Nuclear Power, Clean Coal, Cap And Trade, Biofuels: Comparing And Contrasting Obama And McCain On Energy

The San Francisco Chronicle recently declared that John McCain and Barack Obama are "like peas in a pod" on a major issue. The newspaper was talking about their energy platforms. It's time to debunk this: there are real differences in priorities. Yes, both John McCain and Barack Obama agree that we should urgently address our energy and climate crises. Although these two candidates espouse the same list of ingredients, however, the cakes they plan to bake are decidedly different.

Let's first review John McCain's plans. Overall, they lack much detail but there are main themes: offshore drilling and the expansion of nuclear power. McCain's main mantra of "Drill, baby, drill!" is as flawed as Bush's energy policy in being too little, too late and too polluting. Offshore drilling will not yield enough oil to significantly affect gasoline prices, and it won't become available for 20 years. Moreover, oil still generates greenhouse gases when burned.

McCain's second emphasis -- build 45 new nuclear plants -- is equally useless. Even with government subsidies nuclear power today is more expensive than wind or solar thermal energy production, and the cost of building nuclear plants continues to increase. Furthermore, our energy demands are increasing faster than the rate at which nuclear plants can be built. The incredible amount of coolant water they require has already forced some U.S. plants to shut down during recent droughts, which are predicted to increase as the planet heats further. Disposal of the resulting toxic and long lasting radioactive wastes remains an unsolved, expensive problem. Considering the economic crunch we're in, nuclear power is one of the most expensive and least promising avenues for generating cheap, clean renewable energy - a truly bad investment.

McCain supports biofuels, but they are not clean - growing, processing, and burning them produce greenhouse gases. Production of the most popular biofuel, corn-based ethanol, is so inefficient that it's literally not worth the effort financially or environmentally. Growing biofuels also has the nasty side effect of driving up basic food prices worldwide because farmed biofuels compete with food crops for cropland.

To be fair, there's a little green among his plans. McCain doesn't support subsidizing corn ethanol production. He supports current fuel efficiency standards but offers no target for increasing them. He also supports developing solar and wind power sources, but his scant, almost peripheral mention of them indicates that they are low on his list of priorities. If policy plans had warning lights, most of his would be flashing red.

Barack Obama's plans are comparatively rich in detail, with specific targets and financial investments. His main emphasis is on the cheapest and most promising sources of clean renewable energy, solar and wind power. Compared to nuclear power, the solar thermal and wind power sources are much cheaper and produced with far cheaper infrastructure. Although solar photovoltaic's cost is comparable with nuclear, recent technological advances indicate that its price will decrease substantially. Substantial but surmountable challenges must be met: distributing the new power via a new upgraded national power grid, and storing the energy when not needed are two main challenges.

With appropriate investment and development, however, we could replace all our current and future energy demands with wind and solar energy. Obama calls for replacing 25% of U.S. electricity with clean renewable energy by 2025, and a yearly investment of $15 billion dollars over the next decade devoted to developing clean renewable energy, biofuels, energy efficiency, and other clean technologies. He places a high priority on greatly increasing fuel economy standards.

Some elements of Obama's energy plan do represent political compromises. Obama understands that nuclear power is not a great option but is willing to explore its potential. He is willing to consider offshore drilling but only as part of an overall plan that includes developing clean energy sources. He also calls for stipulating greater use and incentives for "advanced biofuels" such as cellulosic ethanol, which has much the same problem of other biofuels. Overall, though, most of the lights of Obama's plans flash green.

There are troubling concerns about both plans. Both candidates support investing in developing "clean" coal technology. McCain, for example, proposes spending $2 billion a year to develop "clean" coal technologies, processes that will prevent any greenhouse gases escaping when the coal is burned. By the estimates of many technologists, however, creating "clean coal" is far on the technological horizon and will be expensive, as the recent PBS Frontline Report HEAT emphasized.

