Suzanne Waldman
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The dubious environmental justice of 100% renewable energy

9/18/2015

12 Comments

 

There is a petition going around in Canada called “The Leap” sponsored by David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and others that is packed with excellent progressive sentiments and is oriented towards influencing the political climate in advance of our upcoming election.

It makes a series of 15 demands, some of which are easy for any self-regarding progressive to subscribe to, such as the need to better respect treaties with Aboriginal tribes. But some of the other demands—especially those concerning energy supply and infrastructure—are pretty incoherent.

The manifesto calls for Canada to initiate a shift to 100% renewable energy based on so-called research that holds such a shift is possible within two decades. The research is by a cult academic at Stanford University named Mark Jacobson who comes up with utterly impractical plans to power regions with renewable energy. His plan to power the New York state includes unproven, overrated, and inappropriate technologies such as offshore wind a mile deep along the entire coast of Long Island, and concentrated solar power, which needs tremendous levels of insolation to work and as such has ever only been built in deserts.

In most of the real world, the attempt to shift to high concentrations of renewable energies is failing. Germany has been going all out on a renewable energy system for 15 years, and they have only managed to reduce the amount of coal they burn by about a fifth, primarily by burning garbage and trees, which they are importing in vast quantities from around the world. Globally, the only regions successfully approaching high percentages of renewable energy are those that were there all along because they happen to be blessed with access to lots of hydro power, which not all of Canada is.  

But the truly deep incoherence in #TheLeap is not the aim for a 100% renewable approach to energy, however dubious that is. Rather, the incoherent idea is that by shifting to renewable energy we can put an end to the burden exerted upon the earth of extraction.

I’m sympathetic to the writers of #TheLeap for being unfavorable to developments “nobody wants in their backyards.”  But in other regards than fuel—in regards to the materials that goes into building the generation supply--renewable energies are the most extractive form of energies. Building a system on solar and wind requires vast amounts of redundant generation to gather wind power in one region when it isn’t blowing in another, transmission lines between them, as well as backup, which is virtually always fossil fuel. If instead you try to store renewable energy in batteries for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, you would probably need more Lithium than there is in the earth. All of that metal needs to be mined and processed somewhere—be it China, or Malaysia—and the impacts on those places in terms of radioactive and other types of toxic contamination are not pretty.  

By contrast, a better balanced energy system that moved beyond fossil fuels by combining renewable sources with nuclear power would be easier and cheaper to develop and would require a far smaller materials and land footprint. As is well known, nuclear, like renewable energy, produces electricity without greenhouse gases. Most experts, including the IPCC, know that combining nuclear into low-carbon energy system is essential for making those systems cost-effective and adequate for expanding economies and populations.

Nuclear energy is not considered "renewable," because it requires fuel, but the amount of power in that fuel is on a different order of magnitude than in fossil fuel and less than a millionth of it is required to do the same amount of work. For that reason, the material demands of nuclear power are exceptionally low. Two Canadian mines now produce enough uranium to power 40% of Canada's electricity demand. As importantly, our well-regulated uranium mines and deep geological waste repository projects can carefully protect the earth and its inhabitants from the impacts of our energy use.

The small environmental footprint of nuclear power has led 75 scientists concerned about conservation, biodiversity, and climate change recently called for a reevaluation of nuclear power's environmental credentials. By contrast, a 100% renewable energy system in Canada might look clean on paper, but that's because much of the mess would be elsewhere.




 

 

 

 

 

12 Comments
Todd De Ryck
9/18/2015 10:19:47 am

Thank you for this article, Suzanne, a great and much needed summary. As for nuclear waste, South Australia is currently engaged in the "Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission" in which they have essentially proposed to import spent nuclear fuel and store it until such time reactors could be built to use as fuel, an example submission is here http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2015/09/Martin-Nicholson-Oscar-Archer-29-07-2015.pdf The main web site http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au

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Suzy
9/19/2015 08:09:10 am

Thanks, Todd. Yes, nuclear waste recycling would raise this all to a different level, but because it isn't that significant at this point I left it out of the discussion.

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Ike Bottema
9/20/2015 05:54:35 am

Agreed. Great article. Well researched. Have you published this elsewhere? What sort of feedback have you had?

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John Klein link
9/20/2015 02:40:53 pm

I read the critique of Jacobson's idea, and found it lacking insight. Medicine Hat is more northerly than New York, and if heliostat mirrors get snowed on dump the snow off.

