Mitt Romney’s Winners & Losers

October 16th, 2012 by Guest Contributor

Here’s a great post by perhaps the best Congressperson in office today, Bernie Sanders, on Mitt Romney’s relationship to energy (h/t Grist):

The Big Energy industries (oil, coal and gas) along with their political allies like Mitt Romney are waging war against sustainable energy and efforts to transform our energy system and reverse global warming. In many instances, they are aided and abetted by the very powerful nuclear power industry.

One of their main lines of attack (used repeatedly by Romney in his first debate with President Obama) is that the federal government is picking energy “winners and losers.” Romney says he will not invest in “chasing fads and picking winners and losers” among energy technologies and will instead allow the free market to determine energy development.

Romney is right about one thing: The government does pick winners and losers in the energy sector. What Romney has not told the American people, however, is that the big winners of federal support are the already immensely profitable fossil fuel and nuclear industries, not sustainable energy.

As a member of both the Senate energy and environment committees, I am working to stop the handouts to the fossil fuel industry. I have introduced legislation called the End Polluter Welfare Act. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) filed the companion bill in the House of Representatives. Our measure calls for the elimination for all subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries. Using the best available estimates from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other budget experts, we found that over $113 billion in federal subsidies will go to fossil fuel corporations over the next 10 years. These subsidies benefit some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, including the five largest oil corporations, which made a combined profit of $1 trillion over the last decade. Unlike sustainable energy incentives, many of these fossil fuel subsidies are written permanently into the tax code by industry lobbyists, which means they never expire.

Let me give you just a few examples of outrageously strong federal support for Big Energy companies:

BP, after causing one of the worst environmental disasters in the modern history of America, was able to take a large tax deduction on the money it spent cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coal companies are able to sign single-bid sweetheart leases to mine on federal lands without paying fair value in royalties to the taxpayers of this country.
In 2009, ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable corporations in this country, paid no federal income taxes, and in fact received a rebate from the IRS. Many other large and very profitable oil companies also have managed to avoid paying federal income taxes in certain years.

But it is not just fossil fuel companies. The nuclear industry also benefits from massive corporate welfare. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reports that the nuclear industry has received over $95 billion (in 2011 dollars) in federal research-and-development support in the last 65 years. Nuclear corporations currently have access to billions in federal loan guarantees to build new plants and enrich uranium. They also have federal tax incentives for mining uranium, producing nuclear electricity, and even decommissioning plants.

Perhaps most significantly, the nuclear industry would collapse tomorrow without a huge nuclear insurance program from the federal government. The Price-Anderson Act could, in the event of an American nuclear disaster, force taxpayers to pay out tens or even hundreds of billions in damage claims. Nuclear power is so risky that none of Mitt Romney’s Wall Street or free-market friends will provide that type of insurance.

Let’s be clear. The war against sustainable energy by the Big Energy companies has been extremely successful. During the last year, with almost unanimous Republican opposition, Congress has not been able to extend a very successful program, the 1603 grant program, which had supported over 20,000 sustainable energy projects and tens of thousands of jobs. Congress also has been unable to extend the production tax credit that primarily supports wind energy. The result has been significant layoffs and cancelled projects in the wind industry.

What has not been often enough pointed out is that despite all of the opposition, despite all of the lies coming from fossil-fuel-sponsored think tanks and the right-wing media, this country has made significant and important progress in moving toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

That progress is critical in the fight to reverse global warming, which the vast majority of scientists who study the issue consider to be one of the greatest threats to our planet. With strong federal intervention, we have made some good progress in recent years, but clearly much more needs to be done. Let me just mention a few energy success stories.

As a result of the stimulus package, and legislation that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and I introduced called the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants program, billions of dollars have gone to every state in the country for local projects. The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that over 70 percent of its member cities have installed new energy-efficient LED lighting with block-grant funds. Many cities have also invested in public-building retrofits that save taxpayers money.

The stimulus also invested in weatherization, which is the low-hanging fruit in terms of saving energy. We know this from experience in Vermont where, on average, families whose homes are weatherized save $916 a year on their fuel bills, while cutting carbon emissions. We have now weatherized over 1 million homes nationwide thanks to the stimulus weatherization investment. Significantly, these projects are also creating many new jobs for construction workers installing insulation and manufacturing workers producing energy-efficient products and materials.

