Pennsylvania, with its vast natural-gas reserves and critical nuclear power generation, is at the center of a national debate on the future of energy and climate policy in the United States.
One issue that needs more attention is the fact that, while nuclear energy accounts for 93 percent of the state’s zero-carbon energy production, its nuclear reactors are at risk of closure. Without policies that properly value nuclear power plants, they will close, and the electricity they produce will be generated instead by pollution-emitting fossil fuels.
My organization, Third Way, which advocates centrist public policies, has long supported a broad technological approach to solving climate change that starts with keeping the zero-emission generation capacity that’s already on line.
To be sure, many environmentalists hope that the massive amounts of electricity lost if nuclear plants close will be replaced by wind and solar power. And if that were likely to happen, deciding the fate of nuclear power would be more difficult. But it’s not.
There is a reason that the lobbying arm for Big Oil and Gas — the American Petroleum Institute — is spending money in Pennsylvania on campaign mailers, push polls and other means of advertising to attack nuclear power. They know that, if the nuclear plants shut down, the power lost will be replaced by new fossil-fuel plants. If wind and solar were poised to fill the gap, API wouldn’t be spending so much money deriding nuclear power.
The data are crystal clear on this point, and it’s one of the few things that Third Way and API agree on: When nuclear plants close, they almost always are replaced by fossil-fuel plants. Third Way conducted a detailed study with an MIT researcher that came to the same conclusion.
This not just theory. When a nuclear power plant in Vermont recently closed, virtually all the generation capacity was replaced by natural gas. Carbon emissions increased by 3.1 million metric tons, reversing a long-standing trend in New England.
It’s also important to note that, once nuclear facilities close, they cannot come back on line. They are gone forever.
To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we need to de-carbonize the power grid as quickly as possible. This will require more renewable energy, carbon-capture-and-storage technology and new smaller, advanced nuclear reactors. But it will also require keeping our existing nuclear plants online and producing carbon-free electricity as long as they can safely operate.
Given the recent actions of the Trump administration on climate policy, we need to do everything we can to keep carbon emissions low into the future. Replacing nuclear generation with new fossil fuel-burning plants that have a 40-year lifespan would mean digging an even deeper hole, reversing years of effort to reduce carbon emissions. Nuclear must be part of any practical approach to curbing climate change.
This will take a shift in thinking about power generation by some of my friends in the environmental community. In the past, the debate has been about “old” forms of power generation versus “new” forms of power, such as wind and solar.
The truth is, as the effects of climate change and air pollution increase, we need to think about forms of energy as either “clean” or “dirty.” Renewables are great. But we also need to support other forms of power generation, such as nuclear energy, that do not emit pollutants into the air, as we work to phase out forms of power that emit carbon.
Big Oil and Gas are furiously working to shut down nuclear power facilities, so they can build more fossil-fuel plants. It’s critical that those who care about the environment get in this fight now. If API wins, we’ll all be living with higher levels of pollution from fossil-fuel burning for decades to come.
Josh Freed is vice president for clean energy at Third Way.
First Published: September 12, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
