Using Renewable Energy, Efficiency, and Conservation to Address Climate Change
Chapter 6 discusses many CC solutions that avoid nuclear fission. Because wind and solar-PV power are fully developed, are relatively inexpensive, and can provide electricity (which offers the greatest flexibility in energy use, including supplying electricity for plug-in hybrids), this chapter considers mostly wind and solar PV. This chapter lays out 10 arguments for using renewable energy and efficiency programs, rather than nuclear fission, to address CC. First, it shows that energy efficiency and conservation are the cheapest ways to address CC. It also shows that both wind and solar photovoltaic are cheaper than atomic energy. Not only do market proponents confirm that renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear fission, but renewable energy is also becoming progressively cheaper, while fission is becoming progressively more expensive. The chapter illustrates that renewable-energy sources could supply all global energy, while fission could not, and that renewable-energy sources can be implemented more quickly than atomic power. Renewable-energy sources, unlike nuclear fission, are sustainable, low-carbon technologies that would also make the nation and the planet more militarily secure than could nuclear power. Finally, the chapter shows how the transition to 100-percent-renewable energy can be made easily and smoothly.
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