Nuclear power will never have a fair shot as long as fossil fuel-burning power plants are able to use the atmosphere as a sewer. Consequently, the fossil fuel industries must clean up their messes:
- No new fossil fuel-buring power plants should be licensed to operate unless they are able to capture and sequester all emissions.
- In light of the economic importance of fossil fuels–and in light of the political skills of the fossil fuel industries–an agreement should be reached with the relevant stakeholders to phase out coal-fired power plants in exchange for market guarantees for synthetic gasoline. Such a plan would preserve all current coal mining jobs, create a significant oil export market in some countries, and cut per capita carbon dioxide emissions in those countries by 30%, if clean process heat (from, say, a nuclear reactor) were used to produce the required synthetic motor fuels.
- If no such plan is implemented, a carbon tax of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere is a good starting point. Ensuring that the fossil fuel industry pays for the mess that it makes is but an intermediate step to requiring them to meet the standard met by the nuclear industry long ago: perfect containment of waste. But it is an important step, one that will officially recognize for the first time that fossil fuel waste is a problem. Importantly, this tax must be levied on emissions, not production of energy or even production of carbon dioxide. If a coal-fired power plant successfully contains carbon dioxide instead of dumping it into the atmosphere, it should not be penalized with a tax on the production of carbon dioxide. Likewise, if a new coal-fired power plant is built that is more efficient than an old one, producing less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity output, it should not be penalized with a tax on the production of electricity. And most importantly, power plants that do not emit carbon dioxide should not be taxed as though they did. That approach would amount to an energy tax–which would lead to cutbacks in energy use that decrease turnover in the power plant fleet. Fleet turnover is an essential element of any market-based environmental strategy; without new, clean units replacing old, dirty units, no progress is made at all.
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This page was written by Stewart Peterson on June 19, 2009
