Nuclear climate

Progress Energy bolsters its case for new nuclear power plants by stressing their advantages against global warming

Both of North Carolina's giant electric utilities now are enlisted in the fight against global warming, and that's good news. Raleigh-based Progress Energy published a report this week outlining its strategy, joining Duke Energy and a host of other U.S. power companies that have taken on the issue.

This development reflects the growing confidence of science in the reality of climate change, but that's not all. Global warming also helps make the utilities' case for building the country's first new nuclear power plants in a generation. Progress Energy, for example, seeks federal permission to expand its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County. Certainly, the company's nuclear case is worth considering, along with other options to reduce the importance of fossil fuels in the nation's power generation mix.

Plants that burn coal as they generate electricity are major sources of the carbon dioxide that collects in Earth's atmosphere and prevents heat from escaping. Regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions from those plants gradually are being tightened, confronting utility companies with steadily mounting anti-pollution expenses. It's understandable that they would want to find options to heavy reliance on coal.

Two scientific studies published in the respected journal Nature last week highlight what's at stake on the environmental front. The authors concluded that Arctic temperatures today are approaching the same levels that thawed Greenland's glaciers 130,000 years ago. If melting again gathers an unstoppable momentum, sea levels could rise 20 feet over several centuries, swamping North Carolina's Outer Banks, southern Louisiana and the lower quarter of Florida. Unchecked carbon emissions can be expected to accelerate the meltdown.

With global warming alarms being sounded, activist investors have been lobbying Progress Energy to use renewable alternatives to coal, such as solar, as energy sources that are friendlier to the environment. Some want state regulators to require the company to tap these sources.

The company's response is that such alternatives are valuable and that it intends to make more use of them. Still, it regards them as insufficient to meet projected increases in electricity demand. Population growth in its North and South Carolina service areas has outpaced national averages over the past five years, and that is likely to continue. Bigger houses, with air conditioning and ample floor space, are using more power.

To meet the demand for all that juice, the utility needs plants producing major megawatts all day every day at the lowest possible cost. Progress Energy's strategy thus is to concentrate now on building small natural gas-fired plants to use strictly during times of peak demand, and to get in line for federal permits to build new nuclear units. At the same time, it is committing itself to ramped-up conservation and efficiency programs and to a greater reliance on alternative energy sources.

Despite the industry's decent safety record, terrorism and incomplete plans for handling nuclear waste remain problematic. We need national leadership willing and able finally to solve that problem. When the ice caps begin to melt, it may be too late. Meanwhile, it is encouraging to see a company such as Progress Energy formulate a strategy that makes it a participant in the effort to combat global warming. That strategy could be good for business, and should be good for the environment as well if the expanded nuclear option can be pursued safely.