Both Obama and McCain believe in instituting some form of cap and trade plan for industrial carbon emissions as a means of enforcing a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. A cap and trading system would require substantial time and resources to execute, however, and has yet to be proven effective where it has been instituted elsewhere, notably Europe. A combination of regulations, shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources, and investing in their development could be a more effective way to accomplish the same decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

Furthermore, neither of the candidates' plans go far enough fast enough to address the climate crisis. Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has mapped out expected consequences of global warming, their predictions at best underestimate how soon and severely those consequences will affect us. Why? The predictions do not include important feedback effects that can accelerate global warming. Indeed, physical observations indicate that some consequences of global warming are already accelerating faster than the IPCC predicted. And then there are those nasty, unexpected surprises that occur despite our best efforts to predict them. The next president will have to be mentally agile enough to both assess these unexpected climatic developments and adapt his policies accordingly.

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Where can you go to learn more about solving the climate crisis? There's a new readable resource book freely available for download on the web that 1) describes global warming and its consequences; 2) comprehensively reviews and assesses the feasibility and costs of both technological and policy solutions; and 3) proposes a fairly simple straightforward plan. It is called "Cool the Earth, Save the Economy: Solving the Climate Crisis is EASY." We've written it, based on the findings of numerous scientific, technological and social studies by noted experts. Go to www.CoolTheEarth.US , download it, read it, and spread the word!

Comments

[Woolley]

Nuclear power is the most expensive form of energy that exists in the USA because it is also heavily subsidized through the Price-Anderson legislation which is nothing more than insurance that the nuclear industry purchases from the Federal government in order to have the funds available for future litigation that may result from a nuclear accident. Thus, corporations have no liability costs associated with the production of nuclear power. There is, therefore, no fiscal reason to adhere to the many regulations that are in place to ensure safety.

Also, no discussion of the costs of nuclear energy can be complete without a discussion of the annual operating costs of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) which is the only Federal agency that has primary responsibility for the public health and welfare. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the distinction of also being an agency where the preponderance of the workforce have multiple degrees and thus command high salaries and the additional long term financial burden of subsidizing the costs of health insurance and pensions for a workforce where $75,000 per year is the average for the more than 3,000 employees. The NRC has one of the lowest attrition rates in the Federal government because in addition to its high salary structure the culture gives out performance awards as though they were candy. These performance award average out to be another $2,000 to $3,000 per employee.

[Haditup2here]

Part II

Now I do agree, that the technology for clean coal is far from development and may have its drawbacks but I find the overall paragraph on the development of clean coal disheartening. First off, as anyone knows, it takes the work of scientists and engineers to put innovations in development. Many of those innovations are done by performing experiments on a small scale but backed by the research work done by others. I'm sure this one done for wind technology, solar energy, and it is now being done for clean coal technology. In other words, any form of technology takes time to develop and for that purpose the whole argument against clean coal technology (no defense) was rather lame.
Gasification is a process that can clean of the sulfur components while NOx emissions can be reduced by either air separation (separating nitrogen from air to form pure oxygen) or using nitrogen as a diluent. .The problem I see with proponents and opponents of environmental issues is the lack of understanding for the technical issues in producing energy with minimum effects on the environment. Dealing with the issue of providing energy while protecting the environment is more complex than people think and people should learn about the technology available before making judgments
based on the comments of others. Anyone who wants to learn about gasification and what it is can go to the following site: http://www.gasification.org/what_is_gasification/overview.aspx

[Haditup2here]

Part I

I disagree with the author(s) assessment on clean coal and some of the overall assessments. First off, I think the overall key to any energy plan is through conservation of energy. That conservation of energy needs to be done by retrofitting buildings to reduce the amount of heat loss (in the winter) or heat gain (in the summer) for the climate that it is located. As long as the population grow, you will continue to have an increase in demand and given the amount of energy demand that exists today, solar power and wind energy (as the technology stands now) will not be enough. With that said, clean coal technology is the only viable option to not only insure energy independence within the next 5-10 years but gateway towards using biomass while improving the technology for other forms of alternative energy. Biomass may contribute less amount of pollution but it has some of the same issues in terms of the salt and minerals that exist in using coals in addition to a lower heating value than coal. However, the Dept. of Energy is looking into co-gasification (form of clean coal technology) in addition to carbon sequestration to reduce CO2 emissions.

