Breakers in the Solar Wave

Although Germany has become something of a whipping post on this blog, it’s hard not to look at its energy profile since it decided to close its nuclear facilities and not see something like chaos. But a lot of that chaos is incipient, so there’s time – not a lot, but still some time – to figure out how to proceed.

For Germany, one of those ways has been encouraging the uptake of renewable energy. But now, the plummeting price of solar panels has unleashed a new round of, how shall we put it, chaos.

Germany plans to reduce government subsidies supporting solar power by up to 30 percent within a year because higher-than-expected demand has made the scheme far more costly than authorities initially expected.

At first glance, that seems a boon to the solar business and a vindication of those subsidies – they seeded the market and now the market can proceed on its own. But not so.

German companies producing solar panels, already under pressure from stiff competition from new manufacturers in China, protested against the new cuts. Several thousand employees of about 50 firms in the segment held protest rallies across the country, the German Solar Industry Association said.

Now, this could simply be a case of not wanting the money spigot turned off – that’s not unusual. The growth of solar energy in Germany in impressive but seems containable: installations ran to 7500 megawatts in capacity last year, more than double the 3500 megawatts the government expected to see (and based its subsidy system around.) Remember that solar power cannot achieve 50 percent of its capacity rating, so those numbers are a little deceptive on their face. Nuclear energy facilities, by contrast, achieve above 90 percent of its capacity rating routinely.

Beyond these issues, the subsidies have put considerable pressure on the price benefit from the installations, essentially erasing the savings for ratepayers:

Installations of solar panels have boomed due to feed-in tariffs, generous subsidies which have mounted into a growing burden passed on to energy consumers.

Clearly the economics of solar power have gone haywire, but how?

Here’s the beginnings of an answer, from Morningstar:

Looking forward, we expect module pricing will begin falling within the next month, and reiterate our projection that module prices will be in the mid-$0.80s by summer. At such pricing levels, even a company with best-in-class production costs will not be able to turn a net profit this year. We reiterate our belief that for now long-term investors should steer clear of the space.

That’ll help, won’t it? Other financial gurus take equally dire views. The prediction is that there will be a wave of bankruptcies followed by a retrenchment. Here’s the bankruptcy part.

That will inevitably lead to more bankruptcies in a sector already laboring under 100 percent or more over-capacity and where leading names have filed for insolvency, including U.S.-based Evergreen Solar and Solyndra, and debt restructurings such as the one at Germany's Q-Cells.

And the retrenchment part.

But further cost cuts across the supply chain - and in particular the upstream manufacturers of raw solar-grade silicon - will sharpen the technology's competitiveness and see it mount a serious attack on offshore wind, shaking up the relative outlook for emerging technologies.

I’d add here that this shakeout holds the potential to strangle the solar panel business in Germany in the face of competition from China – what those protestors are rightly worried about - and losing a nascent business sector in a nascent technology would be an unquestionably poor outcome. But what about that serious attack on offshore wind?

If solar economics can leapfrog those of offshore wind, this poses the question: why invest in such a complex, moving piece of machinery as an offshore turbine, stationed in an unpredictable weather environment with massive servicing costs, rather than a simpler, static and more proven solar panel array?

One answer is that there may be more limited space for solar panels in the best, south-facing spots compared with the available coastlines suited for offshore turbines.

So – maybe. Note that Germany is far from being a sun-and-fun kind of place – this argument for solar is actually more solid for the United States.

I may be wrong, but this sounds like an instance where a business gambled that it would have a substantial product to sell but has ended up with the equivalent of a widget – and what company, especially one with considerable worker needs, can survive with a single widget as its product line?

This will shake out. Watching it do so is likely to be incredibly painful, especially in Germany, and a real blow to the solar energy business just when, ironically, it is gaining traction. In the meantime, chaos – Germany has blown a giant hole into its energy outlook.

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You win some, you lose some:

Kuwait has decided to abandon civilian nuclear power production.

Abandon in this case means not build. Kuwait thought it might build four reactors by 2020 but has changed its mind.

We wrote about Kuwait’s plans two summers ago, based on this bit of news:

Kuwait is experiencing almost emergency conditions after power consumption hit an all-time high for the third day in a row at 10,921 megawatts at 2:30 pm, which is around 30 megawatts short of maximum production capacity. The record consumption was triggered by record temperatures that reached 51 degrees Celsius at Kuwait Airport, 50 degrees in Kuwait City and as high as 53 degrees at the Abdali border post with Iraq.

