One November Monday, I was listlessly scrolling through Twitter on my lunch break when a photo caught my eye. It showed a group of activists blocking a bridge in central London.

They carried a banner reading “Tell the Truth. We’re F*****d.” and placards with more slogans: “climate breakdown kills” and “rebel for life”. A line of cars was waiting impatiently to pass and some police were visible, but the activists looked cheerful and determined.

I stopped eating my disappointing sandwich and looked closer at the picture. This was a very different group of environmental activists than those clichés I was used to seeing on the news.

Deeply concerned

For a start, there were children on the street too, and having fun by the look of it. And the adults themselves were such a mixed group – as well as some who looked every inch the activist, there were others who looked just like my mum and dad.

After some digging, I discovered who this group were. These ‘Extinction Rebellion’ people were responsible for a wave of peaceful civil disobedience across the country.

This had culminated, a few days previously, with 6,000 people blocking major bridges in the centre of London and dozens willingly putting themselves forward to be arrested for their peaceful resistance.

They were demanding that the government and media tell the truth about the climate emergency and ecological collapse.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been deeply concerned about climate change, climate crisis, climate catastrophe – every year a new and more horrifying noun is attached to the phrase!

End-of-the-world

As a teenager, I’d read obsessively about the looming threats of biodiversity loss and mass extinction, keeping myself up at night worrying. As an ostensibly “wiser” adult, I’d learnt to push these things to the back of my mind and get on with my life.

Now it all came rushing back. That one picture – the devastating truthfulness of the messages, the willingness of these people to go to such lengths to get those messages across – brought it home to me once again: climate breakdown is not something for future generations to worry about. This is an emergency right now.

In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the tone and content of scientific reports on these issues.

When I was at school we were told that it was important to move towards green energy, that people had to drive less, take fewer flights, have their homes insulated properly – but what would happen if we failed to make these adjustments was always a little vague.

Sure, you had some scientists making end-of-the-world predictions, and yes, some polar bears might lose their habitats, but overall we were given the impression that the truly dire consequences were due “by the end of the century” and that we still had time to avert them.

Democratic contract

But following my chance encounter with that powerful photograph, I browsed through newspaper pieces and the odd accessible journal article with increasing horror.

Clearly, the situation – or our understanding of it – had changed quite a lot since I’d last properly looked into the science. This isn’t a distant threat – we are already in the first stages of total ecological collapse. It’s not only the polar bears we should be concerned about, but a global mass extinction event that could spell the end of our civilisation.

For a few weeks, I was overcome by depression and, if I’m honest, a healthy dose of apathy. All the most powerful companies and governments in the world are invested in the status quo, so what can possibly be done to change our path?

But slowly this apathy evolved into a feeling of injustice, and then rage. Ecological collapse is threatening the extinction of our species and our elected politicians have failed us completely.

They have broken the democratic contract to protect us and fight for our interests, instead looking after themselves and the interests of a tiny, wealthy fraction of our species. Now I truly understood what motivated those protesters on the bridge.

Civil disobedience

My first Extinction Rebellion meeting was held in a room packed with new members like me. It was comforting and exciting just to be with so many other people who felt the same as I did and who were willing to do something to fight back.

As I looked around the faces gathered there, I was struck by the same thing I had noticed in the photo: these were people of all ages, from all walks of life, all cultures. Now, we were all activists.

Each of us found a role that suited. I mainly help with the XR podcast and talking to journalists about what we are doing; others have launched themselves into planning nonviolent direct actions, or helping with fundraising, or making Extinction Rebellion artworks – all sorts.

But the big thing we are building up to at the moment is an event called the Spring Uprising: a two-day festival with music industry supporters like Boomtown and Ninja Tune records.

It will be happening on the weekend of March 15-16 in Bristol in a huge space called Motion. Lots of top artists who support what we do will be playing, alongside a programme of talks and mass training in civil disobedience.

Criminal inaction

This is the first time Extinction Rebellion has organised a major event that doesn’t involve any civil disobedience – it’s all totally legal.

But with further investigation, I found that the Spring Uprising is part of our Regenerative Culture, which aims to build a progressive and sustainable movement involving training, community building, idea-sharing and celebration.

There’s only so far you can go through the continuous push for action. You burn out. This Spring Uprising festival is about embodying the future we all need to adapt to.

It’s a post-capitalist, co-creative gathering that prepares us to engage with the crisis, as well as discover all the things we gain when we look to the world we know is possible… oh, and have a damn good time doing it.

This is all in preparation for the International Rebellion beginning April 15, when we will directly challenge the government’s criminal inaction on the swiftly changing climate, ecological breakdown and species extinction by taking to the streets, and staying there.

This Author

David Anderson works in the media industry and works with the press team of Extinction Rebellion. Image: Ruth Davey.

It is not easy to be hopeful about the future. Every day it seems a new publication is released about ongoing ecological violence, worrying economic instability, growing geopolitical tensions, and deepening cultural malaise.

While we may still have the capacity avert ‘worst case’ scenarios, it is becoming increasingly plausible that deepening crises lie ahead. This raises questions about how we might best manage crisis situations, if or when they emerge or intensify. 

How, for example, would an ordinary middleclass consumer – you or me, perhaps – cope in crisis conditions that radically reduced material living standards and enforced a ‘simpler way’ of living? 

Reduced consumption 

I want to explore the possibility that radically reduced but sufficient consumption could be both manageable and consistent with a high quality of life, provided we are prepared for such circumstances, both as households and communities.

For those who find deepening crisis a plausible future, I contend that embracing a simpler life in material terms should be strategy to take seriously as a means of increasing resilience in turbulent times.

To be clear, I am certainly not seeking to romanticise genuine material destitution, which everyone recognises as inconsistent with human flourishing. Even in affluent nations like Australia many people still struggle to make ends meet, so counselling such households to ‘simplify’ is neither fair nor useful.   

Furthermore, if radical simplicity were to be imposed upon people suddenly and without anticipation and preparation, most people would doubtless find such dramatic change existentially confronting and distressing – and understandably so. Life satisfaction would likely decline, perhaps significantly.  

But what if, in advance of collapse conditions, households and communities began voluntarily downshifting their material living standards, increasing home-based production and self-sufficiency,sharing more, cutting out superfluous consumption and waste, and preparing for far more austere material futures? 

Affluent culture

In order to thrive in these more austere futures – whether voluntarily embraced or externally imposed – it seems clear that a deep re-evaluation of affluent material culture is required.

High-consumption nations, including Australia, throw out disturbing amounts of food, casually jump on planes as the climate heats up, get deeper into debt buying our favourite consumer gadgets and some of the world’s largest homes, only to store our superfluous stuff in over-crowded garages or support the growing storage industry.  

In a crisis or collapse situation, this form of life could be taken from us in a flash. To increase resilience in the face of this plausible future, we would do well to reimagine the good life beyond consumer culture and explore ways to live well on less – much less.  

Imagine, for example, a life with little discretionary income beyond basic needs, only buying second-hand clothes, never wasting food, and having significant financial pressure to maximise frugality and self-sufficiency in the household. Imagine, that is, having to apply the Depression era slogan: ‘use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.’ Would this necessarily be so bad? 

