In the United States, citizens often have a less than favorable view of the local utilities, whether it be the phone system or the power grid. I think it has a lot to do with impingements on private property for utility right-of-ways, less than punctual service, and sometimes a perception that – in a capitalist country! – they’re in it for the money. I try not to get all het up about the utilities, but I see it around me.
So it was a nice local change of pace to see Ilana Strauss’ article on Treehugger:
For the first time in American history, a major utility company declared to dive fully into clean energy. Xcel Energy, a major utility company based out of Minneapolis, just pledged to go completely carbon-free.
“Our biggest energy source in a few short years is going to be renewable energy. We’re going to absolutely integrate as much of that as we can into the grid,” said Ben Fowke, Xcel’s CEO. That means more solar, more wind and less coal, among other changes. …
The company says it’ll be 80 percent carbon-free in 2030 and 100 percent in 2050.
It’s good, if inadequate, news for those customers who understand the seriousness of climate change. I hope Xcel will lay out a plan for achieving this goal. From Xcel’s publicly available information on electricity generation:
I doubt they’ll construct any more nuclear power plants, as they are expensive and tend to overrun cost estimates, and the environmentalists tend to be against them – although there has been significant dissent on that point. I would prefer Xcel not follow Germany’s lead and shut down its nuclear power plants unless they have significant physical vulnerabilities, until sufficient clean energy resources are available to replace the nuclear sources of power. In the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011, Germany began shuttering its nuclear power plants, and I worry that this is adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere. However, finding solid estimates from reputable sources isn’t working so well this morning. I do see Environmental Progress has a chart for 2016:
Another article on Environmental Progress (EP) suggests nuclear power may be the right choice:
California and Germany could have mostly or completely decarbonized their electricity sectors had their investments in renewables been diverted instead to new nuclear, a new Environmental Progress analysis finds.
I’ve been unable to find anything to suggest EP is a nuclear power plant front, at least so far. I’d not go so far as to suggest further investment in nuclear power is a proper choice, but it may be worth considering; certainly, retention of current Xcel nuclear sources until other, more immediate sources of climate change gasses have been eliminated from their sources makes far more sense than the German approach, again absent significant physical vulnerabilities in those nuclear sources.
