The Wednesday Interview with Sarah Cullen.
Back in May last year we had a debate on the Sustainable Futures Report called The Nuclear Option. One of the panellists was Sarah Cullen and she has joined me again today, this time to talk about clean energy. We covered a number of controversial issues. For example, will Germany slow down the pace of decommissioning its nuclear plants in the face of a possible shortage of gas from Russia? We talked about citizens’ assemblies, and how they might empower politicians to adopt policies that they wouldn’t dare consider on their own. We spoke about the need to consider all energy options and to recognise that all have risks.
Roadmap to Net Zero 2050
We spoke about the IEA’s Roadmap to Net Zero 2050 and you’ll find a link to that on the Sustainable Futures Report website. Links too, to next week’s webinar from 18for0, which asks “Is Nuclear Green?” and talks about the European Sustainable Taxonomy.
Listen now to the full conversation, and all the other things we talked about.
Anthony:
Today, I'm talking to Sarah Cullen, who is a founder and steering group member of 18for0. 18for0 is an Irish organisation which wants all forms of electricity production to be considered in order to achieve net zero, including nuclear power, which is currently illegal in Ireland. Sarah has professional experience in the solar and nuclear sectors, has a BSc in physics and a master's degree in energy systems engineering. Sarah, welcome to the Sustainable Futures Report.
Sarah:
Thank you very much for having me and thanks for having me back.
Anthony:
Oh, that's great. It's always nice to keep in touch with specialists and experts.
IPCC
So this week another report was published by the IPCC. Once again, it urges us to cut carbon emissions dramatically and urgently. A very significant proportion of the world's emissions comes from the generation of electricity, from coal, from natural gas and biomass. If we're going to clean up energy production in time to save the world, where should we be concentrating our efforts?
Sarah:
Electricity v Energy
So electricity production is a really good place to start talking because it's really important to make clear the difference between energy and electricity. So electricity is a portion of energy, but energy also includes heating and transport, that industry, and other big sectors, some of which are quite difficult to decarbonise. So really a tactic that I think a lot of people are familiar with is electrifying these sectors. So replacing the oil in your car with electricity, or same with industry, and then focus on decarbonising the electricity. So decarbonising electricity is really central to most roadmaps to getting to net zero and I suppose the ideological factors in the conversation make it a little bit more difficult with regards to decarbonising electricity. So some people have views that to decarbonise electricity, “we should be minimising our use to the bare minimum and we should stop economic growth and we've been very bad, so we're not allowed to use electricity anymore.”
Decarbonise
And then other people take another extreme view that we should completely decarbonise electricity and then continue on the trajectory that we're on and clearly it's important to decarbonise the technologies we're going to be using for the electricity that we have but then, I feel like neither of those two extreme scenarios are right and somewhere in the middle, we also have to factor in a massive reduction in energy use and energy consumption. So yeah, it gets quite complicated and then when it comes down to which technologies we use to decarbonise the electricity, there's further ideologies at play.
EU Taxonomy
You might have heard about the EU have the sustainable taxonomy that they're pushing through. So it's going to define green technologies for investment purposes and for financing purposes and what this is meant to do is discourage greenwashing and set out these need our scientific definition of green.
Ideology
But ideology has come into it again where some technologies that meet the scientific definition are being contested. So nuclear power was found to meet the "does no significant harm" criteria, but some countries oppose, mainly Germany on an ideological basis and then other technologies that don't meet the criteria, like natural gas, are being proposed to be included as well. It casts a lot of doubt over the integrity of the taxonomy and that's obviously only relevant to the EU, but it's indicative of this broader confusion about what we do, how we decarbonise, which technologies we use.
Anthony:
Yeah. Well, as you were saying, I think there's a midway between stopping economic growth and not using any energy and carrying on as we are. I think it's undeniable that we waste a lot of energy and I think we've certainly got to address that.
Sarah:
We do.
Anthony:
Gas is Green?
But then it leaves us with a question as where are we getting the energy from in the first place? Yeah. I'm surprised to learn that the EU is suggesting that gas is green.
