Recently, a spotlight has been shined on the future of nuclear power plants after two Dominion Energy reactors in Virginia received 20-year renewal licenses, despite the plants’ inability to meet clean energy goals while costing consumers more money than cleaner alternatives. The issue is representative of a narrative all too familiar: major utility monopolies stifle innovation, prevent competition, and cost ratepayers more money for energy.
Experts agree that it is more cost-effective to accelerate the renewable energy transition now, rather than wait for the nuclear subsidies to end. In New York, where residents pay among the highest electricity prices nationwide, Exelon Corporations’ subsidies show up on consumers’ bills at about $3 extra each payment period. This doesn’t need to be the case. Rather, we need to unleash competition and embrace that we have the capability to build renewable energy now, which will, in turn, save consumers money.
Read the excerpt below or more by Leanna First-Arai at Truthout.
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“Energy policy analyst and activist Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear reinforced Lovins’s point. “Operating economically distressed and deteriorating nuclear power stations diverts critical resources and wastes what precious little time remains for deploying more carbon reduction quicker, more cost-effectively,” he told Truthout. Gunter also suggested that replacing nuclear plants with efficiency upgrades to cut down on demand, and renewables, can be a one-to-three-year process. If the owners of the plants don’t give enough public notice about their closure, more natural gas may be burned, but that can be offset over the following years by other carbon-free substitutes, Gunter said.
Paying subsidies to keep nuclear plants open is based on the assumption that we can’t build renewable energy and increase energy efficiency fast enough to replace nuclear and fossil fuels.
Jessica Azulay is executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for a Green Economy. She told Truthout state regulators should find a way to end contracts with the nuclear plants earlier than planned, which would enable an accelerated phase-out and save consumers money. “We think that will be more advantageous than delaying the renewable energy transition until 2029 when the nuclear subsidies end.”
Similarly, Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service said paying subsidies to keep nuclear plants open is based on the assumption that we can’t build renewable energy and increase energy efficiency fast enough to replace nuclear and fossil fuels without trading off between them. “That might have been true 20 years ago before wind and solar had really taken off,” he said, [but] “the situation has totally changed.” Judson notes tremendous wind potential in Central and Western New York, the Thousand Lakes region, and the Tug Hill Plateau, in addition to offshore wind potential in the Great Lakes, which he said: “hasn’t even been tapped yet.”