53 degrees Celsius is 127 degrees Fahrenheit. Kuwait asked its neighbors for help but didn’t get much.

So, this is Kuwait:

About a quarter of Kuwait's power is generated from gas. The rest is from oil. Besides the exorbitant cost, the use of fuel oil has a major environmental impact and Kuwait City is often shrouded in a brown haze.

I’ve lost track of who lost what here.

Neighborhood as solar array in Germany.

On Politifact, President Clinton and Nuclear Costs

You may recall that in November, President Clinton made the following statement about the relative costs of nuclear, solar and wind in an appearance on The Daily Show:

"Solar energy and wind energy ... would already be competitive with coal if you had to pay the extraneous costs of coal -- the health care costs and other things. And ... wind within two years and solar within five will be competitive in price with coal. They're both cheaper than nuclear right now."

In response, Lou Jacobson, a reporter with Politifact, took a closer look at Clinton's claim, and rated it half-true:

Clinton was correct about wind energy being "cheaper than nuclear right now," at least the onshore kind. But for now, nuclear beats the cheapest form of solar energy on price. So we rate his statement Half True.

That claim didn't sit well with NEI's David Bradish, who pulled apart the numbers and suggested that Politifact change its rating from "half true" to "mostly false":

As shown above, the low end of nuclear’s cost range ($109.70/MWh) is lower than the high end of wind’s cost range ($115/MWh); therefore wind is not always cheaper than nuclear.

Further, the amount of wind that can be built is limited to specific places in the U.S. that receive adequate wind flow (see map below).

A substantial amount of wind cannot be built in places such as the Southeast due to a lack of natural resources. Areas with low wind resources will produce less electricity from installed turbines which in turn cause higher levelized costs.

[...]

Currently, 104 nuclear reactors (101 gigawatts) generate 20% of the country’s baseload power at low operating costs. This compares to 40 GW of wind and 1 GW of solar generating 2.2% and 0.0003% of the country’s electricity, respectively, at intermittent times.

The folks at PolitiFact should reconsider their conclusion about former President Clinton’s statements and change it from Half True to Mostly False.

Back on November 22, I passed David's analysis along to Jacobson, and here's the response I got:

I apologize for not getting back sooner. I was gone for most of last week and now we're on a short week.

We are expecting to do a full Mailbag treatment on this topic, probably next week, since we have received many comments on the story. We are happy to run your comments (likely abridged for space) in that piece. We usually do not run names with the comments in our mailbag items, but your case would likely be an exception, assuming you'd like to be identified.

I will say that our comments have included many examples of complaints that we were too soft on nuclear (and too hard on renewables) and many that we were too hard on nuclear (and too soft on renewables). Given the complexity of analyzing this issue -- both nuclear and renewables have complaints about how they were treated by the DOE methodology -- I do not see an obvious reason for us to change our rating from the fairly neutral Half True. But that's not my call--the editors determine the rating, and the writers only make recommendations.

Thanks for writing....

Lou Jacobson

Well, it's now December 8, and I have yet to see an update to the original piece. I checked in with Jacobson again today, and he wrote back that they've been busy, but are still planning to do a follow up. While I'm happy to take him at his word, we promise to keep you updated as to if/when Politifact gets around to doing a deeper dive on the evidence. As far as we're concerned, we think their readers deserve it.

Solyndra, Nuclear Energy and Loan Guarantees

One of the things that struck me when reading about the bankruptcy of Solyndra and its implication for the federal loan guarantee program is that it seemed so small bore – beyond the entertainment value of any “scandal-worthy” elements attached to it – because it “only” realized the risks associated with the loan guarantee program. That doesn’t impact the social value of loan guarantees as a mechanism for promoting a desirable energy policy. Now, I’m not saying risk is nothing – and Solyndra’s bankruptcy is worth an investigation – but everyone knows that no business is a sure thing. 

But, of course, Solyndra didn’t make nuclear facilities, so it was interesting here only insofar as its downfall might impact upon the loan guarantee program.

Still -

Solyndra had a use as Exhibit A for the argument that solar energy is always a bad investment, but that’s transparently false, so there’s nowhere really to go with that line of attack.

It has also been used as an argument against the loan guarantee program. Bloomberg Government lately has done a good job showing that this is also false:

The DOE’s 1705 loan guarantee program, valued at $16.1 billion, constitutes 1.7 percent of the federal government’s guarantee commitments across all agencies. Solyndra’s guarantee of $535 million is 3 percent of the portfolio.