Or perhaps we have to put a woolen jumper on rather than turning on the heater, or resist the temptation to turn on the air-conditioner in the summer. Perhaps we might find ourselves having to bike to work or take public transport as the price of petrol becomes unaffordable, or to dig up the lawn and maximise food production because the two-income household becomes a one-income household as economic times worsen.

Frugal hedonists 

The interesting thing is that a growing subculture of ‘voluntary simplifiers’ and ‘frugal hedonists’ are choosing these material practices not because they have to, but because they want to.

In other words, they are exchanging superfluous stuff for more time to do things other than consume… and they are finding that it is a good trade. 

Could these people have something necessary to teach broader culture about managing or even thriving in conditions of reduced material abundance? 

It seems a low but sufficient material standard is enough to live a good life, but this requires post-consumerist attitudes to material culture that recognise the limited role of material things in producing human wellbeing. 

As the pioneering environmentalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote: ‘Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.’ He is one amongst many throughout history who have advocated enlightened material restraint as the pathway to genuine happiness and freedom. 

A prosperous descent? 

The same material living standard can be experienced very differently depending on the ideas and values one brings to experience. Mindfulness matters. Getting those ideas and values right is therefore of critical importance, especially in an age when crisis and collapse are plausible futures.

There are, of course, even more fundamental reasons to embrace the values of frugality and material sufficiency – justice and sustainability. According to the ‘ecological footprint’ analysis, the world would need more than four planets worth of biocapacity if the global population had the same material demands and impacts per capita as Australians. 

This means that moving toward a fair share ‘one planet’ way of life implies significant degrowth in rich nations – that is, planned economic contraction. Embracing a ‘simpler way’, therefore, seems part of any transition to a just, sustainable, and flourishing world. 

From various angles – social, ecological, personal – embracing more frugal ways in advance of recession or collapse seems to be very coherent strategy for building resilience and ensuring that any descent ahead is prosperous.

This Author 

Dr Samuel Alexander is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also co-director of the Simplicity Institute and a research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.

Everyone has seen nutritional programmes and fad diets come and go. However, some meal plans make so much sense and provide so many benefits, they stand the test of time. One such dietary program involves plant-based nutrition.

As population continues to expand across the globe, determining how to feed this burgeoning population presents a serious challenge. Raising cattle and pigs for protein uses up a huge amount of arable land that could otherwise sustain greater plant-based food crops for human consumption,  ethical concerns aside. 

As increasing numbers of people turn to vegan and vegetarian diets for reasons from concerns of animal cruelty to a desire to increase their sustainability quotient, colleges and universities have begun incorporating plant-based nutrition courses as staples of their curricula.

Plant-based nutrition

Plant-based nutrition involves the majority of an individual’s food intake stemming from plant, not animal, sources. While many people automatically equate plant-based nutrition with vegetarianism and veganism, plant-based nutrition programs vary, with some actually including meat or dairy products in limited quantities for a variety of health needs and dietary reasons.

In addition to limiting consumption of meat products to a minimal level, plant-based nutrition programs focus on the consumption of whole foods over their refined and processed kin. Individuals following a plant-based nutrition program obtain the majority of their calories from raw or gently cooked vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes and nuts.

Most people following a plant-based nutrition program care deeply about choosing foods that encourage good health, therefore, they limit their consumption of refined, white flours and sugars as well.

Plant-based nutritional programs take many forms and can be tailored to accommodate individuals suffering from intestinal issues such as Celiac disease or Crohn’s. Both grain and gluten-free plant-based diets exist, although individuals following such plans need to take extra care to get adequate protein without the complex amino acids found in many grains.

Other plant-based nutritional programs cater to vegans who avoid eating or using any animal products whatsoever.

Animal welfare 

Plant-based nutrition programs benefit not only human beings but the planet earth as a living entity as well. Plant-based nutrition plans eliminate the need for factory farms where countless animals suffer and die in deplorable conditions. 

Animal welfare enthusiasts who switch to a plant-based diet often do so in order to do their part to minimize the suffering of innocent animals raised in miserable conditions only to meet their end in the slaughterhouse.

Additionally, switching to a plant-based diet minimizes the environmental impact of mass food production. Raising animals produces agriculture runoff that flows into waterways and groundwater reserves, contaminating them with harmful pathogens.

In addition, the raising of livestock for food produces 18 percent of all greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere — more than the amount produced by trucks, cars and other modes of transportation such as ships.

Switching to plant-based nutrition could even help alleviate world hunger as well. Raising livestock uses valuable water, land and food resources that could otherwise be used to cultivate a vastly greater amount of food. Indeed, producing just one kilogram of beef requires 25 kilograms of grain, grain that could otherwise feed hungry human beings.

Finally, human beings’ addiction to eating meat may prove hazardous to our health. Farmers pump animals full of antibiotics to prevent illness. These antibiotics lead to the production of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, and when these strains get passed on to humans through the food they eat, it can lead to serious illness and even death.

Meaningful education 

While embarking on a plant-based diet requires no special training or certification, learning how to properly nourish ourselves with plants prevents possible malnutrition if done incorrectly. 

But finding a quality plant-based nutritional course can present a challenge, as many traditional certification paths discuss nutrition as a whole, paying only cursory attention to those wishing to embrace vegetarian or vegan lifestyles. Still, a number of colleges and universities have implemented certification programs specifically in plant-based nutrition, up to and including PhD level coursework.

One of the most important things every individual can do — and could potentially learn how to do better by participating in an official program — is to learn more about where their money is going when it comes to food. It’s essential to research businesses and organizations before buying from them to find out if they truly live by the principles you value. 

With any new trend from Paleo to plant-based nutrition, business owners rush to cash in, oftentimes mislabeling their eateries and products just to take advantage of the hype. Proper education and training to help those wishing to maintain an ethical and sustainable diet, identify others who truly embrace this lifestyle, and plant-based nutrition programs could heavily aid in that quest.

Interested but not sure where to start? Those wishing to embrace a plant-based lifestyle can give up meat cold turkey or they can gradually reduce their animal consumption to no more than once per week or on special occasions only. Those uncertain if a plant-based diet will work for them can ease into the transition by spending just one week following a plant-based diet. 

Environmental catastrophe

Even individuals with gastrointestinal disorders or elite athletes training for competition can easily find one-week plant-based diet plans online tailored to their specific needs.

Discussing your unique health needs with a doctor is important, too. This is another area where plant-based nutrition programs could truly revolutionize the way we discuss and approach our diets.

With planet earth teetering on the edge of environmental catastrophe due to climate change, everyone has an obligation to do their part to reduce their carbon footprint, and switching to a plant-based diet offers one way to do so. Furthermore, switching to a plant-based diet prevents animal and human suffering alike by utilizing farmland to grow plants instead of raising cattle.

Whether you choose to go fully vegan or simply reduce your meat consumption, switching to a plant-based diet can ensure you get the nutrition you need to perform at your best while benefiting the world at large.

This Author 

Kate Harveston is a vegan health and sustainability writer and the editor of women’s wellness blog, So Well, So Woman.

The big push to go digital – paying with an app, not a note; e-bank statements; the paperless office – resonates with some people concerned about the environment.

However, it is increasingly apparent that some of the companies espousing these ideas are motivated more by profit than ecology. So let’s examine the claim that paperless is environmentally friendly. 

Totally sustainable forestry practices in Europe’s paper industry are fast approaching – contrary to popular belief.

