The Politics of Climate Change (21 page)

Nuclear power remains mired in controversy, but, as mentioned in
chapter 4
, it is difficult to see how it will not figure in a prominent way – not for all industrial countries, but certainly for some of them. In Britain, nuclear power generated 19 per cent of the country's electricity in 2006, compared to 36 per cent from gas and 38 per cent from coal. In 2007 this proportion dropped to 15 per cent and it will decline more as the ageing plants lose capacity. The differential was partly made up in 2007 by the import of 3 per cent of electricity demand from nuclear plants in France. Since the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources is so small, it is difficult to see how the UK could possibly meet its EU 2020 target of 16 per cent from renewables if nuclear were allowed to lapse.

Many in the green movement remain opposed to the use of nuclear power, but some environmentalists who were previously hostile have since revised their views. One is Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue in the 1970s. He says he is now pro-nuclear ‘because coal is so awful'.
⁴
Brand calls for the rapid deployment of a new generation of nuclear power plants, in the US and elsewhere.

Risks and problems there are plenty. Yet, as I have stressed throughout this book, it is the balance of risks we have to consider and there are no risk-free options. A nuclear reactor
emits virtually no CO
₂
, although emissions are involved in the building of nuclear power stations. The IPCC calculates that the total life-cycle level of emissions per unit of energy is some 40g CO
₂
equivalent per kilowatt-hour, the same as that for renewable energy sources.
⁵
Supplies of uranium are plentiful and not concentrated in unstable countries. The biggest difficulties concern the connection between nuclear power and the building of nuclear weapons, the possibility of nuclear terrorism and the difficulty of disposing of the nuclear waste. No one could possibly be sanguine about how serious these questions are. The first is arguably more dangerous than the second or the third. Many countries that have nuclear power do not possess nuclear weapons. Yet some states, at the moment most notably Iran, almost certainly want to develop nuclear power in order to build a nuclear arsenal.

I do not want in any sense to downplay such risks; like many others, I am a reluctant convert to nuclear power, at least insofar as some of the industrial and developing countries are concerned. There simply is no substitute on the horizon at the moment and the risks of taking nuclear out of the mix are too great. Nuclear power stations can be engineered to be almost impervious to terrorist attack, at least in terms of such an episode causing a release of radiation. The reactors currently being built in Finland incorporate such safeguards. It is at least possible that the waste-disposal issue could be resolved at some point in the future. Some have argued that fourth-generation nuclear technology could burn almost all the energy available in the uranium ore, and also run on the depleted uranium left behind by conventional reactors. Pie in the sky? It may be, but almost all renewable sources of energy need comparable technological breakthroughs if they are to serve to replace oil, gas and coal.

In March 2011, in the wake of a massive earthquake, an explosion occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant in Japan. The reactors at the station were subsequently flooded with water and boric acid to try to prevent a meltdown and a large-scale release of radiation. These efforts were not successful and a significant radiation leak did occur. The plant in question was over 40 years old and of antiquated design. Critics had long warned that plants of this design constructed
anywhere near geological fault-lines should be closed down. At the time of writing, it is not clear what either the short-or the longer-term consequences will be for human health. In April 2011, the Japanese government raised the level of risk to the same as that experienced at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, in 1986. However, the radiation released at the Japanese plant was less than one-tenth of that at Chernobyl.

In the wake of the events in Japan, most countries with an existing nuclear industry, or plans to develop one, stated that they would reassess their programmes. The German leadership reversed its intention to extend the life of the country's nuclear plants (see below, pp. 80–1). Two of the country's oldest nuclear stations were closed temporarily until they were thoroughly tested. Switzerland was among several countries going back on proposals to replace its existing nuclear plants and build new ones. The Chinese leadership put on hold its plans to construct new nuclear plants, pending tests of the proposed designs. The happenings in Japan are certain to affect the expansion of nuclear power, whatever position governments take. The main reasons are that communities are likely to object if a proposed nuclear plant is sited in their area, while groups that were anti-nuclear from the beginning will renew their protests.

From the point of view of containing carbon emissions, these developments could be unfortunate. It is possible that countries could decide upon programmes of large-scale investment in renewable technologies to fill the gap left by nuclear. More likely is that they will turn back to, or continue their dependence on, coal, the most polluting of the fossil fuels in terms of carbon emissions, but for many states the most reliable and accessible.

Wind, wave, tidal and geothermal energy, together with biofuels, are all reasonably well developed. They are likely to play a part – albeit in most countries only a relatively small part – in the total energy mix. None is problem-free. Thus, wind power delivers energy in an erratic way, although it can be topped up from other sources to produce a more stable output. There is some concern that wind farms could interfere with the radar used in air-traffic control. In Britain, a number of proposed wind-power installations have been deferred
because of such worries. Widespread enthusiasm for the use of biofuels has diminished as it has become clear that growing them can seriously affect world food production. They could have an important role to play in the future, but further technological advance is needed if they are to be employed on the large scale, as discussed in
chapter 3
.