But it is not just weatherization and energy-efficiency technologies. We also have made great progress with solar. Prior to the stimulus, at the end of 2008, we had about 1,500 megawatts of solar and fewer than 50,000 solar jobs in America. The cost of solar was $7.50 per watt installed. Today, less than four years later, we have more than tripled solar energy to 5,700 megawatts installed. We have more than doubled jobs, with more than 100,000 solar energy jobs at 5,600 companies in the United States. And we have cut the cost of solar by more than half, down to $3.45 per watt installed.

Further, there are exciting new breakthroughs in solar technology. For example, a 30-megawatt solar project in Alamosa, Colo., developed by a company called Cogentrix, uses advanced concentrated solar panels that produce double the power of a conventional panel. The Alamosa solar project created jobs for dozens of construction workers and is providing power for 6,500 homes in Colorado.

In California, the Ivanpah concentrated solar thermal plant has created 2,100 construction jobs. Ivanpah is scheduled for completion in 2013. This huge 400-megawatt solar plant, a little less than half the size of an average nuclear plant, will provide power for 140,000 homes.

In Yuma County, Ariz., First Solar has installed a 250-megawatt solar project that is now the world’s largest operating solar photovoltaic plant in the world. Using advanced thin-film panels, which can cut costs, the project created hundreds of construction jobs and will power about 100,000 homes.

Each of these projects in Colorado, California, and Arizona received financing support from the stimulus. Other similar projects are under construction and in development. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has estimated that just with solar projects like these in the Southwest on federal public lands, we could generate enough electricity to meet 29 percent of the nation’s residential electricity needs.

The story is much the same with wind energy. At the end of 2008, we had about 25,000 megawatts of wind energy, and now we have more than 50,000 megawatts, equivalent in capacity to roughly 50 nuclear plants. Some 75,000 Americans work in wind energy. We have over 470 wind manufacturing plants. And the cost of wind energy has dropped from 8.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2008 to about 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour today.

Far from being a “fad” as defined by Romney, wind has added more capacity in the last five years than nuclear and coal combined, and has provided 20 percent of the electricity in states like Iowa and South Dakota. The stimulus has supported one of the largest wind farms in the world, operating now in Oregon. The Shepherds Flat wind farm employed over 400 construction workers and has 845 megawatts of wind energy installed, enough to power 235,000 homes.

As a nation we must continue this progress. It is not about whether government is picking winners and losers, because clearly government has been doing just that for years, with the fossil fuel and nuclear industries being the big winners. What is necessary to reverse global warming and create jobs is that we pick the rightwinners — the technologies that will transform our energy system and protect the environment.

U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) is a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee. He is chair of the Green Jobs and the New Economy Subcommittee.

Image Credit: Bernie Sanders

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Tags: Bernie Sanders, clean energy subsidies, dirty energy subsidies, election 2012, Energy Subsidies, federal energy subsidies, Fossil Fuel Subsidies, gop republicans, mitt romney, renewable energy subsidies, Romney, wind power production tax credit, Wind PTC, wind subsidies

About the Author

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. :D

nearly retired

Here we go again in the comments section. A boxing match between the future and the past. Humans are humans, anyone is susceptible to the gravity of greed. Concentrated energy generation is simply too tempting to cause gouging of the consumer. Diffuse, multiple energy sources are what make capitalism (without totalitarianism) in this sector possible. While both sides of the energy production plans are in favor of “smart grid” infrastructure, I am against it. The Iranians and Chinese are smart. Probably smarter than us. Our energy systems are choice targets. Offense is easy, defense is difficult. The easy default answer is proliferation supplementing sophistication. Common sense and redundancy are what win wars, the K.I.S.S. principle. There exists in the known universe only a tiny space capable of supporting life. A cover thinner in proportion than a shell of an egg. The biosphere of the earth should not have ANY nuclear material, save maybe some medical isotopes. We can harvest nuclear energy in the form of geothermal heat. The rest can and should go back to h(e)ll.
George Stevens