You can read about 1705 here. Nuclear energy is not included in this program, which is limited to some renewable energy sources, electricity transmission projects and some biofuels. Nuclear energy is covered in the 1703 program (more here), which includes a long list of technologies. 1705 projects had to break ground by September 30, 2011; there is no such limitation on 1703.

But this explanation for 1705 in the Bloomberg report covers some of the bases for both programs pretty well:

The rationale behind loan guarantees in energy is that new-to-market companies or technologies need help overcoming the so-called “valley of death” — the financial predicament an energy company finds itself in when it is too established to receive
start-up venture capital yet not established enough to secure affordable debt financing.

So you can see them as a hedge against risk – not to the companies, which, like Solyndra, could fail, but to the banks providing loans. In exchange, promising technologies and projects move forward.

Solyndra appears to have failed for an exceptionally specific reason rather than because the solar panel market collapsed beneath it:

Solyndra’s silicon-free modules, while more expensive than traditional silicon solar panels, were more efficient and easy to install on rooftops. The company believed that the advantages of its modules would allow them to remain competitive, even against cheaper panels. The company didn’t foresee that a steep decline in silicon prices would lead the price of silicon solar panels to drop 40 percent in 2011, undercutting Solyndra's perceived advantage

While other solar energy companies didn’t suffer because they trade in “traditional silicon solar panels.”

Abound Solar Inc., which received a $400 million loan guarantee, says its thin-film panels are already competitive. The company expects to triple capacity by the end of 2012. SoloPower, which received a $197 million loan guarantee, also says it can succeed because its lighter, flexible panels are useful on commercial and industrial rooftops that can’t bear the weight of older, heavier technology.

Hmmm! I might have wanted a surer sense of how SoloPower differs from Solyndra – sounds awfully similar to me - but it’s probably that SoloPower is using silicon in its panels. There are other examples given of companies that say they are succeeding – I wouldn’t expect them to say otherwise - but you get the idea.

And what about nuclear energy loan guarantees? Well, the report does mention nuclear in several places, but really only in passing.

Most of the loan guarantee rules still apply, but there are some notable differences to consider: solar panel companies are manufacturers, not energy companies, and are often start-ups, not well-established entities; the technology and economics behind Gen III and III+ reactors is well-understood; and there are impressively large loan origination fees to the government that renewable energy sources don’t have to pay but nuclear energy sources do.

Bottom line: the government stands to make money from a nuclear energy loan guarantee. That’s a pretty good deal.

Otherwise, the two are much the same – oh, except that the failure of one solar panel company has no identified knock-on effect on other solar panel companies – except that they may pick up business now lost to Solyndra – much less on any nuclear energy project.

As you may have read, the world spewed out more carbon emissions last year than in any previous year. Nuclear and renewable energy sources did not contribute to any of that, so encouraging their use is both practical and existential.

Loan guarantees provide an effective and relatively inexpensive way to encourage clean technologies. There’s now no reason to believe the failure of Solyndra should change that.

I didn’t really grasp how Solyndra really captured its business in its name: “The design is made a certain manner. It wraps the photovoltaic copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound around a series of tubes until they resemble a row of black, fluorescent lights. Each module is rounded and to catch the maximum amount of light from any direction, so the panels don’t need angled in any way and secured like traditional PV panels.

Where Goes Solar, There Goes Nuclear?

This MIT Technology Review article is good but gets off on the wrong foot:

Politicians are drawing parallels between the $535 million federal loan guarantee issued to bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra and loan guarantees that the U.S. Department of Energy is offering to utilities building new nuclear power plants. But while those nuclear startups could also go bust, experts say U.S. taxpayers are unlikely to take a loss on them. That's because the only reactor projects moving forward are those in a handful of southern states, where laws allow utilities to offload the risk onto state ratepayers.

Offload the risk? All the risk of any large electricity project redounds to the ratepayers – because they pay the bills. What those southern companies are doing is using a method that pays for plant construction as it goes along – which means less money borrowed from banks or paid back to banks – and thus less interest charges for ratepayers to eventually absorb.

