Subsidies for Oil, Gas and Nuclear vs. Renewables

[kristopher]

Subsidies for Oil, Gas and Nuclear vs. Renewables

Energy sources, from coal to oil and gas to nuclear, have all been subsidized over the last 400 years in the U.S. and elsewhere. By most metrics, renewable energy sources have received far less in subsidies in their early years than any of these other energy sources.

These findings come from a report by Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner, DBL Investors, and Ben Healey, a graduate student at Yale University School of Management and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (here's a link to the PDF).

Pfund said, “All new energy industries -- timber, coal, oil and gas, nuclear -- have received substantial government support at a pivotal time in their early growth, creating millions of jobs and significant economic growth," adding, “Subsidies for these ‘traditional’ energy sources were many, many times what we are spending today on renewables."...




According to the report, as a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal spending, nuclear subsidies accounted for more than one percent of the federal budget over the first 15 years of each subsidies’ life; oil and gas subsidies made up half a percent of the total budget, but renewables have amounted to only about a tenth of a percent.

Other key findings in the report include:...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Subsidies-For-Oil-Gas-Nuclear-vs.-Renewables/

Oil/Gas 4.86 billion avg /year (1918-2009),

Nuclear $3.50 billion avg /year (1947-1999)

All Renewables $0.37 billion avg /year (1994-2009)

[PamW]

1. What is being counted as a "subsidy"?

Nuclear $3.50 billion avg /year (1947-1999)
==============================================

What is being counted as a "subsidy"? I've noticed the anti-nukes for a long time making these claims that
nuclear get $3.5 Billion per year in subsidies. But what are they counting?

When you investigate what "line items" of the federal budget they are counting, you will find that
they are counting the amount of money the USA spends on nuclear weapons as a "subsidy" to the nuclear
industry. The nuclear weapons budget has been about $3.5 Billion per year on its way to $7 Billion per
year under the Obama administration as a condition for the Senate ratification of the latest arms control treaty.

The nuclear weapons money doesn't go to GE, Westinghouse, B&W, Combustion Engineering...the companies that
produce nuclear reactors, and construction contractors like Bechtel.

No the nuclear weapons budget goes to University of California ( Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore ),
Lockheed Martin ( Sandia ), ....

PamW

[kristopher]

2. It appears the authors have sought balance in the paper...

Given that it starts in 1947 there is probably some early R&D funding that was dual use, just as there was some funding NASA's space programs renewables, DOD funding for turbojet engine development that benefitted the gas industry, land and surveys for the coal industry among others. In fact, it is fair to say that an awareness of balance and fairness in what to include is a constant theme that rins through the paper.

This is what they say specifically about nuclear:

Nuclear:
In considering how best to quantify nuclear data, we considered multiple sources and decided to use the analysis conducted by lifelong energy analyst and consultant Marshall Goldberg, a resource planner with a broad background in resource and land use policy and impact analysis. In his work, Goldberg includes principally the costs of regulation, civilian R&D, and liability risk-shifting (the Price-Anderson Act), while also taking into account both payments from the government to industry and government receipts from industry— thus coming up with a net annual figure for every year from 1947 to 1990. Although “on-budget” expenditures for the nuclear industry have been enormous, we especially value Goldberg’s analysis because he attempts a rigorous quantification of the “off-budget” value of the Price-Anderson Act of 1957, which “provided federal indemnification of utilities in the event of nuclear accidents, thus removing a substantial (and perhaps insurmountable) barrier to nuclear power plant development.”29
Congressional testimony at the time of passage confirms the importance of Price-Anderson:
For instance, the Edison Electric Institute noted “We would...like to state unequivocally that in our opinion, no utility company or group of companies will build or operate a reactor until the risk of nuclear accidents is minimized.30 p

http://www.dblinvestors.com/documents/DBL_energy_subsidies_paper.pdf

[Nederland]

3. I wonder what the subsidy is per MWh generated

I suspect if you look at it that way you'd find that renewables receive many times the subsidy that nuclear does.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf

[kristopher]

4. If you were a sophist interested in obscuring a valid comparison you would do it that way...

Which of course, means it is the preferred way of looking at it for nuclear supporters.

Per kilowatt hour view of subsidies

The price of nuclear subsidies is worth looking at. Nuclear proponents will tell you the subsidies per unit of electricity for nuclear are no worse than for renewables. That statement omits the fact than nuclear power has received the lions share of non fossil energy subsidies for more than 50 years with no apparent payoff; for all the money we've spent we see a steadily escalating cost curve for nuclear. When we compare that to renewables we find that a small fraction of the total amount spent on nuclear has resulted in rapidly declining costs that for wind are already competitive with coal and rapidly declining costs for solar that are competitive with natural gas and will soon be less expensive than coal.



In other words: subsidies work to help the renewable technologies stand on their own but with nuclear they do nothing but prop up an industry that cannot be economically viable.

Another factor that truly limits the utility of the nuclear indsutry’s preferred way of framing the impact of subsidies to our understanding of the true situation is found in the report "Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007" Published in April 2008 published by the Energy Information Administration Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric, and Alternate Fuels. It is on page 92 and reads:
"Direct subsidies to electricity producers that provide incentives to investment in generation technology of a specific fuel type are assigned to electricity production in their entirety and are included in the $5.1 billion of subsidies allocated to electricity production by fuel type."

What this means is that the numbers presented in the standard argument offered by the nuclear Industry and referred to by Nederlander are ‘current year’ production divided by ‘current year' allocation of (a very incomplete) DOE version of what counts as a subsidy.

The information they are trying to obscure is in the OP. You'll also you'll find it in other comprehensive analysis of the topic. For example:

Full report: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf

This shows that when we look at lifetime subsidies against lifetime production of nuclear power the subsidies nuclear has received are worth more than the average value of the electricity produced.

That's right, we paid for every kilowatt of nuclear power twice; once through the utility and once through the tax man.

You won't hear that from the nuclear industry.




a version of this was originally posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=278186&mesg_id=278379

[Nederland]

5. You really should stop using the word sophist

It is clear you do not know what it means.

[kristopher]

6. You've made that inaccurate assertion before.

It was as incorrect then as it is now.