Premier Debate 2016 September/October ld brief

NEG—Warming DA

UQ

Squo energy use doubles emissions and causes warming-low carbon tech is key

IEA 15 ["Technology Roadmap: Nuclear Energy." IEA Technology Roadmaps (n.d.): n. pag. 2015. Web. 8 Aug. 2016] [Premier]

Current trends in energy supply and use are unsustainable. Without decisive action, energyrelated emissions of carbon dioxide will nearly double by 2050 and increased fossil energy demand will heighten concerns over the security of supplies. We can change our current path, but this will take an energy revolution in which lowcarbon energy technologies will have a crucial role to play. Energy efficiency, many types of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and new transport technologies will all require widespread deployment if we are to sharply reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Every major country and sector of the economy would need to be involved. The task is urgent if we are to make sure that investment decisions taken now do not saddle us with sub-optimal technologies in the long term.

Warming is skyrocketing now-drastic action key-just cutting fossil fuels won’t work.

Gottfried 6 [Kurt; "Climate Change and Nuclear Power." Social Research: An International Quarterly 73.3 (2006): 1011-1024. Project MUSE. Web. 8 Aug. 2016. .] [Premier]

I now turn to the climate issue. Here it is important to understand that our global environment is a delicately balanced system. Many large forces that move the system in different ways strike this balance. As a result, if the mean temperature—the average over the whole globe and over a number of years—changes by only a couple of degrees, the system can undergo dramatic change. For the same reason, there are considerable uncertainties in the temperature change that would be caused by a given amount of additional greenhouse gasses. To establish concrete policies for meeting the climate challenge one needs a credible quantitative target for cutting carbon emissions. Setting such a target, given our state of knowledge, is not an exercise in pure science, although science provides indispensable guidance. Political judgments must be made. Given what is at stake, it is essential to exercise caution and prudence. All this has led the British government, the European Union and other major actors to adopt the target of a global mean temperature rise of no more than 1.2° C (or 2.1° F) above today’s, which translates into a CC>2 com position of the atmosphere no greater than by about Climate Change and Nuclear Power 1013 a third above the current level (Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, 2005). To achieve this goal will require industrialized countries like the United States to reduce annual emissions by 60 to 80 percent by midcentury! Obviously, this is a huge challenge. Furthermore, deep cutting would have to continue during the rest of the century because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for so long. What is there already would produce considerable warming even if we could, today, halt all further growth in the use of fossil fuels.

Nuclear power will reduce carbon emissions in the short term but will be supplanted by renewables

Chakravorty 09 [Ujjayant Chakravorty, Professor of Economics at Tufts University and Fellow at the Toulouse School of Economics and CESifo, “Can Nuclear Power Supply Clean Energy in the Long Run? A Model with Endogenous Substitution of Resources,” Technical report, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, 2009] [Premier]

This paper applies a model with price-induced substitution across resources to examine the role of nuclear power in reducing global warming. The cost of fossil fuels and uranium, the main input in nuclear power generation, rises with depletion. The main insight is that nuclear power can help us switch quickly to carbon free energy, but in the long run, large scale adoption of nuclear power will be hindered by the rising cost of uranium and the problem of waste disposal. Only significant new developments such as the availability of new generation nuclear technology that is able to recycle nuclear waste may lead to a steady state where nuclear energy plays an important role. If expansion of nuclear capacity occurs at historical rates, uranium producers could engage in cartel-like behavior since the ore is found mainly in four countries, fewer than for crude oil.24 These results are similar to recent engineering studies of the potential for nuclear power (MIT, 2003). In the long run, renewable energies such as biomass and wind become economical and supply a major portion of energy. But significant supplies also come from clean coal technologies. The availability of new nuclear technologies such as Fast Breeders reduces the dependence on clean coal. Meeting carbon concentrations of 550 ppm is modestly costly but a 450 ppm target implies a rapid ramp-up in terms of clean energy use in the near term (by 2050). This significantly raises the cost to the economy. The cost of carbon jumps up from $18 to $150/ton in 2050. This is somewhat lower than predictions by other studies such as the DICE model of Nordhaus (2007) which predicts a 450 ppm carbon price of $250/ton in 2050.25 Going from a freeze on further expansion of nuclear power to a continued expansion of nuclear power at historical rates, the shadow price of carbon declines by almost 50%. This suggests that political constraints on continued expansion of nuclear power are likely to result in a significantly higher cost of reducing carbon. However this price is not sensitive to whether new nuclear technologies such as fast breeders become available or not, since these technologies play a role in the distant future. The shadow price of carbon plays an important part in determining which abatement options may be feasible as well as the size of a global permit market. Lower carbon prices may suggest that such a market may be smaller than expected, with lower benefits relative to no trading. The damage to economies that may be potential buyers of carbon, such as the United States or China, may be smaller than currently estimated. Similarly, potential benefits to sellers of permits such as Russia and Ukraine may be correspondingly lower. The model results are quite robust to changes in cost parameters. However, the results are sensitive to the choice of the discount rate. A lower discount rate favors capital intensive technologies with relatively low operation and maintenance costs such as wind power. Renewable energy technologies become economical earlier leading to a lower cost of carbon and lower aggregate emissions. Across-the-board higher learning rates also benefit technologies such as solar energy because they have a lower floor cost. Nuclear power quickly becomes redundant in this scenario.