Here’s how Southern Co. explains this in relation to the Plant Vogtle project:

• The cost of the plant will be phased-in over 7 years, versus included in rates over only two years. (Approx. 1.3 percent/yr over 7 years for total of 9 percent, versus approximately 12 percent total over two years.)
• Customers will avoid paying $300 million in interest charges, thereby saving money over the life of the plant.
• The in-service cost of the plant will be reduced by nearly $2 billion (30 percent).
• Total rate increases required to cover the cost of the plant when it goes into service will be nearly 3 percent lower.
• Preserving utility credit ratings reduces costs for other projects and helps keep customer rates low.

The MIT story is interesting in that it explains how this use of pay-as-you-go differs in regulated and non-regulated states and what the implications of that might be for nuclear energy projects.

It still comes back around to loan guarantees:

While the Solyndra case appears unlikely to be replicated with nuclear loan guarantees, political attacks from Congressional Republicans on the wisdom of loan guarantees for energy projects may, ironically, hurt the prospects for further nuclear projects that many support.

We’ll just have to wait and see, but those Congressional Republicans are as aware of nuclear energy loan guarantees as we are. It doesn’t necessarily follow that where goes solar also goes nuclear.

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If you’re going to open a new nuclear facility, it makes sense to stress safety.

Hsu said Taipower had incorporated improvements to the project, such as an emergency diesel generator facility, after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant crisis in Japan, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami that crippled the facility on March 11.

This is in Taiwan. Hsu is Taipower vice president Hsu Hwai-chiung. There’s more on safety:

In line with Ma’s instructions, Hsu said, Taipower would adopt the strictest possible safety standards in handling the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant’s testing and supervisory work.

“We will invite international professional organizations, such as the World Association of Nuclear Operators, to assist with oversight and the plant will go online only once optimal safety is guaranteed,” Hsu said.

In addition to Taipower’s internal controls, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) have also closely monitored the construction of the plant to ensure safety standards are met, Minster of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang said.

And Ma is Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou. The World Association of Nuclear Operators, or WANO, is really stepping up to the plate here. These are the recommendations approved by WANO’s board during its general meeting in October:

These included expanding the scope of WANO's activities; developing a world-wide integrated event response strategy; improving WANO's credibility, including important changes to WANO's peer review process; improving visibility; and improving the quality of all WANO products and services.

This sounded as though WANO was interested in adopting the approach taken by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, the nuclear energy industry-created watchdog, into the international sphere. And indeed, that’s at least partly the case:

WANO said that it will also put into place an internal emergency response procedure that clearly defines roles and responsibilities in the event of a nuclear emergency. It will also take additional initiatives of working with other key industry organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Nuclear Association and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

Issues of national sovereignty can easily keep WANO from becoming as effective as it could be, but if the organization’s members allow it latitude, as Taiwan is doing, and WANO is able to gather enough authority around itself, then its potential expands accordingly. It’ll be interested to see how the experience in Taiwan goes.

Sort of an interesting merger of the WANO logo – which is a wireframe world map – and a map showing its main offices.

Falling Into Molehills

IEEE has published a very strong account of the first 24 hours at Fukushima following the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Japanese plant. Almost novelistic in depth, it is long and impossible to extract – well, not impossible, I just don’t want to. Read the whole thing here. Terrific job by Elizabeth Strickland.

We’ll be seeing some official timelines on the accident before the end of the year – consider this a considerably fleshed out coming attractions trailer.

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The folks at IEEE have also put up an interesting if slightly misleading chart called Fukushima Daiichi’s Messy Future. It aims to show how the cleanup will go at the stricken Japanese plant at the 1 year, 10 year and 100 year marks.

The misleading part is that setting the future at 10 and 100 years doesn’t really indicate when the cleanup or disposition of various components – reactor buildings, reactor cores, etc. – will be finished, only that they will be finished by then.

Maybe this is fair enough – one can’t really know what the future will bring – but it might have helped if IEEE had used current estimates to pin down the target dates a little more. With that caveat in place, it’s worth a look.

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From the department of keeping it real:

This is the headline from the Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog:

Energy Department Couldn’t Manage Stimulus Money, Watchdog Says

Here’s the evidence:

Friedman’s appearance Wednesday is meant to summarize the more than 100 investigations conducted by his office into the department’s stimulus spending. To date, the office has recovered $2.3 million in stimulus fraud and has sparked five criminal prosecutions.

A little more data:

Gregory H. Friedman is slated to tell lawmakers that the Energy Department‘s efforts to quickly distribute $35.2 billion in economic stimulus funding “was more challenging than many had originally envisioned.”

