Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die.

John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932

Time is running short! When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of human — caused global warming, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) was 354 ppm. When I began writing this book about four years ago, the con­centration of CO2 was 387 ppm. It is now 397 ppm and rising. In spite of Kyoto, in spite of Copenhagen and Cancun, atmospheric CO2 continues its inexorable upward path. And the earth continues to warm.

The United States and the world are not yet serious about changing policies to stop this spiral. Too many politicians and others have their heads buried in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the continuing deluge of data showing that the world is indeed warming. 2010 was the warmest year—and the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest decade—for at least the last 100,000 years. A seri­ous debate is ongoing among geologists to decide if the earth has formally passed out of the Holocene epoch of the last 12,000 years into the Anthropocene epoch, in which 7 billion humans are the primary factor driving climate (1). Sea levels continue to rise, the oceans are acidifying, glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt, the Arctic will likely be ice-free during the summer sometime this century, and weather extremes have become commonplace around the earth. Plant and animal species are migrating to higher latitudes at 17 kilometers per decade on average, and alpine species are moving to higher altitudes at 11 meters every decade (2). Changes like this have occurred in the past, but over time spans of thousands to tens of thousands of years, giving species time to adapt.

There are those who argue that species have always had to adapt to a changing climate or die and therefore they will handle the current changes. While there is

some truth to that, it ignores the fact that many species are already under great pressure from the impact of humans on habitat. We have taken over the entire earth and are changing it to meet our desires, regardless of the impacts on the species that share the earth and on which we depend. These combined anthropo­genic impacts are leading to extinction rates that are 2 to 5 orders of magnitude above historical rates. As a result, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity, though this is the only one that has human fingerprints on it (2). We are playing a dangerous game with the earth and are ignoring the potential consequences. It is time to get serious about recognizing what we are doing to the earth and drastically reduce our production of CO2.

About three-fourths of the global CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels and about one-fourth from deforestation. The United States cannot solve the world’s CO2 problem by itself, but we play an outsized role in the production of CO2—gen­erating nearly one-fifth of the world’s CO2 by burning fossil fuels—and must take a leading role in reducing our emissions. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), 82% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and petroleum (see Chapter 2). Petroleum is primarily used for trans­portation, so reducing its usage requires building vehicles with much better gas mileage. The United States emits 2.3 Gt of CO2 from petroleum usage (3). The CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for cars and light trucks in the United States are scheduled to reach 54.5 mpg by 2025, according to an agree­ment between President Obama and 13 car manufacturers reached in 2011, more than double the current 27 mpg average (4). This is a big step in the right direc­tion, and even more can be done. Plug-in electric vehicles can reduce the use of petroleum even further, but at the cost of finding carbon-free sources of electric­ity. While the use of petroleum is clearly a major problem for generating CO2, that is not the focus of this book, except to the extent that electricity may play a role in reducing the use of petroleum.

Currently, 40% of all energy used in the United States is devoted to producing electricity. The energy used to generate electricity will almost certainly increase in the future because of population growth, the increasing use of electricity to power cars, and the rapid increase in what Daniel Yergin calls “gadgiwatts”—the multitude of electronic gadgets that have become essential to our modern world, including computers, cell phones, iPods, iPads, iPhones, huge flat-screen TVs, microwaves, and the list goes on and on (5). In spite of energy conservation, the use of electricity is expected to increase by over 30% by 2040, while total energy consumption is expected to increase by about 10% (6). This can be reduced by strenuous efforts in efficiency, but overall, electricity use will almost certainly grow in the future. The big question is: What can be done to provide the electric­ity in a manner that drastically reduces the production of CO2?

A giant but unwelcome experiment was done in the worldwide Great Recession of 2008-2009. Electricity demand actually decreased in the United States from pre-recession 2007 and total CO2 emissions decreased by 3% in 2008 and 7% in 2009 (7). But I don’t think anyone wants to see CO2 emissions reduced by such catastrophic economic crises with associated high levels of unemployment. There is some good news here, though. The EIA estimates that energy-related US CO2 emissions will not reach the 2005 level of 6 Gt until 2040 (6). But that is still too much! The goal of the Kyoto Protocol was for the United States to reduce CO2 emissions to 7% below the level of 1990. Is it possible to reduce CO2 emissions from electricity generation to near zero and still have a robust economy? It has often been argued that only by drastically cutting back on our standard of living can we reduce our detrimental effects on the environment. That is a false alterna­tive, though. It is possible to provide our electrical demand through environmen­tally friendly power sources that generate little or no CO2.

