Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
NUCLEAR POWER’S GROWTH IS STALLED: Nuclear power globally is in a “stasis” and should not be counted on as a significant tool to help combat climate change in the future because of its high cost compared to renewables, according to a new report Thursday.
By the numbers: The number of nuclear reactors operating globally is at a 30-year low, while several plants are facing the end of their life expectancies, and new projects face delays, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report found.
As of July, there were 408 nuclear reactors active in 31 countries, a decline of nine units from mid-2019 and 30 fewer than the peak in 2002.
No new reactors started up in the first half of 2020, while six reactors came online last year. Russia is the driving force behind new nuclear, completing half of last year’s reactors, while being involved with 15 of the 52 projects under construction globally. Of the 52 new plants being built globally, at least 33 are behind schedule.
In Western Europe and the U.S., the rate of retirements is increasing while the few new construction projects have experienced cost overruns and schedule slippages.
Costs don’t add up: The report argues that new renewable energy sources are beating existing nuclear power plants economically — today. For example, on a levelized cost of energy basis, between 2009 and 2019, utility scale solar costs fell 89% and wind 70%, while new nuclear costs increased by 26%, the report showed.
Investment in new nuclear is about one tenth of that in wind and solar.
“In some major countries such as the United States, even 30-year-old plants whose capital costs have been paid off cannot compete economically with new renewable power plants, whose capital costs have been declining,” the report says.
Existing nuclear power plants are “usefully producing” a little less than one-third of global zero-carbon power, the report acknowledges. But closing uneconomic reactors can lead to overall reductions in carbon pollution if a nuclear plant’s operating costs are instead invested into efficiency and solar and wind, the report claims.
Also skeptical of small reactors: The Trump administration and members of both parties support R&D for small reactors, which are designed for greater safety and easier construction than today’s massive plants. However, the report is also less bullish on these reactors being commercialized in the U.S., concluding “there are few signs that would hint at a major breakthrough for SMRs, either with regard to the technology or with regard to the commercial side.”
This is the same exact language the report’s authors used last year, but there have been new developments since then. Oregon-based NuScale last month became the first company to obtain a design approval for a small nuclear reactor in the U.S., a key step before seeking approval to operate a plant.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
LOOKING UNDER THE HOOD OF CALIFORNIA’S BIG CLEAN CARS PUSH: Whether or not California can eliminate the sales of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035 could depend quite a bit on who wins the White House in November and what happens in the courts.
That’s because, as Rapidan Energy Group says in a research note, California’s gas-powered car ban is “really just an update to the state’s already less-stringent-than-advertised” zero-emissions vehicle program. That program requires a certain percentage of the state’s car sales to be zero-emissions each year, and under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new executive order, California officials would ramp that amount up to 100% by 2035.
A pretty notable caveat: California’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate is rooted in its Clean Air Act waiver allowing it to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas standards, which the Trump administration withdrew.
California, and several other states, are fighting that withdrawal in court, but if President Trump wins reelection, a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court is more likely to uphold the Trump administration’s position, Rapidan Energy Group notes. That would couch California’s ability to enforce any zero-emissions vehicle mandate.
California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols didn’t directly address what might happen to the state’s new policy if Trump’s waiver withdrawal is upheld, simply noting the state is fighting Trump in court.
“In the meantime, we continue to lay out the course and gather support,” Nichols said in a news conference Wednesday. “We have more states now than ever who have joined with us.”
BONUS STATE CLIMATE MOVES: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer set her state on course to be fully carbon neutral by 2050. Her executive directive also sets an interim goal for the state to slash carbon emissions by 28% below 1990 levels by 2025.
The climate target could be challenging for Michigan. Roughly a third of the state’s power generation in 2019 came from coal and 30% from natural gas, compared with roughly 8% from renewable sources of energy, according to the Energy Information Administration.
OIL EXECUTIVES FORECAST PEAK DEMAND, FEAR BIDEN WILL MAKE IT WORSE: Most executives (66%) from 154 oil and gas companies polled by the Dallas Fed said they believe U.S. oil production has peaked, according to a survey released Wednesday.
In comments attached to the survey, oil executives from companies active in Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana, expressed alarm about the state of the industry, especially if Joe Biden were to become president.
“A Biden administration would wreak havoc on our industry,” said one executive from an exploration and production firm. “It would put us out of business.” A second executive said, “A Biden administration would absolutely kill our industry.”
Another executive said, “we are in a period of energy transition away from fossil fuels,” and predicted “going forward, large investment pools of capital will not invest in petroleum.”
NO SURPRISE…WORLD NOT ON TRACK TO MEET PARIS GOALS: It’s looking more like a 3-degree Celsius world if the current rate of progress on emission reductions continues, Wood Mackenzie said in a new analysis Thursday.
In its base case, Wood Mackenzie finds electrification of sectors like transportation and buildings, which the firm says is crucial to reaching net-zero emissions, is growing slowly. Electricity consumption in 2040 would be only 4 percentage points higher than today under the base case. In addition, energy emissions would peak in 2030, but they’d still be higher than 2019 levels in 2040.
To reach a 2-degree world, Wood Mackenzie models peak energy emissions in 2023, a 14% boost in electricity consumption as cars and buildings are electrified, and more than 50% of the world’s electricity coming from wind and solar power (compared to just 30% in the base case).
The firm warns, however, that the world must do much more to decarbonize its existing capital stock, much of which is young and emissions-intensive, by investing in technologies like carbon capture and green hydrogen.
WHOSE INNOVATION IS IT ANYWAY? House Republican leaders on Wednesday came out against Democrats’ clean energy package, the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, up for consideration this week.