[ravensflight]

Part 3 of 3 parts, reply to biofuels advocate:

That US corn went unsold last year while people of other nations went hungry supports the supposition that other nations could not afford US corn as food for their people, let alone as feed for their stock. The United Nation"s Food and Agricultural Organization (http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah877e/ah877e00.htm ) and other organizations have gathered data indicating that the competition of biofuels with food crops for farmland is partly responsible for a worldwide spike in basic food commodities (see Chapters 2 and 8 of our book).

Biofuel advocate asks: who stand to benefit if biofuels are not a major solution? Solar and wind energy sources stand to benefit as the answers to both our energy and climate crises.

[ravensflight]

Part 2 of 3 parts, Reply to Biofuels advocate continued:
4. The needed irrigation and fertilizers, and/or harvesting and processing for biofuel crops, whether corn, kelp or mesquite, have substantial energy costs associated with them. It is these costs that make biofuels not worth it environmentally as an answer to our energy crisis, when solar and wind energy alternatives exist. Yes, biofuels do remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they are grown, than they emit when the fuel is burned, but the energy that is used on the farm and in the conversion and transportation of these fuels erases most or all of that benefit.
Switchgrass and other plants grown on wastelands could be financially lucrative sources of biofuels, but the technology needed to convert these sources of cellulosic biofuels into energy has yet to be developed. The prohibitive amount of land needed to grow them precludes biofuels as a main source of clean renewable energy.

Brazil has proven that it is capable of destroying parts of the major carbon storage systems on earth by converting forests into biofuel croplands or food croplands that replace those diverted to biofuel production. Furthermore, Brazil then uses energy to farm and process sugarcane in order to create a substitute for gasoline " ie, it manages to contribute to the climate crisis in two ways through biofuels

[biofuelsadvocate]

Part 1

You two should do your homework on biofuels. You have bought into the oil company generated myths about alcohol generation. In particular the bogus food versus fuel argument, their supposed negative environmental impact and their cost. Let me debunk them.

First of all, Brazil has proven that alcohol can replace gasoline for an entire country. They produce enough alcohol on 2% of their crop land to completely eliminate imported oil, and they sell alcohol at the pump at prices substantially less than we buy gas.

Granted we focus on corn in the U.S. and corn is not the most efficient crop for alcohol production, but there are literally dozens of other viable crops that can be grown on substandard crop lands and even on water, without competing with land for food.

For example, mesquite already grows wild throughout the southwest, covering approximately 70 million acres, without any cultivation by humans at all. In fact, ranchers consider it a nuisance crop they would just as soon get rid of. Yet it produces a bean pod with approximately 50% sugar that can yield about the same amount of alcohol per acre as corn. All we have to do is pick those pods and process them.

Continued below¦.

[biofuelsadvocate]

Part 2

Another example is kelp. Kelp can be grown in the Gulf of Mexico and off the west coast in sufficient quantities to satisfy most if not all of our gasoline needs, and its cultivation would be highly beneficial to the oceans and can even help cure the giant dead zone in the Gulf. It can produce yields much higher than corn.

Even the lowly weed cattails, found in swampy lands, can produce 10 to 40 times the yield of corn, and they can even be used to help clean up our sewage, as is already done in a number of spots in our country.

With respect to the environmental damage argument. Who are you kidding? Alcohol burns much cleaner than gasoline and besides carbon dioxide, barely generates any of the other pollutants that gas does. A simple check with any smog check station will prove that point to you.