This article is incredibly slanted. Nuclear receives over $95 billion…OVER 65 YEARS! How many TWh of clean energy has nuclear produced compared to renewables!? What would the ratio look like of Nuke TWh produced/subsidy $ vs. renewable TWh produced/subsidy $ ???? Renewables are great but we have to be honest here in 3 ways:
1. There is not yet a viable non-fossil fuel option for the transportation and freight sectors. So subsidies here keep prices reasonable for consumers and businesses that rely on the energy stored in liquid and gaseous fossil fuels.
2. The lower cost of natural gas that resulted from fracking technology has done more to lower US emissions than all renewable energy plants erected in the US over the last 20 years. This happened because NatGas became cheaper than coal and replaced a large amount of coal generation. NatGas generation emits ~1/2 the CO2 that coal does. US emissions are at a 20 year low because of more natural gas and less coal, any subsidy to natural gas will be much more effective in immediately driving down emissions than any other subsidy. Not to mention the economic benefits.
3. If we are really serious about curbing global warming there is no choice but to take nuclear, especially next generation reactors, seriosuly. Renewables could be cost effective in the next decade or so (or now given a high wind resource for turbines), but this cost analysis doesn’t account for the effects of intermittency that need to be compensated for by large integrated storage devices, backup NatGas or hydro generation, and/or a smart grid. Accounting for these costs makes it clear that producing a large percentage of US energy from renewables would be a very costly endeavor, while we know for a fact that govt sponsored nuclear can be affordable and safe.
Wind and solar are valuable for peak offsetting benefits and because they provide diversity in the energy portfolio, but their overall contribution to our energy mix will remain low in the future for reasons of practicality: cost and intermittency. It isn’t because of any corporate or govt favoritism or conspiracy. Oil and nuke companies (TOTAL, Westinghouse, BP) have and still do own wind and solar comapnies and want the technology to succeed as much as anyone else. If you believe the nuclear energy industry is some heavily-lobbied entity without merit you have an ill-informed opinion and need to do more research on the real capabilities of different technologies to provide clean, affordableb, and grid-compatible energy for our entire nation. GOOD DAY!
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Yes George, OVER 65 YEARS! (See, I can shout too.)
  
  We’ve been subsidizing nuclear for over 65 years and it keeps getting more and more expensive. Nuclear is just too damned expensive to consider.
  On the other hand we’ve been subsidizing wind and solar for about half as long and they keep getting cheaper and cheaper.
  
  A smart investor should be able to figure out which investment is working and which hasn’t.
  
  As far as transportation, we could get rid of 75% of the petroleum with technology we have on hand right now. There’s essentially no one who couldn’t do their driving with either an EV or a PHEV. We could move about half our air travel, the moderate length trips, to high speed rail. We could move most of our freight to electrified rail using trucks for shuttling between rail and door. We could even use electricity for those shuttle-trucks.
  
  Natural gas is cheap at the moment, but it will be going up. We’re working through a supply glut caused by a drilling bubble. Current prices won’t support new well drilling.
  
  Nuclear, I’ll repeat, is just too damned expensive.
  - George Stevens
    
    Bob, I respect you for supporting renewables, but being anti-nuclear is just wrong and closed minded. Govt supported nuclear is by far the most practical and cost-effective non-GHG emitting source. Romney wants to aid nuclear by revising the over-burdening regulation system and clear the way for the next generation of reactors and perhaps even offer some govt sponsored loans. Some of the world’s brightest entreprenuers are betting on a growing mix of Nuclear with sound reason.
    When considering the effectiveness of subsidies you have to account for the amount of energy actually produced. So sure Nukes got $95 bil, but how many TWh were produced over that 65 year period? The figure would be staggering and a much more favorable ratio compared to renewable TWh/subsidy dollars. If you care about the environment and the standard of living for the common person you will start to be more honest. These articles are misleading the more casual environmentalist.
    As far as Electric Vehicles, they aren’t selling too well yet. I think the Volt is a good idea but the average person wont buy a leaf and a conventional car to meet local and long distance traveling needs. Batteries dont follow moore’s law, major improvements aren’t a sure-fire thing.
    
