David Rupert, incoming Alliance Chair and Director, discusses Alliance achievements in 2011. Source: EUISSCA

On a supplier panel moderated by AEP’s Manager of Sustainable Supplier Development, Mark Bueltmann, I presented on AREVA’s using Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology to reduce environmental impact. Given its inherent focus on eliminating waste and process improvement, the LSS approach easily lends itself to natural resource/energy efficiency projects. For example, one of our LSS energy efficiency projects reduced that site’s energy consumption by nearly ten percent without requiring any major capital investment. Through this project, we defined the main drivers of the site’s energy consumption and then identified and prioritized a series of behavioral and technical solutions. As another example, AREVA already reduced per person paper consumption in the U.S. by 45% since 2005, but is using an LSS project to achieve an additional 10% reduction.

AREVA and our utility customers have a shared commitment to sustainability. Through supply chain sustainability (facilitated by the Alliance) and complementary supplier diversity programs, we systematically ensure that our operations and initiatives reflect an increasingly inclusive and responsible approach to doing business. Our clean, reliable, safe, and affordable energy future depends on this kind of leadership and collaboration.

Countries around the world marked the world’s population reaching 7 billion Monday with lavish ceremonies for newborn infants symbolizing the milestone and warnings that there may be too many humans for the planet’s resources….While demographers are unsure exactly when the world’s population will reach the 7 billion mark, the U.N. is using Monday to symbolically mark the day. A string of festivities are being held worldwide, with a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.

Dr. Eric Tayag of the Philippines’ Department of Health said later that the birth came with a warning. “Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply,” he said.

We agree. Seven billion people — not to mention the projected growth rates from here — is a sobering statistic. As many commentators are pointing out, this accelerating population brings up important and pressing global health, housing, education, food and environmental questions.

But we also know undergirding and influencing all of these issues are the immediate questions of energy and sustainability.

Our global future requires a considered and balanced approach combining expanded renewable and nuclear energy solutions to provide and maintain steady, reliable, low-carbon power. This need is clear. How we accomplish it requires creative cooperation still hobbled by polarizing activism.

We must focus on these larger and harder questions together. We now have seven billion reasons to do so, and counting.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has operated nuclear plants for three decades, but our program was hindered, as many energy providers were, by safety concerns and a public backlash against nuclear generation in the 1980s.

Our response, however, was not to abandon nuclear energy. Instead, we revamped our program and adopted a more conservative, disciplined approach to both operations and construction. In a departure from the 1970s, when we were building 17 nuclear units at once, today we allow only one unit to be in any single stage of development at a time.

We believe that nuclear power, developed properly, is not only a promising option, but the best available. Our forecasts for the region’s energy demands by the end of the decade show we will need more base-load electricity — or continuous minimum power — something nuclear plants excel at providing…

Nevertheless, critics have rightly asked, why not simply bypass nuclear power and rely on more wind, solar, gas and energy efficiency? In fact, the T.V.A. is adding power from all of those sources in record amounts. But none can produce sufficiently large volumes of base-load electricity as consistently and affordably as nuclear power can.

AREVA will begin making large components in the UK similar to this steam generator channel head emerging from the furnace at Creusot-Forge, France. AREVA / CARILLO GEORGES

Yesterday’s agreement announced between AREVA and EDF Energy shows the impact of clean energy in not only creating a low carbon power future, but also the near-term benefits of workforce expansion and job security.

In the agreement, AREVA will manufacture massive forgings for the first EPR™ reactor to be built at Hinkley Point, South-West England. Current estimates show a single EPR™ reactor project creates peak employment during construction of more than 3,000 direct jobs on the site, plus many more indirect jobs. Once the construction phase is completed, an AREVA EPR™ reactor facility requires highly-skilled workers to manage and maintain the facility, creating hundreds of high-paying permanent jobs.

If you’ve been tallying up the math, that’s an impressive amount of jobs and job security, especially when one considers that this is the first of perhaps eight EPR™ reactors under discussion in the United Kingdom.

The same job numbers are true on this side of the pond, and here are two numbers that apply to the U.S. economy: Throughout construction, a single project represents more than $800 million in federal, state and local taxes, and during operations generates annual tax revenues of nearly $100 million.

With four EPR™ reactors under construction world-wide and more in the works, how are we doing in the United States? AREVA continues working closely with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to certify the U.S. EPR™ design, and several companies have submitted license applications to the NRC based on this technology. We’re making progress on our own low-carbon future.