Sarah:
Three Categories
So under the taxonomy, there's three categories of technologies that are getting included. So, the first that meet the scientific definition, they are green. So that would be geothermal, most renewables, nuclear and stuff. And then there's other ones that enable green technologies. So hydrogen, things that can store energy. And then the third category, which is the controversial category, and has been added in and actually it's been proposed that nuclear is added into this category for political reasons, not for any actual scientific reasons, but it's the category of natural gas and it's described as transitional.
Natural Gas Transition
So the argument is that although natural gas has a high carbon intensity, it's not as high as other technologies and it will enable countries to transition to fully renewable grids if they want to avoid other technologies like nuclear power, and they don't have the capacity for hydro power or geothermal, other base load clean technologies.
Anti-nuclear
So the natural gas one is, yeah it's been proposed mainly by anti-nuclear countries for obvious reasons. So Austria and Germany. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of bickering over that and it casts doubt on whether the taxonomy will make it through the European parliament.
Anthony:
Russian Power
Well, nuclear power is the elephant in the room, isn't it? And events are changing rapidly and, of course, we've got these dreadful things going on in Ukraine. And Russia is a principal supplier of both oil and gas to Europe. So whether we continue to use gas is to a great extent in the hands of Russia and people are beginning to realise that in present circumstances, Russia could actually switch the pipelines off. It's already been agreed that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will not be put into operation. The fact that that's happened doesn't actually reduce supplies, because it's not in operation at the moment, but Russia could go further and turn off existing pipelines.
German Nuclear Rethink
So I understand that Germany is now beginning to rethink its opposition to nuclear, or at least rethink it in so far as they're not going to decommission their remaining nuclear power stations as quickly as they originally intended. Do you think that's a start of a complete about turn?
Sarah:
About turn in how we generate electricity?
Anthony:
Nuclear in France
Well, a change of German policy towards perhaps retaining nuclear power, perhaps even putting in new nuclear power like France is because France has just announced a programme of a whole range of new nuclear power stations.
Sarah:
Germany’s Impossible Target
Yeah. So with Germany, it's very interesting. So as of today, no decision's been made and it might take a while for a decision to be made. There's been claims in newspapers that Germany is going to transition to a hundred percent renewable grid by 2035, which isn't technically possible and those are quite misleading headlines. That's an aspiration.
Anthony:
Why do you say it's not technically possible? What would it imply?
Sarah:
Base load power v variable renewables
So there are certain types of renewables that can provide what's known as firm power or base load power and then there's other types of renewables that are variable. So we know these wind and solar, tidal I suppose in the future, they rely on external factors to turn them on and off. So you can't choose when you're going to dispatch electricity from them and these are great and you can have other technologies that complement them, which mean that you have electricity all time and you can use them to charge batteries and use those batteries when, say it's not sunny. Firm power is power plants that can be turned on and off. So in most countries, this is usually fossil fuels, but nuclear power, geothermal power, hydro power all also fit this description and there is, in some countries, it is possible to get to a hundred percent renewable power quite soon because they have a lot of hydro power and hydro is defined as renewable.
Clean Energy
Renewable power is just power that fuel source isn't being depleted as it's being used. It's a bit of a kind of misleading term. I think a lot of people conflate it with clean energy. Clean energy is low carbon energy and that includes some non-renewable sources like nuclear power that has lower carbon emissions, lifecycle carbon emissions than all renewables actually, the UNECE found last year. So basically we want clean electricity technologies and focusing on renewables is an ideology as well and to get to a hundred percent renewables, you will need firm power to back up the variables because battery technology, as it currently exists, can't be expanded at the rates needed to fully back up a grid that's based entirely on variable power. Same with hydrogen, it's in no way economic, but also there's huge supply chain issues and materials issues like technical issues beyond cost.
Cost
But if it was to rely on cost, it would be astronomically expensive, even grids with a high share in variable renewables have really high systems costs. So all the extra transmission systems you need to put in for them, the cost of balancing power, which is, you know, filling in the gaps when it's not windy or sunny get really expensive. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency last year did a study on nuclear and renewable hybrid systems and the cost of these systems costs double the cost of electricity when you get to over 70% variable renewables. So that's a really important consideration as well. But just on the technical side, it's not possible for a country that doesn't have large supplies of clean firm power to just rely on variable renewables.
