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Energy, land and power

In his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: an Ecopragmatist Manifesto (Viking), Stewart Brand argues that environmentalists should change their thinking about four issues: population, nuclear power, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and urbanization. Amory Lovins, an equally legendary figure in US environmental circles, has produced a very damning critique of Brands assertions on energy in which he says: “His nuclear chapter’s facts and logic do not hold up to scrutiny.”

For example Brand rejects all non-nuclear options, arguing that photovoltaics need about 150–175 times, and wind farms from 600+ to nearly 900 times, more land than nuclear power to produce the same electricity.

In a summary of his full analysis, Lovins says that Brand understates nuclear power’s land-use “by about 43-fold by omitting all land used by exclusion zones and the nuclear fuel chain” – including uranium mining and waste disposal. Conversely, “he includes the space between wind or solar equipment­unused land commonly used for farming, grazing, wildlife, and recreation. That’s like claiming that two lampposts require a parking lot’s worth of space, even though 99% of the lot is used for parking, driving, and walking. Properly measured, per kilowatt-hour produced, the land made unavailable for other uses is about the same for ground-mounted photovoltaics as for nuclear power, sometimes less­or zero, for building-mounted PVs sufficient to power the world many times over”.

In his full paper, Lovins present a substantial amount of data to back up his claim that: “Land actually used per kWh is up to thousands of times smaller for windpower than for nuclear power. If land-use were an important criterion for picking energy systems, which it’s generally not, it would thus reverse Stewart’s footprint conclusion.”

Brand’s other arguments for nuclear and agains renewables are similarly dispatched as erroneous. For example while Brand claims that new nuclear will be more competitive, Lovins argues that “renewables are cheaper, faster, vaster, equally or more carbon-free, and more attractive to investors”, backing this up with his usual truck load of references. They reinforce Lovins’ claim that nuclear power “would reduce and retard climate protection, because it saves between two and 20 times less carbon per dollar, 20 to 40 times slower, than investing in efficiency and micropower” that is renewables (large hydro apart) and local CHP/cogeneration. He concludes that: “The more you fear climate change, the more judiciously you should invest to get the most solution per dollar and per year.”

He is then left with trying to explain why nuclear had nevertheless been taken up by some governments, and why people like Brand talk of a “nuclear imperative”. Lovins says that it is not due to any obvious advantage, economic or otherwise, In his summary he says: “If nuclear power isn’t needed, worsens climate change (vs. more effective solutions) and energy security, and can’t compete in the marketplace despite uniquely big subsidies – all evidence-based findings unexamined in Stewart’s chapter – then his nuclear imperative evaporates”. He goes on: “Of course, a few countries with centrally planned energy systems, mostly with socialized costs, are building reactors: over two-thirds of all nuclear plants under construction are in China, Russia, India, or South Korea. But that’s more because their nuclear bureaucracies dominate national energy policy and face little or no competition in technologies, business models, and ideas. Nuclear power requires such a system. The competitors beating nuclear power thrive in democracies and free markets.”

This is little less convincing, or rather, less than a full explanation. Lovins claims in his full paper that the “rout of nuclear power in the global marketplace, and its inability to persuade private investors anywhere to risk their money on its equity, marks the biggest collapse of any industrial enterprise in the history of the world” adding that “Brand can ignore it only by reading World Nuclear Association press releases instead of actual market order and installation data, and by pretending that the decentralized technologies that actually add tens of times more global capacity each year than nuclear power adds somehow cannot be important or effective competitors”.

Certainly renewable and other green energy options are doing very well around the world – for example as the recent REN 21 annual review noted, by 2008, renewables represented more than 50% of total added generation capacity in both the United States and Europe i.e, more new renewables capacity was installed than new capacity for gas, coal, oil, and nuclear combined. But, as Lovins admits, there are still some new nuclear projects going ahead. And what he does he doesn’t explicitly address is why some of these are in the (at least allegedly democratic) EU and possibly soon also in the US. It might be argued that they will not be economic and will have to be subsidized – by taxpayers or consumers. If so, then perhaps Lovins is saying that they are being mislead by governments under the sway of powerful corporate elites, even in ostensibly “free” countries? Maybe that is the case. I couldn’t possibly comment!

Posted by Dave Elliott on November 7, 2009 12:47 PM | Permalink