Saving nuclear plant could help California hit climate goals
California should extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to meet state climate goals, a report by academics and a consulting company said on Monday.
The report by researchers at Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and LucidCatalyst, LLC said delaying closure of the plant to 2025 would reduce California's carbon emissions from power plants by more than 10% from 2017 levels, reduce dependency on natural gas, and save up to $21 billion in power system costs.
The Diablo Canyon plant generates about 8% of California's in-state electricity and 15% of its carbon-free power. Keeping it open to 2045 could save up to $21 billion in power system costs and spare 90,000 acres of land from use for energy production, it said.
Starting in 2016, utility PG&E decided to allow the licenses for two reactors at Diablo Canyon to expire in 2024 and 2025, which would close the last nuclear power plant in the country's most populous state. The move came amid public concerns about earthquakes, nuclear waste and the use of water to cool the plants.
The planned closure also came with the belief that power generated by wind and solar energy would make up the lost electricity. But California struggled with rotating power outages in August 2020 during a heat wave; hydroelectric generation has sagged with droughts; and the switch to electric vehicles is likely to add stress to the grid.
Steven Chu, a U.S. secretary of energy under former President Barack Obama, said that when Japan and Germany shut nuclear power plants in recent years it led to a rise in carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
"In order to combat climate change in the best possible way, I think nuclear power ... is something that we should really consider and ask PG&E to reconsider," said Chu, now a Stanford physics professor.
PG&E spokesperson Suzanne Hosn pointed out the state's legislature and regulators approved the plan to shut the plant. "Our focus therefore remains on safely and reliably operating the plant until the end" of its licenses, Hosn said.
The 2,240 megawatt Diablo Canyon plant could also provide power for plants that desalinate ocean water for drinking water and agriculture, and to produce cleaner-burning hydrogen gas, the report said. It did not address how nuclear power proponents could convince PG&E and California politicians and regulators to complete the complicated process of keeping the plant open.
But Jacopo Buongiorno, a report author and director of advanced nuclear energy systems at MIT, said the researchers have shared the results with some California officials. "We really hope that the debate starts now," he said.
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The uses and abuses of green finance
Why the net-zero pledges of financial firms won’t save the world
Alas, the cop26 summit in Glasgow is shaping up to be a disappointment. The hope that emerging markets, which belch out much of the world’s greenhouse gases, would announce ambitious proposals is being dashed. The plans of China, India and Brazil all underwhelm. There is no sign this will be the cop that kills coal, as Britain, the host, wanted. World leaders have still not agreed to stop subsidising fossil fuels.
But one area where enthusiasm is growing is climate finance. Financial institutions representing nearly $9trn in assets pledged to uproot deforestation from their investment portfolios. The most striking announcement has come from the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (gfanz), a coalition co-chaired by Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England. Its members, which include asset owners, asset managers, banks and insurers, hold about $130trn of assets. They will try to cut the emissions from their lending and investing to net zero by 2050. Can the financial industry really save the world?
In principle, it has a huge role to play. Shifting the economy from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy requires a vast reallocation of capital. By 2030, around $4trn of investment in clean energy will be needed each year, a tripling of current levels. Spending on fossil fuels must decline. In an ideal world the profit incentive of institutional investors would be aligned with reducing emissions, and these owners and financiers would control the global assets that create emissions. Asset owners would have both the motive and the means to reinvent the economy.
The reality of green investing falls short of this ideal. The first problem is coverage. The Economist estimates that listed firms which are not state-controlled account for only 14-32% of the world’s emissions. State-controlled companies, such as Coal India or Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, are a big part of the problem and they do not operate under the sway of institutional fund managers and private-sector bankers.
A second issue is measurement. There is as yet no way to accurately assess the carbon footprint of a portfolio without double counting. Emissions from a barrel of oil could appear in the carbon accounts of the firms that are drilling, refining and burning the stuff. Methodologies behind attributing emissions to financial flows are even sketchier. How should shareholders, lenders and insurers divvy up the emissions from a coal-fired power plant, for instance?
The third problem is incentives. Private financial firms aim to maximise risk-adjusted profits for their clients and owners. This is not well-aligned with cutting carbon. The easiest way to cut the carbon footprint of a diversified portfolio is to sell the part of it invested in dirty assets and put the proceeds in firms that never emitted much, such as, say, Facebook. Together, the five biggest American tech firms have a carbon intensity (emissions per unit of sales) of about 3% of the s&p500 average.
Heavily polluting firms or assets will often find new owners. If you can brush off the stigma, it can be profitable to hold assets that can legally generate untaxed externalities—in this case pollution. As shareholders urge oil majors to clean up, the oilfields they sell are being bought by private-equity firms and hedge funds, away from the public eye. Pledges alone do not alter the fact that firms have little reason to invest trillions in green technologies that still have mediocre risk-adjusted returns.
