Renewable energy tops nuclear power in US
By John Timmer | Published July 9 2011
Read the entire story
Plunging prices and booming investments are beginning to reshape the energy market, according to a couple of reports that were released this week. A report produced on behalf of Bloomberg says that investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China's renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. As a result of these investments, the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power.
First, renewable investments. Bloomberg's New Energy Finance group has collaborated with the UN Environment Programme and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management to produce a global overview of funding for renewable power. This includes the obvious—financing for the construction of utility-scale projects and home installations—and some non-obvious funding, like merger and acquisition activity.
Any way you look at things, the numbers make it clear just how significant renewables have become. Excluding hydropower, renewables made up about 35 percent of the power capacity added worldwide last year, and produced over five percent of the total power. Investments directed toward this new capacity (excluding things like mergers) hit $187 billion, and are closing in fast on the spending on fossil fuel power plants, cutting the gap in spending to $31 billion, down from $74 billion. At that pace, we'll be investing more in renewables either this year or next.
24 comments:
"the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power"
That's no surprise since nuclear energy has been demonized by the ignorant euro-lefties for years. We fear what we lack the intelligence to understand.
to preceding Anonymous:
How many Love Canal, Chernobyl, Japan nuclear disasters (plus many less horrible ones --some reported, some not) do you have to learn about before you'll decide (as most of the sane world has) that nuclear anything is not the safest power source?
To Anon #1,
May we store nuclear waste in your back yard since you have the intelligence to understand what to do with it?
First Anonymous says:
"...nuclear energy has been demonized by the ignorant euro-lefties for years. We fear what we lack the intelligence to understand."
Wrong, nuclear breath!
We fear what we saw happen in Japan and Chernobyl and other places where the profit expediency over safety nuts push through nuclear programs without adequate regulations because fools like the right wing anti-regulation supplicants will allow it.
Btw, Anonymous Bubba raised at Yucca Mountain, France - one of those Euro-Lefties you refer to - is the largest generator of nuclear power in the world
So before your write again to the blog, get your mindless free markets right wing talking points correct before you say anything even more indicative of your lack of knowledge.
Hey Rocky, I get tired of you slamming Free markets and Corporate America. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe a free market economy is better than an economy managed by the government. Just 14% think a government-managed economy is better. Another 14% are not sure. Which 14% are you in?
See the Results Here!
To Anon, July 11, 2:13 PM:
Rocky isn't slamming TRULY free market advocates. He slams the imbeciles who THINK they are free marketeers, but who all the while accept tax subsidies, tax abatements, tax loopholes, etc. Those are the hypocrites Rocky is berating. (Hope I'm not "presuming," Rocky.)
The thing about right wingers is they throw out these clearly biased Republican Party favorable polls and try to get people to respond to them like they are legitimate.
And Roundup readers can see how Anonymous of July 11, 2:13 PM is clearly a regurgitator of right wing misinformation.
A little research - which Anonymous right wingers are loath to do - would show the following relevant information.
In 2010, the New York Times wrote the article “Is Rasmussen Reports biased?” The research states that Rasmussen's polling results diverged notably from other mainstream pollsters, with the results being labeled a 'house effect.' The article claimed that Rasmussen conducted its polls in a way that excluded the majority of the population from answering.
In other words, the Rasmussen polls excluded answers in the survey they did not like. The NYT article concluded that Rasmussen's polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters in 2010, having an average error of 5.8 points and a pro-Republican bias.
Additionally, TIME Magazine has described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group". According to Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who co-developed Pollster.com,“He [Rasmussen] polls less favorably for Democrats." Franklin also said: "It’s clear that his results are typically more pro-Republican than other pollster's results."
Moreover, the Center For Public Integrity has claimed that Scott Rasmussen was a paid polling consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign. The Washington Post reported "... the Bush re-election campaign used a feature on Rasmussen's site that allowed customers to program their own polls. Yet Rasmussen asserted that he never wrote any of the questions or assisted Republicans in any way..."