Link

Empirical data from France proves that nuclear power reduces CO2 emissions.

Iwata 10 ["Empirical Study On The Environmental Kuznets Curve For CO2 In France: The Role Of Nuclear Energy"; 2010. Sciencedirect.Com; Accessed August 8 2016; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510001941] [Premier]

Based on cointegration analysis and a Granger causality test, our estimation results show that the EKC for CO2 emissions in France is proven, and the effects of nuclear energy on CO2 emissions are significantly negative. The causality tests confirm the uni-direction running from income and nuclear energy to CO2 emissions. The estimated results show that the turning point in the relationship between income and CO2 emissions is within the sample period. To check for robustness, our study estimates the model, adding trade, energy consumption or urbanization in addition to income and nuclear energy. While the effects of trade, energy consumption or urbanization are insignificant, the EKC for CO2 is still satisfied, and the effects of nuclear power are also significantly negative.

Nuclear power decreases CO2 in the short and long run.

Iwata 10 ["Empirical Study On The Environmental Kuznets Curve For CO2 In France: The Role Of Nuclear Energy"; 2010. Sciencedirect.Com; Accessed August 8 2016; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510001941] [Premier]

From the estimation results, we find evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis for the case of France. The stability tests also indicate that estimated models are stable over the sample period. The impact of nuclear energy on CO2 emissions is shown to be significantly negative in both the short-run and long-run. Our results indicate that trade and urbanization are not statistically significant in both the long-run and short-run. On the impact of energy consumption on CO2 emissions, unlike previous studies in the case of France, we only find evidence of statistical significance in the short-run, but not in the long-run.

Methodology.

Iwata 10 ["Empirical Study On The Environmental Kuznets Curve For CO2 In France: The Role Of Nuclear Energy"; 2010. Sciencedirect.Com; Accessed August 8 2016; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510001941] [Premier]

Our study uses the annual data spanning from 1960 to 2003 for estimation. This sample is chosen based on the availability of all data. CO2 emissions (co2) are measured as metric tons per capita. Real GDP (y) is GDP per capita in constant local currency. Electricity produced from the nuclear source (nuc) is the percentage of the total electricity produced. Trade (tr) is the total trade as the percentage of GDP. Per capita energy use or consumption (en) is measured as kg of oil equivalent per capita. Urbanization rate (urb) is measured as the percentage of urban population in the total population.

Nuclear Power key to Prevent Warming

Magill 15 [Bobby; Senior Science Writer for Climate Central; Scientific American; 1/30/2015; “Nuclear Power Needs to Double to Curb Global Warming”; http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-needs-to-double-to-curb-global-warming/; [PREMIER]]

The International Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency suggest in a report released Thursday that nuclear will have such a significant role to play in climate strategy that nuclear power generation capacity will have to double by 2050 in order for the world to meet the international 2°C (3.6°F) warming goal.

With fossil fuels growing as sources of electricity across the globe, the IEA sees nuclear power as a stable source of low-carbon power helping to take polluting coal-fired plants offline.

To accomplish the needed CO2 emissions cuts to keep warming no greater than 2°C, the IEA says global nuclear power generation capacity needs to increase to 930 gigawatts from 396 gigawatts by 2050. With nearly 100 nuclear reactors, the U.S. has more nuclear power plants than any other country, representing 105 gigawatts of production. France, Japan, Russia and China round out the top five countries using nuclear power.

Globally, nuclear energy is already making a comeback with 72 nuclear reactors now under construction worldwide, mainly in Asia.

“This marked the greatest number of reactors being built in 25 years,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in a statement. “Nuclear energy also remains the second-largest source of low-carbon electricity worldwide. And, indeed, if we are to meet our collective climate goals, nuclear energy is critical.”

All forms of low-carbon energy must be employed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

That conclusion is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings last year that global carbon dioxide emissions need to be capped at 450 parts per million in order to prevent warming greater than 2°C, Robert N. Stavins, director of the Project on Climate Agreements at Harvard University and a drafting author of the IPCC’s Working Group III Report, said.

“It is virtually inconceivable that the 2 degree or 450 parts per million target as a cap can be achieved in this century without a variety of factors, among which are substantially greater reliance on nuclear power than current trajectories would suggest,” Stavins, who is unaffiliated with the IEA’s report, said.