AREVA’s EPR™ reactor itself is an impressive mix of power and safety. Generating 1,600+ MW of clean, reliable electricity, a single modern Generation III+ EPR™ reactor also meets the highest safety standards, including four redundant safety systems, double-walled hardened container building, and the most reviewed design of any modern power plant.

Combining reliable nuclear energy with peak-load renewable energy is the winning combination for generating sustainable jobs and electricity in our clean energy future.

Germany will have to initiative a range of aggressive measures, focused on energy efficiency, smart metering, car taxation, renewable energy heating systems, etc. etc. This was to make up a ‘gap’ compared to 2009 policies of 70 – 90 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2-e. The gap is now much larger…

The current reality in Germany is that subsidized coal-fired electricity (with the funds generated by the trade in CO2 emissions certificates – yes, turn up the irony dial) will be ‘filling the gap‘ (interesting euphemism) left by the nuclear phaseout. We’re talking here of upwards of 20 GWe of new fossil fuel power plants to be built in Germany over the next decade…

You can read the whole article here.

Somaïr open pit mine in Arlit, Niger

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“So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all – and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”

- President Obama, at the State of the Union Address

Today we want to highlight a recent Huffington Post piece by Carl Pope—yes, the chairman of the Sierra Club. Taking an open and frank dialogue about energy and future development is important, and while we don’t agree with all of his comments, he does open the conversation that “we should be having.”

What we appreciate most is his discussion and analysis of John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell USA. Pope takes stock of Hofmeister’s recent book, Why We Hate the Oil Companies, saying:

“The short-term nature of American politics – not the individual flaws of parties or politicians – is Hofmeister’s villain. He says that we need to operate and decide in what he calls “energy time” – the decade or more that it takes to significantly change the nation’s energy sector—but that politicians can only look forward in “political time”, the two or four years before the next election.”

Pope goes on to say that the long-term vision Hofmeister takes is quite a departure from his oil industry background:

“For one thing, he takes mass transit and urban planning profoundly seriously, ‘Real conversation starts with the manner in which we develop and use land, water and air resources in the world around us… the unconstrained geographic growth of communities that became a way of life in the twentieth-century America has got to change.’”

While Pope is not convinced by Hofmeister’s entire argument, he concedes that “some degree of greater planning is clearly desirable – so however much I may disagree with Hofmeister, I though it was very helpful to have to engage with his ideas. That’s the kind of conversation we should be having.” Read the full post here.

We also agree that the conversation on energy should taking place and the need to look at how we are going to meet the nation’s growing demands — to create jobs, energy security with sources that don’t produce carbon emissions. And at AREVA, we are developing the latest generation technologies in nuclear energy and making advancements in renewable sources—both of which meet these demands. Why? Because if we want to have real conversations about our energy future, we need to have the options available first.

To learn more about the challenges of climate change and AREVA’s solutions for sustainable power generation, including information on a Clean Energy Park for New Brunswick check here.

When you’re hard about the task creating an industry from scratch, it’s good to pause on occasion and see where you are.

William Pentland provides such a snapshot in his Forbes “Clean Beta” post yesterday about the slow pace of the U.S. offshore wind industry, and its potential momentum. He says,

“While Europe has installed nearly 1,000 wind turbines offshore since Denmark built the world’s first offshore wind farm in 1991, the U.S. has not installed a single offshore wind turbine.

That is likely to change soon.”

William goes on to sketch out the potential from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) data and includes this encouraging, progress-being-made statement:

“Nearly two dozen offshore wind-power projects representing more than 2,000 MW of capacity are in the planning and permitting stages, mostly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.”

Good news, indeed. These 2,000 MWs represent 40,000 jobs waiting to join the workforce, according to NREL’s 20-jobs-per-megawatt-produced number in the Untapped Wealth publication.

As the manufacturer of 5 MW offshore wind turbines, AREVA is actively engaged in bringing projects in North America to fruition and delivering on our commitment to build a North America supply chain.

We’ve done it before. AREVA helped launch the European offshore wind industry in the North Sea with the first six pilot offshore wind turbines in the water in October 2009. Our experience building, installing and commissioning offshore wind turbines from our facility in Bremerhaven, Germany, has shown how offshore wind can revitalize a region, drive economic growth, and generate power.

Of the 12 pilot turbines installed, the six 5 MW AREVA Wind turbines have generated 90 GWh of the 120 GWh fed into the grid.

William’s title sums it up nicely, “Turn Baby, Turn – Offshore Wind Power Poised for Major Growth in U.S.,” and AREVA is working hard to help make it happen.

To see how AREVA installs an offshore wind turbine assembly taller than the Washington Monument out in the deep blue sea, click on the image to watch a 2-minute video.