OPINION:
Listening to environmentalists talk about the threat of climate change is like hearing some lost passage of the Book of Revelation with predictions of flooded cities, wildfires, hurricanes, failing crops and swarms of disease-bearing mosquitoes. Given these warnings of catastrophe, one would reasonably assume that the environmental community would be doing everything in its power to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That would be a reasonable assumption. But it’s wrong.
Unfortunately, environmentalists are far more interested in promoting renewable energy than they are in holding down emissions. Their stance on the early closure of more than a dozen nuclear power plants has made that abundantly clear.
Climate change appears to be no more than a tool of convenience to promote their true agenda. If these groups, such as the Sierra Club, Green Peace or Bill McKibben’s 350.org, were really focused on cutting greenhouse gases, they would surely support our most effective tool in providing emissions-free power. Nuclear energy provides more than 60 percent of the nation’s emissions-free electricity. It’s without question our zero-carbon workhorse and yet there’s hardly an environmental group willing to speak in support of it.
Caught between remarkably low natural gas prices — a product of the shale revolution — and subsidies and mandates for the use of wind and solar power, many of the nation’s existing nuclear power plants are now operating at a loss. Since 2013, utilities have announced the closure of 14 nuclear reactors. Perhaps 20 more are in jeopardy of early closure as well. And yet, many environmentalists are cheering the news.
This hypocrisy is nicely captured in a single tweet from Mr. McKibben, the originator of the anti-Keystone XL movement and chief energy adviser to Bernie Sanders. After Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announced the decision to close the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, California’s last remaining nuclear plant, Mr. McKibben linked to a San Francisco Chronicle article on the decision and wrote, ” ’A rising flood of renewable power’ makes CA nuke obsolete- — little sun inside can’t compete w/the big one in the sky.”
That’s absurd. Mr. McKibben knows very well that Diablo Canyon is not being pushed aside by solar. In the very article he linked to, the Chronicle provided data from the California Energy Commission on how the commonwealth generates its electricity. Even excluding the 25 percent of the power California imports from out of state, which is largely generated using coal, solar power supplied just 5.3 percent of the electricity in the commonwealth in 2014. Natural gas, on the other hand, generated 61.3 percent.
When Diablo Canyon is closed, the vast majority of its emissions-free power is going to be replaced with greater use of natural gas. How do we know this? First, because Michael Shellenberger, the rare environmentalist who thinks sensibly about nuclear energy, actually looked at how PG&E proposes to replace nuclear power.
Mr. Shellenberger notes that PG&E proposes to replace the 17,660 gigawatt-hours per year of emissions-free power from Diablo Canyon with 4,000 gigawatt-hours per year of energy efficiency and renewable power. What about the remaining 13,660 gigawatt-hours? There’s really only one alternative — more natural gas.
While natural gas is an effective emissions-reduction energy source if it’s used to replace coal, it raises emissions if it’s used to replace nuclear power. By Mr. Shellenberger’s estimate, if natural gas is used to fill the gap caused by the closure of Diablo Canyon, it would produce an additional 5.4 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions every year.
Second, we have a reference case for what happens when a nuclear plant is closed in California. In 2013, the two reactors at the San Onofre plant outside of San Diego were shuttered. The electricity they generated was replaced by a mixture of some renewables, but mostly natural gas, and the result has been an additional 18 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions per year poured into the atmosphere.
The U.S. environmental movement largely originated from anti-nuclear sentiment in the 1970s. Despite a remarkable U.S. nuclear safety record over the last five decades and overwhelming evidence that nuclear energy is the best way to reduce emissions, the environmental community is by and large hanging on to its outdated and irrational opposition to zero-carbon nuclear. The anti-nuclear “greens” have done out country a great disservice.
Any rational energy policy would aim to keep our existing nuclear power plants operating. Since environmentalists are not only unwilling to fight to keep these plants online but are actually working to close them, they will have no one but themselves to blame when U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rise in the years ahead.
• Mark J. Perry is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.
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