    ” At the end of 2008, we had about 25,000 megawatts of wind energy, and now we have more than 50,000 megawatts, equivalent in capacity to roughly 50 nuclear plants
    Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1qc9b)”
    This is a false statement. Capacity factor wasn’t considered.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      George, tell me what a kWh of electricity would cost from a newly built nuclear reactor. And tell me how long it would take to build a new reactor.
      You do that and I’ll explain why I’m not so much anti-nuclear as I am nuclear dismissive.
      
      —-
      
      BTW, the paperwork/permitting process for nuclear has already been streamlined. The government is already offering loan guarantees for multiple reactors if anyone wants to build them. Romney is blowing smoke up your backside.
      - George Stevens
        
        I think youre blowing smoke at yourself. Is Solopower a good investment? At $2.20/watt I would say not. I’m very knowledgable about pv and wind, I support them, but I don’t blindly oppose other options. The regulatory process for nuclear is extremely prohibitive hence the rise in cost for new nuclear plants. Construction delays caused by regulatory issues are the primary driver of nuke price hikes. A new strategy is to build smaller modular reactors that help alleviate regulatory hurdles by replicating a widely understood and proven design that doesn’t require as much engineering evaluation or upfront capital for construction. These reactors are also safer by the use of passive convection cooling systems. More cooperation, effort, and experience on part of the govt can make the difference in cost as it has in the past. Nuclear remains the most legitimate clean option for providing a large amount of the electricity mix in developed nations, and since I truly care about the environment I want a large percentage of our energy to be produced from non-GHG emitting sources, not 5%. Another legitimate reason for support of nuclear is the shear potential that next-generation reactors pose. These designs are far from proven and are a decade or two away, but the potential for extremely low-cost clean energy from next-gen nuclear concepts is simply unmatched by even photovoltaic cells of optimum efficiency or wind-turbines reaching the betz limit (and their accompanying ultra-cheap storage solutions). Nuclear has its caveats but to ignore it outright is to lack an understanding of its potential to serve humanity. THANKS BOB.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        George – state the cost of a kWh of electricity from a newly built nuclear reactor and we can go forward.
        
        A number George.
      - George Stevens
        
        For the US its not too good currently, I think $0.12/kWh on the optimistic side and more realistically $0.15/kWh+.
        In other countries lending more govt support to nuclear the number is much better hence big nuclear plans for Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, India, and Korea. Costs can fall based on what I detailed in my last response. Costs have historically been low and can be low again if public misperception is set aside and the true ability of nuclear to mitigate environmental problems is acknowledged and supported.
        So can we go forward and honestly assess all energy solutions Bob?
      - George Stevens
        
        If the economics dont make sense then why all of the interest in large Nuke projects where no FiT, carbon tax, or Tax credit is even involved? It is because when all things are considered Nuclear makes sense for electricity providers right now and will even more so going forward. Thank you for your time.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        The only place in the US where there is enough interest in new reactors to build any is the socialist state of Georgia.
        
        Georgia is allowing Southern Company to seize money from its customers and use that money to help pay the cost of building a couple of new reactors.
        And when/if those reactors are finished the socialist State of Georgia will permit Southern Company to cram the cost of that expensive electricity down their customers state.
        
        The citizens of the State of Georgia are not free to purchase their electricity on the free market.
      - George Stevens
        
        Hey I cant say that those PBO approved reactors are going to produce ultra cheap energy because the political climate is very much averse to that right now and this is the first installation of this westinghouse tech. But I feel pretty confident that even in this non-ideal case the cost of electricity per kWh will be cheaper overall from nuclear than if solar and wind produced an equivalent amount of energy over 60+ years with storage to supplement for variability in that particular geographic region.
        I think you are missing the point of my argument, I absolutely 100% agree with you that we should take advantage of our very sunny and windy areas, but nuclear has an advantage in its baseload abilities and scalability which wind and solar (and the balancer natural gas) can be a great complement to. Your opposition to a clean energy source is unwarranted in my opinion.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        No, George, you misunderstand. I do not favor natural gas over nuclear. The financial/utility world favors natural gas over nuclear.
        
