I am reminded this morning of the odd contempt that conservatives have for renewable power—There's no sun at night! The wind doesn't always blow!—paired with their seemingly inexhaustible love of nuclear power, which survives even $17 billion overruns on $14 billion nuclear plants.
I myself have mixed views on nuclear. On the one hand, new Gen 4 technologies hold out the hope of reliable, modestly priced, carbon-free power. On the other hand, waste disposal can't be blithely waved away and existing construction of nuclear plants is wildly expensive. It's hardly a slam dunk for either side.
So why the endless love from right-wingers? And why the equally endless mockery of solar and wind? Even if you're deeply invested in pretending that climate change is a big liberal delusion, clean energy is still something to root for, isn't it? At the very least it reduces air pollution of all kinds, and who's against that? And it's hardly a secret that modern, utility-scale renewable installations include battery storage that allows them to provide electricity all day long.
But conservatives nevertheless jump gleefully on any reported hiccup with renewable energy. They even hate electric vehicles. Ron DeSantis has enshrined this in his "Declaration of Economic Independence," and red states are passing regulations to rein in charging stations and increase EV registration fees for no reason other than an inchoate grudge against anything "green."
The obvious answer to all this, I suppose, is that the libtards like solar, wind, and EVs, so MAGAnauts don't. Ditto in reverse for nuclear power. It seems like there has to be more to it than just this, but I sure can't figure out what it might be.
The CEO of the firm I work for is both a Republican, and drives a Tesla (and apparently also an owner of solar panels and a Tesla powerwall). I asked him nearly this question a year ago and, in fact, he does opposed most of the 'green' agenda (his term). As I recall he said
1. No matter what the US does, this is a global problem. No way the world goes green without huge cash transfers from the west. He opposed large cash transfers.
2. In the US the green agenda is basically the 'liberal' wish list (he was speaking of the Green New Deal....I think). He opposed the Green New Deal. He also opposed much higher taxes.
3. If the green technology is better, and priced properly, you don't need government interference. Further, the green agenda means the government picking winner. He mentioned that hydrogen is likely better than an EV. Yet Biden is pushing EVs
Final bit, I may not agree with his position on this topic but he is a very successful and well educated (degrees from two super elite university's): meaning I don't believe, at least in the business world, one can fairly call him stupid.
It may be unfair but if he thinks hydrogen is a better idea than EVs, I'm calling him stupid. I've worked with hydrogen. I'm not scared of hydrogen. But the idea of a couple of hundred million people pumping hydrogen into the tanks of normal, minimally maintained cars at a million or so "gas" stations, then driving these things around is terrifying.
Where does this hydrogen come from anyway? People have been trying to improve the efficiency and cost of electrolysis of water, but I think commercial hydrogen still is almost entirely made by using steam, generated by burning natural gas, to break down natural gas and liberate hydrogen. Hell we'd be better off just running the cars on natural gas...and that'd be a disaster as well.
Hydrogen can store a lot of energy per pound, but the trouble is that it weighs almost nothing. Liquefying it requires very low temperatures and high pressures. DOE says that liquefying hydrogen requires 30% of the energy stored in the hydrogen.
This hydrogen economy stuff goes back to the Bush II administration if not earlier and is nothing but an attempt by the fossil fuel industry to bamboozle us into doing nothing about global warming.
The only way to make hydrogen green would be to make it with nuclear power and even if you could get that many nuclear power plants approved they take twenty years to build, twenty years during which EVs will continue to improve.
And then if you have all these hydrogen cars they're all emitting masses of water vapor into the atmosphere right at the surface increasing humidity, increasing the temperature.
And in the winter they're leaving a slick of ice behind them as they go and hoarfrost covering every nearby surface.
Hydrogen would be a disaster.
Hydrogen looks like a lousy substitute for gas/diesel in transportation, but perhaps it could replace fossil methane in industrial processes such as steel and cement.
cld - you do know that lots of water vapor comes out the tailpipe of a gasoline car, right? CO2 and H2O (plus misc) are the reaction products.
