$34 billion and 10 years. The performance of Southern Co. & Westinghouse at Vogtle is utterly unacceptable. If it is best the sector can do, nuclear has no future. I think new small modular reactors can do better, but they have to prove it. No one will believe it until we see it.
For those missing conditional statement above: read it again. IF this is the best they can do. Challenge is to build confidence the sector can do better than this. We have examples that build hope from South Korea, China, the UAE. Yet we've seen repeated failure in the West too.
Remember, cost isn't value. Nuclear is worth more than wind. But 2.5-3x more? Doubtful today. Perhaps in near 100% carbon-free grids. But we can and should do much better than this!
And since I've upset team nuclear, I'll throw this in for equal measure: Vogtle is still a better deal than New Jersey or Massachusetts ratepayers have been getting for rooftop solar at well over $200/MWh... 🤔
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A federal judge temporarily halted completion of a 102-mile high voltage transmission line that would connect dozens of renewable energy projects to the grid, at the behest of three environmental groups. 🤦♂️ reuters.com/sustainability…
At issue: Driftless Area Land Conservancy, National Wildlife Refuge Association & Wisconsin Wildlife Federation sued to block a land swap approved by US Dept of Interior that would add 35 new acres of land to a wildlife refuge in exchange for 20 acres crossed by the line Come on!
I wonder where @audubonsociety @nature_org & @NWF are at on this project. They've done a lot to help keep a more balanced perspective on broad benefits of transmission to connect clean electricity resources and local environmental impacts.
At long last, proposed #hydrogen tax credit rules are out. Industry reactions are in. While opponents of climate-friendly rules continue to complain, stakeholders from across the industry endorsed the proposal & are prepared to unleash investment in a truly clean H2 sector. A🧵⤵️
The Biden admin resisted a torrent of intense lobbying from big industrial players like the utilities NextEra & Constellation, oil majors like BP & Exxon, fuel-cell maker Plug Power, & their trade-group proxies, which spent millions on ads & lobbying to weaken the hydrogen rules.
If you’ve read about electric vehicles in the news lately, you know the vibes are all bad. The media has fixated on the idea that consumer demand for EVs is “slowing." But the data shows that just not true, as I explain in a new @Heatmap column heatmap.news/electric-vehic…
If we take a look at actual sales data (as I did here ), there’s NO sign the growth in EVs is flagging. In fact, sales of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the third quarter exhibited the strongest year-on-year growth since the Q4 2021! anl.gov/esia/reference…
Putting aside plug-in hybrids, which have shorter electric range and retain a gasoline engine, sales of purely electric vehicles have been steadily increasing at ~60% annual growth rate for each of the last six quarters. That’s fast enough to double EV sales every 14 months.
In the past two weeks, I think EVERY media outlet has written a story w/headlines like "EV sales are slowing" or "automakers are pulling back" from EVs. All present recent developments as a major setback. But are they? Are they really slowing? Is this 'red alert' moment? A 🧵...
What does it mean that EV sales are "slowing"? Year-on-year growth rates have been ~60% in each of the last several months. That's a rate fast enough to double sales in about 18 months. It's hard to see growth that fast as "slowing" sales.
The best (and only) quantitative evidence presented for the dominant media narrative is this data, as presented in a WSJ piece yesterday here: dealers for traditional OEMs (Ford, VW etc) are taking more time to move EVs off the lots wsj.com/business/autos…
It's not a disaster. These offshore projects getting cancelled now all signed fixed price long-term contracts several years ago, pre-pandemic & then got clobbered by unexpected interest rate hikes and cost inflation that made the projects financially unviable.
Developers tried to pass along costs to states (NY MA NJ) & their electricity consumers, and for the most part were rebuffed. State agencies basically said "No, a contract is a contract and we cant start renegotiating or any future contract wont be worth the ink it's printed on."
I happen to think that's a perfectly reasonable decision. These states will have to re-contract for new projects. In fact, NY just inked another 4 GW of contracts from three new projects after rejecting attempts to hike cost of a couple of previously contracted projects.
Important🧵from BNEF expert @CoreyBCantor ⤵️
It's been a rough few weeks of news on US EV transition. But there's also QUITE a lot of groupthink and sensationalism. Seems like everyone in the press decided this week the EV transition was dead and consumers "dont want EVs." Yet...
We risk conflating a *slow down* in incumbent automaker's EV ramp up plans -- GM, Ford, VW & Honda specifically -- with the broader market, which is still growing robustly, about 50% year-on-year according to @CoreyBCantor, despite serious headwinds from high interest rates.