States have the power to keep nuclear in the mix
In July, there were two court rulings that were both significant and positive for the future of clean energy. Federal courts in New York and Illinois ruled that states have the authority to place an economic value on the zero-emission production of electricity. More important, these rulings establish prececedent for other states to achieve their own goals to use clean energy credits for sources of electricity that don’t emit carbon dioxide.
The noteworthy outcome is that nuclear facilities will continue to operate in New York and Illinois. Our paper, “Nuclear Energy as Foundational to Low Carbon Future,” elaborates on why this result is so critical now.
Our report concludes that without nuclear energy and policies such as those adopted by New York and enacted in Illinois, we cannot expect to maintain or continue meaningful carbon reduction. Nuclear energy is, by far, the largest source of zero-carbon energy generation in the country. As of last year, it represented 60 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the U.S.
Nuclear energy now finds itself pinched between unusually low natural gas prices and rules that promote other carbon-free sources of electricity but exclude nuclear. According to published reports, about half of the existing nuclear fleet is seriously economically stressed. These circumstances represent a crucial inflection point. Our next steps will determine the emissions from our nation’s electricity supply for the foreseeable future.
We have a few options. The first is to allow nuclear facilities to close while still operational. We have examples of what happens. Most notably, nuclear generation is replaced by natural gas, leading to an increase in emissions. Within a year of the retirement of the facility in Vernon, Vermont, New England saw its first increase in carbon emissions in five years.
The next option is to retire operational plants and replace them with other zero-emitters such as wind and solar. New York studied this. The first question as a matter of electrical engineering is whether solar and wind can replace nuclear generation. Most say they cannot. But if they could, it would cost more than $1 billion each year to replace existing upstate plants.
Continued development of renewables is essential for a lower-carbon future, but relying on renewables solely and immediately to replace nuclear would not only be astronomically expensive but also doesn’t change carbon emissions. We’d be shelling out to stay in place.
The final option is to maintain our existing safe and efficient nuclear facilities. Not only does it make progress toward a low-carbon future but also there are numerous other benefits, monetary and otherwise, to our economy and national security.
Preserving facilities ensures a diverse energy supply that doesn’t overrely on any one source. This shields customers and businesses from cost increases that may arise from fuel unavailability, price volatility and prospective source-specific changes in regulations.
A diverse energy mix also makes the grid better able to minimize effect and quickly recover from disruptions. Energy Futures Initiative, the policy shop founded by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, says nuclear energy is key to national security and in an August paper urged the federal government to “work with states to harmonize federal and state policies affecting the design of organized electricity markets to appropriately value attributes of nuclear electricity including supply diversity.”
Businesses, elected officials, academics and consumers all say the same thing: they value low-carbon energy. But unless state policies and energy markets do the same, many nuclear facilities will close. Once a nuclear plant closes, it cannot be restarted. And with it goes the cheapest and most effective options for keeping carbon emissions from electricity generation in check, leaving only technologies that are more expensive, less effective and not able to produce enough energy to substitute for nuclear power.