“This bill has little to do with innovation and everything to do with House Democrats’ embrace of their high cost Green New Deal,” said Greg Walden, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Frank Lucas, top Republican on the Science Committee, and Rob Bishop, top GOP member on the Natural Resources Committee.
The House Democrats’ bill is more aggressive than the Senate’s bipartisan package led by Energy Committee leaders Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin. But the House bill is still filled with bipartisan innovation bills, and the vehement opposition from Republicans makes us skeptical the two chambers can reconcile their differences in final legislation before the election.
Election year politics at play: In an interview, Walden and Rep. John Shimkus, another top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, accused Democrats of stripping out some bipartisan provisions in the bill that had been approved by the panel.
The Republicans told Josh the committee’s Democratic chairman, Frank Pallone, sought a more liberal bill so he’d have more leverage in negotiating a reconciled package with the Senate.
“They [Democrats] don’t want to carry a bill that has a majority of Republicans on it,” Shimkus said. “He’s just got to get a bill through in hopes of having some negotiating position.”
Democrats’ response: In comments on the House floor, Pallone said the “goal of this energy package is to move provisions we believe have a shot at becoming law this Congress after negotiations with the Senate.”
He called the bill’s provisions “practical and achievable,” including a measure phasing out the use of HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons, investments in transmission and EV charging equipment, and new energy efficiency standards for buildings.
PEBBLE MINE CEO IS OUT: Tom Collier is resigning as CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, the U.S. subsidiary of Canadian-based Northern Dynasty Minerals that is seeking to build a controversial gold and copper mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
Northern Dynasty announced Collier’s resignation Wednesday, just days after an environmental group released covertly recorded tapes of him and Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen boasting they’d used their ties with Republican lawmakers in Alaska to jam the project through permitting.
In a press release, Northern Dynasty said Collier’s comments “embellished” his and the project’s relationship with lawmakers and government officials and were “clearly offensive” to the politicians in question. Murkowski in particular took issue with comments Collier made suggesting she misunderstood recent Army Corps actions teeing up additional requirements for the project. “I am not ‘embarrassed’ by my statement on it, and I will not be ‘quiet in the corner,’” Murkowski said in a statement, per the Washington Post.
Thiessen, despite similar comments about Murkowski and other lawmakers, didn’t resign, but he apologized, saying the “unethical manner in which these tapes were acquired does not excuse the comments that were made, or the crass way they were expressed.”
The Pebble project, which environmentalists say would damage one of the world’s most productive salmon habitats, has had a bumpy road in recent weeks amid staunch opposition from some prominent conservatives. Trump, however, recently tweeted he wouldn’t let politics drive the mine’s review.
IEA CALLS FOR MASSIVE CARBON CAPTURE SCALE-UP: “[G]overnments and industry today have the chance to combine their forces to realize the environmental and economic benefits that [carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)] offers,” said International Energy Agency director Fatih Birol in a foreword to the agency’s new report Thursday. “Without it, our energy and climate goals will become virtually impossible to reach.”
The IEA report acknowledges support for carbon capture is already ramping up somewhat. Around $27 billion in projects are nearing final investment decisions, and countries have announced plans for more than 30 commercial-scale carbon capture facilities in the last three years. Taken together, those projects would double the amount of carbon captured globally, the IEA says.
That’s not nearly enough, the IEA cautions: In a scenario where the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2070, carbon capture accounts for 15% of the necessary emissions reductions, the IEA says. The world would have to deploy 50% more carbon capture to reach net-zero by 2050, according to the report.
The IEA says governments need to massively ramp up support for carbon capture in the next decade — by putting an economic value on emissions reductions (like a carbon price, for example), funding development of carbon capture infrastructure and storage, and increasing research funding to help cut costs for the technology.
DEMOCRATS PRESS FOR CLIMATE IN DEBATES: More than 30 Senate Democrats are urging the Commission on Presidential Debates to ensure that each debate over the next two months include questions addressing climate change and environmental injustice.
The senators, in a letter Wednesday, say moderators should address “intersecting crises” facing the country, all of which they say relate to climate change, including wildfires in the West, extreme heat waves, shifting water levels in the Great Lakes, and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Voters, regardless of their party affiliation or candidate preference, must have the opportunity to hear directly from the candidates about what they have done and plan to do to fight this crisis,” said the Democrats, led by leader Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Sheldon Whitehouse, and more.
A CALL FOR ELECTRIC REFORM: Recent utility scandals in Ohio and Illinois are not isolated but rather demonstrative of the “perverse incentive structure of monopoly utility regulation,” according to a paper Wednesday by the R Street Institute.
Authors Devin Hartman and Mike Haugh say Ohio and Illinois have begun shifting competitive electricity markets, but have done so “incompletely.”
“The Illinois and Ohio utility scandals highlight the flaws of letting electric monopolies mingle in competitive markets. This is a call for state reform to isolate monopolies to distribution systems and enable competitive markets to provide all power generation and retail services,” Hartman and Haugh write.
The Rundown
New York Times After years of political gridlock, Oregon’s fire disaster brings ‘new reality’
Reuters California outpaced Trump’s Forest Service in wildfire prevention work: data
Los Angeles Times Los Angeles hid a methane leak for a year. Activists want the power plant shut down
Calendar
THURSDAY | SEPT. 24
11:30 a.m. Washington Examiner and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions hold a virtual event celebrating Iowa’s recognition of National Clean Energy Week with a discussion featuring Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and local leaders in Iowa. Josh will moderate.
FRIDAY | SEPT. 25
2 p.m. National Clean Energy Week hosts a conversation with former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Sen. Mary Landrieu on clean energy and the November election. Abby will moderate.
WEDNESDAY | SEPT. 30
11:30 a.m. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s environment subcommittee holds a hearing entitled “Coping with Compound Crises: Extreme Weather, Social Injustice, and a Global Pandemic.”