And with respect to the carbon dioxide issue. Granted burning alcohol puts it into the atmosphere. However, it is only returning it back to the atmosphere, as it was pulled out of the air by the plants that were used to produce the alcohol. And even then it is only returning a fraction of the amount pulled out by the plant and the rest is sequestered in the remaining plant material that gets buried in the ground. Thus for each crop/fuel cycle, more carbon dioxide is removed from the air. Can you say that about gasoline?

Continued below¦

[biofuelsadvocate]

Part 3

And back to the bogus claim about food versus fuel with respect to both land and food prices. IF that were true, how do you account for the fact that 1.6 billion bushels of corn went unsold last year, AFTER all other purchases for food, animal feed and fuel were accounted for? BTW -animal feed uses 87% of the corn so purchased in this country and is the main use of corn exported.

With respect to taking food out of the mouths of starving folks world wide, did you know that only 4 countries in the world will allow us to export our corn to them for food, even if it is donated, because we have genetically modified it such that those governments won't allow their citizens to eat it?

Granted, corn prices have risen in countries like Mexico so that it is impacting food for the poor there. But that is a factor of rising corn costs that have nothing to do with supply and demand as demonstrated by the unsold quantity specified above. The question is, why has the price of corn risen in those conditions and who is responsible? Who stands to benefit with the country thinking - like you do - that alcohol is not viable as a replacement for oil. Can you spell O-I-L companies?

Continued below ¦..

[biofuelsadvocate]

Part 4

And finally let me point out that we need a portable fuel that can replace gasoline in our transportation industries. Wind and solar cannot provide that solution. Biofuels are the only viable means to that end available to us today and can be introduced right into our transportation industries as they exist today. And once again, guess who has the most to lose if we figure out what Brazil already did and do it ourselves? If they can do it, why can't we?

So, when are you going to stop repeating the myths perpetuated by the oil companies and recognize that we should be embracing biofuels, not condemning them. Remember it was the oil companies who told us that there was no such thing as global warming. Why should we believe them about their self serving claims about alcohol?

For those who would like to know more, go to http://www.oil-free.us and http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com

[Tulka2]

Thank you for your knowlegable post. (The Cattail lobby thanks you. LOL.) What about hemp? Serious question. I have heard, is is this true...? That hemp could be grown in the midwest with much less fertilizing and subsequent pollution of ground water than corn. (I grew up in Iowa and all the water there is horribly polluted by corn cropping and hand in glove pork, dairy, beef and chicken farm factories.) I have heard hemp is a boffo oil producer and would also be a great source of plastic, fuel and beautiful cloth. Would midwestern farmers go for it or does their purchase of corn-centric machinery put them in opposition? All sincere questions.

[biofuelsadvocate]

Thank you for the compliment.

With respect to your questions, I have heard similar claims, and there are many beneficial products that can come from hemp. However, I will have to defer to David Blume on the question of hemp for alcohol.

From his book, Alcohol Can Be A Gas, p. 133 he says - "Hemp's Potential - There is much work to be done as far as cultivating plants with high cellulose content to be used for fuel. The much-maligned hemp plant (a fibrous industrial version of marijuana) has been known to provide cellulosic stands 14 feet tall when irrigated in good soils. With cellulose yields of five tons or more per acre, hemp could be a new contender in the energy field, possibly yielding 900 to 1000 gallons per acre in six months. (corn = ~250 gals.). Some species of annual Crotalaria " which goes by the name Sunn Hemp but is not actually related to true hemp, and is currently used for summer cover crops - can reach similar heights in half the time, less than 90 days, all the while enriching the soil with nitrogen."

I will have to also defer to him for your other questions at [e-mail]. I would encourage you listen to this detailed interview with him at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jew3ah24Zj4 for part 1 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vq7km9TWL0&feature=related. He cuts through the bull and really knows his stuff!

[clarity101]

In part 2 you just fly by the CO2 as if it means nothing.
The whole point here is not burning anything.
You miss the pollution of our ground water that has occurred from the additives in gas.
The fact remains we cannot produce enough bio-fuel anyway.
Alcohol is very corrosive ask any 'fueler' drag racer.
Fresh water for crops is a big issue as global warming is accelerated.

