Gives me hope
Dear member,
I just had a short meeting with the president this morning before his climate speech and I'm more convinced than ever that he is ready to tackle climate change.
In his speech, he announced that he's directing his administration to crack down on climate-disrupting carbon emissions from power plants, scale up renewable energy, and boost energy efficiency for commercial, industrial, and federal buildings.
He also said he will reject the Keystone XL pipeline if it is bad for the climate. (Hint: it is.)
Today's announcement is a big deal, and it's happening because you, your neighbors, and hundreds of thousands of others helped show our country and our president the way forward.
Thank President Obama for making climate a priority, and let him know you're ready to fight back against the big polluters who are going to try to stop this plan dead in its tracks.
By putting his administration to work on the climate crisis -- and especially by tackling climate-destroying carbon emissions from coal plants -- President Obama is showing that he understands the seriousness and urgency of climate disruption and is ready to lead the way with immediate and decisive action.
And that gives me hope.
To cement his climate legacy and protect future generations, the president will need to keep taking big, bold steps like this -- things like rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, ending destructive oil drilling in the Arctic, halting mountaintop removal, protecting public lands from fracking, stopping the rush to export fossil fuels, and abandoning dirty fuels for a clean energy future. Today he's shown that all those things are still on the table because he understands how important this fight is.
Join me in showing the president that there's a groundswell of support for bold climate plans like this. Let's send 50,000 letters and make sure he knows we're ready to do this -- and more.
The president is going to have to tackle this crisis without Congress, but that doesn't mean he has to fight alone. He needs to know that activists like you will have his back when big polluters try to stop him. He needs to see that the climate movement is energized, growing, and ready to win.
This past February, 50,000 activists like you took to the streets in Washington, D.C., and more marched all across the country. You joined climate conversations, took more than a million actions online, helped support and build the movement, and made the first 100 days of President Obama's second term a turning point in the climate fight. And together over the past decade, you've stopped 179 new coal-fired power plants and won the retirement of 147 existing coal plants -- the nation's number one source of carbon pollution.
Even more than the president's plan, that gives me hope that our nation will continue to confront the climate crisis, and continue to win a clean, healthy, and safe future for our children and future generations.
So let's show the president our hope and our strength. Send your message now!
Thank you for all you do,
Michael Brune
Sierra Club Executive Director
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/R?i=3gxSpGtdgm6UQ-czK6ZvhA
= new reply since forum marked as read
If you haven't seen this movie yet or visited their digital community space, I encourage you to check it out.
Fantasy or Vision?
Thank you for sharing this carrot of hope. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that we can not count on any meaningful, effective or sustainable renewable energy planning or implementing in the monetized global economic system which we are debt slaves to at the present time. The transfer of wealth from the many to the few which occurs when our energy is privately owned is a situation which the recipients of our global wealth will never give up voluntarily, no matter the cost to our human society and this biosphere.
We, the community who cares, will need to work supporting research and development of the open sourced and commonly held renewable energy resources which exist today, and those which are still in their conceptual and design phases. Eventually, we can have sustainable abundant energy which belongs to it's user community, if we actively support movement in that direction.
A energy sustainable world will not be given to us by the greedy bastards currently in charge of our fossil fuel resources, they will fight for more money transferred to their pockets until we end their private energy cabal, even if it results in Gaiacide.
But there are thousands of people working on changing the current monetized paradigm.
Thank you for your contribution to the positive outcomes of Sierra Clubs community of support.
A few sights highlighting solutions:
http://networkawesome.com/show/doc-future-by-design-the-venus-project/
http://www.wfs.org/futurist/2013-issues-futurist/july-august-2013-vol-47-no-4/transition-engineering-planning-and-build
Nuclear power remains a key component of the Obama administration's strategy for reducing U.S. carbon emissions, with the administration's support for the technology evident in a climate action plan released Tuesday.
In a speech announcing the plan, the president made an early reference to Generation III reactors under construction at the Vogtle and V.C. Summer nuclear plants: "Thanks to the ingenuity of our businesses, we're starting to produce much more of our own energy. We're building the first nuclear power plants in more than three decades in Georgia and South Carolina."
Is the Sierra Club looking at nuclear afresh?
I never have been able to understand the logic which allows nuclear power plants to be part of our community power grid.
This is a graph demonstrating the costs of various power sources
"When the full nuclear fuel cycle is considered - not only reactors but also uranium mines and mills, enrichment facilities, spent fuel repositories, and decommissioning sites - nuclear power proves to be one of the costliest sources of energy".[73]
Doesn't seem like there is much rational conversation happening before these decisions are made. Unfortunately, that really isn't all that out of character when you look at the cardholder.
Comparisons with other power sources[edit]
See also: Relative cost of electricity generated by different sources
Generally, a nuclear power plant is significantly more expensive to build than an equivalent coal-fueled or gas-fueled plant. However, coal is significantly more expensive than nuclear fuel, and natural gas significantly more expensive than coal — thus, capital costs aside, natural gas-generated power is the most expensive.[dubious – discuss] Most forms of electricity generation produce some form of negative externality — costs imposed on third parties that are not directly paid by the producer — such as pollution which negatively affects the health of those near and downwind of the power plant, and generation costs often do not reflect these external costs.