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Ike Bottema
9/22/2015 10:35:08 am

John, what sort of insights would you offer towards Jacobson's "idea"?

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Doug Proctor
9/20/2015 04:53:44 pm

I'm in the oil and gas industry. Optimistic outcomes on multiple issues is why risk-based businesses like mine go bankrupt. Regularly, because each group of entrepreneurs thinks they are special, not ruled by general rules of business, the market or success.

The Klein-Suzuki plans for a near-future utopian world of environmental and social harmony is based on their perceived exceptionalism. It is a shame their smarts and energies are not directed at improving specific items of social concern as buttressing their feelings of moral superiority.

The world has too many wealthy whose riches need to be redistributed to the poor. So, Naomi and David, how much of your personal wealth are you sending to First Nation members in Canada, or is "too much" defined by "twice as much as I am likely to obtain in my lifetime"?

Walk the talk and I will pay you attention. Paris 2015 will be irrelevant until the Clintons, Gore, Suzuki and Klein reduce their energy consumption to their proposed levels and send all of their "excess to sustainable" wealth to their local marginalized citizens.

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Michael A. Lewis, Ph.D.
9/21/2015 09:16:52 am

Please stop repeating the myth that nuclear power "produces electricity without greenhouse gases." This is absolutely untrue, and you well know this. Life cycle analysis clearly shows that nuclear, as all energy sources, produces CO2.

Nuclear is not the answer to concerns about greenhouse gases. Demand reduction is the only viable means of reducing greenhouse gas production.

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Ike Bottema
9/22/2015 10:38:38 am

Yes concrete manufacture currently requires a lot of coal-fired process heat thus introduces a lot of carbon. Now Michael, imagine for a moment, MSR plants providing not just electrical power but process heat. How much CO2 would now be going into concrete manufacturing?

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Todd De Ryck
9/28/2015 05:17:33 am

Michael, I'm curious what your "Ph.D" is, considering this comment https://twitter.com/MAlan012/status/626854300644470785

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Stephen Tindale link
9/23/2015 11:10:18 pm

Not surprising to read that something involving Naomi Klein is incoherent. This post, in contrast, is highly coherent. Excellent that you point out that not everything called ‘renewable’ is good for the climate. Burning garbage and trees is not. Valuable too that you say that technologies like wind and solar, and batteries, need lots of raw material for construction.

Renewable energy is an important part of the solution to our climate and energy challenge – maybe even the largest part. But nuclear has to be part of the solution too. So, in my view, does CCS, on which Canada is leading the world. I’d be interested to hear your views on that.

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Doug Proctor
9/24/2015 09:17:25 am

It is only PR greenwashing by both government and industry that Canada is the king of CCS. The project at Weyburn? Saskatchewan you refer to is a CO2-flood, tertiary oil recovery project. It uses CO2 brought in from Beulah, North Dakota. The CO2 comes from the gasification of coal, a byproduct that has value. The CO2 is an important part of its revenue stream, not a problem they have struggled to deal with.

CO2 has long been used as an energy source for restoring pressure in oil reservoirs after natural pressures have declined due to primary production. At Weyburn, a waterflood secondary recovery scheme was used until that lost its impact.

You can also inject standard natural gas for the same repressutization. That gas is dangerous as it is explosive. CO2 produces acids that eat up regular iron and steel equipment. More expensive fittings are required. It is recycled, though. Still, some internal reservoir capture occurs, otherwise injection needs would quickly decline.

Eventually the oil reservoir will be depleted and the field, abandoned. At that time the wells will become CO2 producing wells with a liquid oil component. The C02 will be collected and transported to other, nearby fields for other CO2- floods.

CCS only works financially - and physically - when you are replacing a removed liquid. Hammering it into a pressure normal rock is stupid expensive and will very quickly dangerously overpressure the rock. Earthquakes and seal failures along natural fractures and the wellbore rock-cement contact will happen.

CCS in Canada is about producing MORE oil, not less atmospheric CO2. This is the only thing worth doing with it in large quantities. If we were on Mars we would turn it into O2 and CO for power, but on Earth that would not make sense .... unless there were green subsidies.

Oh, crap

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how to write help in japanese - can you write my assignment link
7/25/2017 01:20:11 pm

Yes, I was interested in an electronic petition. I think there needs to add a couple of points about the best environmental protection

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    Suzanne Waldman

    I'm a PhD student at Carleton U. in Ottawa, Canada researching risk communication.

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