As I have argued in this book, coal is the big problem for electricity produc­tion, and the CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology is not going to solve the problem. Coal needs to be essentially eliminated as a power source because of its multitude of health and environmental consequences. Coal provides 41% of our electricity now, and the actual amount of coal used is expected to increase through 2035, even though the percentage of electricity generated by coal would be slightly decreased by then. That is untenable if we want to reduce CO2 emis­sions. Of the 30 Gt of CO2 emitted by all countries from energy sources, over 13 Gt comes from coal, and of that, the United States generates about 2 Gt. China generates more than three times as much as the United States, however, while India generates about half as much as the United States (3). Clearly, the world is hooked on coal and needs to be weaned off it if CO2 is going to be reduced suf­ficiently to mitigate climate change.

The only way that a serious reduction in coal usage is likely to happen is through the implementation of a carbon fee of some sort that makes the actual cost of car­bon more realistic than the current market price. Coal plays such a major role in electricity production in the United States and in the world for two connected rea­sons: it is plentiful and it is cheap. But it is a Faustian bargain that we have ignored for a long time. It is time to begin paying the actual cost, including the costs to the environment from mining and global warming, as well as the direct health costs from air and water pollution. If a carbon fee were implemented that took these costs into account, coal would no longer be a bargain, and other carbon-free sources would become economically attractive, including both nuclear energy and renewable energy.

James Hansen (8) argues strongly for a “fee and dividend” method that would enact a fee on the producers of coal, oil, and gas per ton of CO2 that would be released by burning the fossil fuel. This fee would, of course, raise the price of gas­oline, electricity, home heating, and many other things in society. To help reduce the impact on individuals, the fees collected would be returned to citizens as a uniform dividend. How would that help reduce the CO2 problem? It would give a strong economic incentive to reduce your personal use of carbon. If you drive a gas guzzler and live in a mansion, you will use a lot of energy and pay a high price, but the dividend will be small in comparison. If you drive a highly efficient car and live in an energy-efficient house and conserve in other ways, you will come out ahead. Al Gore argues similarly for a carbon tax with a tax rebate to citizens (9).

An alternative approach is the “cap and trade” system that was very successful in reducing acid rain from sulfur oxides emitted by coal-fired power plants in the 1980s. A cap and trade system would use the efficiencies of the marketplace to achieve a desirable result, in this case reducing CO2. The government sets a cap on allowable CO2 emissions from industries such as power plants, and issues allowances for each ton of CO2 that a particular power plant comes in under the cap. That power plant can bank the allowances or trade or sell them to power plants that exceed their cap. It provides a financial incentive for a power plant or a utility to reduce their emission of CO2 but doesn’t specify how they might achieve that. They might, for example, use more wind power or nuclear power to get a lot of allowances. The higher-emitting power plants then find themselves at a cost-disadvantage in the marketplace because they would have to buy expensive allowances, and the operators would have an incentive to close down the plants and build more efficient plants (9). President Obama pushed for a cap and trade approach, but Congress has adamantly refused to pass a cap and trade bill. Europe passed a cap and trade bill in 2003 with a cap that would reduce emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 (5). However, their system has been fraught with problems, largely from giving out too many credits, so there is an oversupply. As a result, the price of the carbon credits has plummeted to €2.75 in early 2013. At that price, it does not reduce the demand for carbon, making coal still attractive (10). California began to implement a cap and trade system in late 2012 that issues allowances for carbon and then establishes a cap and a market for them. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (11). If it works, it will be a good test case for the United States to implement a cap and trade system.

In March 2012, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new rules for carbon emissions from new power plants that would essentially prevent any new coal-fired power plants from being built unless they had carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which is not available on a commercial scale and has numerous problems (see Chapter 3) (12). And other EPA rules on nitrous and sulfur oxides and mercury emissions mean that old coal plants will have to finally upgrade or be shut down. About 14% of coal plants, accounting for 4% of total electrical capacity, will have to be retired in the next five to eight years (13). This attrition of existing coal plants is moving in the right direction—especially because these plants are the most inefficient and most polluting and generate the most CO2 per kWh produced—and the rate of attrition should be accelerated so that they are all closed down over the next 20 to 30 years.