        I think they favor NG over nuclear first because it is massively cheaper. Five cents vs. fifteen plus cents.
        
        Second, because NG is immensely quicker to bring on line. They can get a new gas plant up and going quickly which allows them to shut down dirty coal plants and avoid fines.
        
        Third, because NG plants are immensely easier to permit and site. There just aren’t many places that have adequate cooling water and where the locals will allow a nuclear plant to be built.
        
        Fourth, because NG plants are dispatchable. Utilities can do math. They can see that wind and end-user solar will cost them even less than NG and because NG is dispatchable and most of the cost if fuel, they can turn off those plants when they can get cheaper power somewhere else.
        
        I also suspect utility companies see cheap storage coming. If one of the several promising large scale storage technologies materializes it will be cheaper to store wind than to burn gas. And much, much cheaper than running a nuclear plant 24/365. In a few years those NG plants will be paid off and cheap to keep on hand for deep backup.
        
        —
        
        Me? I’d take nuclear over severe climate change in a heartbeat. If that was the only choice.
        
        But since nuclear is expensive, slow to build, hard to site, at least somewhat dangerous and creates hazardous waste I’ll go with renewables.
      - George Stevens
        
        Bob, you are totally dodging my argument repeatedly. Of course nuclear cant compete with NG right now in the free market, why did you spend several paragraphs explaining that?
        My argument is: among clean energy options nuclear is the most economical given the right political climate when all things are accounted for. Since wind and solar have scalability issues supporting only these sources and not nuclear is to favor natural gas generation over nuclear. Get it yet? Even with the bad prices in Georgia right now the price of nuclear energy is not as volatile as the fossil fuel supply so it may not look so bad in 10 or so years, kind of the same as wind or solar in this instance except with 2x the operating life.
        Maybe we will see a storage breakthrough with flow batteries but Im not so sure we can count on it. Dispatching stored energy in a useful way requires additional grid interactive equipment that doesnt exist yet and the batteries themselves even if cheap add significant material, installation, and maintenance costs to a form of energy (wind or solar) that is already costly in most situations.
        I know a breakthrough could happen and wind or solar could become the best option, but based on what we know right now nuclear is by far the most practical clean energy source. It has been cheap in the past and can be again by virtue of a more favorable regulatory environment, improved modular design, and more govt support. End of story.
        Im not asking you or anyone to repeal support for renewables, but instead stop the uncalled for bashing of nuclear which is so prevalent and steers public opinion away from the best available option. Road construction and defense are publicly funded, to take the same approach to some extent in the energy industry would not make us a socialist nation. In fact it will probably prove absolutely necessary in order to hold ourselves environmentally responsible and to account for finite fossil fuel supply.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        George. Right now the cheapest way to generate new electricity is natural gas. That is why no new nuclear plants will be built.
        
        Right now the cheapest way to generate low greenhouse gas emission electricity is a blend of wind, solar and pump-up hydro. Nuclear can’t compete with wind at 5 cents, solar at 10 cents and pump-up at 5 cents or less. The blended cost is under 10 cents.
        
        Utilities are already installing battery storage rather than creating new pump-up so I expect they have decided that battery technology is going to be the cheapest way to store. It may not be cheaper than new pump-up right now, but batteries seem to be on route to a cheaper price than pump-up in the next couple of years.
        
        I don’t think you’re a dolt. But I do think you’ve got a single idea fixed in your mind and you aren’t letting yourself consider the facts available.
        Take two pieces of paper.
        
