What Isn't Renewable Energy?
The mission of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative is to make Harvard University a living laboratory and learning organization for the pursuit of campus sustainability. A major focus of the HGCI is global climate change and how Harvard can work to reduce this imminent threat. Accordingly, many of HGCI’s actions are couched in terms of greenhouse gas reductions or carbon neutrality.
This said, HGCI does not condone the use of technologies that, while technically carbon neutral, are otherwise harmful to the global environment or to human societies. HGCI especially does not support the attainment of greenhouse gas reductions via the purchasing of “large hydro” or nuclear energy.
Nuclear Power
Nuclear power presents unacceptable risks to the global environment and human health. The United Nations does not recognize nuclear power as a clean or renewable energy source and refuses to award carbon credits to nuclear power projects. Several European countries including Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland are phasing out nuclear power and decommissioning nuclear plants.
Photo credit: Operators are Standing By
Large-Scale Hydropower
Similarly, hydropower projects that have not been developed in accordance with the principles of the Low Impact Hydro Institute are not an acceptable source of renewable energy. Poorly designed and uncertified dams can create poor water quality, severely disrupt fisheries, destroy wetlands and riverside ecosystems, and alter the delicate chemical and thermal equilibrium of a natural river. These environmental costs are not worth the greenhouse gas reduction benefits associated with hydropower, especially as low-impact hydropower is a readily available option.
More Information/Sources
Union of Concerned Scientists: Nuclear Power Webpage (the report "Nuclear Power in a Warming World" is available on the webpage)
Low Impact Hydropower Insitute
Australian Conservation Foundation Nuclear Info