nuclear-news

Renewables need minerals. Can their pollution and public health challenges be overcome?

 https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/10/09/renewables-need-minerals/ By Linda Pentz Gunter, October 9, 2022 by beyondnuclearinternational,

We are now both on the path to — and amidst the crisis of — resolving our past greed and irresponsibility in the energy and transport sector. But few, if any, human industries are without a carbon footprint. This has made the climb out of our carbon-intensive paradigm all the harder. 

Consequently, our first imperative — in order to do as little current or future environmental harm as possible — is to focus on solutions that have the lowest carbon footprint and environmental and human impact. This puts conservation at the pinnacle of our priorities, followed by energy efficiency. 

Particularly in developed countries — where we bear almost the entire responsibility for the mess we have made of our planet — we can, and must, consume less, become more energy efficient, live in smaller homes, use public transport routinely, walk and bicycle more and drive and fly less.

Using fossil fuels has to stop. Completely. And ideally now, but, realistically, as soon as possible. Replacement power will still be needed. But nuclear power, which creates long-lived lethal radioactive waste from the beginning to the end of its fuel cycle, and, as a large thermo-electric generator, relies on huge quantities of what will become increasingly scarce water supplies, is not the substitute for fossil fuels. Nuclear power cannot be an environmentally clean and just energy solution. And it has no answers for the transport sector, either.

Yet, as we decry the extraction of uranium — and all its attendant poisoning of the environment and ourselves along with human rights violations — we are met with the legitimate argument that increasing the use of renewables (and electric cars) in order to decarbonize, brings with it the same extractive environmental impacts.

But are they really the same? If we dig deeper, to use an unwelcome metaphor, we find parallels but not necessarily equity between the impacts of renewables and nuclear. This does not excuse or justify worker abuse, human rights violations or extractive contamination in any sector. But it’s an important distinction. 

First and foremost, we must look to carbon emissions. It makes sense, even if all the other downsides were equal — which they clearly are not — to at least focus on the lowest carbon emitters. And those are unquestionably renewables. Therefore, our responsibility now is to put things right in the renewable energy industry, even as we must point out, criticize and urge change in those areas that need improvement, including recycling, sustainable sourcing and human rights.

A second priority, is the ability and willingness of industries to make those improvements. 

We have seen how the wind industry has worked to minimize its impacts on migratory birds. It’s no coincidence that some of the biggest bird conservation groups, including BirdLife International, the American Bird Conservancy and the Audubon Society, cautiously support the development of wind power while scrupulously watchdogging its progress.

The renewable energy and electric vehicle industries recognize the fact that they rely on mineral extraction and, as such, must try to mitigate or avoid negative environmental, social and human rights impacts. Unlike the nuclear industry — which has been guilty of environmental and human rights abuses since it began — the renewable energy industry is working to resolve these significant drawbacks.

As Justine Calma wrote in The Verge at the end of last year: “There are ways to get the minerals the clean energy revolution needs while minimizing the impact on people and the planet. Startups are figuring out how to get better at recycling lithium batteries.” Mining companies are also looking to power their extraction using renewables rather than fossil fuels.

The World Bank program — The Climate-Smart Mining Initiative — aims to help “resource-rich developing countries benefit from the increasing demand for minerals and metals, while ensuring the mining sector is managed in a way that minimizes the environmental and climate footprint as it works to decarbonize”.

The nuclear industry, by contrast, has made no such effort to mitigate its environmental impact, and cannot do so, because splitting the atom to boil water is inherently dangerous and polluting. Worse, the industry actively pushes back against — or outright rejects — mitigation efforts because it would cost the already financially struggling nuclear sector money it can’t afford to expend if it is to stay in business.

The end product of nuclear power is long-lived highly radioactive waste with no long-term, safe, permanent management solution. While the renewable energy sector is looking into the recycling of batteries, there is no recycling of nuclear waste. Reprocessing — often misleadingly called “recycling” — does no such thing. 

In separating out the uranium and plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel, reprocessing produces even higher volumes of largely “low” and “intermediate”-level radioactive wastes, discharged into the air and sea or stored indefinitely.

The mining of uranium for use in nuclear power leaves behind radioactive waste and heavy metals that persistently contaminate the local environments, harming the health and safety of those communities and that of their land and water resources.

