Our Team :: New Jersey :: Christine Todd Whitman
Clean Air - Cool Planet • Energy & Climate Solutions Conference
Remarks by Christine Todd Whitman
Manchester, NH, October 12, 2007
Thank you very much for the kind introduction. It’s an honor and pleasure to be in the company of such motivated stewards of the environment.
I actually have some ties back to the early days of Clean Air – Cool Planet. Back in 2001, as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, I presented an award to your first signed corporate sponsor, Shaw’s Supermarkets. The Shaw’s East Boston location was honored with the Energy Star designation for its commitment to energy conservation practices, the first grocery store in the country to be honored with the award. Shaw’s went on to become the Energy Star Partner of the Year.
In my time as the EPA Administrator, I was determined to work alongside business and industry to tackle our most difficult environmental issues. I am happy to see people here representing the union between environmental and business responsibility (Gary Hirshburg, President and CEO, Stoneyfield Farm; Gary Smith, SVP, The Timberland Company). I truly believe that businesses are more than the products they produce and the jobs they create – they have the power, as innovators and entrepreneurs, to set the course for their state.
As the former governor of New Jersey, having joined with my New England colleagues on numerous occasions to ask for relief from our neighbors to our west and upwind from us, I am keenly aware of the air quality issues that plague the northeast. Simply improving our own environmental performance is only part of the challenge; encouraging cleaner energy choices across the nation is equally important for states like ours.
It is one reason why I am committed to co-chairing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, widely known as CASEnergy. When the founders contacted me more than a year ago, they asked me if I would like to join forces with Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace and a well-known environmental activist. Our mission would be to draw attention to nuclear energy’s positive story. More broadly, it would be to convert 30 years of emotional debate about nuclear energy into a practical discussion of the role it can play in meeting our energy demand, a task I relished And to me, the discussion starts with the fact that nuclear energy doesn’t emit greenhouse gases.
Scientists may debate some of their predictions about climate change, but they agree that greenhouse gas emissions are dangerously warming the planet. Addressing the problem will mean drastic changes in the levels of greenhouse gases we emit. But how?
From both my role as Governor of New Jersey and my role as EPA Administrator, I have found that a common-sense, realistic approach to problems is generally the best approach. We know that energy needs are on the rise, and that fossil fuels-fired plants will remain in the mix. We can and will continue to invest in technologies to make that energy cleaner – but we should also recognize that increasing nuclear power is one way we can meet our base power needs without harming air quality.
Right here in New Hampshire, you have the Seabrook nuclear power plant, which supplies emission-free power to southern New Hampshire. Seabrook produces about 42 percent of New Hampshire’s electricity, more than any other source of energy in the state. What does that mean for clean air? Well, the 3,400 tons of nitrogen oxides avoided by Seabrook is the amount of nitrogen oxides released in a year by 180,000 passenger cars. That’s like taking a quarter of the cars in this state off the road.
The economy in New Hampshire is growing. Gross State Product has risen an average of 3.3 percent in each of the past 5 years. Growing economies mean more business, more people, more cars, more houses and more computers. And that means more energy – at least 16 percent more demand on the New England power grid by 2030, and something closer to 40 percent nationwide by that year.
As an environmentalist, my first instinct is to look at renewables and alternative energy. And we should all welcome and encourage them. But the reality is that renewables contribute only about 2.5% of our current power supply if you don’t count hydroelectric, which is largely built to full capacity in this country. Even if we double or triple our electricity supply from renewables by 2030, we’ll still need more. We will still need to increase our primary sources of electricity.
What about efficiency and conservation? Emphatically, yes and yes. We all must do our part. As EPA administrator, I worked hard to encourage both goals, and continue to do so now. It’s just common sense. But efficiency and conservation will only get us so far, and that’s not far enough.
We face a serious energy and environmental challenge. The trick going forward is for us to find a way to meet our energy needs while limiting environment repercussions. Nuclear is an appealing way to do this.