A comparison of the "real" cost of various energy sources is complicated by several uncertainties:
The cost of climate change through emissions of greenhouse gases is hard to estimate. Carbon taxes may be enacted, or carbon capture and storage may become mandatory.
The cost of environmental damage caused by (fossil or renewable) energy sources, both through land use (whether for mining fuels or for power generation) and through air and water pollution and solid waste.
The cost and political feasibility of disposal of the waste from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel is still not fully resolved. In the U.S., the ultimate disposal costs of spent nuclear fuel are assumed by the U.S. government after producers pay a fixed surcharge.
Operating reserve requirements are different for different generation methods. When nuclear units shut down unexpectedly they tend to do so independently, so the "hot spinning reserve" must be at least the size of the largest unit (this partly makes nuclear power more suitable for large grids). On the other hand, many renewables are intermittent power sources and may shut down together if they depend on weather conditions, so the grid will require either back-up generation capability or large-scale storage if the portion of generation from these renewables is significant. (Some renewables such as hydroelectricity have a storage reservoir and can be used as reliable back-up power for other power sources.)
Governmental instabilities in the next plant lifetime. New nuclear power plants are designed for a minimum of 60 years (50 for VVER-1200), and may be able to be refurbished. Likewise, the waste from reprocessed fuel remains dangerous for about this period.
Actual plant lifetime (to date, no plant has been shut down due to maximum licensed lifetime being reached, or been refurbished).
Due to the dominant role of initial construction cost and the multi-year construction time and planned lifetime, the interest rate for the capital required is of particularly high importance for estimating the total cost.
Several recent comparisons of the costs of plants are available (see below); however, commodity prices have shot up since they were completed, and so all types of plants will be more expensive than shown[22]
A UK Royal Academy of Engineering report in 2004 looked at electricity generation costs from new plants in the UK. In particular it aimed to develop "a robust approach to compare directly the costs of intermittent generation with more dependable sources of generation". This meant adding the cost of standby capacity for wind, as well as carbon values up to £30 (€45.44) per tonne CO2 for coal and gas. Wind power was calculated to be more than twice as expensive as nuclear power. Without a carbon tax, the cost of production through coal, nuclear and gas ranged £0.022–0.026/kW·h and coal gasification was £0.032/kW·h. When carbon tax was added (up to £0.025) coal came close to onshore wind (including back-up power) at £0.054/kW·h — offshore wind is £0.072/kW·h — nuclear power remained at £0.023/kW·h either way, as it produces negligible amounts of CO2. (Nuclear figures included estimated decommissioning costs.)[4][24][65]
However a much more detailed review of over 200 papers by the UK Energy Research Centre, on the issue of intermittency came to much lower costs about the cost of wind energy compared to nuclear energy.[66] A recent study shows the current generating costs of wind, nuclear and coal plant in the UK which stills shows nuclear the cheapest, but not by a great a margin.[67]
The lifetime cost of new generating capacity in the United States was estimated in 2006 by the U.S. government: wind cost was estimated at $55.80 per MW·h, coal (cheap in the U.S.) at $53.10, natural gas at $52.50 and nuclear at $59.30. However, the "total overnight cost" for new nuclear was assumed to be $1,984 per kWe[61] — as seen above in Capital Costs, this figure is subject to debate, as much higher cost was found for recent projects.[citation needed] Also, carbon taxes and backup power costs were not considered.[68]
A May 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office concludes that a carbon tax of $45 per tonne of carbon dioxide would probably make nuclear power cost competitive against conventional fossil fuel for electricity generation.[69]
Estimates of total lifetime energy returned on energy invested vary greatly depending on the study. An overview can be found here (Table 2):[70]
The effect of subsidies is difficult to gauge, as some are indirect (such as research and development). A May 12, 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal stated, "For electricity generation, the EIA(Energy Information Administration, an office of the Department of Energy) concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and 'clean coal' $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59."[71]
However, the most important subsidies to the nuclear industry do not involve cash payments. Rather, they shift construction costs and operating risks from investors to taxpayers and ratepayers, burdening them with an array of risks including cost overruns, defaults to accidents, and nuclear waste management. This approach has remained remarkably consistent throughout the nuclear industry's history, and distorts market choices that would otherwise favor less risky energy investments.[72]
In 2011, Benjamin K. Sovacool said that: "When the full nuclear fuel cycle is considered - not only reactors but also uranium mines and mills, enrichment facilities, spent fuel repositories, and decommissioning sites - nuclear power proves to be one of the costliest sources of energy".[73]
An EU-funded research study known as ExternE, or Externalities of Energy, undertaken from 1995 to 2005, found that the cost of producing electricity from coal or oil would double, and the cost of electricity production from gas would increase by 30% if external costs such as damage to the environment and to human health, from the particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, chromium VI, river water alkalinity, mercury poisoning and arsenic emissions produced by these sources, were taken into account. It was estimated in the study that these external, downstream, fossil fuel costs amount up to 1-2% of the EU's Gross Domestic Product, and this was before the external cost of global warming from these sources was included.[74] The study also found that the environmental and health costs of nuclear power, per unit of energy delivered, was lower than many renewable sources, including that caused by biomass and photovoltaic solar panels, but was higher than the external costs associated with wind power and alpine hydropower.[75]
