One thing you've gotta love about Jim Webb is his whole badass, "won't back down," U.S. Marine attitude. That is, you gotta love that about Webb when he's right about stuff, which is 90% of the time. But, as much as I respect Webb - and that's a huge amount, given that I started a "draft" to get him in the U.S. Senate and worked as his campaign's netroots coordinator - I strongly disagree with him on this one.
Two U.S. Senators on Monday unveiled bipartisan legislation aimed at doubling nuclear power in 20 years and increasing funding for research into low carbon sources of energy.Here are my main areas of disagreement with Senator Webb on this.
Sponsored by Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Virginia Democrat Jim Webb, the bill would provide $100 billion in loan guarantees for carbon-free electricity projects, adding to the existing $47 billion loan guarantee program.
Although the additional loan guarantees would not be limited to nuclear power, the nuclear industry would likely be the major recipient of the extra money because it is one of the most established low carbon energy sources.
[...]
Webb raised concerns about the effectiveness of the climate legislation in Congress and said he does not back the Senate bill in its current form.
"I have a lot of reservations about cap and trade as a concept," Webb said. "And I have very strong reservations about the notion that we should apply different standards to ourselves in terms of global warming than other countries such as China."
1. In general, I believe that the approach of the government specifically picking "winners and losers" among various technologies is sub-optimal. Instead, it's much better and more efficient from an economics point of view is to simply place a price on the thing you want to limit - in this case, carbon - and then let the market do its thing.
2. I have no philosophical problem with nuclear power, but the main reason new plants haven't been built in the United States for years is that nuclear plants are very expensive. There are also problematic issues of siting and waste disposal, neither of which are addressed by providing federal loan guarantees for building nuclear power plants.
3. Given the magnitude and urgency of taking action on climate change, building a few dozen nuclear plants over the next 10-20 years won't make a dent and certainly won't make it soon enough. To put it into perspective, according to EIA, the United States has about 1,000 gigawatts of power generating capacity, of which 75% is fossil-fuel-fired (natural gas, coal, and oil). In contrast, nuclear power plants - there are 104 right now - account for only about 10% of U.S. power generating capacity. Increasing that number to 120 or 130 would raise nuclear's hare to 12%-13%; again, barely a blip in the broad scheme of things, and certainly not sufficient to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in the time frame required.
4. As far as the issue of China, I'm not sure how Senator Webb expects us to proceed. Obviously, we can't force China to do anything, but we can encourage China to act by setting an example and leading the way, as America has done so many times. Regardless, China is starting to race ahead of us on renewable energy development, "clean tech," etc. Which means, of course, that if we don't get moving fast, we're going to find pretty soon that we've lost out on one of the key technological and economic drivers of the 21st century. Not good.
5. Sen. Webb also made a comment that cap and trade is "enormously complex." I agree, which is why I tend to favor a much simpler, revenue-neutral carbon tax ("neutral" in the sense that we slash other taxes or return the money to people, preferably as subsidies for energy efficiency and renewable energy systems). If simplicity is one of Webb's main concerns, well, you can't get much simpler than a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and you also can't get much more effective in terms of "internalizing externalities" and sending a strong price signal to the market. Yet I've never heard Webb support that approach, which really leaves me scratching my head here. Also, the fact is that right now, nobody in Congress is talking about a carbon tax, and that the cap-and-trade approach is the only serious one on the table. The problem is, ruling out both cap-and-trade and a carbon tax means, effectively, that there will continue to be no price on carbon indefinitely, and that's a recipe for failure.
6. If Webb is concerned with "bipartisanship," the fact is there's already a serious bipartisan bill moving ahead in the Senate, one sponsored by John Kerry (D), Joe Lieberman (I), and Lindsey Graham (R). The Kerry/Lieberman/Graham bill, by the way, also includes subsidies for nuclear power, but it also includes (according to Lieberman a cap-and-trade component as well as "the best [of the bill the committee produces]" (according to Kerry). The Kerry/Lieberman/Graham approach is one of two comprehensive approaches making their way through the Senate, the other being the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill. I'm not sure why we need a third, far less comprehensive, energy bill at this point, especially one that doesn't do much of anything about the core problems here: climate change, plus the economic and national security problems that stem from our "oil addiction."
7. Sen.. Webb does not mention energy efficiency, which is by far and away - not even close - the "lowest of low hanging fruit" when it comes to energy. Put it this way: a "negawatt" (saving a watt of energy through efficiency) costs a tiny fraction of a megawatt of new nuclear capacity. Which is why, if we put a price on carbon, we'll see the U.S. economy becoming much more energy efficient - using far less energy to produce the same or more economic output - than now. True, a higher price on fossil fuels would give a boost to nuclear power, but energy efficiency would benefit far more because it provides so much more "bang for the buck."
The bottom line is that Senator Webb's bill is inadequate to the huge challenge we face here. It's also redundant, to an extent, given that there are already nuclear subsidies in the Kerry/Lieberman/Graham approach. And opposing cap-and-trade, without offering a serious alternative like a revenue-neutral carbon tax, is simply a non-starter. It's a non-starter, that is, if we really want to make some headway here, not just give the nuclear power industry an enormous gift from Uncle Sam.
UPDATE: I just got a press release from Environment Virginia, which says that Webb's approach would "set U.S. back in solving global warming."
Legislation released today by Senators Alexander (TN) and Webb (VA) would dramatically increase subsidies for new and existing nuclear power plants and in so doing set America back in effort to solve global warming, according to Environment Virginia. The plan includes releasing $100 billion in federal loan guarantees which could be used for nuclear power; spending up to $1.5 billion developing nuclear breeder reactors; and spending $2.5 billion on nuclear worker training, nuclear plant design review, and extending the life of existing reactors.
“When it comes to global warming, time and money are of the essence and nuclear power will fail America on both accounts,” said J.R. Tolbert, Advocate with Environment Virginia. “With government dollars more precious than ever, nuclear power is a foolish investment that will set us back in the race against global warming.”
“Senators Alexander and Webb should focus instead on energy efficiency and clean renewable energy -- the quickest, cheapest cleanest solutions to global warming,” said Tolbert.