Hmm! $2.3 million out of $35.2 billion distributed equals 0.07 percent of the funds that went to fraudulent activities. That’s not a bad outcome at all.

Energy Department officials have defended their management of stimulus dollars, noting that a majority of the money has been distributed to recipients on time. But the $535 million government-backed loan given to Solyndra, the now-shuttered solar company, has raised questions about the rush to distribute stimulus dollars …

But one of the complaints about the Energy Department stimulus funds early on was that it was taking too long to distribute the funds – I heard this at more than one hearing. And loan guarantees really are stimulus, in fact, one of the most stimulative aspects of the stimulus bill. As the Economist put it, they were:

optimal stimulus policy: the money was spent, it flowed out into the economy and added to demand, rather than going to wealthy individuals or firms who in a period of high risk aversion were likely to park it in Treasury bonds.

And a final overlooked point: Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee is 1.3 percent of DOE’s current $37.8 billion loan guarantee portfolio. Yes, of course there should be investigations, but there’s a lot of molehill-into-mountaining going on here – and it’s unfortunate the Post is falling into the molehill.

Solyndra’s building in Fremont, Calif.

Nuclear Energy and Heat, Solar Energy and Japan

CBS News finds a new hook for their look at nuclear energy:

Temperatures began going down Sunday in the eastern half of the country, dropping from last week's record triple-digits and easing a heat wave blamed for at least 34 deaths.

Boy, it didn’t feel that way from here, but okay. In any event, the question of where to get more electricity as everyone switches on their air conditioners becomes crystal clear.

Demand was said to be ten percent higher than the average for July, and with demand only growing, going nuclear is getting another look.

The story doesn’t really get into why this should be so and tries to be even handed, not always to its benefit, but it makes a strong point: that if demand for more electricity increases – and it will – then nuclear energy is an excellent way to feed that demand.

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The Wall Street Journal talks to Sharp Corp. President Mikio Katayama:

WSJ: Is it necessary for Japan to gradually move away from nuclear power?

Mr. Katayama: It would be too simplistic to say nuclear power is good or bad. There's no doubt that people are starting to question nuclear power's safety and security. Nobody would say "please build a nuclear plant next to my house." The actual cost of nuclear power may be different from previously estimated. Still, under the current system, using an alternative power source would be more costly.

Safety may be the most salient issue for people living relatively close to a nuclear plant, but it may not be so for those who are relatively distant. Wealthy people may not mind paying a bit more for electricity, while others may find it painful. Among businesses, manufacturers that consume a large amount of power and service industries that don't require much power may have different perspectives. The question is how to find a way to design a compromise plan and agree on it. That's what political leaders need to work on.

You might think, well, that’s okay, not great. But it seems strikingly honest given this reality:

Sharp could benefit from the new [Japanese government] policies, which would require utilities to buy up electricity that comes from renewable sources. The company is Japan's largest supplier of solar panels, which accounted for about 9% of Sharp's overall revenue of ¥3.02 trillion (US$38.57 billion) in the last fiscal year.

And that’s important because the government will create a marketplace for people who buy solar panels for their homes. That could spur a lot of business for Sharp.

But:

WSJ: How does Sharp compete against Chinese solar-panel makers?

Mr. Katayama: Solar power, or any other energy, is in the realm of government policies. It would be a huge mistake to think that the cost of solar power is determined by competition among private companies. Governments get involved in all sorts of ways, like feed-in-tariffs or other subsidies for construction of facilities.

Katayama is quite frank that the free market itself cannot push solar energy over the hump of broad acceptance – which is necessary to make the cost of its electricity competitive. So government, having determined that solar energy helps fulfill a public policy goal, provides a push.

But that’s all solar energy inside-baseball stuff. What’s interesting is that a solar energy entrepreneur recognizes the plain difficulty of building a market and providing electricity comparable in price to nuclear energy.

I think Katayama has more government support that he lets on – the Japanese government wants to compete with China in photovoltaics and wants home-sited solar installations, both of which will redound profitably to Sharp.

(Consider this story: “Japan is considering a plan that would make it compulsory for all new buildings and houses to come fitted with solar panels by 2030, a business daily said Sunday.”)

Still – nuclear energy doesn’t seem at all ready to cede its position as the more affordable source of electricity.

In Hakone prefecture. Not exactly NIMBY, but the panels really do mar the look of nice architecture – if they’re visible - which may discourage their adoption in some instances. If the government plan goes through, it’ll be interesting to see how the new buildings accommodate the panels.