So, Mr. Hays County Anonymous
twister of facts to suit your own beliefs, your question to me appears to be irrelevant anyway, since the survey you want me to respond to was probably designed in a biased way to get people like you to feel vindicated with your right wing beliefs. In fact, I bet you are a unquestioning quoter of the biased Rasmussen polls.
Also, your question to me is too simple minded in your premise for me to answer intelligently. When you say a "government managed economy," do you mean like Canada or Sweden - or like Venezuela and Russia?
And when you say "free markets economy," do you mean a corporate welfare economy, a lobby money controlled big corporate economy, or a a true laissez faire decentralized favorable to small business economy that has regulation against unfair corporate power and monopoly-like lobby money competitive advantage?
Anonymous, if you ever get to the point when you finally understand the differences betweem the types of economic systems I listed above, show some courage and give your name and number and I will call you and we can have a good discussion about capitalism and free markets face to face over coffee or tea (sorry, I don't drink alcohol anymore).
By the way, Anonymous, did you know that the stock markets of countries like Canada, Australia, and all the "government directed" Scandanavian nations have strongly outperformed the US stock market for the last ten years? I wonder how the Rasmussen group would survey that fact?
And, thanks, Barbara, you are spot on with my rants about corporate hypocrisy, which Anonymous clearly doesn't like.
My, My Rocky, you doth protest too much, methinks. Using the New York Times and Time Magazine as the references of what is conservative biased is laughable. If you truly believe that, you are beyond any help. It is sad since you seem otherwise intelligent.
"CNN is reporting that a group of Congressmen backed by the nuclear industry are pushing to open Yucca Mountain [Nevada] nuclear waste site....It's also worth noting that there's been a fee on electric bills since 1983 for the building of the site."
-Bob Hamste, www.slashdot.org
July 11, 2011
To Anonymous of @ July 10, 2011 10:31 PM.
Don't rely of Biblical words and adolescent attacks to avoid my questions.
I asked you a couple simple questions:
"When you say a "government managed economy," do you mean Canada, Sweden and Norway on the one hand - or Venezuela, Iran, and Russia on the other? Please name these so-called successful free markets economies that the Americans polled by Rasmussen are so knowledgeable about?
And when you say "free markets economy," what are examples of healthy free markets economies that are not up to their nose in debt and unemployment? Yes, there is Germany, a country with a single payer health care system and strong unions?
Don't wuss out on me here. I am using facts, while you are using opinions. Show me and the readers your facts to back up your claims - rather than back away with your ridiculous discounting of my sources. Btw, what about the Washington Post, the Center for Public Integrity, and the University of Wisconsin. Are they liberal bias media losers too?
Really, explain to all of us, given your extensive market knowledge, WHY the stock markets of Canada, Australia, all the "government directed" Scandanavian nations, Brazil, Germany, South Korea, and Singapore - most who support unions and strong pollution regulations - have strongly outperformed the US stock market for the last ten years? And what about China, while we are at it?
Yes, I thought so. Back to the shadows you go.
The "Yucca Mountain [Nevada] nuclear waste site" should be opened and the petty bickering with the anti-nuke types should end. That part of Nevada is the most desolate and isolated part of our country and is a perfect place for the nuclear waste. That waste is currently being stored at nuclear power plants all over the nation, some close to populated areas. This would reduce the threat of contamination, enhance security and lessen the possibly of theft or terrorism.
To Anonymous, July 12, 5:49 AM:
I think you might not be so offhand about storing nuclear waste in Nevada if YOU lived in that state.
Mainly, my point in reporting about
the Yucca Mountain site is that nuclear waste (which has a very long half-life) is a huge problem that we don't have with solar or wind power.
There have been many slow and agonizing deaths from radiation (nuclear power), but I've never heard of a solar panel killing anyone.
No one in their right mind would live anywhere near Yucca Mountain. That area is already pretty radio active from the various nuclear weapons tested and other secret devices tested there. The waste will be placed deep inside the mountain at 1200 feet below the crest and 800 feet above the water table. It was known as Yucca Flats when I worked there in the late 50s. Next to the cost prohibitive prospect of blasting the waste into space it is the best option for storing the waste.