At present, 74.7 percent of pulp delivered to paper and board mills in Europe is forest management certified by independent forest certification schemes.

Carbon footprint

The notion that paper consumption is stripping the planet is not exactly accurate either, being that the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon, for example, is the result of agricultural and cattle-ranching expansion. 

Crucially, European forests grew by 44,000 Square Kilometres – an area bigger than Switzerland – between 2005 and 2015. Additionally, paper is only responsible for around 13 percent of world forestry harvests.

When new trees are planted as part of sustainable forestry practices, they extract carbon from the air and store it in wood over their life-time. This directly reduces greenhouse gases.

Two Sides, a paper industry advocate countering many of the voices in the corporate world who condemn paper in order to promote their own digital services and products, writes: “The paper, pulp, and print sector is one of the lowest industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses, accounting for one percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” 

Crucially, being made from a sustainable crop, cash outshines the oily PVC plastic of debit and credit cards. Soon, with the adoption of modern green energy to power ATMs, and as electric powered vehicles revolutionise the transportation cost of cash for the environment, we will see the carbon footprint of cash only reduce.

Mobile phones

The same cannot be said of the growing beast that is the digital payments system. With every new payment app or fintech company that emerges, yet more energy is consumed, taking its toll on the environment.

Paying with cash is far more environmentally responsible than digital payment alternatives due to the sustainable resources used to make it, contrary to the narrative being spun by card companies and banks.

 The cashless society that many people want to see happen is not eco-friendly at all.

Computers, mobile phone networks, and data and server centres are partly responsible for the destruction of over 600 square miles of forest in the US alone, due to their unprecedented consumption of electricity.

This is, in turn, tied to the coal industry. Stopping to consider the ecological cost of the hallowed microchip can be a startling experience.

A report by the United Nations University found that the most conservative figures for the quantities of fossil fuel and chemical inputs used to produce and use a single 2g microchip are estimated at 1600g and 72g, respectively.

Williams, Ayres, and Heller, the report’s authors, said: “Secondary materials used in production total 630 times the mass of the final product, indicating that the environmental weight of semiconductors far exceeds their small size.”

 That is to say that the tiny microchips which make up the fabric of the digital revolution are not terribly good for the planet. When compared with a car – which has the relative input/output ratio of 1:2 – this becomes all the more shocking. Ultra-purified carbon, comes at a somewhat impure cost.

Then we have to consider the consumption process associated with mobile phones, the devices which we are being told will replace money with their digital payments.

Aside from the damaging environmental effects of large-scale raw mineral extraction activity, the oil and metal mining industries are not without other issues.

It is quite easy to find potential roadblocks on the horizon when looking in particular at the metallic components of your average smartphone. The impending global copper supply deficit notwithstanding, there are an average of 62 elements found in a handheld device, few of which are sustainable in any real sense.

Chief among concerns are the 16 out of 17 of the world’s rarest minerals which make our digital brains so effective – elements like gold and dysprosium.

Global demand

A study by Yale University concluded: “Many of the metals needed to feed the surging global demand for high-tech products, from smart phones to solar panels, cannot be replaced, leaving some markets vulnerable if resources become scarce”.

The authors added to this conclusion that substitutes for such metals and metalloids are either insufficient alternatives, for their relevant purposes, or they are non-existent.

If we then consider the much more mundane issue of e-waste itself, we start to form a clearer picture. According to The Global E-Waste Monitor 2017, we are now producing 44.7 million metric tonnes annually, of laptops, computers, mobile phones, and various other gadgetry. The authors of the E-Waste report indicate dryly that this is the equivalent 4500 Eiffel Towers.

Global data centre traffic for 2020 is predicted to be 7 times that of 2015, increasing the strain on energy consumption and involving more and more consumers in ever shrinking consumption cycles. The average life-cycle of a first use mobile phone in the UK in 2015 was 23.5 months. However, in China where mobile payments have shot ahead of traditional payments it was just 19.5 months per phone per user. 

Paper, certainly, does not deserve the harsh criticism it receives – particularly, the responsible, sustainable practices of European producers. Perhaps we should begin to consider the possibility that, in spite of commercial pronouncements, going digital is not as green as we thought.

This Author

Robert Moore is a retired biology professor interested in matters such as the environment and the impact of the industry on the climate. He is now  an independant environmental consultant working for small to medium-size companies that want to minimimize or eliminate environmental damage.

The nuclear industry is heavily promoting the idea of building small modular reactors (SMRs), with near-zero prospects for new large power reactors in many countries. These reactors would have a capacity of under 300 megawatts (MW), whereas large reactors typically have a capacity of 1,000 MW.

Construction at reactor sites would be replaced with standardised factory production of reactor components then installation at the reactor site, thereby driving down costs and improving quality control.

The emphasis in this article is on the questionable economics of SMRs, but a couple of striking features of the SMR universe should be mentioned (for details see the latest issue of Nuclear Monitor).

Fossil fuels and militarism

First, the enthusiasm for SMRs has little to do with climate-friendly environmentalism. About half of the SMRs under construction (Russia’s floating power plant, Russia’s RITM-200 icebreaker ships, and China’s ACPR50S demonstration reactor) are designed to facilitate access to fossil fuel resources in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Another example comes from Canada, where one application of SMRs under consideration is providing power and heat for the extraction of hydrocarbons from oil sands.

A second striking feature of the SMR universe is that it is deeply interconnected with militarism:

• Argentina’s experience and expertise with small reactors derives from its historic weapons program, and its interest in SMRs is interconnected with its interest in small reactors for naval propulsion.
• China’s interest in SMRs extends beyond fossil fuel mining and includes powering the construction and operation of artificial islands in its attempt to secure claim to a vast area of the South China Sea.
• Saudi Arabia’s interest in SMRs is likely connected to its interest in developing nuclear weapons or a latent weapons capability.
• A subsidiary of Holtec International has actively sought a military role, inviting the US National Nuclear Security Administration to consider the feasibility of using a proposed SMR to produce tritium, used to boost the explosive yield of nuclear weapons.
• Proposals are under consideration in the US to build SMRs at military bases and perhaps even to use them to power forward operating bases.
• In the UK, Rolls-Royce is promoting SMRs on the grounds that “a civil nuclear UK SMR programme would relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability”.

Independent economic assessments

SMRs will almost certainly be more expensive than large reactors (more precisely, construction costs will be lower but the electricity produced by SMRs will be more expensive).

They will inevitably suffer diseconomies of scale: a 250 MW SMR will generate 25 percent as much power as a 1,000 MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 percent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.

It’s highly unlikely that potential savings arising from standardised factory production will make up for those diseconomies of scale.

William Von Hoene, senior vice president at Exelon, has expressed scepticism about SMRs: “Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that’s associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive,” he said last year.

“It’s possible that that would evolve over time, and we’re involved in looking at that technology. Right now they’re prohibitively expensive.”

Every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors.

A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated costs of A$180‒184/MWh (US$127‒130) for large pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors, compared to A$198‒225 (US$140‒159) for SMRs.

A 2015 report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicts that electricity costs from SMRs will typically be 50−100 percent higher than for current large reactors, although it holds out some hope that large volume factory production of SMRs could help reduce costs.