        On the top of one write “Nuclear”. Under that write:
        
        “15+ cents per kWh”
        “few sites with adequate cooling water and cooperative population” “unsolved hazardous waste disposal problem”
        “decade plus to bring on line”
        “limited containment dome forging capacity”
        “lack of trained and experienced engineers and construction experts”
        
        On the top of the other write “Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Tidal, Hydro” Under that write:
        
        “5 to 10 cents per kWh”
        “More than adequate sites”
        “No hazardous waste issues”
        “Very quick to bring on line, especially solar”
        “No manufacturing bottlenecks. Current manufacturing capacity exceeds demand”
        “New installation technicians can be trained in days (solar) to a few months (wind)”
        
        Then see what else you can add to those lists. I used to think that nuclear was the option we should choose, but over time I watched the cost of renewables fall and the problems with nuclear remain unsolved.
      - George Stevens
        
        Bob, 5 cents and 10 cents dont reflect the ‘True’ costs of solar and wind. You still arent adressing the subsidies or the fact that these sources have limits to scalability due to intermittency that nuclear doesnt have. and that certainly isnt the median cost for solar for average geographic solar resource. I am aware of storage efforts and research performed by several PV, battery, and utility companies. Im familiar with Saft, Aquion, Beacon power and others. Im not saying its a problem that cant be overcome, but as it stands a heavy penetration of solar or wind into the grid would be very costly, and nuclear would be cheaper overall. Battery improvements hinge fully on material science developments, drastic cost reductions and capacity increases are not a certainty. Nuclear has merit. My whole argument is based on the premise of a society powered by >50% renewable energy.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        George – you post…
        
        “Bob, you are totally dodging my argument repeatedly.
        ….
        My argument is: among clean energy options nuclear is the most economical given the right political climate when all things are accounted for.”
        
        In no way have I dodged your argument. I’ve shown you, using your estimated cost for new nuclear, that nuclear is too expensive to consider.
        
        It’s too expensive if we pay no attention to CO2 releases and use natural gas. It’s too expensive if we use clean, renewable generation sources.
        
        I don’t know what you mean by “the right political climate”. Does that mean that we would build nuclear reactors with tax payers money and use our military to suppress opposition to putting them where the nuclear industry chooses?
        
        Are you calling for a police state in which the government goes into the electricity business and forces citizens to pay exorbitant prices for electricity?
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Yes, I saw a nuclear industry insider state $0.12/kWh a few years back. When questioned he would not disclose whether he had included waste disposal decommissioning costs, and a few other “possibly overlooked” costs in his number.
        
        As they say, he was not forthcoming.
        
        I use $0.15+ as my number and I expect the plus adds another nickel based on the Turkey reactors bid. Of course, post Fukushima costs have likely gone up more.
        
        But, what the heck, let’s be overly fair with nukes and use 12 cents. Let’s see if someone could make a living running a new nuclear plant if they had to sell their power at 12 cents per kWh in order to keep from going bankrupt.
        
        We need to assume that we’re talking free market conditions. Not “socialized” power like China or the state of Georgia. Merit order pricing. OK?
        
        Nuclear has to sell roughly 8,000 hours per year at an average of 12 cents per kWh. That’s the break even point. Give them 10% of the time off for refueling/maintenance/repairs.
        
        Now, PG&E recently signed a contract to purchase solar for $0.104/kWh. That tells us that solar is ready to dive under 10 cents. Merit order, get enough solar on line and the price paid for power drops to no more than 10 cents. Nuclear can’t shut off either its output or loan payments, so it has to sell at a loss in order to push solar off.
        
        Even in not-so-sunny parts of the country the Sun provides over 1,500 hours per year. In sunny SoCal the sun provides over 2,000 hours. That’s 1,500 to 2,000 hours per year that nuclear has to absorb a loss which means that nuclear has to sell at “12+ cents” the other hours in order to avoid bankruptcy.
        
        OK, now there’s wind. The wind blows more than 50% of the time, over 4,000 hours, and the median price of wind-electricity is now $0.05/kWh. That’s a big “OMG” for nuclear. All those hours at which the reactor has to sell under 5 cents in order to force wind to curtail.
        
        So now we’re down to perhaps 3,000 hours (likely less) in which wind and solar are not forcing nuclear to sell at a loss. Nuclear has to crank its 12 cent price to 20(?) cents to stay alive.
        
        Natural gas generation costs 6 cents per kWh.
        
        Understand why new nuclear is priced off the table?
        
