Presidential campaigns, including Giuliani’s, discuss energy and climate
Earlier this week, representatives of four presidential candidates (two Democrat, two Republican) appeared for an issues briefing at the National Press Club on energy policy — videos here (warning, they are kind of boring). The short version is that the politically polite rhetoric managed to smooth over the sticky policy points: details of a cap and trade program and nuclear energy policy.
Congressman David E. Bonior spoke on behalf of John Edwards, Senator Tom Daschle on behalf of Barack Obama, former Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington for Rudy Giuliani, and Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin for John McCain.
The representatives loved to point out that they agreed on two things: leadership and urgency. The discussion was diplomatic and strategically ambiguous, as they did not all agree which required leadership and urgency - energy policy or climate policy.
Secretary Herrington was the outlier whose priority was clearly energy policy (and it’s no wonder, given his background). Only Herrington expressed hesitation regarding a cap and trade program, while the others sparred more over details of a plan. Rather than discuss climate, Herrington repeatedly revolve his comments around Giuliani’s two energy priorities: investing in nuclear energy for our electricity sector and using natural gas to fuel our vehicle fleet. [JR — a truly pointless idea since 1) natural gas can be used twice as efficiently displacing coal power and 2) if natural gas became a major transport fuel, we’d have to import it, so it doesn’t solve our energy security problem.]
Since Giuliani is the Republican front-runner, this lame energy/climate policy is quite discouraging.
The only clear partisan divide was over nuclear energy - both panelists for the Democrat candidates are against nuclear power, to varying degrees, and both for the Republican candidates are for nuclear power. (Similar sentiments were revealed in an earlier poll of Congress. )
Greenwire (subs. req’d) has a good recap of the conversation:
Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who represented Obama, said his candidate could support the use of nuclear power but only after figuring out ways to address several issues such as storage, transportation, security and developing a proliferation policy.
“If we say it’s OK for us to acquire far more nuclear capacity, are we prepared to say that about Iran, Sudan and that any other country in the world can have it too,” Daschle said. “Or are we going to be arrogant enough to say, ‘We can have it and you can’t.’”
Meanwhile, both Republicans came out strongly in favor of nuclear power, arguing that it has to be part of any effort to reduce climate change emissions.
“We should move aggressively to allow markets to build nuclear power,” said former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who represented McCain. “It is inexcusable to take nuclear off the table; it’s inexcusable to oppose based on the ghosts of 30 years ago.”
There was doubtlessly one takeaway from the press event: A good presidential nominee is going to need to think through and present an aggressive and comprehensive plan, and the bi-partisan sense of urgency on energy and climate action made that clear. Unfortunately, the representation of Giuliani’s platform painted a fuzzy, dirty, potentially dangerous picture.
– Kari M.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Nuclear power is the sweet siren’s song. It tantalizes and terrifies.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Most of the world’s natural gas is in Russia and Qatar. Do we really want to be dependent on these two countries for NG? Even if you want to use NG as a transportation fuel, the best way to use it is to turn it into electricity and ship that across the car to batteries in cars. You’ll use a lot less NG that way than burning it in the car itself, or by turning it into hydrogen and using the hydrogen in a fuel-cell vehicle.
It is also important to understand that nuclear power can only at most be a small part of the solution. There isn’t enough economically recoverable U235 to build enough nuclear plants to solve our emissions problem. There are 330GW of coal power plants that need to be replaced in the U.S. alone. If the world adds 700 new reactors to its generating capacity, half would have to be in the U.S. just to replace our coal. Then there is China’s coal, India’s coal, etc. MIT’s The Future of Coal (http://web.mit.edu/coal/) has an expanded nuclear scenario that shows capacity going from 1.95PWh to 7.44PWh in 2050 (Table 2.6), and yet in the same scenario coal use increases. (They also assume end-use efficiency improvements.)
Breeder reactors and spent fuel reprocessing could extend the U235 supply, but when MIT looked at those options, they concluded the once-through fuel cycle still made the most sense. (http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/).
