Renewable energy, Exxon, nuclear power and conservation
This entry was posted on 9/20/2007 7:12 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
Oooops.....
Last night I replied to comments, but neglected to do a Wednesday evening entry. So..... excerpts from one reply copied below. For the full reply and context see:
It's time to stop the madness.
......we don't know the costs of long-term (tens of thousands of years) nuclear high-level waste storage because we're not doing it. You can't make the statement "The bottom line is that the externalities of nuclear are a lot less than the externalities of fossil fuels, especially coal" because we don't know the cost of nuclear's externalities.
The point of the Mayak article (on a nuclear waste accident) for me is that, "Using nuclear power for generating electricity is like cutting butter with a chainsaw." (Amory Lovins) With this kind of raw power (and waste), accidents will happen. Why not a "softer" energy path with a base in renewable energy. I can guarantee that wind power will not kill hundreds of people. I don't pretend to know the optimum short-term balance between renewables, fossil fuel, and nuclear - but I DO know that we need much more of our energy needs to come from renewables and that the best way to get there efficiently is a federal tax shift.
For energy storage.... oh I how I wish that the billions and billions of dollars we've spent on nuclear power were spent on renewables instead. This blog wouldn't exist if we had done that. Efficient and effective mass storage - would have been accomplished no problem. We can't change the past, so let's create our future by stimulating the renewable energy industry with higher non-renewable energy prices to make an entire tier of renewable projects economically viable.
Let's face it. Nuclear was subsidized and grew as it did in the U.S. because there's way more money to be made in huge centralized power systems than in smaller decentralized renewable systems.
A couple of years ago I heard an Exxon executive being interviewed on the radio. He was adamant, "We're an oil company, not an energy company." Sure, this was/is smart. They are in business to make money. The oil business is very profitable - they've done well.
The energy business is more risky. So let's decide that we want the Exxons of the world to REALLY be energy companies. We have the power - level the playing field between non-renewables and renewables by including the external costs of non-renewables in the prices via tax shift from income featuring a BTU tax. Watch Exxon run.....after the money. We need their, and other oil companies, considerable resources ($ and talent) to get hungry to make a buck in the renewable energy industry. Not just these cheesy, show ads for the $2.50 they're investing in some solar cell somewhere. Get 'em fired up by changing the rules of the game. Money is quite a motivator.
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AND, let's not forget the best and largest energy "source", the real "low-hanging fruit" for years and years and years --- CONSERVATION. What's the best way to reduce energy consumption via conservation? - make non-renewable energy more expensive (via a federal tax shift).