I’m here today on behalf of the CASEnergy Coalition, which has a membership of more than 1300 individuals and organizations around the country. We have been talking to the country’s leading health, environmental and policy groups, as well as the 2008 presidential candidates. We’re seeing more and more of these leaders respond with understanding – they are talking about the need for an expanded role for nuclear power.
I’ve also had a chance to look at the Carbon Coalition’s Presidential Leadership Agenda. We are very much on the same page with the benchmarks you’ve outlined for the president-elect. As a former governor, I support the idea of a mandatory cap on carbon. As the former EPA administrator I am in line with your directive for the president-elect to encourage citizens to build efficiency and conservation in their homes and communities. And as for myself, I have to encourage you all to take a hard look at nuclear energy. It presents great opportunities for your initiatives and is largely in line with all seven of your key benchmarks.
I’ve done this long enough to know what you’re thinking right now. Is nuclear energy safe? Isn’t it too expensive? And what do we do about the waste? I’d like to briefly take these common, realistic concerns one by one.
First: Safety. I think the main concern about nuclear is radiation. Quite frankly, you would have to live near a nuclear power plant for more than 2,000 years to get the same amount of radiation exposure that you receive from a single diagnostic medical x-ray. Beyond that, nuclear plants provide some of the safest working conditions for their workers of any industry. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says it is safer to work at a nuclear power plant than at a typical factory in the manufacturing sector. Some plants have logged more than 2 million hours without a lost-time worker incident.
Second: What about the cost? There is no doubt that building a new reactor requires a considerable investment. But many believe these plants cost nearly the same as coal plants, which are deploying pollution control technology and will soon need to be able to sequester greenhouse gases. Once a nuclear power plant is online, nuclear energy actually has the lowest costs to produce electricity of any expandable electricity source.
But whatever sources we use, adding almost 50% more capacity to our current electricity grid is going to cost money. As we do that, investing in a clean and efficient source of power that has low daily operating costs and produces zero emissions makes tremendous sense.
Finally, and this is the big question, what do we do with radioactive fuel rods after they are used in reactors? My answer is that we already have an answer to the issue of spent fuel. It’s called Yucca Mountain. And the reason that we aren’t already storing used fuel there has far less to do with nuclear science than it does with political science. This is a political roadblock. Yucca Mountain can and should be the repository for spent fuel.
I believe strongly in the power of research and development, particularly around the idea of recycling spent fuel. This will enable us to derive even more energy from our current supply and reduce the amount of spent fuel that will ultimately need to be stored in Yucca. In fact, recycling has the potential to reduce the remaining fissionable material in a spent rod by up to 97%. We have to invest the money and the time to explore the possibilities.
What I have found in my own career and throughout my travels is that when people really take the time to wrap their minds around nuclear energy, their minds are ultimately opened.
Right now, this country is at a standstill between what we know is the right and responsible thing to do – meet energy demand while giving the environment a break. We seem to be getting hung up in this emotional debate between two schools of thought that do not necessarily have to be at odds with each other. All of us in this room are concerned about the environment, about air quality – that’s why we’re here. But the reality is that people want their electricity, and even if we do train ourselves to be efficient conservationists, we’re still going to need more energy in the future.
Nuclear energy provides some common ground between these issues.
Nuclear energy is not a magic bullet. It will not solve all of our future energy needs and people have legitimate questions about nuclear energy, questions to which I believe there are good answers.
But nuclear is part of the broader solution. We must start advocating for a broad energy mix – one that includes efficiency and conservation, that includes renewables and other sources of alternative energy, and that very much includes nuclear energy.
As I said at the beginning of this speech, I take great pleasure in being part of these conferences that take seriously the environmental crises we face today. I encourage all of you to give serious thought to the value of nuclear, and if you feel the way I do about it, I encourage you do sign up to be a member of CASEnergy. You can sign up online at www.CleanSafeEnergy.org.
Thank you for having me here today. I’d be happy to take a few questions.