[biofuelsadvocate]

Well, unless someone can issue us all flying carpets, I don't see how we can, in any practical terms, continue with our transportation systems as they exist today (unless you want to go back to horses) so we have to burn something. I assume you are not in favor of gasoline. What alternative can you offer besides alcohol, which as I said continues to remove carbon dioxide with each cycle. What is wrong with that?

And what do you mean about the gasoline additives? I want to get rid of gas, so what was your point here?

And your assumption about not being able to produce enough biofuel is just another one of those myths. There are enough crops alternatives that can be grown on non-food crop land or water to satisfy our transportation fuel energy needs several times over. Are you saying Brazil can do it but the U.S. can"t?

Re: corrosion. Methanol, not ethanol is corrosive. Besides, every car driven in California uses approximately 6% alcohol now as the state's mandated replacement for MTBE. Heard about any cars dying in California because of it.

Finally, I told you about mesquite that grows wild and requires no watering. Cattails in sewage systems CLEAN UP our waste water and produce a fuel at the same time. Kelp grows in the ocean. None of these requires us to water them with fresh water. And the alcohol cycle reverses global warming. So again, what is your point?

[atomicrod]

It is wrong to claim that nuclear power is more expensive that wind or solar energy. Nuclear plants operating in the US today produce electricity for an average cost of just 1.76 cents per kilowatt hour, more than 20% less than the cost of "cheap coal" and about 1/3 of the cost of burning natural gas. There is a good reason why nuclear plants run at full power for an average of 7900 hours each year.

Nuclear plants are such "cash cows" that some state governors have begun talking about imposing "windfall profits" taxes. There would be no such profits if the plants were expensive to operate.

Talented engineers and scientists figured out several centuries ago that the wind and sun were simply inadequate for meeting human needs for heat and desires for comfort, travel, and convenience. The only thing that has changed since then is that the world's population has continued to grow and to develop infrastructures that are incompatible with variable power sources.

The wind and the sun may be "free", but when the sun goes down - which happens with great regularity - even Bill Gates cannot afford to make the sun come up again before its time. Similar statements can be made about the wind - I have spent several calm afternoons in the company of some very rich sailors who would have paid almost anything for just a tiny bit of wind so they could win their race.

[clarity101]

Sorry you have been misled,
Nuclear cost 10-12 cents per kilowatt hour this is reported everywhere.
Nuclear Power has been subsidized more than 500 billion dollars.
The number you quote leaves out a huge list of expense that goes along with operating and refueling these plants.

[stayinsouth1981]

Where on earth do they think we are going to STORE the radioactive crap that is a by product? We can't even move oil without getting ourselves into ecological trouble. I sure do not trust a Nuke Nuke Choo Choo...

[HansB]

As the article states, neither candidate goes far enough. And both are in favor of clean coal (though it should be added, that since clean coal doesn't exist this leaves a lot of wiggle room).

I think the crucial question will be that of appointments. McCain may have pale-green proposals (though it's worth noting that he consistently voted against clean energy, or declined to show up for the vote), but the people he surrounds himself with don't share them. Whereas with Obama one may hope that people like Barbara Boxer and/or Al Gore will have cabinet posts.

And we should abandon cap and trade. Let's remember that in the Kyoto negotiations, a decade ago, Europe wanted cap, period. And the US, in the person of Al Gore (disappointingly), forced cap and trade down everyone's throat - and then (through Bush) refused to sign anyway. It's too late for half measures. We need an immediate moratorium on coal plants and an immediate end to deforestation - and that's for starters.

[naschkatze]

Nuclear power is not a great option, to say the least. Not only is there the potential for catastrophic accidents, those of us who live in the west do not want to be the dumping ground for any more nuclear waste.

