Jim Sconyers jim_scon@yahoo.com 304.698.9628

Remember: Mother Nature bats last.

----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Edward Mainland emainland@COMCAST.NET To: CONS-SPST-GLOBALWARM-CHAIRS@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Sent: Wed, June 2, 2010 12:43:22 AM Subject: Picking the Right Low-Carbon Investment Strategy

Chris Paine blog circulated May 28 by Jim Magavern:

Picking the Right Low-Carbon Investment Strategy

So what would all the nuclear largesse mean in practice if the K-L bill as written becomes law, and perhaps 12-24 new nuclear power plants are constructed over the next fifteen years in response to the incentives the bill creates? American taxpayers and consumers will have to pay through the nose for the electricity from these plants, which is likely to cost - depending on the project ownership and finance structure-anywhere from 17-34 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) (California Energy Commission, December 2009) when it enters the grid around 2018, instead of buying end-use efficiency "negawatts" today at less than 5 cents per kilowatt hour, industrial waste heat cogeneration today at less than 9 cents per kWh, wind at less than 11.5 cents per kWh, and a wide variety of other renewable sources at less than 17 cents per kilowatt hour, with the expectation of further price declines. In a recent analysis from DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), for example, big box commercial rooftop PV solar is expected to decline from about 11 - 15 cents/kWh (Phoenix versus Kansas City) today to 4.5 - 6 cents per KWh in 2015. Not only will new-nuclear cost more than these other cleaner sources, but the effective carbon displacement arrives 5-7 years later than the other technologies, further raising the overall cost of meeting the GHG reduction targets.

The harder, farther, and earlier we push on energy efficiency in a climate bill, the fewer costly nuclear, coal CCS or other "low-carbon" generating plants we'll have to build later on to meet the GHG reduction targets. So there is actually a triple-barreled economic benefit from deferring widespread deployment of the most costly decarbonization pathways (nuclear, coal CCS, renewables in less-favorable locations) until we absolutely need them to stay on track with meeting our reduction targets: (1) lower electricity costs; (2) earlier GHG reductions; and (3) less required future investment in low-carbon central station power plants that have other serious environmental drawbacks.

This strategy not only frees up funding for massive early investments in more cost-effective energy efficiency, but it also allows more time for technology innovation to reduce future nuclear (and coal CCS) costs and environmental impacts. The same holds true for currently costly, land-intensive combinations of remotely located large-scale renewables and new high-voltage transmission lines. Rapidly evolving technology and plummeting manufacturing costs may enable a higher proportion of clean energy to come from equally or more cost-effective distributed-generation mounted along highway embankments and atop buildings and parking lots, lessening the burden imposed by some large-scale renewable deployments on the natural environment.

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