A report by the consultancy firm Atkins for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that electricity from the first SMR in the UK would be 30 percent more expensive than power from large reactors, because of diseconomies of scale and the costs of deploying first-of-a-kind technology.

An article by four current and former researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considered options for the development of an SMR market in the US.

They concluded that it would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades.

No market

SMR enthusiasts envisage a large SMR market emerging in the coming years. A frequently cited 2014 report by the UK National Nuclear Laboratory estimates 65‒85 gigawatts (GW) of installed SMR capacity by 2035, valued at £250‒400 billion.

But in truth there is no market for SMRs.

Thomas Overton, associate editor of POWER magazine, wrote in 2014: “At the graveyard wherein resides the “nuclear renaissance” of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the small modular reactor (SMR)…

“Over the past year, the SMR industry has been bumping up against an uncomfortable and not-entirely-unpredictable problem: It appears that no one actually wants to buy one.”

Let’s briefly return to the National Nuclear Laboratory’s estimate of 65‒85 GW of installed SMR capacity by 2035. It is implausible and stands in contrast to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s estimate of <1 GW to 21 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But even if the 65‒85 GW figure proved to be accurate, it would pale in comparison to renewable energy sources.

As of the of end of 2017, global renewable energy capacity was 2,195 GW including 178 GW of new capacity added in 2017. On current trends, even in the wildest dreams of SMR enthusiasts, SMR capacity would be roughly 50 times less than renewable capacity by 2035.

SMRs under construction

SMR projects won’t be immune from the major cost overruns that have crippled large reactor projects (such as the AP1000 projects in the US that bankrupted Westinghouse). Indeed cost overruns have already become the norm for SMR projects.

Estimated construction costs for Russia’s floating nuclear power plant (with two 35-MW ice-breaker-type reactors) have increased more than four-fold and now equate to over US$10 billion / GW (US$740 million / 70 MW).

A 2016 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency report said that electricity produced by the Russian floating plant is expected to cost about US$200 per megawatt-hour (MWh), with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.

The CAREM (Central Argentina de Elementos Modulares) SMR under construction in Argentina illustrates the gap between SMR rhetoric and reality. Cost estimates have ballooned. In 2004, when the CAREM reactor was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated an overnight cost of US$1 billion / GW for an integrated 300 MW plant.

When construction began in 2014, the estimated cost of the CAREM reactor was US$17.8 billion / GW (US$446 million for a 25-MW reactor). By April 2017, the cost estimate had increased to US$21.9 billion / GW (US$700 million with the capacity uprated from 25 MW to 32 MW).

The CAREM project is years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further. In 2014, first fuel loading was expected in 2017 but completion is now anticipated in November 2021.

Little credible information is available on the cost of China’s demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). If the 210 MW demonstration reactor is completed and successfully operated, China reportedly plans to upscale the design to 655 MW.

According to the World Nuclear Association, China’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology at Tsinghua University expects the cost of a 655 MW HTGR to be 15-20 percent more than the cost of a conventional 600 MW PWR.

A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost of China’s demonstration HTGR is about twice the initial cost estimates, with increases due to higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and increased costs associated with project delays. The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of the demonstration HTGR is US$6,000/kW.

NuScale Power’s creative accounting

Cost estimates for planned SMRs are implausible. US company NuScale Power is targeting a cost of just US$65/MWh for its first plant. But a study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a cost of US$159/MWh based on the US NuScale SMR design. That’s 2.4 times higher than NuScale’s estimate.

A 2018 Lazard report estimates costs of US$112‒189/MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2‒3 times cheaper than large nuclear is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65/MWh, that would still be well above Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29‒56) and utility-scale solar (US$36‒46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4.2 billion / GW is implausible. The latest estimate for the AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia is US$17.4 billion / GW.

NuScale wants us to believe that it will build SMRs at less than one-quarter of that cost, even though every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

No-one wants to pay for SMRS

No company, utility, consortium or national government is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is at the very essence of the concept of SMRs ‒ mass, modular factory construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities.

In early 2019, Kevin Anderson, North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider, said that there “is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions.”

Anderson argued that it is time to convince investors that the SMR sector is ready for scale-up financing but that it will not be easy: “Even for those sympathetic, the collapse of projects such as V.C Summer does little to convince financiers that this sector is mature and competent enough to deliver investable projects on time and at cost.”

A 2018 US Department of Energy report states that to make a “meaningful” impact, about US$10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But there’s no indication or likelihood that the US government will subsidise the industry to that extent.

To date, the US government has offered US$452 million to support private-sector SMR projects, of which US$111 million was wasted on the mPower project that was abandoned in 2017.

The collapse of the mPower project was one of a growing number of setbacks for the industry in the US. Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D last year.

Westinghouse sharply reduced its investment in SMRs after failing to secure US government funding. MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa after failing to secure legislation that would force rate-payers to part-pay construction costs. 

The MidAmerican story has a happy ending: the company has invested over US$10 billion in renewables in Iowa and is now working towards its vision “to generate renewable energy equal to 100 percent of its customers’ usage on an annual basis.”

Canada and the UK

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has set the goal of siting a new demonstration SMR at its Chalk River site by 2026. But serious discussions about paying for a demonstration SMR ‒ let alone a fleet of SMRs ‒ have not yet begun.

The Canadian SMR Roadmap website simply states: “Appropriate risk sharing among governments, power utilities and industry will be necessary for SMR demonstration and deployment in Canada.”

Companies seeking to pursue SMR projects in the UK are seeking several billion pounds from the government to build demonstration plants. But nothing like that amount of money has been made available.

In 2018, the UK government agreed to provide £56 million towards the development and licensing of advanced modular reactor designs and £32 million towards advanced manufacturing research.

An industry insider told the Guardian in 2017: “It’s a pretty half-hearted, incredibly British, not-quite-good-enough approach. Another industry source questioned the credibility of SMR developers: “Almost none of them have got more than a back of a fag packet design drawn with a felt tip.”

State-run SMR programs

State-run SMR programs ‒ such as those in Argentina, China, Russia, and South Korea ‒ might have a better chance of steady, significant funding, but to date the investments in SMRs have been minuscule compared to investments in other energy programs.

And again, wherever you look there’s nothing to justify the high hopes (and hype) of SMR enthusiasts. South Korea, for example, won’t build any of its domestically-designed SMART SMRs in South Korea (“this is not practical or economic” according to the World Nuclear Association).

South Korea’s plan to export SMART technology to Saudi Arabia is problematic and may in any case be in trouble.

China and Argentina hope to develop a large export market for their high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and small pressurised water reactors, respectively, but so far all they can point to are partially-built demonstration reactors that have been subject to significant cost overruns and delays.

All of the above can be read as an obituary for SMRs. The likelihood that they will establish anything more than a small, niche market is vanishingly small.

​This Author

Dr Jim Green is the lead author of a Nuclear Monitor report on small modular reactors, and national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.

We have compiled a list of 25 inspirational female climate leaders who will be shaping the climate agenda in 2019 to mark International Women’s Day.

We have consulted close to 100  people in the field to compile the definitive list.

We feature some well-known activists such as Greta Thunberg and also place the spotlight on people such as the Vietnames activist Nguy Thi Khan who are doing incredible work without the same intensity of media interest. 