Limitations of Batteries
Maybe in the future, maybe battery technologies will progress. I really hope they do and certainly the International Energy Agency in their road of maps to net zero expect that these will progress and they get a lot of funding for research.
But as it stands, 2035 is completely aspirational. So going back to what you said originally about nuclear power in Germany and their minister for economy, today, I'm not sure about their government titles, another senior member of their government announced that they're looking into nuclear power and he was asked by a reporter about it and he said, "We're not ruling it out." Germany had lots of nuclear and then after 2011, for an ideological purpose, they started being phased out and the phase out is meant to finish up at the end of this year.
Remaining German Nuclear Stations
So they still have three nuclear reactors connected to their grid. They shut off another six at the end of 2021. The carbon emissions that those plants saved compared to the German grid without them is the equivalent of all European flights for an entire year.
Fuel Security
So just to give context of how big these plants are and how much carbon they save, but they also provided extra fuel security for Germany because they're not getting the nuclear fuel from Russia. So now the really big concern is where they're going to get their power from because they're highly dependent on Russia for their other energy, so gas mainly. It's possible for some of the plants to be turned on. Some of the plants that were getting decommissioned by the end of the year, the decommissioning doesn't actually start until the end of next year or a little bit later because you need special permits for some of the processes and that's still all being processed. So some of these haven't actually started being decommissioned and it's technically possible to turn them back on and one of the major fuel suppliers, Orano, that I think the president or the director of that said in a press statement he will do everything he can to ensure that Germany would get the fuel that they would need to support them turning it back on.
Wartime Spirit
Then there's some workforce issues and if people are still around. Although given that this is a crisis, I imagine those employment issues aren't as serious as in regular times when people would be less.... Yeah. It would take less of a war time mentality of helping out possibly. So, yeah, so it's very complicated. Germany are looking into restarting their nuclear reactors, but they've made it difficult on themselves by phasing them out early, but there's some still online and that's good because when one country in Europe is really reliant on Russia for some of its energy, that ties into all of Europe because our grids are interconnected and then countries further downstream of the pipeline also get connected.
Gas from Russia
So the pipeline from Russia goes through Europe and, say Ireland where I'm from, we technically buy our gas from the UK and Norway, but the UK buys gas from Europe and if you start following back up the chain, you see that Germany not getting all of their power means further impacts further down. So what Germany decides to do is really important, as a huge electricity user is really important for the rest of Europe's energy security and yeah, so they haven't announced so far that they're looking to build new nuclear plants and to be honest that wouldn't really help much with this because nuclear plants take a few years to build, and this is quite an immediate concern. So them having these possibly still functional nuclear power plants that are just turned off is a good resource for Europe hopefully.
Anthony:
Turning German Nuclear Back On
Right. If they turned them back on, would that enable them to decarbonise by 2035?
Sarah:
I haven't seen any studies into that because obviously the plan until last week was to have them all shut off.
Anthony:
Yeah.
Sarah:
So all studies take into account that they'll be turned off. I think that that's technically possible. It depends. Well, it depends. Some of the plants are turned off, starting to be decommissioned. When you start decommissioning, you inject a substance into the reactor that neutralises a lot of the potential for reactions to take place in it and that's the start of the decommissioning process. Once that has already happened, you would need to replace the reactor. So there are plants where that hasn't happened already. I'm not sure what share of the total energy those are, but yeah, possibly with a mix of other technologies. And, I mean, you always talk about a mix of technologies because it's never going to just be a hundred percent nuclear, a hundred percent renewables or anything. So it would depend on what other technologies they had available.
Anthony:
IPCC Warning
Yeah. Yeah, of course the urgency in the IPCC report is to cut back emissions as quickly as we possibly can. It's a warning, which I think we've had from the IPCC, almost as long as the IPCC has been around. But they're now saying, if you read the report, that if we go over 1.5 degrees centigrade in terms of global warming, then we will create a lot of things which will be irreversible. The situation as it stands is despite these repeated reports from preeminent scientists all over the world, the global emissions are going up and up and up and even during the pandemic, although it slowed down during lockdown, it's still going up.
