Dear Friend,
Recently, Environmental Progress (EP) published numbers
showing that clean energy as a percentage of global electricity has
been in decline for two decades. This is not just because fossil fuels
are expanding more rapidly than clean energy, but also because the
amount of electricity the world generates from nuclear energy has been
on the decline. While solar and wind have grown significantly, they have
not grown enough to make up for lost nuclear.
Now, in a new analysis,
EP finds that unless something changes, things are about to get much
worse. In the US, 13 nuclear plants are at high-risk of closure within
the next 24 months, and half of all U.S. plants are at risk of premature
closure over the next decade and a half. If that happens, the resulting
higher carbon emissions will wipe out 43 percent of the EPA’s planned
Clean Power Plan reductions.
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Things
are changing rapidly around the world. Within the European Union,
nuclear plummeted from 49 to 27 percent of electricity between 2011 and
2014, and will decline another 20 percent in coming years. Germany’s
carbon emissions went up last year and yet it still intends to eliminate
its nuclear fleet. Sweden is attempting to tax its nuclear plants out
of the market, and Swiss voters may decide this fall to follow Germany
and Sweden.
Meanwhile, Japan may open as few as one-third of the nuclear plants it
closed after 2011 Fukushima accident, even as its air pollution from
burning fossil fuels has skyrocketed.
The good news is that it’s not too late to prevent the loss of these
valuable sources of clean energy. While nuclear energy is feared by many
in the West, there is growing recognition by scientists and
environmentalists that nuclear energy is essential to reducing future
warming — and that many of the things many of us once believed about
nuclear are either not true or greatly exaggerated.
Last December I left Breakthrough Institute, the think tank I co-founded
in 2003, so I could dedicate myself full-time to reversing the decline
of clean energy. Over the last four and half months I have been
variously alarmed and inspired. I was alarmed to discover that the
situation facing nuclear was much worse than I had realized. I was
inspired to find such a large and growing number of people who were as
concerned about the problem as I was, and equally committed to fixing
it.
And so, with this email, I am happy to formally launch Environmental Progress,
a new environmental research & policy organization whose mission is
to build a movement of citizens, scientists and conservationists
advocating ethical and practical energy solutions for people and nature. |
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Our
highest immediate priority is to stop the hemorrhaging of nuclear
plants, and build new ones. Along with dozens of prominent climate and
conservation scientists, we are sending open letters to President Barack
Obama, national environmental leaders, and legislators in Illinois, and
a new web site that describes our vision, introduces our people, and
offers a graphics-heavy explanation of the clean energy crisis.
This is a crucial week for nuclear. Later this week I will give
testimony to Illinois legislators about high environmental impacts of
closing, and the low economic cost to saving, nuclear plants in that
state. And I will be speaking at a joint White House – Department of
Energy event in Washington, D.C. on the crisis facing America’s largest
source of clean energy.
The main obstacle to saving Illinois’s largest source of clean energy —
and preventing emissions from sky-rocketing — is, sadly, its most
influential environmental organization, the Environmental Law and Policy
Center (ELPC). ELPC is aggressively lobbying to replace Illinois
nuclear plants with natural gas while, rather audaciously, taking
funding from natural gas and other energy companies.
The situation in California is almost as dire. State officials could
force the closure of our last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, which
provides one-quarter of our clean power, as early as June 28.
As in Illinois, officials with environmental groups, including Friends
of the Earth and Sierra Club, are lobbying publicly and
behind-the-scenes to close the plant, which would be replaced by natural
gas, and increase carbon emissions the equivalent of adding one and a
half million cars to the road.
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Environmental
Progress is honored to have a remarkable group of scientists and
economists serve on EP’s Advisory Board. The group includes many of the
scientists I’ve worked with over the last few months to urge
policymakers to protect nuclear power by treating it fairly: James
Hansen, the climate scientist; Burt Richter, Stanford nuclear expert and
1976 Nobel Prize winner; Peter Raven, conservation giant and former
head of Missouri Botanical Garden; three ecologists, Stewart Brand,
Michelle Marvier and Barry Brook, who advocate environmental solutions
that also benefit the poor; and Joe Lassiter, Harvard Business School
professor and nuclear policy expert.
Over the last two years I have travelled extensively seeking to
understand environmental problems and solutions at the ground level in
Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo, Indonesia, China, Japan and most recently
India. During that time I interviewed everyone from subsistence farmers
struggling to survive to senior government officials — who offer a very
different perspective than industry and government press releases — and
made a lot of friends from those places along the way.
That group includes Ning Li, the nuclear engineer who brought Bill Gates
new advanced nuclear company to China; Junji Cao, one of China’s
leading air pollution experts; Kun Chen, a senior engineer building
China’s advanced thorium molten salt reactor; four brilliant Indian
economists, Samir Saran, Vijaya Ramachandran, Joyashree Roy and Rathin
Roy; John Asafu-Adjaye, a Ghanian economists focused on energy and the
environment in sub-Sahran Africa; Woody Epstein, a nuclear expert living
in Japan; and Todd Moss, a senior development economist at the Center
for Global Development.
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There
is no shortage of policy solutions to save nuclear plants — rather,
there is a shortage of political will. The obvious reality is that,
around the world, anti-nuclear organizations are undermining
environmental progress. Reversing the decline of clean energy and
liberating all humans from wood fuel use will require more than energy
analyses like the one we release today. What's needed is a new
environmental movement. My hope is that Environmental Progress will
contribute significantly to creating one.
Michael Shellenberger
Founder and President, Environmental Progress
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