        —
        
        (No subsidies were included in any of these prices.)
      - George Stevens
        
        No subsidies were included in any of these prices? no ITC? No CEC rebates? PG&E didnt want them? Backup generation costs don’t need to be considered? I dont think so Bob, I work in the solar industry and know better than that. Listen, wind and solar are great, I fully support them but their scalability to displace a large portion of fossil fuel generation is certainly questionable and that is what my argument is about.You throw out the idea of a fleet of electric cars regulating the grid as though it will happen over night and at no cost. Your optimism for wind and solar blocks out any consideration for other options that may be more achievable and practical. We know nuclear can be cheap and clean, it has been in the past and it is now given the right political climate (lower regulatory costs, low or no interest on govt backed loans). My points about regularoty reform and modular reactors lowering prices are valid. Your points about solar and wind generation taking precedence over nuclear show you lack general knowledge about utility operation. Where a nuclear plant is built and paid for it is the baseload and natural gas provides the flexibility/spinning reserve. The entire Forbes article pits nuclear against natural gas not other clean energy. Your agenda is biased toward special interest and not aimed toward making a significant reduction in GHG emissions, its as simple as that.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        My LCOE prices come from here…
        
        http://en.openei.org/apps/TCDB/
        
        LCOE does not include Fit, etc.
        
        The PG&E 10.4 cents probably does reflect subsidies. But if you look at the EIA projection for PV solar you’ll see that they expect the median price of solar to be at a dime five years from now. That’s years before a nuclear plant could be brought on line, so my argument holds.
        
        Backup generation costs do not have to be considered. Remember I included natural gas as the fill-in for when wind and solar are not producing. I could have included existing hydro which is largely dispatchable and even cheaper.
        
        We do not know that nuclear could be cheap. You, yourself said that 12 cents is probably unrealistically low. Is there some yet-to-be discovered really cheap way to make electricity from uranium or thorium? Perhaps. But we’ve got to make our decisions based on the known knowns.
        
        Until/unless the general public gets much more alarmed about climate change the generation we build will be determined by cost and not by greenhouse emission. That means, quite simply, that natural gas will keep nuclear out of play.
        
        Haven’t I posted this for you before?
        
        “*Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon,
        America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday.* *And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.
        
        “Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired17 days ago as chairman and CEO of
        Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.
        
        “Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.
        
        Speaking to about 5o people at the University of Chicago‘s Harris School of Public Policy, Rowe presented a series of slides comparing the economic viability of various energy portfolios, including the “King Coal” scenario favored by Republicans, the “Big Wind” scenario favored by Democrats, and a “Playing Favorites” scenario that shuffles and selects from various energy sources.
        
        All were trumped by a portfolio that relies heavily on America’s sudden abundance of natural gas, which has flooded the market since the boom inhydraulic
        fracturing of shale gas. Natural gas futures dropped to a 10-year low today—$2.15 for 1,000 cubic feet—on abundant supply, the Associated Press reported .
        
        “I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.””
        http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/ *
      - George Stevens
        
        Bob youre losing credibility, the CEC rebate, ITC, RECs, state sponsored loan, and free pass from the utility to supplement for supply variability while allowing distribution at peak demand equate to a subsidy of well over 50%, this is not debatable. Now Im not arguing against this project, it is worth it because it is clean, but nuclear would be much cheaper no questions asked. We’ll see in 5 years what the cost of solar is, even if it is reasonable it still wont have the scalability to supply a large portion of energy demand. Nuclear does. 25% of the energy demand of New York City is met by the Indian Point Nuclear plant. Solar could not do the same.
        Just admit it already, nuclear deserves our support as well as wind and solar.
        In the mean time check out these air-borne wind turbines http://www.makanipower.com
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        George – LCOE prices do not include subsidies. Subsidies modify the cost of power once it is produced.
        
        From the EIA page I gave you –
        
        “Levelized cost = total costs (including annualized capital and yearly operating) divided by total energy service production (in miles travelled or energy generated).”
        
        You’ll notice that there are no subsidies included in that formula.
      - George Stevens
        
        Haha the capital cost figures in subsidy. You are silly Bob. Solar is intermittent, it is valuable at small generation levels, when generation levels are larger the value greatly decreases. I dont care about small generation levels, its a lot of money to spend to effectively do nothing about climate change. Nuclear can power our entire country. it has been cheap historically, it can be cheap again. If solar breakthroughs occur allowing it to be economical and provide most of our energy needs then awesome, but I think it is much more likely for our government to shift around its priorities and support nuclear to make it cheap as it has been in the past and is in other countries.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        No George.
        
