Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

1. They hyped California & Vermont as climate leaders. They replaced nuclear with fossil. Pollution rose

Now they're trying the same in Pennsylvania & Ohio

Governors who care about the climate will stop them

Climate scientist James Hansen & I @WSJ

wsj.com/articles/the-c…

@WSJ 2. Many environmentalists have changed their minds about nuclear energy over the past decade. While solar & wind have grown rapidly, nuclear remains America’s largest source of clean electricity.

@WSJ 3. Anyone seriously interested in preventing dangerous levels of global warming should be advocating nuclear power.

4. But two-thirds of U.S. nuclear plants in the U.S. are at risk of being closed prematurely & replaced by natural-gas generation, which is currently cheaper in many states. If that happens, emissions could increase an amount equivalent to adding 47 million new cars to the road.

5. Ideally, the feds would step up, but between GOP skepticism of climate & Dem. opposition to nuclear, that’s unlikely to happen before many nuclear-plant operators must decide whether to shut them down. Thus the job of keeping beleaguered nuclear plants open falls to the states

6. Lawmakers in Ohio & Pennsylvania are considering proposals to keep nuclear plants operating. Ohio is at risk of losing 2 plants that produce 90% of its clean elect. Pennsylvania’s 5 nuclear plants produce nearly as much electricity as do all of America’s solar panels and farms

7. Nuclear accounts for 93% of the Keystone State’s clean, zero-emissions electricity.

If Pennsylvania and Ohio’s nuclear plants close and are replaced by facilities that burn natural gas, it would be like adding 13.5 million new cars to the roads.

8. Nuclear plants can be saved through modest subsidies similar to the ones extended by lawmakers in Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey & New York between 2016 & 2018. Those subsidies have been smaller than the federal subsidy that wind-energy generators have received for 27 years

9. In 2017 New York energy regulators gave nuclear power generators a subsidy of $17.34 per megawatt-hour. They also subsidized wind generators at $23 per megawatt-hour on top of the federal subsidy of $22 per megawatt-hour.

10. The fossil lobby’s objections to nuclear are understandable. The American Petroleum Institute wants to replace nuclear plants with natural-gas plants because its members stand to benefit. But why do groups that claim to be concerned about the climate oppose nuclear power?

11. Some Democratic lawmakers in Pennsylvania and environmental groups such as @NRDC are urging legislators not to subsidize nuclear without increasing subsidies for solar and wind.

@NRDC 12. While combining subsidies for nuclear with subsidies for wind & solar worked to get legislation passed in New York & Illinois in 2016, such an approach risks backfiring in Ohio & Penn., where state lawmakers are more fiscally conservative & tend to be skeptical of renewables.

@NRDC 13. Saving nuclear plants won’t be free, but keeping them open will keep electricity prices lower than if natural gas is allowed to dominate.

@NRDC 14. Both Ohio and Pennsylvania still produce large amounts of electricity from coal, which is being replaced by natural gas. If both coal and nuclear plants are replaced by gas, ratepayers will be vulnerable to future price increases at the hands of monopolistic gas generators.

@NRDC 15. New York & Calif. are moving ahead with plans to close 2 nuclear plants. New York's Indian Point will close in 2021 & Calif.'s Diablo Canyon will go offline in 2025.

@NRDC 16. California is already set to miss its 2030 target of a 40% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels. If Diablo Canyon closes and half of its output is replaced by natural gas, there’s no way they’ll get there.

@NRDC 17. It is notable that while three natural-gas plants are being built to succeed Indian Point, local opposition to the construction of solar and wind farms has kept them from being built at anywhere near the rate necessary to replace the nuclear facility’s output.

@NRDC 18. We’ve been here before. Environmentalists promised that solar and wind would replace output from California’s San Onofre Generating Station, which closed in 2013, and the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant, which shut down the following year.

@NRDC 19. Instead, they were replaced mostly by natural gas, and emissions rose in both states. At the rate Vermont is building new wind farms, it would take 474 years to match the electricity generation it lost from closing Vermont Yankee.

@NRDC 20. The problem isn’t only that nuclear plants generate far more electricity. It’s that solar and wind generate it only sporadically, which means they must be backed up by other sources of power 100% of the time.

@NRDC 21. There is great hype about batteries, and using dams as pumped storage. But those solutions remain extremely expensive, which is why whenever nuclear plants close anywhere in the world, they are usually replaced by coal or natural-gas plants—not solar, not wind & not batteries

@NRDC 22. Governors in those states have in recent years urged more action out of Washington to address climate change. They’ll have far more credibility and influence if they first take action in their home states.

@GovernorTomWolf @mikedewine @GavinNewsom @NYGovCuomo

@NRDC @GovernorTomWolf @MikeDeWine @GavinNewsom @NYGovCuomo 23. Mr. Hansen is a climate scientist and head of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Earth Institute Columbia University.

Mr. Shellenberger is president of Environmental Progress.

Appeared in the April 5, 2019, print edition @WSJ

/END