So we are in a very difficult and very urgent situation. I would've thought it was a no brainer if German governments and anybody other governments really took it seriously, that they should not be switching to a transition fuel which is more carbon intensive than the nuclear power they're already using. So, I don't know, is there the psychological willingness or realisation that something has to be done? Are we actually going to achieve clean energy in time? Because when the IPCC says 1.5 degrees is an essential target which cannot be breached, we know that the plans that all the signatories to the Paris Agreement have, if implemented, will lead to a rise to about 3.4. So, well, where are we? What's the answer to that, Sarah? We need an answer.
Sarah:
Still Time?
Okay. So the question is when will people realise that, and is there still time to catch up? That's one of the most pressing topics in the world.
IEA Roadmap to Net Zero 2050
So, the International Energy Agency I mentioned earlier, they came out with a report with roadmap to net zero carbon by 2050 and in that they had two scenarios in that, there were four scenarios in total and two of the scenarios in that were what would need to be done to meet those climate targets and it was tailored to that and then the other two scenarios compared what has been pledged by governments and what actual policy has been put in place by governments.
Best Performing Scenario
So the best performing scenario was by design their net zero emission scenario. So limiting climate change to under 1.5 degrees, I'm pretty sure, and then reaching net zero emissions by 2050. And then the other scenario was meeting net zero, but then also taking into account other sustainable development, like air quality and stuff.
So that was less good in terms of carbon, but is really important for policy makers to bear that in mind. The other two scenarios are very interesting.
Pledges and Policies
So, one of them took into account what governments have pledged that they'll do and what they've signed up to do and that one didn't perform very well at all and then the worst performing one was what governments have actually put, what policies they've actually put into place.
Missed Targets
That one sees us missing our goals entirely and I think that's probably in line with the IPCC report. I'm not sure of the exact numbers of it. So it's really clear that even with the pledges, not even with what's actually happening, but even with the aspirational pledges that governments have, we're so far off track doing what needs to be done and the International Energy Agency, they did this roadmap to try to get people back on track, but they have a progress tracker and everything is either yellow or red in it.
So most energy sources and behaviour changes and policies aren't on track at all. There's a huge disconnect between the scientific community and politicians in this area. It's really unclear what more can be done to combat this. We see at COP, whenever it comes around, all the new pledges, they're not actually helping with anything. They're not correlating with the action that needs to be done.
Party Politics
When you see countries putting party politics ahead of climate change like Germany did, so, the green parties, a lot of them in Europe were founded opposing nuclear war and opposing nuclear power because they conflated those into being the same thing and that has had a knock on effect of ignoring really crucial technologies that should have been deployed around the world and could have averted a lot of carbon and are still being felt where politicians, whose job it is to get reelected, that is their entire job, don't want to anger their base and don't want to anger people who've now made it part of their identity to oppose certain clean energy technologies.
So then we see a warping of, well, maybe gas isn't that bad and I think a lot of it comes from a misunderstanding. It's very worrying to see countries putting forward fossil fuels as a climate solution. It's not in line with any of the scientific literature.
Anthony:
Nuclear Disaster
Okay. But people would turn around and they would say, "Look at nuclear power, look at the potential for nuclear disaster, look at Three Mile Island, look at Chernobyl, look at Fukushima, look at the fact that the waste that is produced is toxic and has a life of well, hundreds of human lifetimes," and they say, "Well, is the risk worth it?" So what is your answer to that?
Sarah:
Really Big Risk
We have a really, really big risk coming our way and we know about it and we hear about it all the time with climate change. There are risks with every form of electricity generation and I think that there should be much broader conversations about all of these.
Scrutiny
The nuclear industry faces a lot of scrutiny with it that other energy technologies don't, not even fossil fuels and especially not renewable technologies when it comes to air quality, waste management, biodiversity loss, and impact on ecosystems. These need to be much better addressed. I think people get a lot of their information about energy systems from what is essentially marketing materials from the relevant associations. So, wind associations and renewables that are pushing for clean electricity, yes, but they're also pushing for business interests, and international organisations like the IEA don't seem to penetrate into what politicians are hearing and what regular people are hearing.
