Now, Reuters reports that two of nuclear’s biggest supporters, France and Japan, have essentially switched sides in the debate. In the wake of last year’s Fukushima disaster, Japan is phasing out its nuclear plants and increasing spending on renewable energy, while France plans to reduce its dependence on nuclear.

By the 2030s, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda says the island nation — which produced more than 10 percent of the world’s nuclear power in pre-Fukushima years — will be out of the nuclear industry. At the same time, it plans to triple the share of renewable resources so they contribute 30 percent of its energy needs.

French president Francois Hollande promises to cut the share of nuclear power in the country from a whopping 75 percent today to 50 percent by 2025. Hollande also called for a 40 percent cut in the European Union’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and a 60 percent cut by 2040.

Weighing in on the other side of the debate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that it may be impossible to fill the gap left by nuclear power entirely with renewables and said the nations will inevitably end up using more fossil fuels. (Incidentally, the website of the journal Nature has an interesting set of charts showing IEA projections on fuel mix through 2035, as well as some other useful data.)

Luis Uriza of Bain & Co. told Reuters that natural gas is the most likely fuel to fill the void, which Japan already imports as a major energy source.

Germany, one of the most aggressive pursuers of alternative power, has backed away from nuclear since Fukushima, but it is still gets a large share of its power from fossil fuels.

Photo of nuclear power plant in Cattenom, France, courtesy of Stefan Kühn/Wikimedia

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A new report from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Agency states that power plant operators will begin to make the switch back to coal because of 34 percent higher natural gas prices over the last 6 months. This switchover will bring with it an across-the-board 2.8 percent rise in all carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. for 2013.

Due to an expected additional 20 percent jump in the cost of natural gas supplies, the report sees a 9.3 percent rise in the use of coal-fired facilities next year and a 9 percent rise in coal-related plant emissions. Coal burns much dirtier than natural gas but utilities have tended to favor it because it has a much more stable pricing structure.

“The recent trend of substituting coal‐fired generation with natural‐gas … may be slowing and will likely reverse,” according to the agency’s report.

With some existing utilities finding competition from new solar-powered energy providers, coal has still remained the source of nearly 50 percent of our nation’s energy supply. And while some power plants have been using more natural gas as of late because of its low prices and a glut in the market, it looks like that is coming to an end – at least for now. Seems maybe all this fracking isn’t really all that energy companies make it out to be. After all, wasn’t it supposed to lead to enough cheap natural gas to provide for our nation’s energy needs for the next 110 years?

If utility companies are already turning their coal-fired power plants back on, I don’t have high hopes for this imaginary future of fracked natural gas.

[via Reuters]

Image Credit: vxla/Flickr

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Ono and Lennon today formally announced the “Artists Against Fracking” coalition, which they assembled in order to attempt to convince Governor Andrew M. Cuomo not to allow the fracking of the Marcellus Shale. More than 180 artists and well-known celebrities have joined the campaign including Lady Gaga and Paul McCartney, who have signed their name on a letter addressed to Governor Cuomo in request of a meeting on the subject.

“What distinguishes us is that we have the ear of our audiences and we have a collective presence,” said Lennon about his coalition.

New York officials are in the midst of deciding whether or not to allow hydraulic fracturing in the state. The Marcellus Shale, located in the Town of Marcellus in Onondaga County, is supposedly full of very hard to get to natural gas reserves and is the prime target of gas and oil companies looking for profits. In order to get to the reserves, companies have to use the hydraulic fracturing method of drilling, which has been determined to be detrimental to the quality of local water supplies and air quality along with being implicated in some earthquake activity. Recently both Vermont and the country of France banned the practice, but I’m willing to bet that the U.S. as a whole does nothing of the sort.

As for the Artists Against Fracking group, hopefully Ono and Lennon put in a call to actor Mark Ruffalo, who has been a vocal critic and activist against fracking for quite some time now. Here’s to hoping they get that meeting with Governor Cuomo and they are able to convince him to not allow fracking in New York State.

[via The New York Times]

Image Credit: Artists Against Fracking

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Too much clean energy is a hard concept for Americans to fathom, but with over 21,000 wind turbines (as of 2011) Germans are scrambling to use or preserve electricity that won’t fit into the overflowing electricity grid. To solve this problem, E.ON, the world’s largest investor-owned power and gas company, will build a pilot power plant designed to store energy generated by the wind in the gas grid instead.

Known as power to gas technology, this unique energy storage method turns surplus wind energy into hydrogen (and even methane) through a process of electrolyzation. By separating water into its separate components of hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen produced can be stored in the existing natural gas grid for later use. The existing gas network can only handle limited amounts of hydrogen, but further processing ultimately results in the production of synthetic gas, i.e. methane, which can be fed into the grid whenever necessary.

“If Germany expands the use of renewable energy sources in the coming years as planned, the power supply on very windy or sunny days will exceed demand more and more often, and to a growing extent,” said E.ON AG Board member Klaus-Dieter Maubach. ”This will increasingly bring the power grid to the limits of its capacity. E.ON is therefore investing in the development of technologies to store large energy volumes. In this respect, power-to-gas is a promising solution for the future energy supply system.”