Greta Thunberg

Student Activist, Sweden

This 16 year old Swedish student has sparked a global youth movement to take a bold stance on climate action. Greta has challenged world leaders with her powerful speeches, most recently at the World Social Forum in Davos in January and during the UN Climate summit in Poland in December 2018; “You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes”.

@GretaThunberg ‏

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

US Congresswoman, United States

The youngest woman to be ever elected to congress, and an example of a millennial in power, AOC has been using her political position to draw attention to social and environmental issues as well as women’s rights and equality. Her work on and in promoting the Green New Deal in the U.S. has made her the voice of climate change concern in a political environment heavily criticised for climate change denial.

@AOC

Patricia Espinosa

Executive Secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Mexico

Espinosa was appointed the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2016, giving her a key role in designing the implementation processes of the Paris Agreement. As the highest diplomat for the UN climate space, she will be safeguarding the implementation of the Paris Agreement from 2020 onwards.

@PEspinosaC ‏

Christiana Figueres

Former Executive Secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Costa Rica

As executive secretary of the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010 to 2015, Figueres was a driving force in the creation of the Paris Agreement. Since leaving office, she has continued throwing her diplomatic prowess in the balance through her organisation Mission 2020, pressing countries around the world to raise their climate ambition.

@CFigueres ‏

Tasneem Essop

Executive Director of Climate Action Network International (CAN), South Africa

Tasneem was recently appointed as director for the largest network of environmental organisations in the world, CAN, bringing along her experience as provincial environment minister of South Africa and climate advisor at WWF. Essop is known for her work promoting the links between social justice and climate change, in her own words:  “Climate Change is a Poverty Issue”.

@TasneemEssop

‏Yamide Dagnet
Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute (WRI), Guadeloupe

Dagnet is a climate change scholar leading the research team on the implementation of the Paris Agreement at WRI, a leading environmental think tank. Dagnet previously worked as the manager of the UK greenhouse gas inventory (NAEI) and was the UK Deputy Focal Point for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

@YDagnet ‏

Nirupabai

Environmental Activist, India

As a Kawar Adivasi woman from Korba, an Indian coal mining district, Nirupabai has been displaced twice by coal mines in her region. She has lead dozens of legal battles to halt the expansion of coal mining activities in the region and has helped affected women gain recognition and compensation from several coal companies.

Jane Goodall

Activist and Primatologist, United Kingdom

World famous primatologist, Jane Goodall has worked for decades on the research of Chimpanzees and on forest conservation. At age 84 she continues to raise awareness and promote education and understanding of the environment and is in the running for the 2019 Nobel Peace Price.

@JaneGoodallInst ‏

May Boeve

Executive Director, 350.org, United States

May runs one of the largest climate change movements in the world, 350.org, and has helped shape, the People’s Climate March, the Keystone XL pipeline protests, and the global divestment movement. In 2019 her organisation will continue building bridges between movements to gather collectively behind the climate banner.

@mayboeve

Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister, New Zealand

Elected in 2017, Jacinda is currently the youngest female head of government in the world. She is known for supporting same-sex marriage, being an advocate for women in the workplace, and pushing for New Zealand to be proactive in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement: “Acting on climate change is about being on the right side of history.”

@jacindaardern ‏

Sharan Burrow

General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Australia

Recently re-elected for another 4-year term, Sharan will be leading the largest workers union in the world to promote a Just Transition for workers and their communities in the light of climate action. The theme of Just Transition has received renewed attention since the UN climate summit in Poland, and will be an important theme throughout 2019.

@SharanBurrow ‏

Laurence Tubiana

CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), France

Laurence was the French ambassador for international climate negotiations in the lead up to the creation of the Paris Agreement and now runs the European Climate Foundation. She founded the Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) in 2002 and currently advises French president Emmanuel Macron as part of the country’s High Council on Climate Change.

@LaurenceTubiana

Nguy Thi Khanh

Founder and Director of the Green Innovation and Development Centre, Vietnam

Growing up in the shadow of a coal mine in rural Vietnam, Khanh has dedicated her life to developing networks of social and environmental organisations, as well as state agencies, that work towards sustainable energy solutions to meet Vietnam’s rapid development. She strongly opposes the 16 additional coal power-plants the Vietnamese government is planning to build and is working closely with said govenment to achieve the goal of 21% renewable energy by 2030.

@GreenIDVietnam

Maria Neira

Public Health Director, World Health Organization (WHO), Spain

Maria has been spearheading the global fight against air pollution as director at the World Health Organization. In 2019 she will play a key role in achieving international political recognition of the links between climate change and human health.

@DrMariaNeira

Yeo Bee Yin,

Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Climate Change, Malaysia

The 35 year old Minister is one of only four women in the Malaysian Government. She is successfully implementing an ambitious plan to transition Malaysia from a fossil fuels based economy to renewable-energy: “affordable, reliable, sustainable, and also long term energy security for Malaysia”.

@yeobeeyin ‏

Yugratna Srivastava

Program Coordinator at Plant for Planet, India

Yugratna has been a voice of youth engagement in international climate negotiations since she was 13 years old. She has led  the UN Youth body at the climate negotiations (YOUNGO) for many years and is now a program coordinator at Plant for the Planet, an organisation that has already planted 14 billion trees, with the goal to plant enough to eventually offset as much as half of man-made atmospheric carbon.

@yugratna ‏

Gunhild Stordalen

Philanthropist, Norway

A physician and former model, Stordalen is a Co-Founder of the Stordalen foundation, and founder of the EAT initiative, promoting the links between human health, diet, and sustainability. Most recently, the EAT – Lancet commision designed a planetary health diet, hoping to transform the way we consume food.

@G_stordalen ‏

Stella Gama,

Climate Diplomat, Malawi

Stella is a gender advocate at the UN climate talks, and has helped create a Gender Action Plan as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She represents Malawi at the UN forestry program (REDD+) and coordinates the group of Least Developed Countries at the UN climate talks.

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

Indigenous Peoples Leader, Chad

Hindou is part of a semi-nomadic community from Chad, and has experienced the effects of climate change on her community and way of living first-hand. She represents the interests of indigenous people at the UN climate talks and is Co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC).

@hindououmar

Jennifer Morgan

Executive Director, Greenpeace International, United States

Jennifer has been leading the environmental organisation Greenpeace since 2016. A long-time activist and climate leader, she has previously worked at WRI, E3G and WWF, and is a member of Germany’s Council for Sustainable Development; “When it comes to climate change, it’s often the poor and marginalised who suffer the most. But we can change the rules of the global economy to benefit people and the planet alike.”

@climatemorgan

Vandana Shiva

Environmental Sholar, India

Vandana is an author, scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate. She founded Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights, as well as the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTN), an organization devoted to developing sustainable methods of agriculture. “I don’t want to live in a world where five giant companies control our health and our food.”

@drvandanashiva

Naomi Klein

Activist, Author, and Journalist, Canada

An award-winning writer and journalist, her 2014 book, This Changes Everything, has lead to a shift in discourse surrounding the interaction of climate change and economics. Klein continues to be a public voice on social and economic justice, women’s rights, and the importance of climate action.

@NaomiAKlein

Rachel Kyte

CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, United Kingdom

Chief Executive Officer and Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), Kyte is also the Co-Chair of UN-Energy. Operating at the highest diplomatic level, Kyte’s work is instrumental to achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the universal access, efficiency, and sustainability of energy.

