‘The human species should as far as possible retreat from the natural world and live in high density urban settings’, enabled by high technology such as nuclear power, nuclear being well suited since it is a high density energy source. So says Prof Bill Nuttall in the conclusions to the second edition of his book on the supposed ‘Nuclear Renaissance’- see my last post. Backing the ‘ecomodernist’ agenda, he says ‘Humanity should learn to resist the temptation to live in harmony with nature, but should give all the other species with which we share this planet, space to do their own thing free from the risks of environmental collapse that the last ten generations of human beings have brought to the planet’.
Many greens are batting on a very different wicket- one in which people and their technologies are diffused across the planet, this being enabled by low-impact decentralised renewable energy technologies like PV solar and wind. Some large wild areas would be retained as protected havens, and there may still be some cities, but the main thrust would be to cohabit with nature, not isolate ourselves from it in some sort of space colony on earth.
These two future depictions are of course simplified and polarised. In reality, there will be other issues and constraints (population growth being one), as well as less extreme hybrid response options and technology mixes. Indeed, there would have to be. The high-tech future would need a lot of exotic materials from the planet (or other planets) and some renewable systems would be large scale (non-land using offshore wind, wave and tidal stream farms for example) and maybe remote from the user community (e.g. for some city power), while, in some versions, Small Modular Reactors might be used to support local communities. Take your pick!
Which way will it go? Well, renewables are clearly doing very well. ‘Not since the wind God Aeolus gifted wind to Odysseus have human beings been able to harness the power of the winds with such efficiency & effectiveness.’ So said UK Energy and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng earlier this year, in a rather simplified rendition of the story. Odysseus was actually offered favourable winds for his return from Troy, but also a bag of unfavourable wind, which he was warned not to use. He didn’t, but his compatriots foolishly did- and got blown back where they started. Make of that what you will. You might scurrilously/tortuously depict it as being nuclear power- a dead end option!
Clearly Kwasi Kwarteng does not see it like that. He is also a strong backer of nuclear, and he is not alone. Some say the energy/gas crisis will lead to even more support for it around the world. It is true that, in response to gas shortages, some countries have slowed their nuclear phases outs (notably Belgium). But it’s hard to see nuclear expansion as a low-cost option for responding to high energy costs, or quick solution. Most renewables are far cheaper and faster to deploy. So is energy saving. If you want to face up to climate change surely that’s the way to go. However, it does mean that some technology gets deployed very visibly on the land- notably large wind farms and solar farms, plus the necessary grid links. And not all greens like that- especially the latter!
Moreover, there are those who seem to hate all things green. Former Brexit minister Lord Frost said ‘Instead of focusing on technological solutions that enable us to master our environment and get more energy in a more carbon-efficient way — nuclear, carbon capture and storage, fracking, one day fusion — we have focused on managing demand so we can use medieval technology like wind power.’ And although, given the problems of weapons proliferation, he does admit to wishing it hadn’t actually been possible to develop nuclear technology, in his book Bill Nuttall says Pandora’s box has now been opened and so there is no way back. He notes that, in Greek mythology, Pandora was created ‘by Hephaestus and Zeus as a revenge upon Prometheus who had stolen fire from heaven.’
Well, the Greek gods did have their funny ways, and some may see using quotes from Greek legends in the energy context as odd, and not very helpful. Certainly, this particular story needs a bit of unpacking, not just about the contents of the box (which, as Nuttall notes, included ‘hope’, as well as all manner of evils), but also in relation to Prometheus’s dire fate. It didn’t end well for him. However, perhaps more relevant, if we want to use quotes from the ancients, is the Roman proverb, ‘whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad’, or the more convoluted earlier Greek variant from Sophocles: ‘Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction’.
There are arguably plenty of signs of that these days, including, for example, the proposed tests for offshore nuclear waste disposal. But, a few dire contrarian throwbacks apart, we are moving ahead with climate change mitigation. It’s still too slow, but some coal burning has been halted and gas and oil are under increasing pressure, while many countries are also moving away from nuclear fire- with renewable supply and smart zero energy end use to the fore - along hopefully with better building design.
Maybe the gods are with us on green energy. The prognosis certainly looks good, with, in a new IEEE paper, researchers from LUT University in Finland and 14 other leading international universities looking at the wide range of global and local ‘100% renewable’ studies that has emerged in recent years and claiming that there is growing consensus that an energy system based on 100% renewables could be achieved cost effectively by 2050.
100% renewables studies date right back to Bent Sorenson in Denmark in 1975 and Amory Lovins in the USA in 1976, and then Greenpeace in 1993 and Sorenson again in 1996, but with very many more emerging in the 2000s. Indeed, there are now hundreds. But the idea has taken a while to get accepted. The new LUT/IEEE paper notes that ‘It took until 2018 for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to acknowledge 100% RE research. The International Renewable Energy Agency has started approaching 100% RE for utilities and countries; however, its central energy transition scenario does not yet offer a 100% RE pathway. The International Energy Agency has developed a global Net Zero by 2050 scenario that only leads to a RE share of 67% (with 11% nuclear and the remaining supply coming from fossil fuels that is partly combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, in 2021 the IEA also presented a first 100% RE country scenario’.
As to which technologies will be featured, the new paper says that solar energy and wind power increasingly emerge as the central pillars of a sustainable energy system combined with energy efficiency measures. But the mix can very. Cost-optimization modelling and greater resource availability tend to lead to higher solar photovoltaic shares, as for example in LUTs studies, while emphasis on energy supply diversification tends to point to higher wind power contributions, as in the studies by Jacobson et al – who, as I noted in a recent post, have also recently updated their own 100% global renewables study. They now claim that the cost of the transition need not be prohibitive. Indeed, all of the up-front costs for switching to 100% renewable energy could it seems be paid back in just six years! Provocative stuff – especially given the huge economic problems facing much of the nuclear energy sector just now. Can I hear the Gods laughing?
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