by Curtis Roberts, Renewables Communications Manager, North America
AREVA’s recent agreement with the province of New Brunswick and the utility NB Power reveals an innovative approach to meeting current and future carbon-free energy demand.
As you would expect from AREVA, the agreement includes building a nuclear power plant, in this case, one of AREVA’s mid-sized light water reactor designs. What you may not have expected in the proposal is the generation of carbon-free power from two sources in AREVA’s renewable energy portfolio: offshore wind and forest energy.
You’re not familiar with AREVA’s renewable energy portfolio?
AREVA was the first company to develop and install 5 MW offshore wind turbines specifically designed to operate in the harsh sea conditions. AREVA is the global leader in developing and generating power from biomass energy sources. In solar thermal energy, AREVA’s CLFR technology was recently selected to build the world’s largest solar booster at a plant in Australia.
This marrying of nuclear and renewable carbon-free energy generation into a comprehensive AREVA Clean Energy Park is becoming the wave of the future, and is the third example of AREVA’s concept.
Back in April 2010, AREVA and the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group (FNEG) in California announced a Memorandum of Understanding to build a Clean Energy Park with an AREVA U.S. EPR™ nuclear plant, but also a solar plant to generate energy and power an onsite desalinization facility producing clean agricultural water.
In June 2009, AREVA joined with Duke Energy, USEC, UniStar Nuclear Energy, and the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) in an ongoing Clean Energy Park proposal at a Department of Energy site in Ohio combining nuclear with biomass power from regional sustainable forest energy sources.
There’s another benefit with AREVA’s approach: regional economic stimulus. Along with energy, AREVA sees the Clean Energy Park concept as an effective producer of local investment and employment through construction activities, ongoing operations and domestic supply chain development.
As the challenge and demand for carbon-free energy continues to increase, the solution looks less like a single hammer response, and more like the toolbox of customized carbon-free sources in an AREVA Clean Energy Park.
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Posted in: AREVA News, Biomass, Clean Energy Park, Environment, Government & Policy, News, Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power Plants, Policy, Renewables, Wind | 3 Comments»