@rkyte365 ‏

Bindu Bhandari

Activist, Nepal

As a dedicated grassroots activist, Bhandari has worked hard to raise youth awareness for climate change in Nepal, particularly the effects of glacial melt on fresh water sources. She plays key roles in both the Integrated Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Wendy Global, a women’s leadership development program in Asia.

@Bindu_Bhandari ‏

Can’t get enough? Find and follow more inspiring women shaping the climate agenda on our Female Climate Leaders 2019 Twitter list.

This Author

Arthur Wyns is the proud son, brother, partner, colleague and friend to the most inspirational women he knows. He is a climate researcher at the World Health Organiztion and tweets at @ArthurWyns

Rio Tinto has redesigned its QIT Minerals Madagascar (QMM) mine following almost two years of criticism and questions from Andrew Lees Trust about its Mandena site operations in Madagascar.

The change reverses QMM’s 2014-2018 plan, which had reduced by 30 metres a legally required 80-metre environmental buffer zone designed to protect “sensitive zones,” such as water bodies, from any harmful impacts of the mine.  

However, the new plan fails to reinstate the statutory 80 metre buffer zone for all water bodies near the site. Nor does it address the serious problem that Rio Tinto’s QMM mine has no confinement of radionuclide-enriched waters from its mine tailings. 

Changes announced 

The QMM mine has no dam or lake protection feature to protect the local waterways where local people fish and collect water.

The new plan, which reinstates the legally required 80-metre environmental buffer zone along the estuary side of the mine site was announced on the QMM website in January 2019. 

This is a significant reversal, and a decision that will cost the company 82,000 tons of ore. 

The company has yet to comment or admit that the changes are a result of an internal investigation, triggered by a study of QMM’s breach of the buffer zone by mining expert Dr. Steven Emerman, commissioned by the Andrew Lees Trust.

However, the timing of the QMM reversal suggests that an internal investigation [1], promised to the Trust by Rio Tinto in October 2018, has vindicated Emerman’s findings and the Trust’s questions.

Breaching trust

Dr. Emerman’s 2018 study found that, not satisfied with reducing the 80m buffer by 30 metres under an agreement with the Malagasy government, QMM went on to breach the agreed 50-metre limit and encroached 117 metres onto the bed of Lake Besaroy.

At the time, Emerman concluded that QMM’s buffer breach and management of mine tailings presented an “unacceptable risk” of seepage or overtopping of radionuclide-rich waters from the mining basins into the adjacent estuary.

Reviewing the situation today, Dr Emerman warned: “There is nothing that prevents flooding of the estuary with radionuclide-enriched water except for Rio Tinto hoping that it doesn’t rain too much.”

Over the last year, Rio Tinto has failed to provide an explanation for how QMM is containing potentially toxic waste-water from its mining basin from seeping or flooding into the adjacent estuary. 

First, Rio Tinto refused to acknowledge that the QMM operated a dam to contain mine tailings; they referred to stacked materials on site as a “berm”. The function of this structure – to stop the flow of waste from the mining basins into the estuary, is precisely the definition of a dam.

Then, following more questions, Rio Tinto’s engineering advisers SRK Consulting defined the “ berm” as “a temporary embankment” (SRK Memo August 2018).

No embankment 

The company finally answered the question this month when publishing its tailings and storage facilities notice, in which QMM mine is now rated as having “no embankment.” 

By according a status of “no embankment” the company is concluding there is no lake protection feature separating the mining basin and its potentially toxic waste from the local estuary. 

No dam, no berm, no embankment. Nothing.

Ironically, the information comes as part of a press release stating Rio Tinto’s commitment to lead improved standards around the management of mine tailings following the tragic Brumadinho mine dam disaster in Brazil last month. 

QMM’s Social and Environmental Management Plan (SEMP 2014-2018), on which mine operations were based and approved, shows a requirement for a lake protection structure. 

The government approved plan demands: “The height of the berm should be at least 4m higher than the level of the (mining) pond”; and a 2017 Rio Tinto memo (2017) confirms “a lake protection berm will be constructed.”

Safety regulations

The company is now saying that this minimum 4m high x 30m wide structure, which it was legally required to erect in order to prevent potentially toxic water flowing from the mine basin into the estuary and lakes – a ‘dam’ by any other name – does not exist as such.

If it did, it would be subject to international dam safety regulations; also an “independent expert review,” pledged by the Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques in his call for an industry-wide bid “to do better” at mine tailings.

Last year, when Rio Tinto/QMM were still calling their mine tailing storage facility a “berm,” its design provided for a factor of safety of 1.3 in a 50-year storm. This was critiqued by Dr. Emerman as the criterion used to design storm drains in a parking lot for a US shopping mall [2].

According to Dr. Emerman’s recent calculations, based on the updated information that there is no dam, the current probabilities of overtopping the QMM mining basin were found to be 0.71 – 3.04 percent, for water level rises of 2-4 meters. 

Emerman explained: “The radionuclide-enriched waters only need to rise to the top of the mining basin. This is an accident waiting to happen.”

Perimeters of change

QMM claims that its new plan “minimises the impact on the environment and the community.” However, in addition to the concerns raised above, the new plan does not provide the statutory 80m buffer zone for the inland Lake Ambondrombe, next to the mine site. 

There is no explanation for this decision. QMM simply states that local people “rarely use” the lake. 

One possibility is that the lost exploitation from reinstating the 80m buffer on the estuary side of the site will be compensated by dredging closer to Lake Ambondrombe, with the cost of QMM’s shifting perimeters pushed back on to local villagers once again.

Will QMM always negotiate its mining requirements at the cost of local people’s access to and protection of their natural resources? 

Importantly, can it be counted on to respect the 80-metre legal buffer zone where it plans to expand across two more sites in sensitive zones along the coastline over the next thirty years? 

Real change

Is Rio Tinto able to adequately assess, rate, and manage mine tailings at the QMM site in order to protect the surrounding environment? 

Can QMM responsibly ensure the safety of its operations in Madagascar  – not only for its staff, but also for impacted communities? 

Given the recurring tragedies wrought by extractives, it must surely be time to stop living with these questions and deliver real change towards “zero failure” [3].

Time to end voluntary standards for mine tailings management by a self-regulating industry and provide real change in the form of robust independent monitoring, international regulations and law enforcement to protect local citizens’ rights and entitlements.

The Rio Tinto/QMM mine will be one of a number of projects discussed in a panel debate about mining in Madagascar at the Anglo Malagasy Society on Wednesday, March 13th. 

This Author 

Yvonne Orengo is an independent communications practitioner and a Director of the Andrew Lees Trust. She has followed the evolution of the QMM mine for over twenty years, having lived and worked in the South of Madagascar to develop the Trust’s social and environmental programmes. 

ALT UK has been advised by Dr. Steven H. Emerman, owner of Malach Consulting, who specialises in evaluating the environmental impacts of mining on behalf of mining companies, as well as governmental and nongovernmental organisations. He is also the environmental compiler and vice-chair of the board of directors of the World Mine Tailings Failure Database.

Image: Antanosy woman on the estuary system next to the QMM mine at Mandena. © Antonie Kraemer. 

Notes

[1] The report of this investigation is still being “consolidated” according to Rio Tonto and will be shared with Andrew Lees Trust at the end of March.

