Be Better Citizens (UK)

A good predictor of a country's wealth (per capita GDP) is how much energy it uses. Climate and the type of economy a country has play a significant part. Macao is an outlier, located in the tropics and with a significant tourist industry based on gambling, which results in a very high GDP compared to its energy use. But generally, you need to use a lot of energy to produce wealth.

The reason we are struggling to kick our fossil fuel habit is that to do so by simply reducing our energy use is the same as reducing our wealth. Look at the issues facing the UK at the moment, with underfunded services all around us. There is no way we are going to make our country significantly poorer, however strong the warnings about future climate threats. Current industry estimates are that: "Global oil supply to the market, is projected to rise by 4.1 mb/d to 107.2 mb/d by 2030"

The only way we will move away from fossil fuels is if there is a comparable cost option. We have moved down this road with wind and solar renewable energy, but on a global scale, this is simply not shifting the dial. On our current path, assuming renewables continue to grow as they have been doing, we are still looking at 4°C of warming by the time my grandchildren are my age, and with that, potentially catastrophic climate effects.

Another issue we face is the cost of generating energy. Renewables are now as cheap as fossil fuels. but they are not 'cheap'. In 1950, using the energy in a barrel of oil would get you about 44 barrels of oil from the ground. Now it's around 10 barrels. The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) for solar energy is around 15, and for wind energy, it is around 25. In order to maintain our economies, we need an EROI of about 20, so as things stand, we face slow economic decline.

If only there were an energy source which we had today with an EROI of over 50, that could solve our problems. It would need to produce very small quantities of CO₂, or we would be back where we started. Additionally, it would need to be scalable to replace the 100 million barrels of oil a day that we currently use, as well as similar amounts of coal and natural gas.

But there is! Nuclear power has an EROI of over 50 and, for some plants, closer to 100. Consider this data:

Recent economic growth in the United States has been attributed to (amongst other things) cheap shale gas, but this is coming to an end. While the US currently has the largest fleet of nuclear power plants (94) compared to China's 57, if China continues its expansion, it will have a significant advantage in cheap (lifetime EROI) energy over the second half of this century.

There are currently 416 active nuclear plants in the world, and these produce approximately 3.7% of the world's total energy, while fossil fuels account for around 76%. Taking a simplistic view, to replace all our fossil fuel energy, we would have to build about 8,620 nuclear power plants of the average size running today (and perhaps double that of the new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) being designed now. It's a considerable number, about 21 times our current total, but surely this is doable over the next decades? Perhaps the Chinese have already started. In the US, they may be lucky, as people like Bill Gates (TerraPower/Natrium) are likely to have a longer and more positively influential effect on the US than the grifter.