October 26th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I’m not an American citizen, but I strongly believe Giuliani’ s ideas are right. First it’ s not true that ” natural gas can be used twice as efficiently displacing coal power ” : coal thermal efficiency in modern plants is about 40/45 % vs 53/55 % for combined gas plants, moreover I do note that coal , even that imported from outside Us, is at least 3 times more economic than NG, mostly imported AFIK, per kWh thermal ! So, the priority is to conserve NG and oil resources for the transport sector where there are few alternatives, at least today if plugins vehicle are not yet avaible
In the heating sector, we have to incentive electric heat pumps and where possible cogeneration and district heating, replacing natural gas use and conserving it for transport sector. Finally, there are a lot of energy efficience schemes to implement
October 26th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Forgot to mention the uranium resource issue, contrary to many statements the planet is plenty of uranium or in general of nuclear fuels, remember it is a little % of the nuclear kWh cost
http://www.fas.org/rlg/010409-nci.htm
” Of great interest are the terrestrial “reasonably assured resources” of uranium, which are likely to amount to 100 to 300 million tons of uranium at a price of $350 per kg (in comparison with the current spot market price of $20-30 per kg)(21).
John P. Holdren and R.K. Pachauri, “Energy”, in ICSU, An Agenda of Science for Environment and Development Into the 21st Century, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 103-118.
Of course, nobody of right mind would buy uranium at $350/kg when the same material is available at $30/kg, but it is of primary importance to note that at $350/kg these high-cost terrestrial resources would still be cheaper than the cost of recycling fuel in an LWR (perhaps $700/kg of natural uranium avoided) or of building a breeder reactor with a capital cost that might be double that of an LWR.
Ultimately, we may have safe, economical breeder reactors, but we can take centuries to perfect them….”
We also large thorium resources can be exploited in existing reactors technology
I hope you’ll forgive my poor English, bye!
October 26th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
They are right to advocate using natural gas for transportation. Natural Gas is too important to be used to make electricity. Electricity should be made with something that uses as little greenhouse/insulating gases as possible, not just half way better than coal. That means wind, nuclear or CSP or whatever works.
The Natural Gas would be a better substitute as a transportation fuel instead of using all those tar sands, tar shales and coal processing for oil.
We now make about 20 percent of our electricity with Natural Gas, which is what makes no sense. Natural Gas is to valuable for home and industrial heat and possibly for transportation than to make electricity from it.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
The partisan division over nuclear power is unfortunate. Expansion of nuclear power could slow global warming by reducing carbon emissions and help make America energy independent.
October 28th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Alex is right about uranium supply. Even w/o breeding, and even with several times as much nuclear capacity, we will have enough uranium (235) to last for a century or more; more than enough time to develop other non-fossil sources (i.e., breeders, fusion, or renewables).
Uranium is a ubiquitous metal in the earth’s crust, and we’ve barely started even looking for it. Now that the uranium price is higher, we hear about new discoveries almost every day. It’s discovery cost (dollars spent to find per unit energy produced) is 300 times less than that of oil. In the 1920’s, when the situation for oil was similar to the situation for uranium today (in terms of how much time and effort had been spent looking for it) the known reserves were only ~1% of what we subsequently discovered. The reason people are talking about running out of oil is that we have discovered very little new oil for decades, despite massive efforts. This is nowhere near the case for uranium, for which the discovery process/period is only just beginning.
On top of this is the fact that, unlike oil and gas, the raw uranium ore cost is a tiny fraction (only a few percent) of the overall nuclear electricity price. Thus, even an order of magnitude increase in ore cost has only a modest effect on overall economics. At such a higher price, lower-concentration sources of uranium become practical and economic, which results in an orders of magnitude increase in expoitable reserves.
I talk more about this at:
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html
and a uranium mining expert dicusses it at:
http://216.94.150.122/ investor_relations/ speeches/ speech_text.php?spid=49
October 28th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I agree that natural gas should not be used for baseload power generation, but I don’t think we should use it for transportation either.
Given that production will soon decline rapidly in North America, and the great majority of the world’s remaining reserves lie in Russia and the Middle East, we should try to reduce use of gas wherever possible, and save this limited commodity for applications for which there are few practical alternatives to gas. These include peak power generation, space heating, cogeneration (CHP) applications, and chemical feedstock (for fertilizer, etc..).
The best answer for transportation is to use plug-in hybrid and/or pure electric cars. Fuel derived from biomass sources (other than corn ethanol) may also have a role. The electricity to power these cars can come from nuclear, renewable, or clean coal (w/ sequestration) sources. The cars can charge at night, making use of existing, spare generation and grid capacity.