I have been critical of wind as a source of electricity generation down through the decades. Now I think otherwise.
My objections began when wind and its companion renewable energy resource, solar, were first pushed not because they were mature technologies capable of doing the job, but because they were offered at a time when the environmental movement was pursuing a policy of anything but nuclear.
But wind and solar have come of age and now represent a valuable part of the energy mix.
In journalism, I have always believed that the reporter in the field should be listened to over the editor at headquarters. In electricity, I have always believed the utilities know best.
Nowadays, the utilities are deeply committed to wind. It is cheap and its intermittency is conquered by the increasing deployment of affordable batteries, where the technology is evolving at great speed.
So Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s announcement of the suspension of five wind farm leases off the East Coast is perplexing. It is as perplexing as his claim — without evidence — that the windmills pose a national security risk.
The Pentagon has long said that it has overcome the interference with surface radar posed by the turbines.
President Trump has been hostile to wind ever since he lost his battle to keep the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm from being located within sight of his resort, Trump International Golf Links, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
U.S. utilities want — indeed, need — all five of the affected wind farms. The three-month suspension of licenses, which if extended, will aggravate electricity shortages in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states in the years ahead.
China, by contrast, is forging ahead with cutting-edge wind energy, including two behemoth, 20-megawatt offshore turbines, one of which is floating.
The country has also planned a 50-MW, twin-rotor turbine that will be a tourist attraction for cruise ships because of its sheer size. It will tower over 1,000 feet above the ocean.
These turbines are so large that they will create microclimates, and their full environmental impact isn’t known.
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Nuclear’s Embarrassment of Choice
Utilities are keen to have the benefits of new nuclear plants but are reluctant to commit.
The problem: an embarrassment of riches, plus a fear that fusion may actually be closer than they had ever thought.
It seems to me that the nuclear industry needs on-ramps for new nuclear plants, particularly for small modular reactors. The fear is that the pioneer reactor bought by a utility may not be the one that triumphs either in the market or technologically over time, leaving it with a stranded investment. It would be a multibillion-dollar mistake.
Britain tried out two reactor types when the nuclear power age began and paid a price for their difference. The first was the natural uranium Magnox and the second, the Advanced Gas Reactor. But they settled for a light water reactor from Westinghouse for Sizewell B as its last reactor deployment of that cycle.
By midyear, the Department of Energy hopes that 11 companies it is working with will be able to demonstrate criticality. Observers are quick to point out that only two or three of these will have a reactor and the rest will be more like laboratory demonstrations.
I have long argued that the trouble with nuclear power is that it offers an infinity of choice. For instance, a new automobile typically features four wheels positioned at each corner, and you can choose between an electric or internal combustion engine. In nuclear power the choices are endless, as demonstrated by the 70 or more companies working on SMRs worldwide.
When the shakeout comes, it will be brutal.
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Coal Needs a Technological Breakthrough
When John Ward, executive director of the National Coal Transport Association, asked me to speak to their members in a virtual conference call, I realized that coal is overdue for a technological breakthrough.
Wind power has evolved since the early experiment I saw at the Sandia National Laboratory in the 1970s. The earlier expectation was that thermal solar — mirrors and towers — was the ticket, but solar has gone for photovoltaics. Photovoltaics are a triumph in power delivery, ease of installation, and versatility in where they are located, from a roof top to a field or between runways at airports.
Coal, to my mind, lags in tech breakthroughs. Combustion is more efficient than it used to be, but still it is short of serial breakthroughs which made gas the fuel of choice — these ranged from the aero-derivative turbine to the whole suite of technologies behind fracking.
Over the decades, there has been a lot of research on the ways to use coal, from magnetohydrodynamics to converting it to syngas, to producing that gas in situ in the mine, as well as carbon capture and storage.
Maybe it is time for back-to-the-future for coal.
Just as much of the technology in SMRs was developed at the national laboratories in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly at Oak Ridge, so there are many coal technologies that could be revived if coal is to be more than a declining power source, getting a brief reprieve from the Trump administration.
The utilities work on 25-year cycles, not the four years of politics. They need to know that technologies and fuels have staying power.
Note
This week “White House Chronicle,” my weekly news and public affairs program on PBS and SiriusXM Radio, features Mark Gabriel, president and CEO of United Power, a Colorado co-op. You can watch the episode on whchronicle.com or listen to it on SiriusXM Radio’s P.O.T.U.S., Channel 124, or to the podcast on your favorite platform.