Nuclear is still the cleanest and least expensive way to produce electrical power, even though some looney environmentalists continue to believe the science fiction films about giant ants and spiders, etc. Solar and wind will never eclipse nuclear in total power produced. Both of those methods require storing electricity when there is no wind or at night.
Yucca Mountain is the perfect place to store radioactive waste however everyone is overlooking the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Just how are we going to safely get all of that radioactive waste to Nevada? That has been the main problem that the government faces. No one wants nuclear waste being transported through their state.
Anonymous on July 13, 2011 10:37 PM said... "Just how are we going to safely get all of that radioactive waste to Nevada? That has been the main problem that the government faces. No one wants nuclear waste being transported through their state."
The nuclear waste can be "safely" transported by specially designed trucks in heavily secured convoys. Many would be surprised at how the much more dangerous nuclear weapons have been transported all over this country and even the world. The NIMBY argument comes up every time the country tries to solve problems these days. Life is full of risks and sometimes we have to take those risks for the greater good.
It is fashionable today to believe in and hope for a risk-free world but the realists know that it is neither possible nor advisable to do so. That idea causes a false sense of security and stifles productivity and creativity while producing a race of "Eloi". From the look of things with our airport security today, we may have already crossed over into that self-destructive land. In that case we have given up some of our most cherished freedoms for security. How sad!
The pollution coming from coal fired power plants has certainly killed more people than any nuclear accident or nuclear weapons use in war. That my friend is also a "slow and agonizing death"; it's called COPD and makes you just as dead.
Anonymous @ 6:40am I never said that radioactive waste could not be safely transported just that the states do not want it transported through their states. In many of the states bordering Nevada there are laws prohibiting the transport of radioactive waste on their highways. Before we can start to transport any nuclear waste these issues must be addressed. I support nuclear energy but we need to make sure that we have adequate protections in place before it becomes widespread.
Solar energy and wind energy are safer and more readily available forms of energy that can be put in place without expensive plants and with less danger to people and the environment.
Don't jump to conclusions Anonymous. Not everyone is against what you want. Some of us just want to make sure that nuclear energy is as safe as possible. A risk free world is not possible and would be boring and unhealthy.
P.S. as a ex military person I can tell you there is no such thing as a "safely" heavily secured convoy. A convoy is by it's existence a target and as such it is a constant target for ied's and other weapons.
Nuclear accidents (large and small) happen almost daily somewhere in the world. Here's another one, which occurred in New Jersey:
"The Salem 2 nuclear plant in southern New Jersey was taken offline after a leak of low-level radioactive water developed during routine testing...." - Austin Am-Statesman, July 16, 2011
The people and government of Germany have decided to build no more nuclear plants. And they will phase out their current ones little by little. They determined that the risks of nuclear accidents -- with their very long-term bad effects -- are not worth the risk. They started the safety debate after Chernobyl, but after the recent Japan disaster, their minds were made up for them.
Since the Japan nuclear disaster, radioactive meat is being found in markets.
to Anon, Jul 17, 10:02 a.m.:
I guess the sale of Kobe beef will plummet in the United States!
"For less than HALF the cost of replacing just 1 nuclear power plant, we could retrofit 1.6 million homes for energy efficiency and reduce the need for the same amount of energy the plant would produce. Doing so would also create 90 TIMES more jobs than replacing the power plant."
REPLACE 1 NUCLEAR PLANT:
Cost :$41 billion
Jobs Created: 2,400
RETROFIT 1.6 MILLION HOMES:
Cost: $20 billion
Jobs Created: 220,000.
See short article "Infographic: Nuclear Power v. Energy Efficient Homes" at www.theenergycollective.com.
"The Japanese government Tuesday halted sales of all beef cattle from Fukushima and unveiled a 30-year plan to monitor the health of the two million residents of the prefecture, a step that acknowledges the effects of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be long-lasting and far-reaching."
-Wall Street Journal
"If a state wants to shutter a nuclear power plant, but the Feds have relicensed it, does the state have legal grounds for closure? That question is being wrestled with in Federal court, with implications for dozens of older nuclear plants seeking to renew operating licenses to extend their lifetimes another 20 years beyond their original 30-year licenses."
-Christian Science Monitor
July 17, 2011
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