Nevertheless, there is no getting around the reality that the renewable industry, too, requires mining of minerals and rare earth metals, and that recycling, while beneficial, is not always done sustainably.

These hurdles are laid out in detail in a useful report prepared for Earthworks by the Institute for Sustainable Futures — Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy (Dominish, E., Florin, N. and Teske, S., 2019, Responsible Minerals Sourcing for Renewable Energy. Report prepared for Earthworks by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.) 

The report emphasizes that “recycling and responsible sourcing are fundamental to improving the sustainability of the renewable energy transition”.

However, it points out that while “the renewable energy and battery industries have made significant improvements to the efficiency of technologies, to improve performance, minimize demand for materials and reduce production costs,” attention to stewardship and human rights abuses has been less promising. “The industry experts interviewed noted that reducing the environmental and social impacts of supply is not a major focus of the renewable energy industry.”

Inevitably, many of the resources for the renewable energy industry (along with electric vehicles, not discussed here as these are outside our energy focus), are to be found in troubled parts of the world — most notably DR Congo. In turn, the manufacturing of those minerals into metals is largely carried out in China, where human rights are suppressed.

The impacts of mining to supply the renewable energy industry invariably result in “pollution and heavy metal contamination of water and agricultural soils, and health impacts on workers and surrounding communities”.

The wind energy industry emerges as the least offender, according to the report. “Material use for wind turbines is already very efficient. Recycling of bulk materials (steel, aluminium, copper) used in wind turbines is well established with high recycling rates.”

The report offers some glimmers of hope, noting that increased use of renewables means a reduction in coal mining, “which is responsible for the greatest number of fatalities, health and environmental issues.”

But we are undoubtedly now in the land of Faustian bargains. We have left it too late to make choices that are problem-free. Renewables, therefore, must be measured up against the alternatives and nuclear power isn’t one of them. Aside from the carbon footprint and human rights violations of nuclear power, and its high costs and long construction times, we must also factor in the lethal waste; the daily radioactive releases harming primarily children; the outcome of a catastrophic accident; and the inextricable link to nuclear weapons development, to name a few.

We must learn to live more simply; smaller. More quietly. Tread lightly. And yes, we must transition to renewables, energy efficiency and conservation, not tomorrow, not gradually, but immediately. Can we do it without leaving yet another mess? Without further abuses?

As the ISF study concludes, not yet, but we are getting there. “There are a large number of responsible sourcing initiatives that promote environmental stewardship and the respect of human rights in the supply chain, most of which are voluntary and industry-led,” the authors wrote. “If these initiatives are harmonized and widely adopted, it may lead to more responsible supply chains.”

Until then, renewables are our least worst power option, and, out of time as we are, it’s a choice we have brought upon ourselves.

October 9, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment

World’s richest countries fall short on renewable energy targets

Eleven of the 20 largest economies got a C or worse on a renewable energy report
card, which assessed their plans to reach net zero and their targets for
producing and using renewable energy. Most of the world’s 20 largest
economies, known as the G20, lack ambitious renewable energy targets or are
falling short of their climate commitments, according to a report by
climate and renewable energy advocacy groups.

The G20, which includes 19 countries and the European Union (EU) and Spain as a permanent guest, is
responsible for around 80 per cent of global energy-related emissions. This
gives the group significant responsibility to reduce emissions as well as
influence over the world’s pace to decarbonise, says Mike Peirce at the
Climate Group, a UK nonprofit that advocates for climate action.

Peirce, along with others from the Climate Group and a renewable energy research
group called REN21, analysed data on renewable energy development within
G20 countries to rank their progress towards renewable energy goals. A
“sustainable energy transition” is a top priority to be discussed
during the G20’s annual conference in Bali in November.

New Scientist 20th Sept 2022

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2338799-worlds-richest-countries-fall-short-on-renewable-energy-targets/

September 22, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment

What’s the real price tag for renewable energy for the planet?

A new Stanford study calculated the cost of global renewable energy would
be $62 trillion (yes, with a “t”). But the big upfront investment would
create jobs, drastically reduce carbon emissions, and pay for itself in
just six years.

It was hot this summer—record-shatteringly hot, in many
places. And the extreme heat around the world in the last few months is
only one symptom of the climate change caused by greenhouse gasses, which
are released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels like coal and gas
burn—more extreme droughts, wildfires, flooding, storms, and unseasonable
weather patterns are also symptoms.