[2] Ref: Basic Environmental Technology.

[3] “Mine tailings – Safety is no accident: a rapid response assessment”. UN Environment Programme, 2015.https://www.grida.no/publications/383

Negotiators have agreed rules to prevent double-counting of carbon credits used to offset airline emissions, at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao) Council in Montreal, Canada, Climate Home News reports.

The sector has committed to carbon-neutral growth from 2020. As air traffic growth outpaces efficiency improvements, airlines will be expected to pay for emissions reductions in other sectors to offset the climate impact.

In a closed-room meeting, Icao adopted broad criteria to ensure those carbon offsets are not also counted towards national targets and represent extra emissions savings. That was reported by NGO observers and confirmed on Twitter by French negotiator Philippe Bertoux. The press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Technical

Climate campaigners welcomed the decision, but said more was needed to meet the industry’s promises. They are also calling for an age limit on eligible carbon offsetting projects and transparency around the way the rules are put into practice.

“This decision is a step forward,” said Gilles Dufrasne, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch, “but without setting an ambitious restriction on the age of eligible credits for the scheme, it could mean a giant setback for climate action. The aviation industry needs to face the reality that only new carbon reductions can deliver its goal of carbon neutral growth.

There is a huge pool of dormant projects under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism that could, in theory, meet demand from airlines for carbon offsets. Analysts at New Climate Institute estimate 82% of the available supply would continue cutting emissions with or without the extra revenue.

Researchers from the same think-tank urged Icao to ban projects started before 2016 from taking part in the aviation carbon market, in a commentaryfor Nature Climate Change last month.

Another critical issue is the make-up of a technical advisory body, which will be responsible for interpreting and applying the rules.

Climate pollution

Annie Petsonk, aviation expert at Environmental Defense Fund, warned that it risked being shrouded in secrecy and vulnerable to industry lobbying. “We don’t want Icao to become the Fifa of carbon markets,” she told Climate Home News, referring to the football governing body’s record of corruption.

The Icao Council meeting runs until 15 March. It is not clear whether negotiators will settle outstanding questions around the carbon market’s operation at this session.

While airlines are eager to learn the details for their planning, Petsonk noted they will not need to start buying offsets until 2023. “It is more important to get it right than to rush it,” she said.

The industry’s Air Transport Action Group endorsed the newly agreed rules. “It is important for the industry that strong sustainability standards are applied for the types of eligible offsets,” said director Michael Gill in a statement.

Meanwhile, some argue the sector should be paying more for its climate pollution. At a meeting of EU environment ministers on Tuesday, Belgium’s Jean-Luc Crucke called for the bloc to impose taxes on air travel.

This Article

This Article first appeared on Climate Home News.

Government funding has almost always played a part in the U.S. energy industry. It played a central role in kick-starting the renewable energy industry and still plays an important role in the sector today. Most other forms of energy, including fossil fuels, also receive subsidies.

There’s a lot of debate around whether the government should continue providing subsidies for renewables and other forms of energy as well as about the impact government funding has.

To help makes sense of these discussions, let’s take a look at the current and potential impacts of government funding on the renewable energy industry.

Phased down

What types of government funding are currently available for renewable? Here are the main ways in which the government provides funding for renewable energy.

The federal investment tax credit, or ITC, is an important direct subsidy for renewables. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 initially established the ITC. It was originally scheduled to expire by the end of 2007, but it was extended it until 2016.

The spending bill Congress passed in December 2015 extended the credit through 2021, although it will end down over the years. For systems bought in 2016 through 2019, you can get a tax credit worth 30 percent of its cost.

In 2020, you can deduct 26 percent of your system’s costs. In 2021, you can deduct 22 percent. In 2022, the credit will expire for residential customers. The owners of commercial systems will be able to deduct 10 percent.

There’s also the production tax credit, which is based on the amount of energy your renewable energy system produces. It applies to the first 10 years of the project’s operation. In 2016, the credit began to be phased down, and it will permanently end in 2020.

Financial rewards

Products that may be eligible for the ITC and PTC include solar energy systems, small wind turbines, solar water heaters, geothermal heat pumps and fuel cells. The ITC most often applies to solar systems, and the PTC most often applies to wind projects.

Another way the government provides funding for renewables is by investing in research and development (R&D). This can come in the forms of grants, loans and loan guarantees. This type of funding helps researchers create new technologies and bring them to market.

A leading reason that government may want to invest in renewables is what is often referred to as market failures. The price of renewable energy does not include the environmental and social benefits it provides.

These benefits are not accounted for by the market. Meanwhile, fossil fuels have negative environmental and social impacts that are not accounted for. To obtain more of the benefits of renewable and avoid the harm caused by fossil fuels, the government may use funding to make up for these disparities.

R&D is also typically quite expensive while obtaining the financial rewards of such work takes a long time and is not guaranteed. For these reasons, the government often provides grants and loans for R&D. When fossil fuels were in the early stages, they received large amounts of federal funding. Renewables recently went through a similar phase.

Incentivise

One impact of federal funding is that it could enable the energy sector to more quickly move away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Federal funding helps make technologies ready more quickly. If subsidies can help make renewables more cost-effective earlier, this will incentivize energy companies to switch sooner.

There are many reasons why we may want to move away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Climate change is a leading reason. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector is crucial for meeting climate goals, and exchanging fossil fuels for renewables is one of the most efficient ways to do that.

Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change and improving air quality could also significantly improve public health. One analysis found that monetizing the environmental health benefits of solar energy could add about 3.5¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to its value.

Using more renewables also has some purely economic benefits. The renewables sector is a major job creator. According to a recent report from EDF Climate Corps, wind and solar are creating jobs 12 times faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. Avoiding climate change impacts would also save the U.S. economy huge amounts of money.

​Government funding has long been important to many different types of energy from coal to natural gas to nuclear to renewables. They help to fund R&D, incentivise companies to make investments and make certain forms of energy more affordable for consumers.

Health benefits

Today, renewables receive a significant amount of government funding, although the amount is starting to lessen as various incentives are phased out. While some are worried about this fact, many others note that the renewable sector is now mature that renewable energy is cost-effective on its own.

A 2016 analysis by financial firm Lazard Ltd. found that solar and wind energy is now cheaper than electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear over the lifetime of a generation facility. According to the study, the cost of solar fell by 85 percent between 2009 and 2016, and the cost of wind energy decreased by 66 percent.

Of course, the price of energy varies from time to time and place to place, but in some cases, renewables may be more cost-effective even without subsidies.

Even if the government cuts funding for renewable energy, many customers may still opt to use it. Some may choose it because it’s more cost-effective.

Another draw is that installing renewable energy equipment on your property allows you to own your own generation resources. People and corporations alike may also choose renewables because of their environmental and health benefits, especially as more companies aim to become more socially responsible and meet their sustainability goals.

Of course, receiving more funding would always be useful for the renewables energy sector — or any sector for that matter. It could help researchers develop new technologies more quickly and increase the deployment of renewable resources.

However, as renewables continue to become more cost-effective, government funding will become less critical to the sector’s success.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

The world witnessed the rise of the Greta Thunberg-led revolt against the climate crisis by school-age teenagers across the world in 2018. From within what popular media call Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2012) a young woman has emerged as a global leader.