Charles Kolstad, professor of economic policy research at Stanford University, suggested the IEA’s conclusions may be too strident.

“Nuclear is not necessary to meet any target except the most stringent,” he said. “The IPCC relies heavily on CCS (carbon capture and storage). Nuclear would certainly help, though.”

That’s because global power demand is growing and nuclear is a good alternative to coal, the main source of power in parts of the world where cheap natural gas is unavailable to replace coal, he said.

The IEA said nuclear reactor safety issues raised by Fukushima can be addressed by strong regulations, independent regulators, a culture of safety surrounding nuclear plants and the development of new safety technology, the report says.

Nuclear power k2 lower emissions

IEA 15 ["Technology Roadmap: Nuclear Energy." IEA Technology Roadmaps (n.d.): n. pag. 2015. Web. 8 Aug. 2016] [Premier]

Nuclear power is the largest source of low-carbon electricity in OECD countries, with an 18% overall share of electricity production in 2013 and second at global levels with an 11% share. The updated vision for the 2014 Nuclear Roadmap – based on the 2 degrees Celsius (°C) scenario (2DS)1 of Energy Technology Perspectives: Scenarios and Strategies to 2050 (IEA, forthcoming 2015) – sees nuclear continuing to play a major role in lowering emissions from the power sector, while improving security of energy supply, supporting fuel diversity and providing large-scale electricity at stable production costs. z In the 2D scenario, global installed capacity would need to more than double from current levels of 396 gigawatts (GW) to reach 930 GW in 2050, with nuclear power representing 17% of global electricity production. Although lower than the 2010 Roadmap vision of 1 200 GW and 25% share of generation, this increase still represents a formidable growth for the nuclear industry.

Nuclear power k2 solve

IEA 15 ["Technology Roadmap: Nuclear Energy." IEA Technology Roadmaps (n.d.): n. pag. 2015. Web. 8 Aug. 2016] [Premier]

Nuclear safety remains the highest priority for the nuclear sector. Although the primary responsibility for nuclear safety lies with the operators, regulators have a major role to play to ensure that all operations are carried out with the highest levels of safety. Lessons learnt from the Fukushima Daiichi accident have emphasised that regulators should be strong and independent. Safety culture must be promoted at all levels in the nuclear sector (operators and industry, including the supply chain, and regulators) and especially in newcomer countries. z Governments have a role to play in ensuring a stable, long-term investment framework that allows capital-intensive projects to be developed and provides adequate electricity prices over the long term for all low-carbon technologies. Governments should also continue to support nuclear research and development (R&D), especially in the area of nuclear safety, advanced fuel cycles, waste management and innovative designs. z Nuclear energy is a mature low-carbon technology, which has followed a trend towards increased safety levels and power output to benefit from economies of scale. This trajectory has come with an increased cost for Generation III reactors compared with previous generations, but this should also lead to better performance and economics for standardised Nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) plants, although this has yet to be confirmed.

Nuclear empirically reduces emissions when replacing other methods

IEA 15 ["Technology Roadmap: Nuclear Energy." IEA Technology Roadmaps (n.d.): n. pag. 2015. Web. 8 Aug. 2016] [Premier]

Nuclear energy currently contributes to a reduction of CO2 emissions from the power sector of about 1.3 to 2.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 every year, assuming it replaces either gas- or coal-fired generation. It is estimated that since 1980 the release of over 60 Gt{onnes} CO2 has been avoided thanks to nuclear power.5 The contribution of nuclear energy to decarbonising the electricity sector 5. The avoided CO2 emissions were calculated by replacing nuclear generation by coal-fired generation. would result in annual CO2 emission reductions of 2.5 Gt CO2 in the 2DS compared with the 6DS (see Figure 5). Globally, this represents 13% of the emissions reduction needed in the power sector with the contribution in different regions varying from as high as 24% in the Republic of Korea to 23% in the European Union and 13% in China. Nuclear clearly plays an important role in providing reliable, low-carbon electricity in most regions of the world.

Nuclear power’s the only route to curb emissions-expert testimony

Harvey 12 [Fiona Harvey, 5-3-2012, "Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change] [Premier]

Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough. "We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said. He said coal was likely to continue to be cheaper than renewables and other low-carbon forms of energy, unless the effects of the climate were taken into account. "Fossil fuel prices will remain low enough to wreck [low-carbon energy] unless you have incentives and [carbon] pricing," he told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. A group of four prominent UK environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and former heads of Friends of the Earth UK Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, have been campaigning against nuclear power in recent weeks, arguing that it is unnecessary, dangerous and too expensive. Porritt told the Guardian: "It [nuclear power] cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they're up and running, they're nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe." But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave. He said greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise despite the financial crisis and deep recession in the developed world, were "nowhere near" falling to the level that would be needed to avert dangerous climate change. He said: "Emissions per unit of energy need to fall by a factor of six. That means electrifying everything that can be electrified and then making electricity largely carbon-free. It requires renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage – these are all very big challenges. We need to understand the scale of the challenge." Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming – a wholesale change and overhaul of the world's energy systems and economy would be needed if the world is to hold carbon emissions to 450 parts per million of the atmosphere – a level that in itself may be inadequate. "We are nowhere close to that – as wishful thinking and corporate lobbies are much more powerful than the arithmetic of climate scientists," he said.