Unless we significantly curb how much
coal and gas we burn in the next few decades, scientists are pretty much in
agreement that the consequences will keep getting more severe.

One of the simplest ways to cut back greenhouse gas emissions is in how the
electricity we use is generated. Even though the current system is
dominated by coal, oil, and natural gas, the technology for producing
energy from renewable sources like wind, hydro, and solar is effective,
available, and increasingly economical.

A new study by Stanford engineer
Mark Jacobson and his team published in the journal Energy & Environmental
Science calculates that the world would need to spend around $62 trillion
to build up the wind, solar, and hydro power generating capacity to fully
meet demand and completely replace fossil fuels. That looks like a huge
number, even spread out across the 145 countries cited in the study.

But after crunching the numbers, estimates show that countries would make the
money back in cost-savings in a relatively short period of time: Between
one to five years. The study also projected that shifting to 100 percent
renewable energy generation would result in a net increase of over 28
million jobs when factoring in the fossil fuel industry jobs that would be
lost.

It also only requires 0.36 percent more land than is currently used
for energy generation, addressing two major concerns about switching from
fossil fuels to renewables. Making the shift, and soon, is important to
slow and limit planetary warming. The study called for 100 percent clean
energy by 2035 ideally, and 2050 at the latest, with an interim goal of 80
percent by 2030.

This lines up with the roadmap laid out in the UN’s most
recent climate report and the Paris Agreement, a 2015 international treaty
for climate action that includes reducing global emissions to net-zero by
2050 to avoid worst-case levels of warming.

Adventure 9th Sept 2022

September 20, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment

Plunging costs of renewable energy – as nuclear power costs increase

The tumbling cost of renewable energy means transitioning away from fossil
fuels over the next 30 years will save the world “at least $12 trillion”,
according to researchers at the University of Oxford.

The decarbonisation
of the energy system will not only see a major reduction in the cost of
producing and distributing energy, but will also allow for greater levels
of energy to be produced and therefore help expand energy access around the
planet.

The faster the transition to renewables occurs, the greater the
potential for savings, the team found, and urged governments to recognise
the enormous boost to the global economy, that abandoning fossil fuels will
bring about.

“There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean,
green energy will be painful, costly and mean sacrifices for us all – but
that’s just wrong,” said Professor Doyne Farmer, who leads the team that
conducted the study at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the
Oxford Martin School. The research team analysed thousands of transition
cost scenarios produced by major energy models and examined data on: 45
years of solar energy costs, 37 years of wind energy costs and 25 years for
battery storage.

They said the research reveals that the real cost of solar
energy dropped twice as fast as the most ambitious projections in these
models, revealing that, over the past 20 years, previous models “badly
overestimated the future costs” of renewable energy technology compared to
the reality of cheap renewables we are already seeing today.

The research also suggests nuclear power will play a diminishing role in the future
global energy mix due to the rising costs of building reactors. “The costs
of nuclear have consistently increased over the last five decades, making
it highly unlikely to be cost competitive with plunging renewable and
storage costs,” the researchers said. Meanwhile, the study showed the costs
for storage technologies, such as batteries and hydrogen electrolysis, are
also likely to fall dramatically.

Independent 13th Sept 2022

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/energy-economy-carbon-renewables-cost-b2166361.html

September 19, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment

Researchers agree: The world can reach a 100% renewable energy system by or before 2050

Oxford Brookes University , 09 August 2022

  New analysis of energy research by 23 scientists around the
world has concluded that the world can reach a 100% renewable energy system
by or before 2050.

The findings, explained in a recent paper On the History
and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research published by the IEEE
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) are that such systems
can power all energy in all regions of the world at low cost. As such,
society will not need to rely on fossil fuels in the future.

In the early
2020s, there is growing scientific consensus that renewable energy
generated by solar panels and wind turbines and the associated
infrastructure will dominate the future energy system, and new research
increasingly shows that 100% renewable energy systems are not only feasible
but also cost effective. This provides the key to a sustainable
civilization and the long-lasting prosperity of humankind.

 Oxford Brookes University 9th Aug 2022

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/about-brookes/news/researchers-agree–the-world-can-reach-a-100–renewable-energy-system-by-or-before-2050/

September 6, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment