Home » Nuclear

Could The Coal/Nuke Bailout Be Dead? Definitely, Maybe

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

It’s been an article of faith among President Donald Trump supporters that he was going to – come hell or high water – “save” the coal industry. As part of that plan, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and his merry team have been working for months on a bailout plan that would use taxpayer money to support failing coal and nuclear plants.

The solar industry has been living with this sword of Damocles this entire time, just waiting for the inevitable announcement of a policy that seemed set in stone.

Well hold up – that stone may not quite be set yet, at least as far as Politico is concerned.

[wds id=”3″]

According to insiders that spoke to the online news outlet on the condition of anonymity, the plan has run into opposition within the White House itself, specifically with members of the National Security Council and National Economic Council.

Word is that President Trump hasn’t officially weighed in against the proposal, but that he’s willing to go along with his advisors who oppose the plan, at least for now (as Politico notes, President Trump has been known to change his mind and that it is possible the plan could come back as part of his re-election strategy in 2020).

In a “too bad, so sad” moment, Politico reports that “the stalemate is frustrating the politically active coal mining companies that backed Trump’s presidential campaign and lobbied heavily for an economic lifeline for their industry.” (By economic lifeline, they mean a taxpayer-funded bailout.)

But as has been noted elsewhere, coal has been focusing its energies on fighting the wrong alternative. Solar and wind were never the monsters that were eating coal’s lunch; that was the natural gas industry. And once you riled up the oil-and-gas industries against you, your bailout was all but finished.

One has to feel a little sorry for West Virginia Congressional members, who took Trump at his word that he would do everything he could to “save” the coal industry. Politico discusses some of the hurt feelings that are now percolating after this most recent decisions to shelve the plan (at least temporarily):

“I’m trying to find the darn plan because I understand it’s gone from the Department of Energy over to the White House, and I don’t know who in the White House would be sitting on it for whatever reason,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters last week.

This story could change at a moment’s notice if Trump suddenly changes his mind or decides to break with his closest advisors. But for now, it seems like the plan to rescue uneconomical coal and nuke plants with a taxpayer funded bailout may not come to fruition.

Memo To Forbes Writer: Nuclear Energy Is NOT Clean Energy

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

As I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed this weekend, I ran across an article from Forbes magazine writer Michael Shellenberger that both made me laugh out loud and shake my head.

The headline of the article was “Had They Bet On Nuclear, Not Renewables, Germany & California Would Already Have 100% Clean Power.” Which, if you think about it, is like saying, “If my dog meowed, she’d be a cat.”

Shellenberger bases his article on a study by Environmental Progress, which a quick glance at their website shows is a shill organization for the nuclear power industry. Something you’d think Shellenberger, who writes about energy and the environment, might either be aware of or at least might want to disclose in the article.

[wds id=”3″]

Instead, Shellenberger wants to pretend that this is an organization like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace that are just interested in preserving the environment. He wags his finger at the denizens of the Global Climate Action Summit for not mentioning nuclear, and then goes ahead with his analysis of Germany and California, shaking his head at their foolishness for not investing enormous amounts of money in the nuclear energy.

Here are a couple of key issues that Shellenberger, in full nuclear hawk mode, ignores. First off, and most importantly, nuclear power is not a clean energy source. Even if you ignore the potential safety concerns about having a nuclear power plant in your back yard (and as someone that has two within 100 miles of his home in two directions, I have those concerns), there’s still the question of what to do with the spent fuel rods. Until you finally build that storage facility inside Yucca Mountain, you’re going to have to put those fuel rods somewhere – and right now there’s no safe place to put them.

Furthermore, he conveniently ignores the costs of storing those rods in his evaluation of costs of nuclear plants, which is something that get ignored by most nuclear proponents. And given the most recent struggles in constructing nuclear plants in Georgia and elsewhere, I’m going to respectfully suggest that the construction costs on which Environmental Progress based its projections may be a little understated.

This discussion is not academic. They are currently debating whether to include nuclear as a clean energy in Arizona’s renewable portfolio standard. So articles like this one from Forbes, dishonest as they are, are important to call out when they appear. Let’s make sure this one doesn’t go unanswered.