Closing nuclear plants leads to increased fossil fuel use

Roston 15 [Eric Roston, writer for Bloomberg, “Why Nuclear Power Is All but Dead in the U.S.” Bloomberg News, April 15, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-15/soon-it-may-be-easier-to-build-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran-than-in-the-u-s-] [Premier]

*ellipsis from original text

Say what? The U.S. achieved fission before anybody else. It learned before anybody else to control nuclear power, train it to boil water, to spin turbines, to generate electricity. There are 99 nuclear reactors across the U.S., providing about 19 percent of Americans’ electricity. They account for about 30 percent of global nuclear capacity. No new U.S. nuclear plant has opened since Watts Bar 1, in Tennessee, in 1996. And 20 more may close, “which makes no sense at all, from a common sense standpoint, or anything else,” Gregg said. Not because there’s something dramatically wrong with them. They’re victims of the success of natural gas, a shortage of power lines, eternal environmental enmity, and the eternally unresolved issue of where to store nuclear waste. Natural gas has driven power prices lower than nuclear’s operating costs. If bad economic trends persist for nuclear, more and more of the U.S. fleet may retire in coming years, leaving the communities they serve at the tyranny of plants powered by fossil fuels. That’s a huge problem for climate activists who oppose nuclear power. Nuclear plants would likely be replaced by natural gas or (shudder) coal plants, which would drive up carbon dioxide emissions. It’s happening in Germany, where the government decided to abandon nuclear power after the March 2011 catastrophe at Fukushima. In Vermont, where a 600-megawatt plant closed in December, carbon-free nuclear power is being replaced largely by fossil-powered electricity from the grid. That makes nuclear an energy source that could help nations meet the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. We're already about 0.8 degree there. “I can’t see a scenario where we can stick to the 2 degree warming commitment ... without a substantial contribution from nuclear,” said Michael Liebreich, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, at its annual conference yesterday. “We have got to figure out nuclear if that envelope is to mean anything to us."

Nuclear energy is the only alternative to coal

Abrams 13

[Lindsay, “Is nuclear power the only real alternative to coal?” The Atlantic, Aug 21 2013] [Premier]

America’s reliance on its “black hope” has been building since the late 1970s, argues Times columnist Eduardo Porter, and wind turbines and solar panels won’t be enough to convince us to leave the rest of our coal in the ground. Even though we know that fossil fuels are destroying the environment, there’s no ready alternative to fuel the sort of paradigm shift needed to curb carbon emissions. “The arithmetic is merciless,” according to Porter’s economic analysis: The United States Energy Information Administration forecasts that global energy consumption will grow 56 percent between now and 2040. Almost 80 percent of that energy demand will be satisfied by fossil fuels. Under this assumption, carbon emissions would rise to 45 billion tons a year in 2040, from 32 billion in 2011, and the world would blow past its carbon ceiling in fewer than 25 years. “We have trillions of tons of coal resources in the world,” Vic Svec, spokesman for Peabody Energy, told me. “You can expect the world to use them all.” The only way around this is to put something in coal’s place, at a reasonably competitive price. Neither the warm glow of the sun nor the restless power of the wind is going to do the trick, at least not soon enough to make a difference in the battle to prevent climate change. There’s only one such something, according to Porter, that really makes sense: nuclear power. It would be cheaper than coal, he cites a study as finding, and more capable of scaling up wind or solar power. He mostly brushes off natural gas, which is neither clean nor renewable, as a long-term solution. Porter cites the 2011 disaster at Fukushima as good reason for global opinion to have turned against nuclear power of late, although he fails to mention that two years later, the situation remains a crisis. Still, he finds reason to believe that the tide of public opinion may be turning: “Younger environmentalists don’t associate nuclear power with Chernobyl and the cold war,” he writes. “Studies have revealed it to be safer than other fuels.” He concludes: Still, the hurdles are substantial. There are fewer nuclear generators in the United States than in 1987. Just maintaining nuclear energy’s share of 19 percent of the nation’s electricity generation will require adding several dozen new ones. Each will take some 10 years and $5 billion to construct. If nuclear power is to play a leading role combating climate change, it should start now. What Porter is ultimately asking for is a mitigation of our expectations for a greener future. It’s time, he’s saying, that we give up the dream of wind and solar power for a more realistic — if less ideal — alternative.