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Old Reactors v. New Renewables: The First Nuclear War of the 21st Century
"Precisely because the economics of renewables have improved so dramatically, nuclear power needs to prevent the development of the physical and institutional infrastructure that will support the emerging electricity system."
Old Reactors v. New Renewables: The First Nuclear War of the 21st Century
Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment
June 06, 2014
Within the past year, a bevy of independent, financial analysts (Lazard, Citi, Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Company, Sanford Bernstein, Morningstar) have heralded an economic revolution in the electricity sector. A quarter of a century of technological progress has led to the conclusion that over the course of the next decade a combination of efficiency, renewables and gas will meet the need for new resources and more importantly, render the antiquated baseload model largely obsolete.
The academic debate over whether we could get to an electricity system that relies entirely (99 percent) or mostly (80 percent) on renewables late in this century is largely irrelevant compared to the fact that over the next couple of decades we could see a rapid and substantial expansion of renewables (to say 30 percent of 40 percent), if the current economic forces are allowed to play out and policies to advance the transformation of the electricity system are adopted.
Political revolutions tend to follow economic revolutions, which is where we stand in the electricity sector today. The dominant incumbents, particularly nuclear utilities, have recognized that they face an existential threat and they have launched a campaign to eliminate it. Utilities, who loudly announced the arrival of a “nuclear renaissance” less than a decade ago, are desperate to save their fleet of aging reactors from early retirement and “stay relevant to the game going forward” (as the CEO of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear utility put it) because they cannot compete at the margin with renewables or gas.
This nuclear v. renewables debate is not just “déjà vu all over again, a lot more than the fate of nuclear power at stake. The fundamental approach to delivering electricity in the 21st century, while meeting the challenge of climate change, is on the table. Nuclear power and the alternatives are so fundamentally different that a strategy of “all of the above” is no longer feasible. Nuclear power withers in an electricity system that focuses on flexibility because it is totally inflexible, but renewables cannot live up to their full potential without opening up and transforming the physical and institutional infrastructure of the system.
Nuclear power has failed because it has never been able to compete at the margin with other resources ...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/06/old-reactors-v-new-renewables-the-first-nuclear-war-of-the-21st-century
Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment
June 06, 2014
Within the past year, a bevy of independent, financial analysts (Lazard, Citi, Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Company, Sanford Bernstein, Morningstar) have heralded an economic revolution in the electricity sector. A quarter of a century of technological progress has led to the conclusion that over the course of the next decade a combination of efficiency, renewables and gas will meet the need for new resources and more importantly, render the antiquated baseload model largely obsolete.
The academic debate over whether we could get to an electricity system that relies entirely (99 percent) or mostly (80 percent) on renewables late in this century is largely irrelevant compared to the fact that over the next couple of decades we could see a rapid and substantial expansion of renewables (to say 30 percent of 40 percent), if the current economic forces are allowed to play out and policies to advance the transformation of the electricity system are adopted.
Political revolutions tend to follow economic revolutions, which is where we stand in the electricity sector today. The dominant incumbents, particularly nuclear utilities, have recognized that they face an existential threat and they have launched a campaign to eliminate it. Utilities, who loudly announced the arrival of a “nuclear renaissance” less than a decade ago, are desperate to save their fleet of aging reactors from early retirement and “stay relevant to the game going forward” (as the CEO of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear utility put it) because they cannot compete at the margin with renewables or gas.
This nuclear v. renewables debate is not just “déjà vu all over again, a lot more than the fate of nuclear power at stake. The fundamental approach to delivering electricity in the 21st century, while meeting the challenge of climate change, is on the table. Nuclear power and the alternatives are so fundamentally different that a strategy of “all of the above” is no longer feasible. Nuclear power withers in an electricity system that focuses on flexibility because it is totally inflexible, but renewables cannot live up to their full potential without opening up and transforming the physical and institutional infrastructure of the system.
Nuclear power has failed because it has never been able to compete at the margin with other resources ...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/06/old-reactors-v-new-renewables-the-first-nuclear-war-of-the-21st-century
