nuclear-news

Iran’s opportunity – energy efficiency and renewables, leaving nuclear power behind

Iran’s invisible opportunity, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Amory B. Lovins, 30 Sept 15, “……….the areas that could do the most to keep Iran from drifting back towards the nuclear path? Energy efficiency and renewables.

Legendary possibilities. At the eye of the storm over the Iran agreement is a zone of silence—an almost unnoticed opportunity to raise the odds of success. On the Iranian side, wisely using the period of restrictions on potential military nuclear activities could help Iran shift its domestic el­ec­tricity priorities from a failed nuclear power program to a world-class, faster-to-implement, and vastly cheaper program that combines energy efficiency, modern renewables, and advances in the electrical grid. By weakening the domestic case for nuclear power, this approach could help remove uncertainty about Iran’s continuing domestic nuclear activities (however benign they may allegedly be, such as the creation of medical radioisotopes for radiation therapy). Importantly, that would clear some of the fog around Iran’s nuclear program. This in turn would isolate bomb-seekers and allow outside intelligence and monitoring efforts to focus on needles instead of haystacks.

Modernizing Iran’s electricity investments could also reduce the risk of renewed sanc­tions, reward and reinforce political moderation, enhance Iran’s prosperity and energy independence, bolster national pride, and—since the same logic applies to neigh­boring coun­tries already making similar energy shifts for economic reasons—help stabilize the region by reversing an incipient Gulf nuclear arms race. More broadly, it could even help guard the global nonproliferation regime from dangerously permissive interpre­ta­tions by updating the purpose of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s (NPT’s) Article IV, which enshrines signatories’ “inalienable right” to the exclusively peaceful use of nuclear energy. Thus, a speedy alignment of Iranian domestic electricity investments with new economic realities could advance the security and economic interests of Iran, Israel, the Arab Gulf states, America and its P5+1 partners, and the world. It could strengthen Iran’s global integration, political evolution, and national stature without compromising others’ similar goals.

Key Iranian officials already publicly favor this approach to their nation’s energy needs, and the technologies are ready and the vendors eager. Indeed, the “United States Assistance to Developing Countries” portion of a 1978 US law called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act requires such assistance from the United States. And encouragingly, a similar shift already helped to defuse a nuclear arms race between Argentina and Brazil over the past quarter-century. As those two countries evolved from military dictatorships to democracies, their energy priorities allowed them to achieve leadership in renewables and leave their nuclear capabilities nakedly uneconomic, isolated, and obsolete—helping to suppress any lingering temptations.

Iran’s remarkable energy opportunities. Iran uses about three times the world average amount of energy per dollar of gross domestic product, due partly to huge and budget-busting energy subsidies now slated for phase-out. Technical studies have confirmed that Iran’s energy use is pervasively inefficient, offering vast scope for lucrative savings.

On the supply side, Iran enjoys Arizona-like sun, vast empty lands, high geothermal potential, and significant opportunities for small hydro projects and waste-to-energy facilities, among other renewable assets. Iran’s average windspeed is also equivalent to that of the so-called “wind belt” of the Midwestern United States, and Iran’s exceptional wind power sites can economically provide more than 30 gigawatts. Consequently, Iran’s New England-sized, 70-gigawatt grid could quickly shift from three-quarter gas- and one-quarter oil-fired generation (plus 10 gigawatts of less reliable hydropower) to modern renew­ables………

Iran already has renewable energy promotion, loans, grants, European-style feed-in tariffs (which pay private renewables developers a predictable price so they can secure private financing), and guarantees to buy all renewable power at world market prices with hedges against fluctuating foreign exchange rates. Cutting grid losses and harnessing flared gas offer further major opportunities. Capturing such profitable opportunities should not be a problem; Iran’s nearly 80 million people have strong technical and entrepreneurial skills. Major vendors of renewable technologies from the European Union, such as Danish windpower leader Vestas and German wind-solar-and-grid giant Siemens, are deepening the relationships they were allowed under EU sanctions. US vendors could compete next year.

At the same time, Iran’s leadership is sensitive to the issues of climate change………….

Iran’s nuclear disappointment. In contrast, Iranian nuclear power has failed. Pre-Revolutionary internal critiques of the Shah’s nuclear power ambitions as a Western-inspired extravagance have proven correct. Iran spent a near-record $11 billion to build, in 36 years, one cobbled-together power reactor that supplied just 1.5 percent of its electricity last year. Iran’s homebrewed enrichment cost about an eighth of a billion dollars per year above the market price of enrichment from a dozen supplier countries (even before that price fell by half in the past five years). Sanctions triggered by the Iran nuclear program’s ambiguous nature—Is it for building weapons? For peaceful energy, medicine, and research? Both sets of uses?—cost Iran at least $100 billion, and maybe even $500 billion. By diverting capital, it left the hydrocarbon core of Iran’s economy in a shambles. Obsessive nuclear invest­ments thus hob­bled Iran’s quest for a more diverse, resilient, and independent energy system.

And Iran’s dubiously safe reactor sits at a tectonic-plate junction whose earthquakes could readily exceed the plant’s magnitude 8 design basis. Rising Iranian safety concerns are shared by neighbors downwind, including many Arab capitals and Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil zone. These concerns are shared by the Gulf Cooperation Council; tellingly, Iran has not joined the international regime governing liability for accidents………

Modernizing nonproliferation. This new energy reality—in which nuclear power is in slow-motion collapse while cheaper alterna­tives take over the world market—is shifting Gulf policies. Both Iran and the Arab Gulf states are having second thoughts about nuclear energy at the same time that all sides have floated deliberately fuzzy, unofficial statements about (and taken ambiguous actions regarding) their nuclear-weapons ambitions. On both sides of the Gulf, forces wanting bomb options oppose forces wanting a cost-effective energy strategy………http://thebulletin.org/iran%E2%80%99s-invisible-opportunity8774

October 5, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, renewable