More:

Had They Bet On Nuclear, Not Renewables, Germany & California Would Already Have 100% Clean Power

Gone With The Wind: Wind Farms Hasten The Closure Of An Iowan Nuclear Plant

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Another one bites the dust: Another nuclear plant is going offline – this one five years earlier than planned – at least in part thanks to the power of four nearby wind plants, which will partially replace the generating power of the nuclear facility.

NextEra’s Energy has decided to close the 615 MW Duane Arnold Energy Center (DAEC) five years prior to its expected decommissioning in part because the energy conglomerate can sell power from its four wind plants more inexpensively and cleanly. The company supplies energy for Alliant Energy, which supplies electricity to customers in Iowa and Wisconsin.

[wds id=”3″]

The four wind farms will replace 340 MW of the generation capacity, and Alliant plans to build its own wind plants in Iowa to make up the rest.

What makes the decision most remarkable is that it comes against the backdrop of plans being hatched in Washington D.C. to interfere in the nuclear market and prop up uneconomic nuclear and coal plants using national taxpayer money to do it. Estimates on what the bailout will cost vary, but some experts have put the number as high as $34 billion. It’s worth asking the denizens at the Department of Energy why they feel it’s important to keep these plants open when the companies on the ground – like NextEra and Alliant – are obviously perfectly OK with closing the plant.

Heck, Alliant is even paying NextEra $110 million in September 2020 to ensure the plant closes five years before its power-purchase agreement (PPA) with the plant runs out. So what on Earth are the regulators and politicians in Washington thinking?

Stories like this one out of Iowa need to be heard at the highest levels of our government in the hopes that the harebrained bailout scheme can still be headed off. Senators and Congressmen need to be held accountable for trying to pick winners and losers in the electricity generation game. Otherwise, they’re just a bunch of hypocrites paying off their donors.

Iron Mountain Joins RE100 and Commits to Setting Science Based Targets for Carbon Reductions

Iron Mountain® Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), the global leader in storage and information management services, today announced two important environmental commitments that significantly advance the company’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and increase its usage of renewable energy around the world.

Firstly, Iron Mountain is joining the RE100 initiative, a collaborative, global platform developed by The Climate Group, an independent, not-for-profit organization working internationally with government and business leaders to advance smart policies and technologies to cut global emissions and accelerate a low carbon economy. Iron Mountain joins more than 130 multinational corporations in committing to a shift to using renewable energy sources for 100 percent of its worldwide electricity. In doing so, Iron Mountain pledges to follow a rigorous standard for green power purchasing and achieving aggressive interim milestones on the way to a complete conversion by 2050.

Secondly, Iron Mountain announced its commitment to set an aggressive science-based target for carbon reduction by the end of 2019. In doing so, the company will work with the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which helps companies determine how much they must cut emissions to do their part to address climate change, to calculate and approve a reduction in carbon from current levels. This promise puts the company on a trajectory for decarbonizing its operations in line with the global goals of the Paris Climate Accord.

“We applaud Iron Mountain for taking these important steps to address climate change,” said Mindy Lubber, CEO and president of Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit organization working with the most influential investors and companies to build leadership and drive solutions throughout the economy. “By committing to 100 percent renewable electricity and setting an ambitious science-based carbon-reduction target, Iron Mountain is joining a growing number of major companies that understand the huge economic benefits and clear competitive advantage of climate action.”

In Iron Mountain’s recently released 2017 Corporate Responsibility Report, the company reports achieving an absolute reduction of 6.6 percent in year-over-year carbon emissions – even during a period of continued business growth and service expansion. Iron Mountain is also a member of several collaborative efforts to advance the use of renewable energy including the renewable energy buyer’s alliance (REBA) a collaboration of World Wildlife Fund, World Resource Initiative, Rocky Mountain Institute and Business for Social Responsibility. The company is a signatory to the Renewable Energy Buyers Principals, a member of the EPA Green Power Partnership and recipient of the 2017 Green Power Leadership Award.

“We’re proud to be among the earliest adopters of renewable energy,” said William Meaney, president and chief executive officer of Iron Mountain. “Understanding the impact of our energy usage has led to the adoption of energy and greenhouse gas reduction strategies that are helping the company save money, reduce environmental impacts and better serve our customers. In making these commitments today, we are setting aggressive public goals with the endorsement of well-respected non-profit organizations, accelerating our efforts to foster strong economic growth while operating as a responsible, ethical and sustainable company.”