“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.” So, according to many, said Sigmund Freud. Let’s hope that the hurling of insults is the worst things get in the current tensions over…
Category: Greenhouse gas emissions
Fighting carbon with electricity: bringing the Third Electrification to Ontario
Ontario electricity-related greenhouse gases are at their lowest point in our modern history. This is because most of the electricity fed into our grid comes from zero-carbon sources, the biggest of which by far is nuclear. Nuclear in 2000 represented…
Clean technology: since the 1960s, a vital bedrock Ontario—and Canadian—industry
A Toronto Star piece this morning on “clean tech” jobs jumped out at me when a colleague sent it. The subtitle reads “Clean technology industry, undercut by Dalton McGuinty’s bungled green energy experiment, is poised to take off.” I did…
Two carbon-reduction paths diverge in the European policy wood: United Kingdom takes less traveled, more interesting one
Germany’s much-touted and -admired route to carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions has, predictably, proved to be an embarrassing and expensive failure. The bubble chart represents electricity data from 2010. As you can see, German electricity was, kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour, the second-dirtiest…
End of coal in Ontario? Not if there’s a power crunch
When electricity was restored to Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario after the ice storm of December 21, nobody cared where or how the current was generated and pushed through the wires to their house. All people cared about was getting…