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STATES EXPLORING NUCLEAR: The nuclear power industry has high hopes that a slew of bills under consideration in state legislatures will help lead the United States toward something akin to the “nuclear renaissance” President Emmanuel Macron is pursuing in France.
A range of states, including those with no existing nuclear capacity or with statutory restrictions on new reactors, are taking a closer look at nuclear during their 2022 legislative sessions as momentum builds behind advanced nuclear reactor technology.
In West Virginia, which generates the overwhelming majority of its electricity from coal and has no nuclear power, Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill into law this week lifting a 25 year-old ban on construction of nuclear power plants.
Meanwhile, a bill in nuclear power-less Indiana that would allow utilities to consider deploying small modular nuclear reactors just passed the state Senate and will be taken up in a House committee next week.
In Alaska, lawmakers are considering a bill to exempt microreactors (defined as those able to generate no more than 50 megawatts of electrical power) from a state law requiring the legislature to approve the sitings of any new nuclear reactors. Proponents expect microreactors will be especially useful to communities that are small and isolated from other population centers.
Bills in Colorado and Oklahoma, neither of which currently have reactors, would initiate studies of the feasibility of bringing nuclear power generation to their states, and nuclear-related bills in at least six other states have been filed.
Christine Csizmadia, director of state governmental affairs and advocacy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said this movement on new nuclear at the state-legislative level has especially picked up in the last few years and made reference to laws like the one Wyoming passed in 2020 to authorize small modular reactors to replace retiring fossil fuel-fired plants.
“Over the last two to three years is really when we started to see the shift” from legislation to prop up the existing nuclear fleet, Csizmadia told Jeremy, though she noted that some states are still doing that.
“But the shift here really is towards looking to the future and incentivizing new nuclear,” she said.
Why nuclear: This interest in nuclear is being driven by two primary factors, Csizmadia said: cutting greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation and maintaining grid reliability. And the prevailing motivation behind these bills differs by state.
“There’s one bucket of states that are considering decarbonization goals. A lot of these states, especially, I would say, the western states that we’ve been visiting like Montana and Nebraska — those states are really concerned about things like reliability and the economic impact of coal closures,” she said.
But advanced nuclear still has more to prove: There’s some measure of consensus that the expansion of Plant Vogtle in Georgia will more than likely be the last commercial scale nuclear project using longstanding reactor technology.
That means the future of nuclear will depend on whether advanced reactors can prove to be commercially viable, and developers still have more to prove.
Reactor projects under development with help from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, including Bill Gates-backed TerraPower’s Natrium reactor project in Wyoming, are tied to a deadline of 2027 for demonstrating they can reliably supply the grid.
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FOSSIL INDUSTRY PRESSES FOR BIDEN’S SUPPORT: The oil and gas industry’s biggest trade groups are asking President Joe Biden for his backing to better enable it to ease stress in global energy markets and stave off a domestic crisis akin to the one Europe is facing.
The U.S. “is not immune to future challenges” such as gas shortages and drained reserves, the industry groups wrote to Biden, if it is “unable to continue growing and modernizing our natural gas system.”
The letter from the Natural Gas Council — which includes the American Petroleum Institute, American Gas Association, Independent Petroleum Association of America, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, and Natural Gas Supply Association — also makes the case that gas’s uptake in the energy sector has enabled reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and argues that it works well in tandem with renewable sources.
Where Biden is: Biden’s records from the campaign trail and inside the White House evince a strong preference for restricting the exploration and production of fossil fuels in order to cut emissions.
But the strain on global energy markets has required his administration to ease up on some of his more aggressive promises and to encourage more production. That easing up has taken shape in different ways, including in the form of a request by Secretary Jennifer Granholm to domestic producers to “get your rig count up” and drill more oil.
Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have also recognized that LNG “in the short-term can enhance security of supply while we continue to enable the transition to net zero emissions.”
Still, the administration has generally been hostile to the oil and gas industry’s proposals for ways to increase production, and adopting any of them would be politically difficult to defend.
TVA LAUNCHES NEW NUCLEAR PROGRAM: The Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power company in the United States, authorized a new program yesterday to develop and fund new, small nuclear reactors as it seeks to dramatically drive down greenhouse gas emissions and hit its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
The TVA, a federally owned utility that provides electricity to seven states, will spend some $200 million in its first phase as it seeks to expand new nuclear technology that can help power the U.S. grid in the next decade, according to the Associated Press.
“Our objective isn’t to build one nuclear plant,” said TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash. “Our objective is to reach net zero carbon, to support economy-wide decarbonization, and to do it at a price and a level of reliability that people can count on. And this is a part of doing that.”
COURT RESTORES FEDERAL PROTECTIONS FOR GRAY WOLVES: A California judge restored the federal endangered species status of the gray wolf yesterday, overturning a Trump-era decision that stripped the species of its federal protection, which had been in place for more than 45 years.
In its decision to remove the gray wolf endangered species status, the Trump administration argued that its population had “exceeded” recovery goals over the past four decades. But U.S Judge Jeffrey White in Northern California, a George W. Bush appointee, disagreed, writing in his decision that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “failed to adequately consider the threats to wolves outside of the core populations in the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains in delisting the entire species.” His ruling applies in 44 of the lower 48 U.S. states, and will take effect in March.
PEABODY REPORTS MASSIVE REVENUE SPIKE: The world’s largest private-sector coal producer, Peabody Energy, reported a net income of $513 million in the final three months of 2021 yesterday, marking its most profitable period in roughly two decades.
The St. Louis-based company’s revenue spike comes despite pledges from world leaders at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to “phase down” use of coal-fired power generation, which produces roughly double the carbon emissions of natural gas, according to the Financial Times.
Peabody has benefited from a rebound in steelmaking economies, as worldwide begin to recover from the financial losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. An increase in natural gas prices has also steered some power producers back in the direction of coal, per the FT. Read more here.
HYDROGEN’S DAY IN SENATE ENERGY: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing yesterday to talk over what it would take for clean hydrogen, or that produced with little to no greenhouse gas emissions, to be scaled up and help decarbonize the energy sector.
Multiple witnesses emphasized particularly the benefits associated with hydrogen’s growth in the transportation sector, including through hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
“When used as a fuel in a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, hydrogen does not generate any pollution at its point of use: zero greenhouse gases, zero conventional pollutants and zero noise,” said American Air Liquide CEO Michael Graff. Air Liquide is committing to invest some $10 billion in low-carbon hydrogen by 2035, beyond the $5 billion it already has invested in hydrogen around the world, he said.
Hydrogen serves as a key feedstock for petrochemical and fertilizer production but producing it using renewable energy is expensive relative to the higher emitting and more common method of steam methane reformation.
The new infrastructure law authorizes $9.5 billion to the Department of Energy to help solve this cost problem and fund hydrogen “hubs” to scale up clean hydrogen use across sectors.
The Rundown
Sacramento Bee PG&E is planting wires underground to reduce California wildfire risk. How much will it cost?
Bloomberg Singapore’s Clean Energy Dilemma Is a Warning for Small Nations
Associated Press High energy prices send Europe’s businesses, homes reeling
The Hill Bipartisan group of lawmakers introduce coastal resilience legislation
Calendar
TUESDAY | FEB. 15
2:30 p.m. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will hold a remote hearing entitled “Keeping the Lights On: Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability.”
