Michael Conroy/AP Photo
Nicholas Hartnett, owner of Pure Power Solar, carries a panel as he and Brian Hoeppner, right, install a solar array on the roof of a home in Frankfort, Kentucky, July 17, 2023.
The Biden administration’s climate policies are intended to rapidly transition the nation toward renewable energy, and reduce or eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels. For years, the main complaint from those who wanted to do nothing about climate change was that the transition would spike energy bills and cost too much up front. But new research about the cost-effectiveness of renewables may just inject hope, even into the heart of a capitalist.
The urgency of what to do about the ticking climate time bomb, as the U.N.’s latest climate report puts it, has left everyone scrambling for solutions, from redirecting sunlight to pulling carbon out of the atmosphere to simply using energy more efficiently. For some, nuclear energy, a “low-carbon” solution according to the World Nuclear Association, is critical to the transition. Tennessee Valley Authority President Jeff Lyash told NPR last year, “You can’t significantly reduce carbon emissions without nuclear power.”
But nuclear energy comes with its own set of issues. Nuclear waste can remain “radioactive and dangerous to human health for thousands of years,” and accidents like the one at the Fukushima plant in Japan, which had a triple meltdown in 2011 due to an earthquake and tsunami, need to be guarded against. As a result, building plants comes with a high cost due to stringent safety measures.
The first new nuclear plant in the United States in seven years, Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, began operating this year in Waynesboro, Georgia. When the plant opened in May, it was $17 billion over budget, and seven years behind schedule. Project costs for nuclear energy often increase over time. A recent Finnish project was completed at more than triple the cost anticipated—from 3 to 11 billion euros.
The cost of nuclear energy is the biggest barrier to scaling it for widespread use. A popular comparison by Lazard puts the cost of nuclear energy at $6,500 per kilowatt, ten times the cost of solar energy. This is why the share of energy nuclear power has produced has remained under 20 percent since the 1990s.
Despite these practical barriers, nuclear energy has recently been under discussion as a viable and groundbreaking source of energy. Bill Gates recently announced a new nuclear plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, with his company TerraPower. And interest in small modular reactors (SMRs), fission reactors that are a fraction of a nuclear plant’s size, has also increased. SMRs are still in the concept stage, though, and have a ways to go before they can be relied on.
If that happens and can be made safe, nuclear could be part of a fossil fuel–free energy mix in the future. But other forms of renewable energy, like wind, solar, hydropower, and geothermal, are available right now. And we’re learning how increasingly cheap some renewables can be to deploy.
The article “Why Investing in New Nuclear Plants Is Bad for the Climate,” which was recently published in the journal Joule, addresses these questions by offering up renewable energy as a more cost-effective and sustainable solution. “It is hard to overstate how strongly the costs of renewables have decreased,” the authors, who include researchers at the European Environmental Bureau, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Stockholm School of Economics, wrote. For example, solar power costs at utility scale decreased by 85 percent between 2010 and 2020.
In the U.S., solar power capacity has increased thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021. Since the bill was passed, more than 50 solar plants have been announced at a cost of $20 billion, with 155 gigawatts in added capacity on the table.
The knock on two major forms of renewable energy, solar and wind, was that they don’t provide so-called “baseload” power, because they only produce when the sun is out or the wind is blowing. But the authors say that this has changed as well. “While renewables’ production is variable, their generation can be matched to demand by storing renewable electricity in the form of hydrogen, using batteries or pumped hydro,” the authors wrote. “Beyond batteries, demand- and supply-side grid flexibility technologies can complement variable renewable energy sources at generally lower cost than fossil-fuel backup or bulk storage.”
Virtually every solar and wind project today is paired with battery storage to get around the problem of intermittency. This worked reliably well in supporting Texas’s power grid during this summer’s heat wave. And using hydroelectric, so-called “green hydrogen” or other options could be available as backup power. So could nuclear, if the cost can be managed. But battery storage is a relatively cheap option already being built into large-scale solar and wind projects.
Renewable energy accounts for less energy output in the United States than even nuclear power: In 2022, it accounted for just 13 percent of primary energy output. However, by 2025, renewable energy is expected to surpass coal as the world’s primary energy source. And with generous production tax credits for renewables from the IRA, it should expand even further in the U.S.
Climate progress has been massively delayed by endless debates over cost. But if the right people, with the right-sized pockets, can be convinced that saving the planet can also save them money, maybe renewable energy will get the boost it needs. There are mounds of potential, and literally nothing to lose.
