Energy Secretary Chris Wright:
America is blessed with abundant energy resources – we are the world’s top oil and gas producer and a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. Our energy abundance is an asset, not a liability. On January 20, the Department resumed consideration of pending applications to export American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries without a free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S. in accordance with the Natural Gas Act. Proper consideration of LNG export applications is required by law and shall proceed accordingly.
The long-awaited American nuclear renaissance must launch during President Trump’s administration. As global energy demand continues to grow, America must lead the commercialization of affordable and abundant nuclear energy. As such, the Department will work diligently and creatively to enable the rapid deployment and export of next-generation nuclear technology.
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If building new energy is an emergency, then, rationally, we should be building the energy sources that are quickest to get up and running on the grid, no?
A coalition of 31 countries has set an ambition of tripling the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050. There is particularly intense interest in the sector as a potential source of power for the fast-growing data centre industry. The steam that drives electric turbines in a nuclear power station can also be used for a range of other purposes, including heating nearby housing, running chemical plants, generating hydrogen or even potentially making steel.
There are especially high hopes that a new breed of reactors produced on assembly lines in factories, known as small modular reactors, might make replication easier in the future. Some countries, including Russia, China, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, claim to have far better records on cost control and delivery.
An IEA report published in January said that two recent projects in South Korea — Saeul 1 and 2 — were delivered only two and five years late and only 30 per cent over budget.
However, Birol accepts the current picture is mixed. “We’ve seen that in Europe and the US the cost didn’t go much down because there’s no continuous process of building nuclear power plants,” he says.
Tom Burke, founder of E3G, a London-based clean energy consultancy, is far more sceptical, saying the information from the countries claiming better records lacks credibility.
“Where the publicly available information is reliable — if you look at what happened in Finland, the United States and the United Kingdom — people have not built reactors to time and budget, ever,” Burke says. Luc Rémont, chief executive of EDF, the French, state-owned electricity company that owns a 23.9 per cent stake in Sizewell C and is providing the technology, has blamed governments’ stop-start approach to building nuclear power plants for creating difficulties.
EDF, which built 56 nuclear reactors between 1974 and 1989, was once admired as one of the world’s most reliable builders. But it has faced years of delays and cost overruns on its three most recent projects — at Olkiluoto in Finland, at Flamanville in France and at Hinkley Point C.
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DOE Secretary Chris Wright is a Fracking millionaire, and not surprisingly, has made fossil gas and increased LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) exporst the centerpiece of DOE initiatives.
But increased exports of LNG expose US consumers to international competition and generally higher pricing, as a recent DOE report concluded.
Utility Dive:
Increased U.S. liquefied natural gas exports will contribute to higher electricity and natural gas prices, as well as increased greenhouse gas emissions and other costs, according to a U.S. Department of Energy study published Tuesday.
The report “exposes a triple-cost increase to U.S. consumers from increasing LNG exports,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
The Biden administration hit pause on LNG export permits in January, to allow DOE to update the underlying environmental and economic analysis for authorizations. That decision was challenged in court and President-elect Trump has vowed to end the pause, leading the Biden administration to request an end to the litigation.
U.S. LNG exports have tripled over the past five years, will double again by 2030 and could double again under existing authorizations, Granhom said. “The quantities already approved for export equate to roughly half of the U.S.’s total current natural gas production today.”
DOE’s report shows increased LNG exports would increase emissions of greenhouse gases as well as displacing more renewable energy than the gas industry has previously claimed, according to Public Citizen.
“The explosion of exports has upended domestic energy markets … and has exposed American energy markets to increased price volatility and episodes of sharply higher prices,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program.
Under a high-export scenario, 2050 Henry Hub natural gas prices increase 31%, in 2022 dollars, the report estimated. That means up to a $122.54 annual average increase for natural gas plus electricity expenditures across all households, according to the report.
The increased 2050 gas prices will add about 3.5% to average electricity bills, DOE concluded.
“This report clearly shows the harm resulting from unfettered LNG exports,” Trevor Higgins, senior vice president of energy and environment at the Center for American Progress, said in a statement “Shipping American fuel overseas mostly displaces clean energy, not coal — and will add roughly $10 per month to household electricity bills.”
The Industrial Energy Consumers of America said they agreed with DOE’s findings, including that between 2020 and 2050 overall energy costs for the industrial sector will go up $125 billion and lead to inflationary impacts.
We need to start a campaign to stop subsidizing oil and gas exported to foreign countries. The U S taxpayer is allowing and subsidizing environmental destruction of our country by drilling and transport (pipelines) of fossil fuels for use in foreign countries. All the externalized cost are borne by us with none of the benefits. To the contrary by creating an export market they raise prices here in the U S and then take a depletion tax credit for the product they sold and no longer have.
What kind of campaign?
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-fires-hundreds-staff-overseeing-nuclear-weapons-report-2031419
Put Elon on the task! Oh, wait …
Another problem with nuclear energy is that it doesn’t make sense economically. There’s a limited market for the reactors in the USA, America’s enemies wont be allowed to have them, and America’s allies don’t want them. The money spent developing new reactors will never be recouped from selling them.
‘If building new energy is an emergency, then, rationally, we should be building the energy sources that are quickest to get up and running on the grid, no?’
It’s quicker to put up a tent than a house, but someone who needs the latter might not thank you if you present a tent as their new home. Fossils still make 80% of our energy, almost the same as nearly 30 years ago, when the Kyoto agreement was signed – and the same fraction of a much bigger pie means CO2 emissions are rising as fast as ever. That’s not just an accident or a conspiracy, they’re incredibly useful and versatile, and will be extremely hard to replace. Chris Wright is a very articulate proponent. His assessment of global warming is flawed, but it’s hard to rebut his prediction that fossil use will keep growing, at least for a while. As he says, women in Ghana switching to cooking on propane instead of charcoal will have huge improvements in air quality, not to mention reductions in deforestation. Should they be using solar stoves? If they were that handy, there’d be a lot more of them.