But what will take their place? That is the huge question on which so much depends. There is no single answer, but President Obama is correct that we need to have multiple strategies. The first answer that nearly everyone can agree on is that a greater emphasis on efficiency can reduce demand so that perhaps not all of the coal-fired power plants need to be replaced. That is certainly the cheapest thing to do, and it can happen relatively quickly. Every kWh of electricity saved through greater efficiency—replacing incandescent bulbs with CFL or LED bulbs, replacing old appliances with Energy Star compliant appliances, upgrading insu­lation and weatherstripping to save on air conditioning and heating—is a kWh that doesn’t need to be generated by an electric power plant. The advent of smart metering to give people more control over how and when they use electricity may reduce the electricity people use, though this is still in the beginning stages and the results are not yet in. The energy guru Amory Lovins believes that efficiency and alternative energy can completely solve the problem (14). However, most energy experts recognize that increased efficiency is not nirvana and that we will still need to plan for additional electric power.

The second answer is that renewable energy can help. But, as I discussed in Chapter 4, energy from the sun and wind have major difficulties associated with intermittency, location relative to population centers, footprint, and cost that limit their contributions to about 20% or less of electricity production. And even worse, they do not effectively contribute to the baseload electricity that coal pro­vides. Baseload is the minimum electrical demand over a 24-hour day that must be provided by a constant source of electricity. Solar and wind power contribute principally to the intermediate demand that fluctuates during the day, but they still require backup—usually with natural gas power plants—for when they are not available (15). Numerous states have adopted RPS (renewable portfolio stan­dards) that require renewable energy to provide up to 30% of electricity, but it is very unlikely that this is actually achievable and I doubt that many states will even achieve 20% as environmental issues associated with wind and solar power become more prominent. Nevertheless, an increase from the current 4% to 20% would be an enormous help. But it does not solve the coal problem. A good exam­ple to demonstrate this is Germany, which has made a great effort and invest­ment to increase both solar and wind power, but the amount of CO2 generated from coal usage did not change at all from 1995 to 2007. It did go down about 15% by 2009 but that is because of the severe world recession that cut energy use throughout the Western world. Carbon dioxide emissions decreased by about the same percentage in the United States (3). And Germany is going to make things worse because they are planning to shut down their nuclear reactors as a response to Fukushima and will depend on poor-quality coal even more in the future—a very bad choice indeed.

Natural gas has become the new darling of the energy world with the advent of fracking for shale gas, which has dramatically increased the world supply. As a result, there is a glut of natural gas in the United States now and prices have plummeted to below $3 per thousand cubic feet from $13 in the summer of 2008 (16). This very low price—and the relatively smaller capital cost of a gas-fired combined cycle plant—make the economics of replacing coal plants with gas seem to be the natural choice. Certainly natural gas is better than coal when it comes to emissions, though as discussed in Chapter 3, the commonly stated 50% reduction in CO2 for an equivalent amount of power is not really true because of the loss of methane from mining and from leakage in the pipes. In fact, natural gas may have an advantage of only 25% or less. Nevertheless, a big part of the reason that energy-related CO2 emissions are expected to stay below 2005 levels is because of the increasing use of natural gas to replace some coal-fired power plants.

The environmental issues associated with fracking are still a major concern and—unless they can be resolved satisfactorily—a major switch to natural gas would be a mistake. Furthermore, natural gas prices have historically been very volatile because of variable supply and usage. In contrast to coal, which is used primarily for baseload electricity production in the United States, natural gas is used about equally for electricity, residential and commercial heating, and indus­trial processes. If there is a huge new demand for natural gas to provide baseload electricity in addition to intermediate and peak load power, it could impact these other areas and cause prices to rise substantially. Certainly natural gas is part of the equation for reducing CO2, but it would be a mistake to try to make up for a large fraction of coal plant retirements with natural gas plants. It would not solve the CO2 problem, and all of the energy eggs should not be put into one basket.

So now we come to nuclear power, the alternative to coal for stable baseload power that can truly cut the emissions of CO2 to nearly zero. Can there be a “nuclear renaissance” that would give us reliable, relatively cheap electricity for the next 100 years and beyond without the environmental burdens of fossil fuels? Can we go back to the future? I argued in Chapter 5 that about 175 Generation III reactors could replace all of the coal-fired power plants in the United States. This would take a major national effort but it would also require a major national effort to get 20% of electrical energy from wind and solar. Neither of these goals will be achieved unless there is a cost associated with CO2 production through “fee and dividend” or “cap and trade.” And that will only happen if there is a strong pub­lic demand that we get serious about reducing CO2 emissions and halting global warming.

Our journey through the world of the atom and nuclear power has exposed many of the myths that are used by anti-nuclear activists to argue against nuclear power (17-19). Let’s explore these myths a bit more specifically.