Not that much, --and another excellent reason to get rid of internal combustion engines.
I suspect you've never driven in very cold weather. The water vapor from combustion condenses in the tail pipe and drips out the end in a steady stream.
An octane molecule has 18 hydrogens, which means that 9 H2O molecules are created every time an octane molecule is burned. There are, of course, 8 carbon atoms in an octane molecule, which means that 8 CO2 molecules are created every time an octane molecule is burned.
So high school chemistry tells me that you get more H2O molecules then CO2 molecules when you burn hydrocarbons.
"Not that much," indeed.
I've been saying for some time now that there's a huge business opportunity for North Africa coming up, making hydrogen with solar power. The same could be said for Arizona.
Hydrogen powered cars are probably a bad idea. However, hydrogen powered ships and airplanes are more practical; they will use hydrogen on a large enough scale and predictable enough schedule that they can store it as a liquid.
OK, so North Africa I could understand - it is coastal with access to plenty of both sunshine and sea water. But Arizona just has the sunshine. It doesn't have the water, sea or otherwise.
Hydrogen has a place. In aviation. Where energy density is quite a bit more important than on the ground.
Did you ask him if he's in favor of removing oil and gas subsidies in order to save on taxes?
If the green technology is better, and priced properly, you don't need government interference.
Apparently he's never been exposed to the idea that climate change isn't priced into the cost of fossil fuels.
The latest bit of hydrogen greenwashing seems to be "white hydrogen" which can be pumped straight out of the ground. No need to worry about climate change as we can depend on clean hydrogen from vast "wells" which may not even exist delivered through an infrastructure which definitely doesn't exist. BTW, you might ask him if they covered "externality" at those elite schools. Fossil fuels are cheap only because fossil fuel providers don't bear the full cost.
Zillions of dollars from oil, gas and coal interests have been funneled into GOP and conservative media coffers for a century. The amount of revenue legacy energy and legacy transportation has to lose if they are suddenly disrupted by renewable energy and EVs is staggering, so conservative politicians and entertainers (as well as ICE auto makers) have perfected the art of supporting alternative energy solutions like nuclear and hydrogen that will just happen to take decades to become feasible. Then Tesla came along and delivered EVs AND a charging network at a price that is measurably less than the price of the average gas car. So now the entire conservative establishment is forced to spout absurd excuses why EVs ‘aren’t ready’ because legacy auto isn’t ready to produce them in large numbers because they can’t figure out how to do what Tesla did: make a profit on them.
If he really thinks hydrogen is the better option then he is indeed, contrary to your protestations, an idiot. That you would think otherwise if you know anything about the storied history of hydrogen says something.
Wind and solar should be pushed with all speed. It's too bad we aren't spending more to see if the deep drilling for geothermal steam idea that's come out of MIT can be made to work.
A couple of comments about nuclear: 1) Yes, radioactive waste is a real issue. However, the number I've heard thrown around, without a source, is that over 90% of US nuclear waste is a consequence of Defense Department activities. Some of it is from Navy reactors, but mostly it's from making bombs.
2) The high cost of US commercial reactors is largely because the vast majority of our big companies are run by BS artists who are just working on ways to maximize their bonuses. This rot extends down to the line managers of the projects. This doesn't have to be the case. Back when Duke Power was run by engineers in the 1970's they brought in most of their nuclear units under budget and on schedule.
A third hand story related by a welder at the new nuclear units at Vogtle, GA goes like this: He saw that the material of the component he was supposed to weld in was de-laminating. His supervisor said if it wasn't in by the end of the week it would affect the manager's incentive pay, so just do it. A few weeks later a QA engineer said to cut it out and order a new one. Cutting it out and prepping the mating surfaces for a new part takes longer than it did to weld in the bad part. The replacement part didn't get ordered until the QA guy said to do it, so that adds a few weeks to the whole process. So a lot of extra work has to be done, extra expense is added to the project, and extra weeks of delay are added. None of this though, affects the supervisors bonus. It probably didn't affect the bonuses of all the BS bosses over him either. The welder related this as a common type of event.
