WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon readers, and Happy Friday! We hope you had a great week. In today’s edition of Daily on Energy, Callie and Maydeen take a look at several nuclear energy issues, including today’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting, which addresses its plans for the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Today’s newsletter provides our weekly update on oil prices and what analysts say about OPEC+ future oil production levels. You can also read about how the U.S. surpasses China in reliance on fossil fuels to power the grid.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley announced it has lowered its climate targets due to the slow phase-out of fossil fuels. We also examined the conditions one month after Hurricane Helene hit parts of North Carolina, as thousands remain without water.
For today’s election countdown, a survey that found few Americans support completely phasing fossil fuel for renewable energy sources.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Author and energy expert Dan Yergin has credited the surge in support for nuclear energy to Big Tech, telling CNBC on Tuesday that it pulled the industry out of “the doldrums.”
“Big Tech is saying, ‘We need reliable 24 hour electricity. We can’t get it just from wind and solar’,” Yergin told the outlet. “This is a really big change, and it reflects in this country, in the United States, a sense that — we’ve had for, really, a generation of flat demand [for] electricity.
“Now it’s going to grow, and there’s real anxiety about, how do you grow it? And nuclear [energy] is back in form, and people are talking about small nuclear reactors. And, of course, you have big tech actually seeking to contract for the output of the electricity from existing nuclear power plants. It’s an amazing change.”
WORLD BANK CALLED TO BACK NUCLEAR: While the World Bank does not currently finance nuclear energy projects, its stakeholders are reportedly calling for a new strategy as the power source has become more embraced on a global scale.
The details: A spokesperson for the World Bank recently told the Financial Times that they have heard calls from stakeholders to “explore nuclear power to decarbonize energy and improve energy supply reliability.”
“In that context, we continue to have conversations with our board, management and external stakeholders to understand the facts,” the spokesperson said.
Advisers to World Bank President Ajay Banga are reportedly looking for ways to support nuclear energy, such as boosting staff expertise or internal capacity to consider nuclear within the energy mix of the bank’s client countries.
Some background: Supporting nuclear isn’t completely foreign to the World Bank, as it did issue a loan for an Italian nuclear energy project in 1959 that was worth the equivalent of $40 million. The international institution has since said it would not finance future projects, citing safety concerns and lack of expertise in the industry. However, experts have claimed this is not a legitimate reason to avoid nuclear.
“The Bank keeps saying they don’t have the expertise,” DJ Nordquist, who served on the World Bank’s board of directors representing the U.S. under former President Donald Trump, told the Financial Times. “That’s not a valid excuse. The bank does all sorts of financing where they don’t have expertise — they bring in consultants.”
NRC MEETS WITH CONSTELLATION ENERGY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public meeting with Constellation Energy on Friday over its plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania (to be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center).
The details: The meeting lasted just over two hours and offered Constellation Energy a chance to break down its plans for reopening the plant, by offering up a proposed schedule and information about the current status of the facility.
The company revealed its plans to submit its quality assurance plan and formal regulatory path letter to the NRC sometime in November. Over the next year, it will also submit approval applications for various licensing actions, including for the plant’s security and emergency plans. Constellation Energy hopes to receive bundled approval from the NRC by the third quarter of 2027, paving the way for the plant to officially reopen shortly after.
When pressed on potential difficulties with restarting the nuclear plant, the NRC pointed to the ongoing process to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. The commission revealed it does not see any challenges with that plant coming back online at this point.
Boosting data centers: Constellation Energy plans to sell the energy generated by one of the facility’s nuclear reactors to Microsoft. While Microsoft is expected to use the energy to power its data centers, Constellation Energy said there are presently no plans to have data centers or co-location at the facility site.
OIL PRICES BACK UP: Oil was up on Friday, with prices expected to end on weekly gains as analysts wait for new price drivers to affect the market.
As of around 2:45 p.m. ET, international benchmark Brent crude was up $1.70 (2.29%) to $76.08 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude was also up $1.64 (2.34%) to $71.83 per barrel.
Though, prices could reportedly jump as high as $85 in the coming weeks over Middle East tensions and China’s upcoming announcement on any fiscal stimulus boost, according to Reuters.
Key quote: “We remain of the view that the right price for crude oil currently is around $70 where it is now, as we await fresh price drivers, including the outcome of China’s NPC Standing Committee meeting as well as Israel’s response to Iran’s October 1 missile attack,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said, Reuters reported.
OPEC+ OIL OUTPUT HIKE LIKELY DELAYED FURTHER: OPEC+ may not increase its oil production levels until the third quarter of 2025, analysts are now saying.
