Now, why am I repeating myself about the grand German Nuclear Phase Out Bait and Switch?
Well I never tire of telling people the truth - which needs lots of repeating - that the anti-nuclear position is identical with the pro-coal position. But another reason is that Germany has sucessfully exported this shell game of pretend to Norway.
Norway, in case you don't know, is one of the world's largest exporters of dangerous fossil fuel - oil and gas - and is rich as a result. To mislead the rest of the world about the consequences of its actions, it continuously dangles the idea of carbon dioxide sequestration in it's North Sea Oil fields - but the real purpose of this "sequestration" is actually to drive out more dangerous fossil fuels from the fields, thus producing more carbon dioxide.
Now.
Norway, a small country, is actually a renewable paradise, and like all renewable paradises, the vast bulk of the renewable energy is hydroelectricity, although Norway does power ten homes with hydrogen powered by wind power to great international acclaim from people of the type who join Greenpeace. Millions of Norwegian homes that do not run on wind generated hydrogen are therefore excused, on the grounds that 0.01% of wind or solar power is more important than say 30% nuclear power, mostly because wind is spelled with a "W," and solar with an "S."
Norway was adamant at the recent EU meetings recently that nuclear is not a climate change solution, because nuclear is spelled with an "N."
Europe told Norway, along with peat and coal burning Ireland, and two other small nations mostly powered by hydroelectric - Iceland and Austria - that nuclear power is bad, bad, bad, bad. When the rest of Europe, told these small nations to get real, they got upset. They stomped out of the meeting, got together afterwards to announce that "nuclear is not the solution." In other words they got together out of earshot to announce "We are fools."
You heard it from Norway: Nuclear just doesn't work like natural gas.
Iceland, floating on magma, also uses geothermal energy. I don't have a problem with that, but I don't think they're in any position to lecture the Netherlands or Slovenia either just because they sit on a geological hotspot and have access to hydroelectricity. (We'll see who's laughing when the glaciers are gone.) In a future diary I will discuss whether Iceland could be the Saudi Arabia of hydrogen - or hydrogen derived fuel export - the answer is "no."
Nobody I'm sure can tell what the hell Ireland is doing in this debate. It is 93% powered by dangerous fossil fuels. There is no permanent repository for dangerous fossil fuel waste and Ireland has no plans either to build such a respository or to eliminate fossil fuels.
There is only one nation in Europe that once used large amounts of fossil fuels to generate electricity and then largely phased them out: France. At the recent EU energy and climate change meetings France insisted that Europe could not tape a sign to its back that said "Kick me, I'm stupid." This generated a lot of hard feelings since some Europeans demanded their independent right to wear such a sign.
And what about the renewable (hydroelectric) powered Norwegians? Well they had so much hydroelectric and such a small population, they didn't need anything but dams.
Up until now. The times they are a changing.
Norway just finished its first natural gas fueled power plant. This plant in a small country will contribute 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, a fact, apparently that is offset by announcing that the plant "could" sequester carbon dioxide, although it won't sequester carbon dioxide.
The other strategy for dealing with the carbon dioxide for this plant is to announce that it is immune to laws on carbon restriction and that the carbon dioxide released "doesn't count." This is one of the most useful bits of machinery ever imported into Norway from Germany, the "sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist," machine.
We read:
Rygarden will be relatively inefficient, using only 58% of the total energy, rather than the potential of above 85% for combined heat and power. Naturkraft will also be exempt from the Norwegian CO2 tax to ensure the plants are profitable. The groups point out that this hidden subsidy will cost around NOK740m (more than US$100m) every year.
The bold is mine.
People always tell me that the choice between nuclear and fossil fuels is a "false dichotomy." This is nonsense.
Germany and Norway are experimental data points demonstrating that it is impossible to eliminate the use of dangerous fossil fuels without appeal to nuclear power.
I've said all of this before now, but it bears repeating because it is important.
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