Going clean can be tough

As India’s Kudankulam nuclear plant gets set for producing power, doubts still remain on both sides of the nuclear argument. The World Health Organization estimates that preventable deaths from air pollution, meaning soot and smog from burning wood, coal, oil and gasoline, total more than two million per year worldwide. James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist, calculates the positive benefit of nuclear power as having saved about 1.84 million lives by reducing such pollution. Natural gas — methane — which anti-nuclear environmentalists lately seem to be embracing, is a greenhouse gas more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

Meanwhile, Germany's push to radically remake its energy system by abandoning nuclear and embracing clean energy is threatened by delays in grid investments and, paradoxically, the success of its solar industry. After the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, Germany adopted a policy of phasing out nuclear energy by 2022 and ensuring that 80 percent of the country's electricity supply comes from clean energy by 2050, or more than three times the level of 2010.

Even as the government is cutting back on once-generous subsidies for solar technology, the country is expected to reach a total solar installed capacity of 52,000 MW by 2017 or 2018. That is up from 6,000 MW in 2008, almost a ninefold increase.

The 17 nuclear reactors that were operated in Germany at the time used to produce about a fifth of the country's electricity. One piece of the new system to take their place will be 5,000 wind turbines installed nearly 100 miles out at sea, in water as deep as 130 feet. Another piece will be thousands of megawatts of gleaming rooftop solar panels.
Wind parks, for now mainly located onshore, already represent 17 percent of the country's installed generating capacity. But the expansion of offshore wind has been slowed by grid problems.
Meanwhile, Germany's solar boom is depressing energy prices and hurting the bottom line at the nation's big utilities such as RWE AG and E.ON SE. Germany needs nearly 1,000 miles of new high-voltage power lines in the coming years, according to plans approved by the federal government. Yet less than 155 miles has been built so far. In another blow to the government's plans, E.ON and RWE are reducing spending on renewable energy to cut down debt.

If and when wind and solar capacity double their outputs from current levels, base-load plants, which have to run constantly to ensure grid stability, will start to suffer financially as well and risk becoming uneconomical.
Going clean also comes with its handicaps. But if one can make it work, there are lessons for many in that.