February 13, 2008
Global Warming and Nuclear Energy
David W. Crane
President and CEO, NRG Energy, Inc.
Minutes of the 19th Meeting of the 66th Year
The 19th meeting of our 66th year was called to order by the President at 10:15 AM at Friend Center. Attendance was approximately 100. George Hansen led the invocation. The minutes of the previous meeting, prepared by John Frederick, were read by Joe Giordmaine. Arthur Eschenlauer, representing the Membership Committee, reported approval of the nominations of the following candidates for membership: Donald Bert Edwards, George Augustus Vaughn III, Edmund Charles Weiss, Jr., and Peter Chapman Wise. Their biographical information was distributed to the attendees. It was announced that the election of new members will be held at next week’s meeting.
John Lasley introduced the speaker, David Crane, President and CEO of NRG Energy, a global power generation company. His presentation was entitled “Global Warming and Nuclear Energy.”
Mr. Crane began by affirming that global warming is a reality, and asking “OK there’s a problem here, how do we solve it?” He looks at global warming not as an environmental problem but as an energy problem. Each year the world’s energy consumption adds 5 billion tons more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than is absorbed. At the present rate of growth in energy use, the greenhouse temperature rise by the year 2100 will be 5 degrees Centigrade, with dire consequences worldwide.
As one example of the urgency of the problem, he cited the growth of coal consumption in China, equivalent to adding the entire annual coal production of the United States every six years.
In the speaker’s view the centerpiece of any approach to global warming must be clean coal, i.e. coal burning plants that don’t emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The other main approach is nuclear. NRG filed last year the first application for a new nuclear plant to be built in the U.S. since 1979. The new plant, and an adjacent existing plant, will save CO2 emission equal to that produced by the whole country of Belgium. He argued that the “happy four” -- solar, wind, energy efficiency and energy conservation -- are inadequate to meet a major fraction of the world’s energy needs.
The dominant source of CO2 emission is the power industry. If the U.S. power industry could be converted to a clean source of energy, clean electricity could largely solve the emission problem of the transport industry and other industrial sources of CO2.
Innovations in technology to address global warming have largely been coming from the United States, but support of large scale development to exploit our present advantage will require concerted government effort.
He cited American capitalism, natural disasters and war as the great agents of change in American history. How can the power of American capitalism be brought to bear on this issue? Emitting CO2 is now free. The first thing the government needs to do is put a price on CO2 emission – a cap and trade system – auctioning or allocating carbon allowances. Congress is working on such bills and all three presidential candidates favor it. Allowances have already worked in the reduction of acid rain.
NRG itself is the tenth largest power generator in the U.S. and a major CO2 emitter. If it were a country it would be one of the top 50 emitters in the world, emitting 68 million tons/year. By contrast, GE, for example, a much larger company, emits only 10.
What is NRG doing? It is developing clean coal technology using two approaches -- precombustion and postcombustion CO2 capture. It is developing nuclear power. The speaker sees no credible reason why we should not go back to building nuclear plants. He said that many environmentalists, originally anti-nuclear in the 1970s, are in agreement, not because they like nuclear but because global warming is such an overriding environmental threat to the earth. His company is first in the queue for Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of a new plant. The earliest they can be on line is 2014 or 2015. NRG has joined with US Climate Action Partnership (US CAP), a group of large corporations and environmental organizations, in encouraging the government to enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gases. This is an extraordinary group that goes to Washington asking the government to “Please regulate us!”
The key issue in clean coal technology is what to do with the captured CO2. An answer is sequestration – large scale underground storage, e.g. in deep salt formations. Development of this approach needs massive government support and a commercial, legal and regulatory framework, none of which presently exists. Mr. Crane suggested that such an effort could be funded from auctioning carbon allowances.
He closed by defining global warming as the big issue of our generation, an issue that will require increasingly severe solutions the longer we put off addressing it, with consequences that will be visited on our children and grandchildren.
The meeting ended at 11:30 AM after a lively question period.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Giordmaine
John Lasley introduced the speaker, David Crane, President and CEO of NRG Energy, a global power generation company. His presentation was entitled “Global Warming and Nuclear Energy.”
Mr. Crane began by affirming that global warming is a reality, and asking “OK there’s a problem here, how do we solve it?” He looks at global warming not as an environmental problem but as an energy problem. Each year the world’s energy consumption adds 5 billion tons more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than is absorbed. At the present rate of growth in energy use, the greenhouse temperature rise by the year 2100 will be 5 degrees Centigrade, with dire consequences worldwide.
As one example of the urgency of the problem, he cited the growth of coal consumption in China, equivalent to adding the entire annual coal production of the United States every six years.
In the speaker’s view the centerpiece of any approach to global warming must be clean coal, i.e. coal burning plants that don’t emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The other main approach is nuclear. NRG filed last year the first application for a new nuclear plant to be built in the U.S. since 1979. The new plant, and an adjacent existing plant, will save CO2 emission equal to that produced by the whole country of Belgium. He argued that the “happy four” -- solar, wind, energy efficiency and energy conservation -- are inadequate to meet a major fraction of the world’s energy needs.
The dominant source of CO2 emission is the power industry. If the U.S. power industry could be converted to a clean source of energy, clean electricity could largely solve the emission problem of the transport industry and other industrial sources of CO2.
Innovations in technology to address global warming have largely been coming from the United States, but support of large scale development to exploit our present advantage will require concerted government effort.
He cited American capitalism, natural disasters and war as the great agents of change in American history. How can the power of American capitalism be brought to bear on this issue? Emitting CO2 is now free. The first thing the government needs to do is put a price on CO2 emission – a cap and trade system – auctioning or allocating carbon allowances. Congress is working on such bills and all three presidential candidates favor it. Allowances have already worked in the reduction of acid rain.
NRG itself is the tenth largest power generator in the U.S. and a major CO2 emitter. If it were a country it would be one of the top 50 emitters in the world, emitting 68 million tons/year. By contrast, GE, for example, a much larger company, emits only 10.
What is NRG doing? It is developing clean coal technology using two approaches -- precombustion and postcombustion CO2 capture. It is developing nuclear power. The speaker sees no credible reason why we should not go back to building nuclear plants. He said that many environmentalists, originally anti-nuclear in the 1970s, are in agreement, not because they like nuclear but because global warming is such an overriding environmental threat to the earth. His company is first in the queue for Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of a new plant. The earliest they can be on line is 2014 or 2015. NRG has joined with US Climate Action Partnership (US CAP), a group of large corporations and environmental organizations, in encouraging the government to enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gases. This is an extraordinary group that goes to Washington asking the government to “Please regulate us!”
The key issue in clean coal technology is what to do with the captured CO2. An answer is sequestration – large scale underground storage, e.g. in deep salt formations. Development of this approach needs massive government support and a commercial, legal and regulatory framework, none of which presently exists. Mr. Crane suggested that such an effort could be funded from auctioning carbon allowances.
He closed by defining global warming as the big issue of our generation, an issue that will require increasingly severe solutions the longer we put off addressing it, with consequences that will be visited on our children and grandchildren.
The meeting ended at 11:30 AM after a lively question period.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Giordmaine