There’s just one pesky problem with this seemingly brilliant storage solution: it ignores the whole “clean” part of the clean tech equation. Wind energy is superior not only because it’s domestically produced, but because it creates electricity without the burning of filthy fossil fuels. Is E.ON is taking a clean source of energy and turning it back into something that’s killing the planet? Is this better than letting the energy go to waste? Would the money to build this power-to-gas plant be put to better use simply upgrading the energy grid to handle more wind-generated energy?  Or perhaps the development of batteries for large-scale energy storage? You be the judge.

Photo Credit: Beige Alert/Flickr

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With a goal of creating a closed-loop system, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will be working on finding a way to take carbon dioxide from SoCal gas plants, feed it into algae ponds, and capture the algae-generated methane to feed back into the gas pipeline for the utility to use.

“What we want to study is how much CO2 could we capture from a power plant and turn it into algal biomass,” said Dominick Mendola, one of the two lead researchers at Scripps.

Algae requires CO2, water and sunlight to grow, so capturing and using the emissions from a natural gas plant make perfect sense. Large-scale algae ponds also require a lot of land, so putting them on existing plots at utility plants would reduce any NIMBY concerns about their development. Many scientists and studies have deemed algae to be the fuel of the future, with uses ranging from the methane gas that SoCal Gas wants or for the generation of biodiesel.

SoCal Gas is the largest natural gas utility in the country, and it is looking for new ways to meet the greenhouse gas emissions rules set up by California’s 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, which encourages GHG reductions in the electricity and natural gas industry. If it is able to build a 100 percent closed-loop system, the design and implementation could be a model for other utilities to follow in order to cut their own emissions while producing much-needed gas. Scripps has been hired

[via North Country Times]

Image Credit: mmmavocado/Flickr

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The decision comes after heated debate about the need for cheap energy during a recession versus the UK’s goal to lower pollution from fossil fuels. Energy Secretary Ed Davey wants to meet 15 percent of the UK’s energy needs by 2020, about five times more than current levels. Conservatives have called for a 25 percent cut in wind subsidies, but clean energy advocates say reducing financial support now could cripple further development and investment. Davey held firm, and the cuts to wind are well below the requested amount at approximately 5 percent.

Although it’s still bad news for the planet, it would seem that for the present, both sides of the issue have been placated. The DECC forecasts the changes will lead to as much as 25 billion pounds of investment in clean energy between 2013 and 2017 while shaving 6 pounds off the average power bill.

But it appears the UK isn’t ready to put its full force behind renewables just yet. The Treasury said the government will publish a strategy later this year on ensuring drillers get long-term commitments on tax incentives for tapping natural gas fields. The 500 million pound tax allowance announced today is designed to spur investment in large gas fields in shallow waters.

via Bloomberg

Main photo credit: tsaiproject/Flickr

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Because coal and gas companies are some of the worst offenders when it comes to air pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created special rules to monitor them. Under these regulations, high-polluting plants are required close or undergo significant renovations in order to meet air safety standards.

Since coal and gas companies rake in billions in profit each year, you’d think they could at least try not to give us all asthma. According to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, however, the fossil fuel industry would rather not be troubled with public health. The report revealed that eight leading U.S. utilities, known as the “Gang of Eight” has spent millions of dollars lobbying and litigating to block, weaken, or delay major Clean Air Act safeguards.

So who’s in this dirty gang? According to the report, these companies are AEP, Ameren, DTE Energy, Energy Future Holdings, FirstEnergy, GenOn, PPL and Southern Company.

In 2011, the coal-fired power plants operated by these companies generated enough air pollution to have contributed to 10,400 deaths; 65,000 asthma attacks; 6,600 hospital and emergency room visits; and 3.4 million lost work-days. According to the NRDC, their combined economic toll on America (based on a widely-accepted model that links air pollution to adverse health consequences) is a staggering $78 billion. It seems these companies would rather waste money defending their right to kill people rather than simply updating their plants to reduce emissions.

“The ‘Gang of Eight’ utilities are putting their profits over protecting kids and communities from deadly and dangerous air pollution,” said Pete Altman, climate and clean air campaign director at NRDC. “Without these health protections from the Clean Air Act, we will see more premature deaths, asthma attacks and other illnesses every year, together with billions of dollars in estimated health costs that go with them.  We want to see these companies focus their money on cleaning up pollution rather than using litigation and lobbying to delay important improvements in clean air protections. ”

To find out how much each company has spent on blocking these regulations, read the full report here. 

via Inhabitat

Photo credit: takomabibelot/Flickr

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Coal provided over half of the U.S. power four years ago, and now provides only a third. A further 100 of the 500 coal power plants in the U.S. will likely be shut down in the next few years, according to a new article in the New York Times. The decline will be steepest in Appalachia, where coal has become increasingly difficult and expensive to mine.

What does this mean for the environment? A typical coal plant burns 1.4 million tons of coal each year, releasing SO2, particulate matter, mercury and other pollutants that researchers have linked to thousands of premature deaths every year. Coal plants are also responsible for nearly 35 percent of the CO2 emissions in the U.S. Environmentalists say that if a third of the country’s coal power plants can be shut down by 2020, it will have the same climate benefits as the failed 2009 Climate Change Bill.

Much of the coal will be replaced by natural gas, which is now much cheaper because of the increase in fracking techniques. Natural gas has its own issues: fracking is linked to water pollution and the increased risk of earthquakes. Though it doesn’t pollute as much as coal, natural gas still contributes to climate change; it’s responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Over the long term, let’s hope the switch from coal means less energy from fossil fuels overall, and more renewables like solar and wind.

Photo credit: Public Domain Photos/Flickr

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