No Coal, No Nukes, No Kidding! Clean Energy or More of the Same?
On April 22, 2009—Earth Day—the New York Times reported:
“No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today. ‘We may not need any, ever,’ Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.”
Wellinghoff was recognizing that there is no need to invest in dirty technologies that use finite fuels. Our sustainable energy future must be built upon the twin pillars of energy efficiency and clean renewable sources.
No Coal
“Clean Coal” is an oxymoron.
- Coal mining is environmentally destructive. Stack gases from coal plants foul the air and water.
- Coal plants produce enormous quantities of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas fueling climate change.
- The industry has proposed sequestering the CO2 emissions underground (CCS), but this is not a viable strategy. It would be very expensive, energy intensive and there would be no guarantee the CO2 would not leak out.
- Even if the CO2 could somehow be sequestered, and even if power plant emissions could be cleaned up—both highly unlikely—coal mining scars the land and profoundly pollutes the water and air.
Right now the coal industry is pushing Congress to include so-called “Clean Coal”—the unproven CCS technology—as a climate-change fix eligible for billions of our tax dollars. This misdirection of resources must be stopped.
For more on Coal, see:
- League of Women Voters: FAQ on a 10-Year Moratorium on New Coal-Fired Electric Power Plants
- Union of Concerned Scientists: Environmental Impacts of Coal Power
- Sierra Club: Factsheets & Resources and Factsheet: The Dirty Truth about Coal (PDF)
- Greenpeace: Coal and 10 Problems with Coal (PDF)
No Nukes
Nuclear power is also dirty energy, although its pollution is less obvious. Nuclear problems include:
- Unsolved—potentially unsolvable—long-lived radioactive waste dilemma,
- Serious safety and security concerns,
- Weapons proliferation connection,
- Exceedingly long lead-times,
- Phenomenally high costs.
Nuclear power is so expensive and risky that investors will not touch it unless either the taxpayers or the utility customers underwrite the risks. That’s why in 2009 Ameren pushed so hard to get Construction Work In Progress (CWIP) charges, and why they abandoned Callaway 2 when they couldn’t force their customers to assume the risks.
The nuclear industry keeps pushing Congress to force taxpayers to underwrite new nukes via federal loan guarantees. This would be a major misdirection of money and would divert us from investing in the real solutions, efficiency and renewables.
For more on Nuclear Power, see: