This article. 'Natural gas rises as alternative to nuclear after Japan disaster'.
"The other power generating alternatives - coal, natural gas, solar and wind - are unlikely to present the same dangers following an earthquake or other disaster as a nuclear facility does. Thus, of these four alternatives, the one that received the most airtime at the CERAWeek conference was natural gas-fired power.
According to John Rowe, the chief executive of Exelon, whose utility company runs 17 nuclear plants along with an assortment of solar, wind and hydro facilities throughout the U.S., here's how the numbers stack up.
"Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner than any or all of the alternatives I know," said Rowe during a lunchtime address during CERAWeek. "It costs about $100 per megawatt hour to build nuclear, and that's with subsidies.''
Rowe went on to point out solar runs at about $200/MGW, carbon capture and storage isn't economic right now and offshore wind is even more expensive.
In Rowe's mind, there should be no question as to how the U.S. goes about replacing the 66 per cent of coal-fired plants that are soon to be retired; natural gas is the future. "We don't need clean energy subsidies because natural gas is so cheap," he said.
According to John Hess, chief executive of Hess Corporation, there are other factors, namely speed and cost, recommending natural gas over other alternatives.
"It would take two years to build a 1,000 MGW natural gas-fired plant for $1 billion, compared with three years for a coal plant at a cost of $3 billion and 10 years for nuclear power at a cost of $6 billion," said Hess.
Using natural gas as the fuel of choice for electricity generation, said Hess, would decrease U.S. emissions by half while increasing demand for the abundant commodity by 40 per cent.
In other words, switching to natural gas as the fuel of choice for power - especially in light of what is being called the "shale gale" that has resulted in abundant supplies in North America - has become the proverbial no-brainer in less than a week."
CEO John Rowe has recently sat down for a television interview in the last few days. The first ten minutes of the fifteen minute interview is good.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67720906/
"Exelon Generation has one of the industry's largest portfolios of electricity generation capacity, with a nationwide reach and strong positions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. It is the largest owner/operator of nuclear plants in the United States". Market cap 27.5B.
The world gas situation is here. World Economic Forum Energy Vision Update 2011 - 'A New Era For gas'
"What a difference a few years can make in one of the world's major energy markets. Advances in the production of unconventional gas - shale gas, tight gas and coalbed methane (CBM) - coupled with growing LNG capacity have changed longstanding assumptions about natural gas markets around the world. Gas has long been recognized as the preferred fossil fuel from an environmental standpoint, with lower emissions of GHG and other pollutants than coal or oil. Recent advances in gas production technology mean that gas is also likely to be more available, and even potentially less expensive, than was assumed just a few years ago.
Natural gas today provides 24% of the world's primary energy. More than half of conventional gas reserves are located in Russia and the Middle East, but the advent of unconventional gas is rapidly expanding the world's recoverable gas resource. Estimates of the world's recoverable gas resource nearly double when unconventional gas resources are included - bringing the total to roughly 250 years of supply at today's rate of production."
I'll shut up now.
CFU Price at posting:
12.7¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