        Capital expenses are capital expenses. Subsidies might offset some capex in determining market price, but subsidies are not included in LCOE calculations.
        
        Nuclear used to be cheaper but the world has changed. With the rise of China and other developing countries the cost of construction is greatly higher than it was 40 years ago when we were building reactors. Additionally, safety requirements have increased which drives up construction costs.
        
        When you look at the price of nuclear and think it cheap you’re overlooking some very important facts. Those plants were paid off long ago, the current price of electricity reflects operating costs, not recovery of capital and loan servicing. Also not included in those costs are all the nuclear plants which never opened or were closed well before they had paid for themselves. Taxpayers ate those losses.
        
        There’s nothing that the government can do to make nuclear cheap. I suppose it could give the nuclear industry free money to build reactors but that just means that we would pay via our taxes rather than our utility bills. That makes no sense to me.
        
        Nuclear is cheap in no other countries. It might appear cheaper in China because China is building nuclear using taxpayer money. That does not make it cheap, it only makes it appear cheap.
        
        Check the price of the new Finland plant under construction. Check the quote that Turkey got for some new reactors.
        
        You seem to have a problem understanding that we could build a 100% renewable energy grid. Clearly we have the technology to generate all the electricity with a blend of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc. If that isn’t clear to you I can give you multiple studies which show it to be true.
        The missing link is cheap storage. Or perhaps it isn’t missing. We’ve got plenty of places to build pump-up hydro if we don’t come up with and even cheaper storage technology in the next few years. I think we’re going to see cheap large scale battery storage very soon. If not, then pump-up is our storage solution.
      - mortinsany
        
        Dont leave out Tidal and wave, salt water has over 800 times the density of air, And tides are far more reliable, predictable and stable than Fukishima!
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        I don’t in general. But tidal and wave aren’t quite ready yet.
        
        Tidal is looking very good, it seems that the major technological problems might be solved. I would expect some manufacturers to start offering ready-to-deploy turbines in the next couple of years.
        
        I really like the idea of tidal because it is so ‘out of sight’ and won’t have the same NIMBY problems of wind and solar. Looking forward to the day when turbines start getting dropped into the Gulf Stream and feeding 24/365 power into the Southeast.
        
        Cuba and Mexico could make gangbuster levels of power out of the Florida Straights. That’s some concentrated flow.
        
        Wave, it doesn’t seem like anyone has really cracked this nut yet.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Here’s what the conservative financial magazine, Forbes, published…
        
        *Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon,
        America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday. And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future.
        
        “Let me state unequivocably that I’ve never met a nuclear plant I didn’t like,” said John Rowe, who retired17 days ago as chairman and CEO of
        Exelon Corporation, which operates 22 nuclear power plants, more than any other utility in the United States.
        
        “Having said that, let me also state unequivocably that new ones don’t make any sense right now.
        
        Speaking to about 5o people at the University of Chicago‘s Harris School of Public Policy, Rowe presented a series of slides comparing the economic viability of various energy portfolios, including the “King Coal” scenario favored by Republicans, the “Big Wind” scenario favored by Democrats, and a “Playing Favorites” scenario that shuffles and selects from various energy sources.
        
        All were trumped by a portfolio that relies heavily on America’s sudden abundance of natural gas, which has flooded the market since the boom inhydraulic
        fracturing of shale gas. Natural gas futures dropped to a 10-year low today—$2.15 for 1,000 cubic feet—on abundant supply, the Associated Press reported .
        
        “I’m the nuclear guy,” Rowe said. “And you won’t get better results with nuclear. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”
        http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/ *
        
        (Spelling mistakes are theirs.)
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  “Over the first 15 years of these energy sources’ subsidies, oil and gas got 5 times what renewables got (in 2010 dollars) and nuclear energy got 10 times as much.”
  http://cleantechnica.com/2012/08/03/oil-gas-over-13-times-more-in-historical-subsidies-than-clean-energy/