For those who haven’t heard it, the classic definition of chutzpah is a child who murders his parents and then asks a judge for mercy because he’s an orphan. While nothing below or in the recent news reaches quite that mythical height (with the possible exception of the rampant idiocy over at AIG), sometimes one has to wonder…
The first example is a real beauty that comes from the UK, where Green lobby and nuclear groups clash over role of renewable energy:
EDF and E.ON have warned the government they may be forced to drop plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants unless the government scales back its targets for wind power.
The demands – contained in submissions to the government’s renewable energy consultation – reinforces the worries of wind developers that the two sectors cannot thrive simultaneously.
EDF of France and E.ON of Germany, two of the most high-profile nuclear supporters, said attempts to reach 35% of electricity generated by renewables is not only unrealistic but also damaging to alternative schemes such as nuclear plants.
“The deployment of high levels of intermittent renewables for electricity generation will require the construction of additional carbon-emitting plant as back-up for when renewables are not available to meet demand,” EDF argued. “This is likely to be predominantly gas-fired and will therefore undermine efforts to reduce dependence on non-domestic fuel sources.”
“A 25% electricity target will provide the best platform for further decarbonisation of electricity generation in the period beyond 2020, through a combination of further renewables, new nuclear and coal and gas with carbon capture and storage.”
The attempt to dilute the contribution from renewables has infuriated the environmental lobby. “We’ve always said that nuclear power will undermine renewable energy and will damage the UK’s efforts to tackle climate change – now EDF agrees,” said Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace’s energy solutions unit.
What really frosts my cookies (and not the browser variety) is that the people who most strongly push nuclear power tend, on average, to be the same people who scream the loudest about letting the free market do its thing without the evil, corrupting hand of Government Intervention involved. Unless, of course, it’s a situation like the one here in the US where nuclear power gets massive subsidies, including loan guarantees, then it’s just peachy keen.
The other example involves The Quarrel Over Coal Ash Waste (emphasis added):
More than 500 million gallons of toxic waste from a Tennessee Valley Authority coal plant broke through the containment wall of a storage pond, destroying homes and contaminating two rivers.
“Any new coal project shouldn’t be approved until there’s a thorough analysis of how it will be dealt with in a way that’s fully protective of public health and the environment,” said Peter Lehner, the N.R.D.C.’s executive director.
But Thomas Adams, executive director of the American Coal Ash Association, said, “Kingston was a problem of containment, it wasn’t the ash that was the issue. The solution is to encourage beneficial use of coal combustion products and to make sure disposal requirements are up to speed.”
Next thing you know we’ll be seeing bumper stickers that say, “coal doesn’t cause environmental impacts, people cause environmental impacts”.
On a more serious note, the coal article links to a (new?) set of pages on the NRDC’s web site about CCW (coal combustion waste), available here which I highly recommend. Clearly, someone at the NRDC has been doing his or her homework on this topic to put together all that sate-level information. From that site:
The Harriman spill isn’t the first time that the inadequacy of our nation’s coal waste storage systems has been proven, and it isn’t likely to be the last. In a 2007 draft report, the EPA identified 24 sites in 13 states where pollution from coal combustion waste dumps and lagoons has contaminated surface water and groundwater.
Coal-fired power plants produced more than 126 million tons of contaminated coal waste in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, according to figures reported to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And NRDC estimates show that the waste produced in a single year contains nearly 100,000 tons of toxic metals.
That’s just the waste from plants already in operation. But coal plant developers want to build more than eighty more coal-fired plants that would produce nearly 18 million tons of additional coal waste, contaminated with more than 18 thousand tons of toxic metals.
Despite the well-documented risks, no federal regulations govern the storage of this toxic coal waste, even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined as far back as 2000 that rules were needed. State rules are inconsistent and often laxly enforced, and the utility industry has lobbied hard to keep it that way.
So, not only does coal have the huge negative externality of CO2 emissions, but it has the additional unpriced impact of pollution from coal waste, which we clearly don’t know how to manage.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: Price every form of electricity generation to include all impacts–CO2 emissions, mercury pollution, waste management (what’s the half-life of coal waste, anyway?), fresh water draw and/or consumption, insurance, and loan guarantees, grid upgrades, etc.–and let’s see how wind, solar, wave, tidal, and geothermal fare against coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Or am I just indulging in my own enviro version of chutzpah by posing such a comparison?
