Is He Serious?

By | February 19, 2006
6 Comments

President Bush is talking about moving ahead with nuclear power:

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday renewed his push for expansion of nuclear energy and sought support for plans to revive nuclear-fuel reprocessing to deal with radioactive waste from commercial power plants.

The President’s take on our energy future is summed up as follows:

“The best way to meet our energy needs is through advanced technology…” .

That’s a refreshing statement. I hope he means it. Whether we pursue a renaissance of nuclear power as the best means of kicking off the hydrogen age, or as moving us towards something more exotic, or as a freeing-us-from-foreign-oil end unto itself — or even if we skip nuclear power altogether in favor of something more productive, more exciting, whatever — the solution to our energy problems lies in technologies not yet perfected or possibly even conceived. And I don’t exclude from that list technologies that allow us to use petroleum more efficiently or extract it from places where we haven’t before.

Put another way, existing energy technologies — on their own — are not going to cut it. So much of the thinking that takes place in the political sphere, where energy is concerned, is predicated on existing technologies and usage patterns or, at best, linear extrapolations therefrom. This kind of thinking leads to zero-sum-game realpolitick whereby we identify countries like Saudi Arabia as our “friends.” It also provides the rationale for those who claim that the US interest in Iraq must be primarily about the oil.

New technologies, whether they involve a refurbished approach to nuclear power or something else altogether, give us options that existing technologies can’t. This is the piece of the puzzle that’s often missing in the global warming debate. The Kyoto Protocoal requires participating countries to cut emissions by…cutting emissions. The assumption is that the primary means of doing this is to reduce energy use. As the Wikipedia article on the subject explains it:

The Kyoto Protocol limits emissions to a percentage increase or decrease from their 1990 levels. Since 1990 the economies of most countries in the former Soviet Union have collapsed, as have their greenhouse gas emissions. Because of this, Russia should have no problem meeting its commitments under Kyoto, as its current emission levels are substantially below its targets.

A more dynamic approach would be an international treaty requiring participating nations to reduce emissions without reducing energy use. Such an agreement would not reward economic failure, which is what Kyoto does — whether intentionally or inadvertantly. Instead, it would presuppose the need to keep economies developing and, more importantly, the need to find non-emission-producing energy technologies.

Ultimately, it’s all about the questions we ask. If we ask “How can we get more oil?” and “How can we reduce greenhouse emissions?” we get one set of answers. If we ask “What alternatives do we have to oil?” and “How can we reduce greenhouse emissions while increasing the amount of available energy?” we get another set of answers.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    According to the Kardashev scale, the best measure of a civilization’s development is the amount of energy that civilization harnesses.

    Kardashev listed three types of civilizations:

    • A Type I civilization uses all energy available from a single planet.
    • A Type II civilization uses all energy available from a single star.
    • And a Type III civilization uses all energy available within a single galaxy.

    Whether or not civilizations this advance are feasible, I think it’s a good point that as a civilization advances it uses more energy, not less. We’d like to be clean and leave a smaller footprint on the environment, and do more with less. But for our civilization to advance, energy use must increase.

    We can’t expect to continue increasing energy consumption with just petroleum. At some point we will run out (or, to be more accurate, oil will get too expensive to be practical). Civilization will either crash, or we will have moved on to another form of power.

    I believe that we will make the leap. I join Phil in hoping that Bush is being serious. The earlier and harder this is pushed, the less painful the transition.

  • eisendorn

    phil,

    i wonder what brings you to equate kyoto implementation with economic failure. i heard of studies indicating the exact opposite. i am no economist, but it sounds reasonable to me that implementing advanced emission reduction technologies and, in the end, alternative energy sources, would create jobs and know-how in the first place, and this is what kyoto aims to foster.

    i name this example, naive fallacy and all: if you could get he major part of the us populace to drive cars swallowing 5l or less per 100 km (as most people in europe do), you could increase gasoline prices to balance the scale again. instead, most people needlessly drive heavy, fuel-intensive cars (that’s what i read, i excuse if it’s another prejudice), and gasoline prices are ridicously low compared to europe. this has a heavy toll on emission rate i am sure.

  • http://ergosphere.blogspot.com Engineer-Poet

    If Bush was serious about this, he would have pushed for funding for batteries, PV research, long-term wind power production credits, and eliminated all tax incentives for gas-guzzlers.

    Right after 9/11.

    He’s not serious; this is another example of him saying one thing and doing another.  We will not get a change of direction as long as this bunch of oil men run Washington.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    Eisendorn –

    I think Kyoto would make more sense if it were explicit in its requirement for reduced emission technologies and alternate energy sources, rather than simply making reduced emissions the goal. I merely point out that economic catastrophe appears to be one effective way of becoming Kyoto-compliant, and that’s unfortunate.

    As for Americans and their big cars — well, it’s certainly true in my neighborhood. I think there’s a perception that a bigger vehicle is safer, plus there’s more room for your stuff, your kids, their stuff, their friends’ stuff, etc. I drive a V6 Jeep which is not terribly fuel-efficient, but not an out-and-out gass guzzler, either. I like the the fact that it sits up pretty high and I like the way it handles snow and ice. I hope we’ll see bigger hybrids soon, which will support some of these kinds of features but also provide for some real fuel savings.

    I think raising fuel prices to cut consumption is a bad idea — a fuel price hike is inflationary. If you raise the price of fuel, your raise the price of everything else, since everything else is raised on farms that depend on tractors, built in factories that require heavy machinery, or delivered by trucks.

    EP –

    Well, I think if Bush had been serious about it then, that’s what he would have done. :-) He has tuned up the rhetoric on changing the energy infrastructure of late. It remains to be seen whether he will follow up with actions. His past record may be discouraging, but it is not (necessarily) determinative.

  • http://pfdietz.blogspot.com/ Paul F. Dietz

    I’d be more impressed with Bush’s energy talk if he showed signs of having more clue. The talk about reprocessing, for example, is just nuts. The market price for yellowcake (U3O8) has increased recently, but it’s still only $37/lb. At that price, reprocessing makes no economic sense whatsoever (and, no, don’t talk to me about how it would make waste management easier; it doesn’t). We’re going to need an order of magnitude or more increase in the price to start to make reprocessing economically feasible.

  • Karl Hallowell

    Phil, I think we already have the technologies that will replace oil. They aren’t perfected, but technology never is.

    eisendorn,

    i wonder what brings you to equate kyoto implementation with economic failure. i heard of studies indicating the exact opposite. i am no economist, but it sounds reasonable to me that implementing advanced emission reduction technologies and, in the end, alternative energy sources, would create jobs and know-how in the first place, and this is what kyoto aims to foster.

    Massive interventions in economic activity are generally associated with failure because 1) economic theory predicts such occurances, and 2) historical evidence tends to support the theory.

    Kyoto was implemented before global warming was even demonstrated to be a problem, a number of countries were exempted from the restrictions of the treaty, and certain forms of carbon emissions and carbon emissions reduction (eg, burning rain forests and carbon sequestration) are ignored.

    Ultimately, Kyoto is a poorly conceived hack, and it won’t matter much to global emissions since in a decade or two the big contributors will either be countries (like the US) that refused to sign the treaty, countries that were exempt from it, or countries that ratified the treaty and later violated its provisions (the UK and Germany in particular look likely to be in this boat IMHO).

    As far as I can tell, your claim is that we’re stuck in an inefficient system due to the cost of switching over to alternate energy infrastructure. Europe appears to be going the alternate energy route. If this truly makes their economy more efficient, then the US can do a massive switch later.