Thinking Out Loud

This is the kind of editorial that pops up more frequently, from the Lexington Herald-Leader (actually, an op-ed in this case):

Should Kentucky reconsider nuclear power, which now provides 20 percent of this nation's electricity? Maybe so. We're in no position to ignore any source of energy. But Japan's disaster reminds us nuclear power is an imperfect, unforgiving technology that can be dangerous and costly.

And Kentucky, of course, provides a fairly good case study when one is of a mixed mind:

Coal provides half the nation's power and more than 90 percent of Kentucky's power. Electricity has been cheap in this state, because many of the health and environmental costs of mining and burning coal have been ignored. That is changing, because it must.

We’re not completely sure about “must,” but let’s hear out the argument:

We must invest in research and technology to mine, drill and burn coal and oil more cleanly and efficiently. We must incorporate whatever lessons are learned from Japan's crisis to make nuclear power safer.

We must develop renewable energy sources — solar, wind and biomass — that will be able to sustain civilization long after coal and oil are gone. Government must play a significant role in this research where private industry cannot or will not.

Perhaps more than anything, we must get serious about designing buildings, vehicles and gadgets to use less energy. Conservation isn't as difficult as many people think. Take, for example, Kentucky's many new energy-efficient school buildings, including one in Warren County that will generate as much power as it uses.

And the conclusion:

We have a choice: ignore the headlines and fight inevitable change, or learn from them and get serious about balancing our needs and desires with those of future generations. Anyone who thinks we can maintain our energy status quo is a dim bulb

This op-ed, by Tom Eblen, is a case of thinking out loud. Puzzling out the energy options available to us – domestically and globally – seems often to lead in the same conclusion: completely shutting down an energy source – coal, nuclear, whatever – keeps us from getting where we want to go. So what do we do? Thinking out loud seems a good place to start.

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On the other hand, why not just think big?:

In light of recent energy-related disasters (the nuclear plant in Japan, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), advocates are calling for a new approach to generate electricity: space solar power.

I assume those are the space solar power advocates doing the calling.

The Lexie coal mine in Kentucky.

Quick Hits: Electric Cars, Solar/Nuclear, China

What about electric cars?

Plans in Europe call for about 1 million EVs on the road by 2020, and a lot that push centers around increasing the number of nuclear power plants to feed these vehicles. Let's face it, an EV that's charged via electricity generated at an oil or coal-burning plant doesn't do much to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, so nuclear makes a lot of sense. And as costly and time-consuming as it is to erect a nuclear facility, it's likely easier and less expensive than relying on solar, wind or hydro-electric energy sources.

So what does all this have to do with electric vehicles? If the events unfolding in Japan lead governments to question the safety and viability of nuclear power, then new plants will be slow to come online. If car buyers know that their EV is likely burning the same CO2-emitting fossil fuels as their neighbor's internal combustion engine, what's the point of paying more for something that's just as dirty, more expensive and not as easy to fuel up?

I discussed earlier anxiety about radiation. Consider this anxiety about a slowdown in nuclear energy.

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Qualified enthusiasm from Jigar Shah, CEO of Carbon War Room, a non-profit group championing clean energy technology. The interviewer for NPR is Farai Chideya:

CHIDEYA: So, are you supportive of the Obama administration's plans to expand the number of nuclear power plants.

Mr. SHAH: Well, we're supportive of carbon emission reductions. And so I think that, you know, that what we're trying to do is to harness the power of entrepreneurial effort to unlock market-driven solutions to climate change. And so if nuclear can stand alone without some of the government guarantees that seem to be very difficult to get through a Congress that is trying to cut cost, then, you know, I think that would be great.

Chideya notes that Shah has had an entrepreneurial interest in solar energy – something that would be dead on arrival absent “government guarantees.” Still, given his own concerns, his words in favor of nuclear energy are striking.

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From China:

An official overseeing nuclear safety in China has said that the safety of the country's nuclear power facilities is guaranteed, while reaffirming its goal of developing nuclear power as a clean energy source.

"There is a guarantee for the safety of China's nuclear power facilities and (China) will not abandon (its nuclear power plan) for fear of slight risks," said Tian Shujia in response to reports that China will become more prudent toward developing nuclear power.

Remember, these are Chinese officials speaking through an official Chinese outlet. Still, the word is: nuclear energy remains strongly supported.

I’m not a car maven, but I believe this is Tesla Model S and the Roadster. By all means, correct me if you know better.