OPINION | JEREMY GORDON
Jeremy Gordon is an independent communication consultant with 18 years of experience in the international energy industry. His company Fluent in Energy supports partners of all kinds to communicate matters of clean energy and sustainable development.
Being a political heavyweight
Nuclear is now gathering political and financial support as it serves to address the twin challenges of energy security and climate change but it is still far away from the longed-for equal recognition with renewable sources as a key part of the solution to net zero. However, Jeremy Gordon argues that even if nothing changes to help nuclear, the competition could equalise sooner than we think
THE UNIT: Illustration copyright Alexy Kovynev
nuclear is diminishing. At the same time, when people look seriously at deploying renewables at the scale required, they start to accumulate unwelcome baggage. Take solar power, which is projected to be the world’s main source of electricity by 2050. Putting solar on rooftops is of course a no-brainer, particularly where its production will coincide with demand for air conditioning or the work of a business. These deployments are the low-hanging fruit, easily accessible in the built environment. But these alone are far from enough to meet our energy needs. Building the large number of utility-scale solar projects required means using vast open spaces in areas of land that could otherwise be productive as agricultural land for instance. But there are even more extreme projects being mooted as the solution to our clean energy demands. Indeed, the solar megaprojects being promoted now
In terms of heating the house, lately I’m starting to turn to nuclear
HE WORLD IS COMING TO terms with the pace and scale of action needed both get to Net Zero and achieve an adequate level of energy security in the short term. This means that the number of people determined to pursue every energy option before turning to
14 | June 2022 |
www.neimagazine.com
require fields of photovoltaic panels that stretch to the horizon and in some cases are far over the horizon too. The proposed Sun Cable project, for example, would provide 3GWe of capacity for Singapore but will come from a solar farm near Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. The plan will see the solar generation connecting up the city via a 4200km undersea HVDC cable. Not only is this a huge undertaking but instinctively, the
idea that an entirely artificial landscape of glass would be a good thing just feels very wrong. It’s true that there are not many really sprawling developments like Sun Cable but it also counterintuitive, or perhaps an irony, that laying out
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