Geothermal energy looks promising. At present, apart from some areas in Iceland, Japan and New Zealand where volcanically active rocks are near the surface, it is too far below the earth's crust to be accessible. However, technology has quite recently been introduced which could overcome the difficulty. It involves fracturing hot rocks and injecting water which heats up as it circulates through them.
⁶
A commercial plant has been set up in Landau, Germany, which already produces 22 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually. As with most other technologies, substantial government subsidies are needed to get the industry off the ground.

The technologies whose development will probably be most consequential, as far as we can see at the moment, are CCS and solar energy. CCS potentially is enormously important, because even if world reserves have been exaggerated, coal exists in some abundance; and also because of the fact that coal-fired power stations are very widespread and a major source of global warming. If most of these cannot be retro-fitted with carbon capture technology, then the battle to contain emissions will be seriously handicapped, or even simply lost.

Some environmentalists more or less write off ‘clean coal' – CCS – altogether. For them, it's not a clean technology at all, because of the number of mine-related deaths and the fact that even de-carbonated coal contributes to illnesses such as asthma and heart disease.
⁷
Moreover, they worry that the promise of CCS is being used as a justification for building more coal-fired power stations, in spite of the fact that no one can be sure how effective or affordable the technology will turn out to be. Yet CCS has to stay very high up the agenda for the reasons given above. There are difficult problems to be faced. The CO
₂
extracted from the coal has to be interred deep underground, with enough pressure such that it turns into a liquid. No one knows how far it will in fact stay buried. If the
technology comes into widespread use, it may be difficult to find enough sites.

The other major problem is expense, which is partly caused by the need for storage, but mainly results from the costs of the process of carbon extraction. CCS is nowhere close to being competitive with orthodox coal production. Four major projects exist at the moment, in North Dakota in the US, in Algeria, in Germany and off the coast of Norway. They are all experimental and none is connected to an electricity grid. Each will require the storing of a million tonnes of CO
₂
per year. The electricity system in the US alone produces 1.5 billion tonnes of CO
₂
annually, which would mean finding 1,500 appropriate sites.
⁸
Crucial though it undoubtedly is, no one knows at the moment how far, and within what timescale, the problems of CCS can be overcome. In the meantime, untreated coal, which a few years ago seemed a fuel from yesteryear, is on its way back.

The picture is quite complex, as there are trends and countertrends. Coal remains, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) puts it, ‘the backbone of global electricity generation'.
⁹
World consumption of coal continues to mount, up 2 per cent in 2010 over the year before. In the OECD countries, the proportion of the energy mix taken up by coal has dropped, and the building of new coal-fired power stations has slowed – largely because of opposition from environmentalist groups, but partly as a result of government policy. The drop in coal consumption in the industrial countries has been more than offset by large increases elsewhere, especially in China. China now consumes more coal than the US, Europe and Japan combined. Coal supplies 80 per cent of China's electricity, compared to 45 per cent in the US.

However, China has become a world leader in the production of coal plants that create substantially fewer emissions than older types. Power companies are obliged to close down at least one older-style plant for each new one they construct. The most efficient plants in China cut down emissions by 30 per cent over the older versions.

And so – on to solar energy, for many the best hope of all. The energy that comes in the form of sunlight every day is far greater than we would ever need to fuel our needs. Such
energy can be generated effectively even in temperate climates, but at present it only works well when there are long sunny periods. Solar energy has a range of practical advantages. It can be deployed on the small or the large scale and, once installed, has high reliability and low maintenance costs, with a lifespan of 30 years or more. So far it only supplies about 1 per cent of the world's electricity. Solar power has been around since the 1970s, which could mean that the technology has got stuck; or it might mean that the long lead-up time will set the stage for major expansion.

Silicon semiconductors, which so radically altered the nature of computers, may be set to do the same for solar technology. The search is also on for non-silicon materials that are cheaper to produce. Solar technology takes various different forms, but the most advanced is photovoltaic, which turns sunlight into electric current; it can be directly connected to the grid. One of the main difficulties, which also arises with other intermittent energy sources, is how to store the electricity so as to have stocks in reserve. Various modes of storage exist at the moment, but none is of the capacity needed to use solar power on a large scale. For instance, the heat energy can be stored in containers in which stones are placed, which can conserve the energy temporarily; the same can be done with water. A pilot study, funded by the EU, is under way to study how solar energy might be converted into chemical fuels that can be stored for long periods of time and transported over long distances.

Finally in this lengthy list there is geo-engineering, although none of the projects of this sort being mooted at the moment is more than a gleam in the eye of their potential inventors. In its Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC concluded that, at present, geo-engineering projects are ‘largely speculative and with the risk of unknown side effects'. Most would agree, but in Britain the Royal Society nonetheless commissioned a report on them, on the grounds that we have to explore all possibilities in the struggle to limit climate change. The report concluded that ‘no geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution' to the prime need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
¹⁰
Geo-engineering is likely to be technically possible, but the
technologies that would be needed are ‘barely formed', while great uncertainties surround their potential effectiveness. Two categories of geo-engineering exist: those which would reflect a proportion of the sun's radiation back into space; and those that would remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.