Decarbonization: The Nuclear Option
February 14th, 2012 by Mike Fowler, Director, Advanced Technology, and Armond Cohen, Executive DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy & Environment Experts blog.
Three years ago, MIT’s Richard Lester published a simple analysis of what would be required to meet President Obama’s 83%-by-2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction target. The results were stark: Even if energy efficiency were to improve at rates 50% better than historical averages, and biofuels were able to meaningfully reduce transportation emissions in the near term (a proposition with which we disagree), meeting Obama’s goal would require retrofitting every existing coal plant in the country with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), building twice again that much fossil capacity with CCS, building close to 3,000 wind farms the size of Massachusetts’ Cape Wind, and building nearly 4,000 solar farms the size of California’s Ivanpah. And, having done all that, increasing the amount of nuclear power we generate by a factor of five.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rethinking The Clean Energy “Race”
October 26th, 2011 by Armond Cohen, Executive DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
For the last five years, the Clean Air Task Force has been working with companies in China and the United States on joint ventures to develop and market clean energy technologies in both countries and around the world. Based on that experience, we believe that the metaphor of a zero-sum China-US race on clean energy is misplaced and drives us to the wrong conclusions. Here are some perspectives that may make for a more productive discussion:
China is a critical ally in moving forward low-carbon energy development. CATF is working in China not only because it is the world’s largest carbon-emitting country, set to double its emissions by 2050, but also because China is a can’t-miss place to demonstrate new clean technologies at scale. Why?
Read the rest of this entry »
Hard Energy Paths
March 7th, 2011 by Armond Cohen, Executive DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
What will America’s energy mix look like thirty years from now? Thirty years is a long time, except that it isn’t. Energy is a big, inertial, capital-intensive system, and change comes slowly – even when government policy gets very serious, or technology and markets achieve step changes. For example, it took policy-driven nuclear power and the market-driven combined cycle gas turbine 30 years each to achieve 20% of US electricity supply.
In this context, then, there are three broad energy path types one can imagine.
Read the rest of this entry »
