Two Federal Courts May Have Just Saved The Nuclear Power Industry
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianpotts/2018/10/15/two-federal-courts-may-have-just-saved-the-nuclear-power-industry/#35882578762eOct 15, 2018
States that want to keep their aging nuclear power fleet from retiring now have a court-approved roadmap for doing so. That’s because two federal courts of appeals last month upheld very similar state laws in Illinois and New York aimed at subsidizing those states’ under-performing and at-risk nuclear power plants.
The current market conditions are, quite literally, killing the nuclear power industry. With natural gas prices low and cheap renewable energy flooding the markets, it’s been virtually impossible for many nuclear power plants to compete.
Some view this as simply the market picking winners and losers. But others see this as a problem. To significantly lower this country’s greenhouse gas emissions, they argue, we’ll need baseload power (i.e., power plants that can run all of the time). And only three current large-scale power sources fit that bill: coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Of those three, only nuclear power can generate energy without carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet, in Illinois (and in most other states), nuclear energy does not qualify as a “renewable energy resource,†which means nuclear generation facilities are categorically ineligible to produce and sell renewable energy credits....
