Obama’s Clean Power Plan: Can Nuclear Power Beat The Global Threat Of Coal?
This week, President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency released the final version of the Clean Power Plan, a major set of rules and incentives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from America’s power plants. The plan requires each state to meet a specific reduction standard, and offers incentives – in the form of credits or allowances – for states that either meet their goals early or exceed the reduction requirements.
Nuclear power plays a role in the Clean Power Plan, along with renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind. According to the plan, states will receive credits for emission reductions related to new nuclear power plants – including both those under construction and those still in prototype stages.
Harvard Business School Professor Joe Lassiter believes nuclear power is an essential ingredient in fighting the worldwide threat of coal-fired power plant emissions. Lassiter, the Senator John Heinz Professor of Management Practice (Retired) at HBS, has spent more than a decade studying the intersection between immediate energy needs and environmental concerns. In the following video, recorded at the Harvard iLab in June, Lassiter and venture capitalist Ray Rothrock discuss the case for using the next generation of nuclear power to combat the dual challenges of climate change and energy poverty (the lack of access to sufficient energy sources in developing countries).