I oppose nuclear. Has nothing to do with GOP. We can technically do it but not in reality. My evidence is Fukushima.
Vastly more people die every year because of the pollutants associated with fossil fuels (to say nothing of climate change) than all of the victims of history's several serious nuclear accidents combined. Simple cost benefit analysis very strongly suggests a massive win on net for reduced human mortality would flow from a transition to green energy even with nuclear energy playing an important role in said transition (which is probably necessary for reasons of economics and energy efficiency).
I suppose you also oppose aviation. Your evidence would be .
Not a fan of risk analysis, are you? Nor of engineering history. You might just as well gone with Chernobyl for your 'evidience'.
It began during the runup to the 2000 election. Al Gore based a significant part of his campaign on promoting his Inconevient Truth and advocating for accelerating development of clean energy.
(Recall that George H. W. Bush derided Gore as "Ozone Man" during the campaign.)
And so, throughout the entire campaign, Republicans mocked and ridiculed Gore's concern with global warming. But as we've seen time and again, once Republicans forge a wedge issue, they're reluctant to undo their work. Thus we have the Republican Party blasting renewables,, entertaining wild antivax tehories, insisting that Benghazi was a Clinton-directed attack, and on and on.
The only exception in recent memory I can think of is Republicans' strange affection for Putin and other eastern European strongmen.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, there were big differences on environmental policy. Both candidates said that they supported preserving the environment, but Bush wasn't willing to actually do much in that regard. For example, Bush wanted to allow drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and Gore did not. While both candidates acknowledged that global warming was real, Gore supported the Kyoto treaty while Bush opposed it.
After he lost the election, Al Gore decided to direct his energies to the issue of global warming. “An Inconvenient Truth” came out in 2006. Gore was concerned about global warming before and during the 2000 election, but didn't make it a central focus.
It's obvious that solar and wind are energy sources for limp-wristed limps.
Conservatives like a tough, masculine supply of energy.
Tough, like coal. Gotta jackhammer it out of the seams.
Hot and blistering, like oil and gas.
Nuclear energy for no-nonsense guys unafraid of gamma rays or alpha particles.
Oh... and geothermal. That's earthy, solid, harnessing the energy of a volcano. They should do that.
Unfortunately, like it or not, you have to include nuclear into the mix of RE if you want reliable baseline power. And yes, that's right, nuclear is RE. 'Renewable Energy' is just douchy sloganeering in this context.
If you've already given up on hitting net zero by 2050, then there's nothing inherently wrong with pursuing nuclear, including the new, untested designs, and perhaps they'll be cheaper in the long run *and* come with the added benefit of producing hydrogen gas for that hydrogen economy that Toyota claims is the future of mankind.
Otherwise, if we're going to use nuclear to hit net zero by 2050, then we're going to have to shift the paradigm on how we design, permit, and build them. It can't take 15 years from design to completion and it can't cost upwards of $15B dollars for 1GW capacity. It's just not feasible.
One already needs a paradim shift on permitting on energy broadly as there is absolutely no way to hit any 2050 goal via Renewables (with or without nuclear*) without an unprecedented expansion of grids - both for long-distance transmission and for retail distribution.
Grid Grid Grid Grid Grid. And more grid. Accelerate permit, connexions and access.
And that implies as well a massive scale up of industrial production of cables and trasnformers. None of which is easy as doing Apps, which US VC has foolishly focused on wasting capital these past 20 yrs, Uber and other capital destorying nonsense.
It is like the observation about armies and logistics. Arm chair generals talk strategy and debate individual weapons systems. Professional generals talk logistics, and scale/volume has as Stalin put it, a quality all of its own.
Grid is the logistics system of electrons, that is electricity
*: it is further relative to grid engineering impossible to run scale grids on pure RE as there needs to be frequency stabilisation servicing or else one has collapse at over 20-25%- so either natural gas or nuclear or some scale storage peaker service
Gotta hot tip for you: There is no chance, none, nada, zip, zero that so-called 'renewables' are going to deliver 2050. Let's stop pretending that was ever going to be the case.