[MHSMustang]

The recognized perils of nuclear power are its greatest advantage. Because we know what they are, we recognize their potential for catastrophic consequences and we can therefore arrive at solutions that fully address these concerns. Operating records (often cited by McCain by pointing to the Navy Nuclear Power Program's record) are actually excellent. It is waste disposal that has earned a dismal mark - we store our most dangerous materials at operating nuclear power plants.

It is not so with most other "fuels" used to produce commercial power - there is no "catalog" of potential dangers associated with the extraction, distribution, use and disposal of wastes. Clean coal, or natural gas or more drilling, or even bio-fuels all create waste (take a gander at the sulfur heaps that are created by cleaning "natural gas" from its original, straight from the hole condition) in the clean up and processing steps, then emit harmful atmospheric contaminants when used. All of which is much harder to actually identify and come up with fixes to effectively mitigate.

Since the effects don't seem to be instantaneously catastrophic and instead merely kill millions of humans slowly, over decades, by contaminating the environment in increments that are only "serious" to the most sensitive first, then manifest as all manner of chronic problems in the population at large. The environmental contaminants and their effects "creep up" on us and instead of alarming us, becoming part of our accepted view of life. (cont'd)

[MHSMustang]

Allergies, cancers, child psychological problems are all on the increase. It is unlikely these are unrelated to the pollution of the environment. But they don't result in an organized campaign to end them, as the dangers of nuclear power did.

What is missed is the very obvious technical challenge of nuclear power, dealing with waste, is an engineering challenge that can be more safely addressed than the virtually unregulated use of carbon based fuels by billions of untrained and, possibly out of ignorance but, uncaring humans around the globe. The French have developed a very technically sound approach and rely on nuclear power.

Nuclear power is not the end all. Nothing will ever be what oil has been. But until alternate technologies are matured, nuclear is available to take up some of the slack.

[Javani]

"McCain supports biofuels, but they are not clean - growing, processing, and burning them produce greenhouse gases. Production of the most popular biofuel, corn-based ethanol, is so inefficient that it's literally not worth the effort financially or environmentally."

Interesting article, but...Obama is the ethanol guy, not McCain. Outrightly so, it's no secret. He campaigns on it locally in the midwest. That's why Obama will win Iowa. McCain was against the ethanol bill. Bush went hard for ethanol in 2004 and flipped Iowa from blue to red. Obama will flip it back, MSM will claim this is something about white people being more open in Iowa, or church traditions, the usual blather.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25324195 - Obama camp closely linked with ethanol -
Industry endorsed by candidate has provided some of his top advisers

As to Cap and Trade you are right, it doesn't work, proven not to work, but both Obama and McCain push it. Why? Because Goldman Sachs, etc. will make money on carbon trades, they're even devising carbon derivatives. Hank Paulson? Joined the Nature Conservancy to subvert it as a front org for carbon credit trading. Theodore Roosevelt IV of Lehman Bros? Got into the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, another front org for wall street traders posing as an environmental group. Remember that every time NPR invokes Pew Center as a beneficient force in the world.

[atomicrod]

Pew has a fascinating legacy - it was formed by the heirs of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. For many years, it has been one of the primary funders of environmental groups who have grown into large, professional organizations partially based on their efforts to oppose nuclear power, the only alternative energy source that has ever captured significant market share from oil and gas.

In 1970, when nuclear plants were just starting to operate and had less than 1% of the US electricity market, oil supplied more than 15% of that market. At that time, there was little organized opposition to nuclear power projects. By 1980, nuclear power had captured most of oil's share in the electricity market and was starting to replace coal and natural gas. It was also making great strides in pushing oil out of the naval ship propulsion market, but there was a vocal and well funded opposition effort. In addition to the Pew Charitable Trusts, another big source of funds for environmental groups was the Rockefeller Foundation. Most of us know the relationship between that name and Big Oil/Gas.

Hmmm.

[stayinsouth1981]

Check out TED "How mushrooms can save the world." Fascinating!