“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [by reducing greenhouse gas pollution], I will.” Thus spake the U.S. president on February 12 of this year, in his 2013 state of the union speech. Only 77 days earlier, he…
Category: Kyoto
How to create infrastructure jobs and pay for clean energy: public and private models deliver success in Ontario
At its height, the nuclear refurbishment at the Bruce power plant on the east shore of Lake Huron was the biggest capital infrastructure project in Canada. It generated 3,000 jobs, mostly in the building and construction trades, at a time…
Why are Ontario electricity carbon emissions so low? Introducing the CIPK: the most important number in clean electricity
What is the most important number in clean electricity? It is the carbon intensity per kilowatt-hour (CIPK): the total amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in metric tons, emitted by the emitting generators feeding the grid, divided by the total…
Smashing a perfectly good… coal plant: a case study in hugely expensive carbon reduction
Why, in this time of fiscal constraint, tight budgets, iffy economic prospects, and persistent unemployment is Ontario throwing away two perfectly good billion-dollar electricity generating plants that have already been paid for and that are capable of generating huge amounts…
Nuclear power in the Japan election: a return to the atom?
In 1997, Japan hosted a conference at Kyoto, in which most of the world’s industrialized countries agreed in principle to reduce their man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to roughly five percent below 1990 levels. Nearly 14 years later, Japan abruptly…