My answer is a meta, political answer. The fossil fuel industry is fighting green energy for obvious reasons. And they have strong ties to the right. They have Senators from Oklahoma and West Virginia on their team. They spread their message via the right wing social media, which makes it seem organic. I'm sure that coal miners and oil workers understand the threat to their livelihood, and only need a little bit of a push.
There are trillions of dollars at stake. Those who have much to lose will do something.
Yep, it's exactly as Dr. Jay says it is. And I imagine whatever money DeSantis has raised a good chunk of it comes from fossil fuels exects.
Once again, Kevin, let me remind you that "Conservatives", "the right wing", even "Republicans" are not uniform blocks.
Even at the simplest level, the (current, and likely to fracture over the next ten years) Republican coalition consists of, among others
- libertarians who probably have no opinion either way, apart from not wanting government to play favorites
- multiple religious groups (Catholics are very different from Evangelists) who have no opinion to Dominion Theology to versions of stewardship
- big business (which itself is split between some businesses who, for obvious reasons, want coal and oil privileges, others who want green privileges, and others who just want a stable energy and regulatory environment)
- family-first and America-first types who would be happy with a transition to wind and solar IF that resulted in equivalent jobs and energy security compared to the current system.
You do realize, for example, that right now TEXAS produces the most renewable energy in the US? And that this is popular and continues to grow? How exactly do you square this with the claims being made?
We keep seeing this nonsense. I mean, FFS, the ENTIRE FACT of the Trump win was about how the family-first and America-first types CONCLUSIVELY won the election against the express wishes of the business and religious types.
This is not about me supporting Trump or even the Republicans. It's about me pointing out that
(a) I want a better class of analysis from Kevin Drum. Usually you are on point against the conventional wisdom. On this one issue, you seem incapable of doing anything but repeating the usual journalist garbage.
(b) if any reader actually wants to influence where politics is headed in the next ten years, that starts by actually getting your facts and analysis straight.
Or, to put it differently: did you, and the media voices you listen to, get it right about Brexit? Did you get it right about the Trump win in 2016? Did you get it right about how your predicted a Trump presidency would play out?
If not, then WTF do you think your theories right now are worth ANYTHING?
De Santis is one very loud, very dumb, politician. That is all.
He is not all conservatives, he is not all right-wingers. I personally suspect he is not even the front runner for president among Republicans. I say this not based on deep following of the news or polls (which I don't do) but on the fact that he seems as clueless as Kevin and most journalists as to how the Republican party has changed and what the different elements of the coalition want. He keeps pushing certain elements of Culture War, but he has neither an intellectual understanding, nor Trump's street cunning, of which of these elements matter and which are historical detritus. Meaning he gets perpetual publicity, but every blather he makes turns off many potential voters (even many of the Trump supporters).
100% hard disagree on nuclear not being a slam dunk for either side. I guess maybe you meant Democrats vs. Republicans for either side? I don't really know, because neither party is really for it.
But if the sides are "do nothing" vs. "do something" about carbon emissions, then nuclear is a slam dunk. It has basically zero carbon emissions. And remember how all these carbon capture technologies have high power requirements? Nuclear can solve that, too. Sure, waste is a problem - but it's less of a problem than carbon emissions and pollutants.
Nuclear would probably also cost less if it were built on a larger scale. Economies of scale and whatnot... But there's also the point that the cost of nuclear is being compared to the cost of other things, notably carbon-fueled power for which the negative externalities are not included in the cost.
Everything must be electrified if we're going to survive what's coming with a recognizable planet, and it needs to be electrified as soon as possible. Nuclear gets us electrified as soon as possible. As better batteries and non-nuclear electricity generation technologies improve, we can phase it out.
Unfortunately, I doubt we'll build nuclear at the scale necessary to avert climate disaster.