Cost Effective U.S. And World Energy Resources Are Evolving Away From Nuclear And Toward Natural Gas

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt

On July 30th, the Financial Times published an interview with GE’s  CEO Jeffrey Immelton the future of various energy alternatives.   For decades, GE has played a significant role in  many sectors of the energy business. It makes huge electric generators for electric utilities.  It sell wind turbines.  It sells solar installations and it recently added oil patch activities to its  roster of companies.  It has also been a leading supplier of nuclear power generation equipment. So for one of the leaders in that last space to suggest that nuclear isn’t a competitive solution now or going forward is a significant statement.

For sure the exploration activities now ongoing onshore in many western and eastern parts of the United States (think upstate NY, PA, Ohio, The Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas et. al. ) are picking up a head of steam.  Environmentalists are concerned about “fracking” shale rocks in terms of possibly contaminating drinking water supplies or causing small localized earthquakes.  The jury is still out on that. As for the importance of nuclear to GE? It’s about a $ 1 billion business or less than 1% of GE’s total revenues.Mr. Immelt expressed his view that it is almost impossible on a cost basis to justify investing in nuclear power plants for the future.   ”So I think some combination of gas, and either wind or solar … that’s where we see most countries around the world going.”