Risks in all Technologies
So yeah, with nuclear, there are risks. In the same way there are risks with all of the technologies that we're using and they need to be managed definitely. But, if you want to look at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukushima, I would really encourage do look at them. Look at them and look at industrial accidents in other sectors and look at mortality and morbidity in all the other sectors and don't just look at the nuclear impacts, look at all of them and make sensible comparisons between them and then choose your mix of technologies based on that. And what we find is when we balance these risks, nuclear power comes out okay. There's still risks associated with it. Sure. And, I mean, even just down to you need concrete to build them and there are always going to be environmental inputs to your electricities, but when you actually look at all of the technologies, not just nuclear, the lands that have…
Balance Risks
I have an article comparing mortality and mobility for major forms of electricity generation in Europe and nuclear is an order of magnitude safer than gas and then other fossil fuels that we're advocating for and it's similar to renewables. The UNECE shows that it has lower environmental impact and so that mortality morbidity includes all nuclear disasters and the UNECE finds that it has lower environmental impact including carbon emissions, but also other environmental impacts like on air quality and water than other technologies, including renewables.
No Time to Waste
We should be really examining all of them, but very fast, we don't really have much time to waste because the really big threat that's coming up is climate change.
Anthony:
And do you feel that the politicians will actually accelerate their work towards addressing these issues? I'm very pessimistic. I mean, I don't see it because politicians, I fear, always take the short term view and as you were saying earlier on, their business is to get re-elected and the long term view, or cathedral viewing, as somebody was describing it the other day is really not on their agenda.
Sarah:
Behaviour Changes
It's not, and it's really worrying. So if you go back to that IEA report, they looked at what factor behaviour changes compared to technology changes and big system changes will have in reaching net zero emissions in that scenario they had, and obviously behaviour changes need to account for much more of emissions reductions in advanced economies and already very energy intensive countries. But even in those cases, it accounted for, I think, maybe 15% of carbon reduction in buildings. So, better insulation, less intensive appliances and that sort of thing and then I think it was closer to 40% for transport, but that's mainly just from not flying because it's really difficult to decarbonise planes.
Action by Governments
The rest of the changes, the vast majority of the changes, are system changes and will have to be enacted by governments. It's just not possible for people to do it.
So while it can be easy to look at this and despair that nothing's going to happen. I mean, first of all, the system changes or the behaviour change is really crucial to meeting those goals and everyone should be pushing for that anyway. I'm not a politician, something has to happen to enable the system changes that we need and to enable them on a more realistic time scale than is currently being discussed.
Unrealistic Technologies
Some of the technologies that I hear proposed as solutions for climate change, like tidal and fusion and other technologies, like hydrogen, on the scales that we would need as quickly as we need them are a bit unrealistic and I think in some ways it's a nice way for governments to just say, "We have these technologies coming up. We don't need to do much now."
And that's been one of the issues I think with the 2050 targets is that no government who's currently in power now will be in power in 2050 obviously. So it's a really nice excuse for them to go, "Well, we tried and that's for future generations," when carbon in the atmosphere is cumulative. So the sooner we make the system changes the better and now we're starting to come into a phase where people say that the changes that we need, the necessary changes, are too slow, and they're getting disheartened from that point of view. So, I know nuclear has been brought up as an example, but also with certain forms of renewables and with battery technologies that it'll take 10 years to get these systems in place. That's too slow. It'll take 15 years to change our transmission system and the way that's needed, that's too slow and that's also worrying.
Fatalism
This kind of fatalism that is being thrown about because the remedy that's being offered to that is that the first really extreme viewpoint I mentioned earlier of cut off people's electricity use, people can't use appliances anymore, people can't have private vehicles and stuff, which I think is totally unrealistic, and just really murkies the water of what needs to be done and turns people off the conversation as a whole. I think it's up to people to be very realistic and pragmatic when they talk about these things, because that's, what's giving people their information, this kind of chatter. So by murkying the waters at this stage and saying, "Wouldn't it be nice if we all just stopped needing electricity," it actually doesn't help in the way that maybe those environmentalists think it would.
Anthony:
XR
Very prominent on the environmentalist front, of course, is Extinction Rebellion. One of the things that they demand is the creation of a citizens’ assembly to assess all the science information and advise governments. Now in Ireland, you have had experience of citizens’ assemblies. Is there any chance that a citizens’ assembly will be set up for that purpose?