The details: “We consider restoring some supply to a weak market would be the worst possible scenario for OPEC+ as it would not only lose revenue but also not gain market share,” BNP Paribas’s Aldo Spanjer said Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Spanjer told clients that he expected the oil-producing bloc to instead shift its focus on cutting output from members like Iran, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
A reminder: OPEC+ had originally planned to increase oil production to 180,000 barrels a day in October. However, in early September, the bloc announced it planned to pause the output hike for October and November amid dropping prices. At the time, eight member countries (including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman) agreed to cut production by 2.2 million barrels before phasing out the cutbacks in December.
As of Oct. 14, OPEC+ said three members (Iraq, Kazakhstan, and Russia) had failed to lower their outputs.
FOSSIL FUEL-DEPENDENT: The United States has reportedly surpassed China in relying on fossil fuels to power the grid since this summer, despite efforts by the Biden administration to prioritize renewable alternatives.
The details: Data from energy think tank Ember reviewed by Reuters reportedly show that U.S. utility companies depended on fossil fuels in order to produce an average of 62.4% of electricity generation since June. Meanwhile, China – which is widely considered to be the largest polluter in the world – relied on fossil fuels for an average of 60.5% of electricity generation during the same time period.
That’s not to say that renewable energy sources haven’t increased, as Ember reports an increase in clean energy production by roughly 16% from 2019. At the same time, coal-powered electricity generation in the first nine months of 2024 dropped by 34% from the same time period in 2019. However, fossil fuels haven’t seen as great a decline. Ember estimated that between January and September of this year, fossil-fuel electricity generation only dropped by 0.8% from 2019.
Some background: The report comes as energy demand has soared within the U.S., attributable to increased manufacturing, electrification, and data centers geared toward artificial intelligence advancements. Environmentalists have repeatedly called for an accelerated phase out of fossil fuels on an international level. However, those within the energy industry have indicated the U.S. will likely depend on these plants for some time, as investments in carbon-free energy sources (such as nuclear) grow to provide more stability and reliability within the next decade.
MORGAN STANLEY LOWERS CLIMATE TARGET: Morgan Stanley’s chief sustainability officer told Reuters that the bank has lowered its climate targets due to the world’s slow phase out of fossil fuel.
Jessica Alsford said factors such as the slowdown in electric vehicle sales, lagging adoption of biofuels in aviation, and policy hurdles in the power sector have played a role in Morgan Stanley’s decision.
Some banks have cut lending to clients in the oil and gas sector, but Morgan Stanley’s report said that unless the pace picks up, the firm may not meet net-zero targets. Its lending approach will now align with capping global warming between 1.5 to 1.7 degrees Celsius instead of 1.5 degrees.
“The current technologies, the current policies are not fully aligned with 1.5 degrees, and by having that range of 1.5 to 1.7 it’s acknowledging the challenges that the global economy faces whilst being aligned, still, with the Paris Agreement,” Alsford said.
THOUSANDS IN NORTH CAROLINA LACK SAFE DRINKING WATER POST HELENE: Nearly one month since Hurricane Helene left devastation across the southeastern U.S., tens of thousands of people remain without clean drinking water in western North Carolina.
The details: As of Friday, more than 150,000 municipal-water customers were still under boil-water notices, according to a New York Times report. Additionally, around 40% of private wells tested by the Environmental Protection Agency were still unsafe for drinking water, as E. coli bacteria were found to be present. Upwards of 90,000 private wells in North Carolina are thought to have been contaminated from floodwaters.
“That’s an indication that a lot of wells were impacted,” EPA’s acting regional administrator for the southeast Jeaneanne Gettle told the outlet. “We want people to get their wells sampled.”
Not all wells in the state can be federally tested, with approximately a third of North Carolina residents using groundwater from wells they have to maintain themselves, according to the New York Times. So far, the EPA has only tested around 600. To help fill the gap and ensure residents are drinking contaminated water, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has sent over 6,000 testing kits to local health departments.
ELECTION COUNTDOWN – FEW AMERICANS SUPPORT COMPLETELY PHASING OUT FOSSIL FUEL: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., surveyed 2,300 registered voters between Aug. 27 and Sept. 5 about how the U.S. should address foreign policy issues such as climate change.
Respondents ranked climate change as the most crucial issue in foreign policy. The survey said that 72% of those surveyed expressed some support for U.S. participation in international efforts to mitigate global climate change.
The survey added that 43% of voters strongly supported international efforts by the U.S. to address climate change, compared to 29% who somewhat supported these efforts.
Although there is strong support for the U.S. addressing climate change internationally, few support completely phasing out fossil fuels for renewable energy sources. The survey found that 52% of all respondents supported having mixed energy sources, while 24% of voters agreed with completely phasing out fossil fuel energy sources.
There are 10 days until Election Day.
RUNDOWN
The Guardian Would abandoning false hope help us to tackle the climate crisis?
Inside Climate News Federal Court Ruling on a Reservoir Expansion Could Have Big Implications for the Colorado River
E&E News Can buried power lines keep the lights on during extreme storms?
The Associated Press Criminals may be leveraging climate change as record acreage burns in Brazil’s Amazon