Now, hundreds of thousands within Gen Z have responded to Greta’s leadership and have created a global social movement, School Strike 4 Climate.

It is no exaggeration to say that within Gen Z there is now the vanguard of a global movement challenging all the forces that are causing humans to commit climacide and ecocide. In addition, our wise teenagers now know that the climate crisis is an integral part of a much bigger crisis.

The symbiocene

In my forthcoming book, Earth Emotions, I make the case for a generational change where the post-baby boomer generations unite to form a new social movement.

I call this united movement, Generation Symbiocene or Gen S. Gen S will lead the rest of humanity into the Symbiocene.

In the essay, After the Anthropocene, recently published in this journal, I made the case for a new epoch in human history: the Symbiocene. The Symbiocene is a meme that represents the very opposite of the period of human dominance known as the Anthropocene.

The new meme has been created to achieve nothing less than complete change of the biophysical and emotional foundations of society from the ecocidal to the symbiotic, from the destructive to the nurturing.

While the Anthropocene is generating despair and desolation, the Symbiocene gives generously of hope and optimism.

Generational change

In Earth Emotions, I speculate on the role of post-Baby Boomer generations in the creation of the Symbiocene. In the popular media it is now commonplace to use marketing-generated characterisations of the post-Boomer X, Y and Z generations (the Gens) in the design, marketing and algorithms of social media.

Collectively, the Gens are often depicted as victims of the Boomer appropriation of the future with many psychological, sociological and economic problems resulting in various forms of trauma, anomie and alienation.

For these generations, a common form of escape from present angst and future dread is to become engrossed in havens of virtual euphoria in a heartless contemporary world. In 2018, there seemed to be little cause to think that revolutionary change was about to emerge from Gens X and Y.

However, I had thought, almost coinciding with the rise of Greta Thunberg, that a unique role might be played by Gen Z. They are characterised as having a broad global outlook, no current investment or employment chains and a highly nuanced, critical perspective on the use of social media and the role of information dissemination within it.

The use of social media and online recruitment to fight climate warming combine to become an ironic case study in how a response to a massive global crisis can use global modalities which themselves are part of the problem. For example, we are now using Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter to fight the very order they depend on for their business models.

Gen S

The momentum created by Gen Z is now unstoppable. I am convinced that many from all other generations, including the Boomers, will unite to form Generation Symbiocene. They will do so because it is now absolutely clear that the future will be unthinkable if it continues in the current direction.

As the old saying goes, if we do not change direction, we will get to where we are going.

In addition, marginalized groups within the Anthropocene, including LGBTQIA, indigenous groups and subsistent people in the so-called developing world, have every reason to join this movement. The Symbiocene requires, after all, the retaking of particular places as unique sites of biocultural energy and creativity the world over.

It has been the erasure of that diversity (biological and cultural) that is a primary cause of cultural and biological endangerment then extinction.

Gen S wants back the positive Earth emotions, the biophilia, that connect human-to-human life and the empathy required to co-exist with non-human beings. To do this, they will become giant-killers.

Giant killers

The most urgent tasks for Gen S will be to protest and fight against gigantism. By gigantism, I mean the dictatorial governments of nation states and corporate rulers that exercise authoritarian and totalitarian control over almost all aspects of our lives.

The globalised system of production, transport and consumption is run by a powerful elite of wealthy individuals at the head of the command economies, monopolies and oligopolies that rule the world. It is these powerful, gigantic bodies that are in control of the Anthropocene and the way it is evolving as a psychopathic juggernaut.

In order to return the Earth to a state that freely engages in the symbiotic building of the human community within the rest of life, the Symbiocene principles, all supportive of the collaboration and continuity required for life, must be engaged.

To achieve this end, the Symbiocene will have to be initiated by protesters, activists and hacktivists. Everything, from how we conduct politics to how we eat and live, will have to be disrupted.

There will be no time for the myopia of reality TV, gambling and gaming; this is genuinely productive work and it will be relentless and all-consuming. With urgency, new visions of all of the foundations of human life now can be imagined, then built. Here are a few of them to give you free entry into Gen S and the Symbiocene.

Growth and population

As Gen S dismantles gigantism, at the same time they need to be furiously building a new economy.  Ideas that have global application (such as renewable energy) will be shared, while innovation at the local level requires tailoring technologies to the particularities of place and culture. Gen S will become technological “terroirists” and sumbiofacts will replace artifacts.

As a consequence, the primary work of Gen S will be to identify and maintain the life bonds of particular places on Earth and, where necessary, create new ones. As sumbioregionalists succeed in this task, their combined efforts will rebuild ecosystem health at island, continental, and global scales.

The complexity of the living planet will be re-built, via active and collaborative human agency, from the bottom up. The amount of work required has no end and zero unemployment.

Instead of having to imagine the econo-apocalypse, Gens S can be encouraged to ensure that, as the GNP, the old measure of success goes down, new measures of genuine growth will go up.

Abnormal, life-threatening growth will be replaced by growth that is normal in that it assists in the maturity of organisms and the completion of a life-span.

Human reproduction will be voluntarily tailored to the limits of place and productivity. The gender sharing of the socialisation of children will become the norm and symbio-literate children will play a vital role in the further development of the Symbiocene.

Energy revolution

The Baby Boomers have set up and now enforce dependency on centralised energy-systems. For safe, just and pollution-free energy, Gen S will dismantle the current form of energy provision and the power structures that operate and own it. All forms of ‘power’ become decentralised.

From the commencement of the Symbiocene, energy and technologies that can be scaled at local levels will be necessities.

Many of these renewable energy systems are already in existence with an energy delivery cost structure lower than that of finite, high-risk polluting alternatives such as coal.

An energy revolution will also create new forms of meaningful employment at local level.

Sumbioculture

Globalised agribusiness is a version of gigantism where the international ‘free’ trade in food has disrupted and destroyed regionally produced food, its workforce and markets. Another task of Gen S will be to rebuild regional agriculture in light of the Symbiocene principles.

Regenerating soil by rebuilding symbiotic, living soil communities will be labour intensive but immensely satisfying. Bees will flourish and their buzzing will be a sign for all that food production without the ‘cides’ is once again life-affirming. Gen S will ensure there is no insectageddon.

Symbiocene food will be produced within a system we could call sumbioculture. Those who eat such food can be called sumbiovores.

Current important choices such as vegetarianism and veganism remain, but they too will respect the higher order ethical and life imperative of the sumbios, or living together for mutual benefit.

The Future

The Boomers can also help Gen S create the Symbiocene. They have wealth and knowledge that could be gifted to the young to build their future.

In joining Gen S, as their last act of generosity on Earth, the Boomers will achieve a degree of clemency.

The diversity of human culture in the Symbiocene will be a new form of tribalism. The new tribalism will not exemplify xenophobia, but an emergent hybrid humanity that celebrates and respects diversity and has new intellectual and emotional attributes.

Positive Earth emotions will triumph over the negative. The acolytes of the Anthropocene will be “on the run” by the 2070s and the Symbiocene on the rise.

This Author 

Dr Glenn Albrecht is freelance environmental philosopher and farmosopher. He has pioneered the domain of psychoterratic or psyche – earth relationships with his concept of solastalgia. He is the author of Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World and writes at Psychoterratica.

Image: Dr Glenn Albrecht.