Sarah:
Citizens’ Assembly
So, we actually already had a citizens’ assembly for climate change in our climate action I think two years ago. So, citizens’ assemblies are great. The big one that Ireland is known for, and that got these citizens’ assemblies on a global stage, was one that we had about abortion rights in 2016, I think. Where scientists were brought in and put before a group of, I think, 99 or a hundred citizens and they were allowed to ask as many questions they want and all different views were taken on board and eventually they came up with recommendations that were in line with a lot of international best practice for medicine and were totally out of line with what Irish politicians would ever have been comfortable proposing. So it's a really nice system to take that element of politicians just want to get reelected that's their job out of it and it gives them a mandate to go forward with something.
I think it's a really nice way of engaging politicians because people tend to be much more up... I know in Ireland, this has always been the case. I imagine in lots of other countries too, most other countries, that people tend to be up for necessary change and people understand science when it's communicated to them. But politicians are always going to be more reserved because it's their personal job on the line if they make a false step. So, yeah, I like the idea of citizens’ assemblies.
Political Slant
There's also a worry though, because the one that happened in Ireland to do a climate action had a political slant to it, and which technologies were considered. So, nuclear power wasn't discussed as a technology at all and that clearly has a political slant to it that is not fully scientific. So I guess ensuring that they're run properly is really important, but they're probably one of the best tools that we have to actually get through to policy makers.
Anthony:
Optimistic
Right. Well, finally, we started off by talking about clean energy and the question is it too late to save the world? How optimistic are you? You've got a lot of life ahead of you, a lot more than I have. Where do you see yourself in the future? Where do you see the world in the future?
Sarah:
My View
I guess in some ways I'm optimistic because I want to be, but then when I look at what I've been doing, so since last April I left my job and I've been volunteering full time to trying to change the rules about nuclear power in Ireland so it can be discussed as a technology option because I look at what our current trajectory is and I feel quite panicked and I felt a sense of… energy is my area.
Personal Responsibility
I felt a sense of personal responsibility to contribute to that topic and I see people, I see all sorts of groups of people doing that in their areas. So, in circular economy or in recycling or whatever it is, but that being said, there have been people doing these things for years, really great, enthusiastic, fantastic people doing great work for years, and it hasn't been having the effect that we want.
Global Changes
I think we're going to make changes and I look at Europe as my main example, main reference point. I think there's a lot of scope in especially Southeast Asia and many African countries that are expanding their grid and building new infrastructure now. There's a really good opportunity for them to get in from the start with really good practices like sustainability practices and really boost from that side of things. But from already very energy heavy countries, like in Europe and very wasteful countries like in Europe, the attitude shifts that I would've hoped to have seen by now, haven't really happened. I hope it's not too late to save the world because I live on the world, but it's hard not to feel a bit depressed sometimes about the prospects.
Anthony:
Well, thank you very much, Sarah, for sharing your ideas with us and the Sustainable Futures Report. I think things are moving very swiftly. I think that change is accelerating. So I hope we can stay in touch and maybe talk to you in a year's time and see where things have gone from where they are now. So thanks again.
Sarah:
Thank you very much.
Sarah Cullen.
I hope you found that interesting, maybe controversial. Let’s have your feedback either by mail to
Before I go let me tell you that the number of listeners to the Sustainable Futures Report has suddenly taken off. The total hits for February was nearly twice the rate for January and the daily rate for March is significantly higher than that.
If you’re a new listener, welcome. If you’re an established listener, especially if you’re a patron. Thank you for your loyalty. I had a request this week from an agency in the US asking if I would advertise their kerbside plastic collection startup and what I would charge. As I told them, I don’t charge because I value my independence. The only income I get, which goes towards the cost of transcriptions and hosting and website maintenance, comes from my patrons via patreon.com. Your support is very much appreciated.
Well I’m sure there will be something to write about for Friday, but for the moment that’s it.
Thanks again to Sarah Cullen and thanks again to you for listening.
Until next time.
That was the Sustainable Futures Report.
I’m Anthony Day.
Bye for now.
Links
Nuclear fuel
UNECE
IEA Report
Here is the IEA report (scrolling down this page gives you a summary which Sarah would recommend over the actual report)
Is Nuclear Green? Asks 18for0
Here is the link to their next webinar
18for0
EU Taxonomy
