New Power Plants through 2010 (USA)
(Coal: 27 GW, Natural Gas: 46 GW,
Petroleum: 1 GW, "Renewables": 3 GW)
New Power Plants through 2010 (USA)
(Coal: 27 GW, Natural Gas: 46 GW,
Petroleum: 1 GW, "Renewables": 3 GW)
Our energy usage is constantly increasing. This isn't something new. It isn't something that's likely to change. We're just going to keep using more electricity. In order to supply that electricity, new power plants are constantly being built.
As you can see in the graph on the right almost all of the new power plants that are planned over the next few years will burn fossil fuels. There are ZERO new nuclear plants planned over that time.
Over the next few years, a small amount of new energy generation capacity in the form of "Renewables" is planned. You'd think that refers to things like Solar, Wind, Biomass, Hydro-power, Tidal Power, Geothermal, etc. There's a very small amount of that, but most of that category is ideas like burning tires... which is a waste of rubber and a pollution nightmare.
The amount of actual renewable energy capacity that is being built is utterly insignificant compared to the total volume of new capacity needed, which will be supplied by new fossil fuel plants.
More than 90% of the greenhouse gas emissions - which cause global warming - in the United States comes from burning fossil fuels. We need to be doing less of that, not more of it.
In addition, fossil fuels are a limited resource. Exactly how limited isn't clear, but it's a safe bet that in 50 years Petroleum and Natural Gas will both be really expensive. Coal is a lot more plentiful, but there's no reason to waste such a valuable resource on electricity production when we can use Nuclear power instead and not dump a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere.
If todays policies don't change, new fossil fuel plants will keep getting built like clockwork. We can't just stop building them without some other type of power plant to build instead. Alternative energy sources just aren't happening fast enough; people have been pushing them for 30 years and they still make up an insignificant portion of the country's energy generation.
We have only one proven technology that can generate the new electricity that we need: Nuclear Power. It's already generating 22% of the electricity in the USA, and it could be generating quite a bit more. Every time a Nuclear Plant isn't built, a Coal or Natural Gas plant is built instead. Modern plant designs even solve almost all of the historical problems that have plagued nuclear power.