Shellenberger opined in April, 2021 that, among other things, the Democrats’ climate infrastructure legislation in Congress proposes a national Clean Energy Standard, which would require electricity providers to generate 80% of their power from zero-emissions resources by 2030 and 100% by 2035. That Standard appears to include nuclear and, theoretically, should help nuclear plants on the verge of being closed and replaced by natural gas and renewables. But the broader legislation, and President Biden’s proposed budget, would heavily subsidize solar and wind, including its enabling infrastructure, but not nuclear plants. As such, the combined impact of the legislation could be to accelerate the premature closure of nuclear plants around the U.S.
To a significant extent this is already happening. In Congress and across the U.S., Democratic lawmakers are advocating and overseeing the closure of nuclear power plants, and their replacement with both China-made solar panels and natural gas, which has increased emissions in California and New York, and will do so in Illinois, if legislators fail to act to save the nuclear plants scheduled to prematurely close later this year. Sitting Democratic governors have used behind-the-scenes efforts, including ones that involved illegal donations from natural gas firms, to pressure nuclear plants to close prematurely, as well as state mandates and credit programs, similar to the ones Democrats are proposing in their climate change and infrastructure legislation.
In 2019, U.S. Congressional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, ”but a few months later advocated the closure of Indian Point nuclear plant, which at the time provided carbon-free electricity for roughly three million New Yorkers.
Ocasio-Cortez got her wish and Indian Point is in the process of being shut down and being replaced by fossil fuels, causing emissions to rise, as well solar panels. “After one of Indian Point’s two working reactors was permanently shut down last summer,” reported the Times last week, “the share of the state’s power that came from gas-fired generators jumped in 2020 to about 40 percent, from about 36 percent in 2019, federal data show.” Emissions are likely to rise further after the second reactor is closed in a few weeks.
In California, even anti-nuclear advocates today acknowledge that emissions are likely to rise if Governor Gavin Newsom of California follows through on his promise to close Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in 2024 and 2025. Last summer, California lacked sufficient electricity by roughly the same amount as had been provided by the nuclear power plant that California’s Democratic leaders forced to close prematurely in 2013. Democratic elected officials have said that solar and wind can replace the lost nuclear, but the Times noted that “each of Indian Point’s reactors had been producing more power than all of the wind turbines and solar panels in the state combined.”
The same problem has afflicted California. "People wonder how we made it through the heat wave of 2006,” said the CEO of California’s electricity grid operator.. “The answer is that there was a lot more generating capacity in 2006 than in 2020.... We had San Onofre [nuclear plant] of 2,200 megawatts and a number of other plants totaling thousands of megawatts not there today." With nuclear plants generating nearly 20 percent of U.S. electricity, and solar and wind just half of that, the Democrats’ legislation could ultimately raise rather than lower emissions by continuing to eliminate emission-free nuclear power generation that solar and wind cannot adequately replace.
Why Biden Must Opt for American Nuclear Over Chinese Solar
China decides its energy policy based on politics internal to the Politburo, and various industry lobbies, and is simply using the issue of climate change to manipulate the West, say some experts. "Xi's bullish talk of combating climate change is a smokescreen for a more calculated agenda," wrote two experts at the U.S. Naval War College and Rice University in Foreign Affairs. "Chinese policymakers know their country is critical to any comprehensive international effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and they are trying to use that leverage to advance Chinese interests in other areas."
Neither China nor Russia are sincere in their promises, agreed the vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "What is striking to me,” she said, “is that while both Beijing and Moscow are speaking the language of climate change before international audiences, at home, they are putting their foot on the accelerator to increase global carbon emissions." She pointed to Russia's exports of natural gas to Germany and much of Europe, and of China's increasing reliance on coal plants to make low-cost products like solar panels.
The climate summit with Xi, closing nuclear power plants, and refusing to apply the same standard to solar panels as governments have applied to tomatoes and shoes, are a bad look for Biden and the Democrats. It’s not too late for action. Republicans in Congress introduced a bill that would ban the import of Chinese-made solar panels into the U.S. But Democrats have not cosponsored it.
Some know better. Moderate Democrats like Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania recognized after the 2020 election that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-nuclear “Green New Deal” made the party look extreme. He should see that Democrats including President Biden are at risk of appearing to value Chinese solar jobs over American nuclear ones. The people closest to the issue express the most fear and anger over what is happening to minorities in China. The researcher who broke the story of coerced Uyghur labor being used to make solar panels unequivocally condemned those who continue to buy Chinese solar panels today. “I would say you are complicit in perpetuating this Chinese industrial policy that suppresses and disenfranchises human beings.”
The replacement of good nuclear jobs with Chinese solar panels will be felt in working-class communities. Nuclear power plants can run for 80 years or more and sometimes employ three generations of families who earn comparatively high wages, thanks to the high-tech nature of atomic energy. Such will be the case in New York. The Indian Point closure will also deprive the local community of $32 million in annual contributions from the plant’s operator including $24 million that went directly to schools. Also lost will be 1,000 good, high-paying jobs. By contrast, the largest new solar farm in the U.S. will create just six permanent jobs.
[Read full article ... the above is just a nuclear selection]
[But also see: https://i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/BEYONDHYDROCARBONS-2020ExpandedIIRev.pdf]
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