California Clean Energy Committee

December 12, 2020

Forbes:  "In California, the MegaDrought, that ended in 2017 ran for five years, severely straining water supplies, agricultural needs and wildlife. It clarified the need to build new desalination plants like every other modern arid population in the world. Most of Abu Dhabi’s gas-fired power plants provide electricity to their huge desalination plants that deliver over a billion gallons of drinking water a day, at about 40¢/gallon. And it tastes good, too, I’ve tried it."

"California needs 30 large desalination plants to deal with future megadroughts. They did recently build one in Carlsbad, but it’s not nearly enough."

"Most desalination plants in the world use fossil fuels to power them, but it’s even better to power them with nuclear energy. The new fleet of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) are ideal as they produce both thermal energy and electrical energy without producing greenhouse gases."

"But only 15 out of the thousands of desalination plants operating today worldwide are powered by nuclear. A small one is at the Canyon Diablo Nuclear Plant in California, slated to be closed soon. The plant could power several huge desalination plants for decades that could desalinate its own cooling water, removing the most commonly stated problem with the plant."

December 12, 2020

Vatican: "The five-year mark for the Paris Agreement is no time to rejoice, but rather recognize 'we're not doing well' in achieving its goals to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit global climate change, top Vatican officials said this week."

December 03, 2020

Associated Press:  "As an extreme year for hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves comes to an end, the head of the United Nations challenged world leaders to make 2021 the year that humanity ends its 'war on nature' and commits to a future free of planet-warming carbon pollution."

"With new reports highlighting 2020’s record-breaking weather and growing fossil fuels extraction that triggers global warming, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered yet another urgent appeal to curb climate change. It was tinged with optimism but delivered dire warnings, as the UN gears up for a Dec. 12 virtual climate summit in France on the 5th anniversary of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement."

“'The state of the planet is broken,' Guterres said in a speech at Columbia University. 'Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal.'”

November 22, 2020

POWER: "An assortment of entities have sought to intervene in a complaint alleging that the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and California state agencies violated bulk power system reliability standards when they approved retirement of the 2,240-MW Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) by 2025."

"CGNP also has the backing of the Climate Coalition, which said: 'We reject the popular opinions and complaints that nuclear plants are somehow not safe or represent unacceptable risk. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the global gold standard for nuclear safety, including seismic assessments. Over half a century of real-world evidence shows how nuclear is the safest of all reliable electricity sources.'”

"But the environmental group went even further, asking Diablo Canyon’s owners to 'immediately' make an application to the NRC for a 20-year operating license. It also urged for a 'halt' to the dismantlement of the now-shuttered San Onofre Power Plant and an exploration of 'the possibilities for refurbishment and re-licensing.'”

See Re: Diablo Is Marine Life Killer. "The affected area is about 4 acres of an ocean comprising some 62.8 million square miles, so the negative effect of Diablo's thermal discharge is vastly exaggerated."

See Californians for Green Nuclear Power; Generation Atomic; Climate Coalition; American Nuclear Society

November 20, 2020

U.S. Department of Energy: "Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released its Hydrogen Program Plan to provide a strategic framework for the Department’s hydrogen research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities."

Dr. Rita Baranwal: "@GovNuclear is currently working to demonstrate high- and low-temperature electrolysis at U.S. reactors to produce hydrogen at scale, which could open up new markets for the nuclear industry."

Idaho National Laboratory:  "Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy will work with Idaho National Laboratory to demonstrate a system that uses a nuclear plant’s steam and electricity to split water. The resulting hydrogen will initially be used at the power plant, but it could eventually be sold to other industries."

October 12, 2020

Wall Street Journal: "CEOs increasingly are embracing the idea that a company’s environmental, social and governance practices will play a role in its future success. For example, a quarter of CEOs now strongly agree that investing in climate-change initiatives could lead to significant new product and service opportunities for their businesses, up from 13% in 2010, according to a 2020 survey of more than 1,500 global CEOs by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, an accounting and consulting firm."

October 10, 2020

Fatih Birol: "The Covid-19 crisis not only delivered an unprecedented shock to the world economy. It also underscored the scale of the climate challenge we face: Even in the current deep recession, global carbon emissions remain unsustainable."

"If the world is to meet energy security and climate goals, clean energy must be at the core of post-Covid-19 economic recovery efforts. Strong growth in wind and solar energy and in the use of electric cars gives us grounds for hope, as does the promise of emerging technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture. But the scale of the challenge means we cannot afford to exclude any available technologies, including nuclear power — the world's second-largest source of low-carbon electricity after hydropower."

October 05, 2020

Wall Street Journal: "Rare-earth elements, used in batteries and electronics, are one of the 35 types of minerals that the U.S. government has deemed critical to economic and national security. The U.S. says it imports 80% of its rare-earth elements from China, with further supply coming indirectly from the country. For 14 of the 35 critical types of minerals, the U.S. has no domestic production. "

September 17, 2020

Washington Post: "The Colorado River’s average annual flow has declined by nearly 20 percent compared to the last century, and researchers have identified one of the main culprits: climate change is causing mountain snowpack to disappear, leading to increased evaporation."

August 31, 2020

Catherine Wolfram:  "As climate change leads to more heat waves and people like me eventually get air conditioning – both because it is hot and because the outside air is bad – heat waves will lead to higher and higher peak electricity demand."

"The thing about air conditioning demand is that it ramps up late in the afternoon, just as solar electricity is fading away."