What should be done? Fine-tuning can help. Measurement should be improved. The eu is rolling out mandatory carbon reporting for businesses; America is considering it. Some accounting bodies want to standardise how climate measures are disclosed. Asset owners, such as pension funds, should hold on to their investments in polluting firms and use them to help bring about change. Institutional investors also need to build up their venture-capital arms to finance new technologies, such as green cement.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/the-uses-and-abuses-of-green-finance/21806111
*********************************************New Study Finds Electric Cars Cost More To Refuel Than Gasoline Powered Cars
Anderson Economic Group EV Transition Series: Report
The Anderson study noted that Electronic Vehicles (EVs) are, “often presumed to be less expensive to fuel than their ICE counterparts. There is a rationale in physics for this: due to greater thermal efficiency, electric motors convert energy more efficiently than combustion engines. However, this cost is only one of five.”
For a complete picture, Anderson notes that we consumers must consider:
Commercial and residential electric power/fuel costs.
Registration taxes.
Equipment (e.g., chargers) and installation costs.
Deadhead miles incurred driving to a charger or fueling station.
The cost of time spent refueling
The study found:
There are four additional costs to powering EVs beyond electricity: cost of a home charger, commercial charging, the EV tax and “deadhead” miles.
For now, EVs cost more to power than gasoline costs to fuel an internal combustion car that gets reasonable gas mileage.
Charging costs vary more widely than gasoline prices.
There are significant time costs to finding reliable public chargers – even then a charger could take 30 minutes to go from 20% to an 80% charge.
In the Anderson Economic Group’s October 21, 2021 column “Real-World Electric Vehicle Fueling Costs May Surprise New EV Drivers” they wrote:
6 months of independent research finds fueling costs for electric vehicles (EV) are often higher than for internal combustion engines (ICE)
East Lansing, MI–October 21, 2021: Anderson Economic Group released today the first in a series of analyses examining the transition from ICE vehicles to EVs.
This initial 36-page study is the culmination of comprehensive research comparing the “apples-to-apples” costs involved in fueling both EVs and ICE vehicles. AEG undertook this study after noting that many commonly cited figures did not account for the true costs associated with EV charging.
AEG calculated the cost of chargers, additional road taxes, commercial charging fees, and “deadhead” miles for three different EV driving scenarios and compared these with 3 analogous ICE vehicle scenarios. The research found that fueling an EV is often more expensive than fueling an ICE vehicle.
It further found that fueling costs are far more variable for EVs. The authors go on to note the significant time costs imposed on EV drivers as a result of both inadequate infrastructure and wait times associated with fueling, which can be five to ten times the cost for ICE drivers.
According to study author Patrick Anderson, “These numbers may be surprising to those who haven’t relied upon an electric vehicle, but it’s important we safeguard the public from ‘charger shock.’ Before consumers can feel comfortable buying EVs in large numbers, they need to understand the true costs involved.”
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Australian government commits to expanding electric vehicle charging stations but no subsidies to increase uptake
The Prime Minister says he will not do anything to force Australians into electric cars, as the government announces its new strategy for zero emissions vehicles.
Instead, the federal government will partner with the private sector to fund 50,000 charging stations in Australian homes, in a bid to encourage more people to buy electric vehicles.
The long-awaited Future Fuels strategy does not include subsidies, tax incentives, sales targets or minimum fuel emission standards that would make electric vehicles more affordable though, according to industry groups.
However, it is a pivot from the government's 2019 assertion that Labor's electric vehicle policy was "a war on the weekend".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had no problem with electric vehicles, but he opposed governments telling people what to do.
Mr Morrison said customers should be able to lead the pace of change to electric vehicles, but his government would make sure the infrastructure was there to support them.
"Reducing the total cost of ownership through subsidies would not represent value for the taxpayer, particularly as industry is rapidly working through technological developments to make battery electric vehicles cheaper," the government's strategy said.
It instead aligns with the "technology not taxes" mantra that underpins the government's broader approach to emissions reductions.
The strategy includes expanding the Future Fuels Fund to a total of $250 million of taxpayers' funds, which the government estimates will create 2,600 jobs over three years.
It does not say exactly how or where those jobs will be created but does point to employment opportunities through supply chains and manufacturing needed to sustain an electric vehicle market.
The government argues its investment will help ensure companies do not concentrate charging stations in inner-city areas, which may dissuade people in outer suburban or rural areas from purchasing an electric vehicle.
"We will not be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes," Mr Morrison said.
"Instead, the strategy will work to drive down the cost of low and zero-emission vehicles and enhance consumer choice."
The federal government will ask state and territory energy ministers to incentivise the use of smart chargers in homes and work with energy regulators to ensure the electricity grid can handle more batteries
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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