This coffeemaker uses a kilowatt of power, and takes about eight minutes, to make a pot of coffee. You can calculate the GHGs involved in coffeemaking in Ontario by multiplying the appliance’s power consumption in kWhs and multiplying by the CIPK in Table 1 on the left-hand sidebar. Once you have done that, compare the carbon implications of making coffee using electricity that is not made at nuclear plants by using the counterfactual CIPK given in Item 1, on the upper right hand sidebar.

This morning my coffeemaker was on for the typical half-hour and used the typical half-kWh. While I drank my coffee, I read an article in the Ottawa Citizen by Mark Winfield, a York University professor and serial anti-nuke, on what he feels is the folly of continuing to rely on nuclear power in Ontario. It occurred to me that the printing presses that printed Winfield’s Citizen piece, and the internet servers that host the Citizen’s growing online presence, were powered mostly with the nuclear energy he opposes.

Moreover, the revenues that Ontario’s nuclear plants generate through the sale of low-cost electricity to provincial ratepayers helped to pay Winfield’s $109,636.32 salary. That revenue is taxed in a variety of ways, from taxes on profits, to income taxes on the salaries of employees at the nuclear plants, as well as the good old HST applied to every kWh of nuclear power, of which nuclear raises more than all other power sources combined because it makes more kWhs than all other sources combined. And, the profits of the provincially owned nuclear utility, OPG, go into the general coffers of the province. So, instead of criticizing Ontario’s most important energy source, Winfield should thank OPG and Bruce Power for helping to fund his ivory-tower lifestyle.

But to my point: I had my coffee, and read Winfield’s Citizen piece, at five-fifteen a.m. At the time I was enjoying my coffee and morning reading, Ontario electricity carbon intensity per kWh (CIPK) was 40.9 grams. That means that I, through my use of an electric-powered coffeemaker, was personally responsible for 20.45 grams of CO₂.

Had Ontario listened to Winfield years ago and replaced its nuclear fleet with the fuel he would rather see used, i.e. natural gas, Ontario’s CIPK at five a.m. this morning would have been 388.7 grams. Which means that instead of being personally on the hook for 20.45 grams by virtue of my consumption of half a kWh to make coffee, I would have had 194.35 grams—over nine and a half times as much—on my conscience.

(You can do this counterfactual calculation yourself: simply multiply the kWh usage from any appliance you use by the current CIPK given in Table 1, then do the same calculation using the counterfactual CIPK given in Item 1 up on the right. That will give you your actual and counterfactual carbon footprint from the use of that appliance in Ontario. The counterfactual CIPK assumes Ontario’s nuclear plants have been replaced by gas plants, which emit 550 grams for every kWh generated.)

It’s easy for people making 109 grand a year to advocate expensive, carbon-heavy electricity. But the good news is, nobody has to listen to them. Sri Lankans, who live on less than $7,000 per year and who are currently protesting electricity price hikes, might, if they could, offer Ontario some good advice on who to listen to.

Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear power program, who once said “no energy is more expensive than no energy.” Sri Lankans who today are protesting against electricity price hikes, and whose annual per capita electricity consumption is less than five percent the average Ontarian’s, know only too well what he meant.

Try cutting your electricity consumption to five percent of normal. If you succeed, congratulations: you now know how much electricity you can afford living on $6,100 a year, which was Sri Lanka’s estimated per-capita GDP in 2012.

As Sri Lanka struggles to rebuild what little was left over from the vicious civil war that lasted more than a quarter century and ended in 2009, it faces a new challenge: high oil prices. The country makes more than half of its electricity by burning oil. The government recently tried to pass costs onto citizens, who in late April began demonstrating against the price hikes.

Sri Lanka is of course an island nation in the Indian Ocean, just south of the sub continent on which sits the world’s most populous democracy, India. A famous and prescient Indian, Homi Bhabha, the father of India’s nuclear energy program, once said no energy is more expensive than no energy. You can see the price Sri Lankans are paying today for that no energy: it has put them into the poorhouse. If things don’t change, they will stay there.

The BBC report notes that some alternatives to oil have recently been added to Sri Lanka’s grid; these consist of some wind turbines next to a petroleum refinery (a typical PR move by oil companies), and solar street lights. Nobody, least of all Sri Lankans living on the edge of economic oblivion, should pin any hope on these alternatives providing much electricity, let alone cheap electricity. Wind is inherently inefficient and cannot solve any supply problems. Its inherent inefficiency is what makes it so expensive in western countries like Canada, where in Ontario it costs at least 11 cents per kWh. Ratepayers, regardless of economic circumstances, are forced to pay this high rate, even though other, much more efficient and just as clean, sources exist and have been already paid for. Can Sri Lanka afford this kind of transfer from the poor to the rich? Clearly not. Sri Lanka should steer clear of “green” energy. It is as expensive as no energy.

Rather than fueling its economy with petroleum-generated electricity and dealing with the understandable popular revolts against price hikes, Sri Lanka might want to look at a very interesting new scheme advanced by Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company. Rosatom says it will offer to build, own, and operate nuclear plants in developing countries.

Flamanville nuclear power plant, Normandy. These are two of the 58 power reactors France built as a result of a radical rethink of its energy policy following the 1973 oil crisis. Today France gets more than 75 percent of its electricity from reactors like these, and has the cleanest electricity and electrified rail systems in Europe.

But unlike every modern country, France was admirably prescient in understanding that the only viable alternative was nuclear energy. Action followed hard upon that understanding. France was prompt and decisive in both nuclearizing its electricity sector and electrifying its transportation sector.

France’s fast and massive transition to nuclear energy was triggered by the 1973 oil crisis and concern over national energy security. But the move has had huge positive environmental results as well. France has twice Canada’s population, but emits only three-quarters of Canada’s CO₂. But a better comparison is with its fellow European states. France has the lowest per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of the major countries in Europe.

And the best comparison of all is with Germany, which activists claiming to represent the environment tout as the promised land when it comes to allegedly green energy. In that comparison, France is clearly superior. The data in the Guardian link above are from 2009, two years before Germany panicked and caved to facile “green” scaremongering over the harmless Fukushima meltdown and announced the phaseout of its zero-carbon nuclear fleet. France’s annual per capita CO₂ emissions were then 6.3 tons—a full three tons lower than Germany’s. They are even lower now, and Germany, after decades of hectoring the rest of the world on the urgent necessity of cutting CO₂ emissions, has quietly abandoned all hope of ever catching up.

It’s not like the French are anti-CO₂. They just understand and respect the global ecosystem, and leave CO₂ production to natural processes, as much as possible. The country is known for its superb cuisine, the basis of which is bread and wine. The processes that manufacture both of these indispensable products ingeniously exploit the natural phenomenon of fermentation, a chemical process in which the yeast fungus species Saccaromyces cerevisiae turn sugars and carbohydrates into ethanol (alcohol) and CO₂. That’s where the alcohol in wine comes from. Next time you’re extolling your beloved over a fine glass of red, drink a toast to these single-celled fungi—they created the mood. These fungi also produce the CO₂ that leavens bread dough; this is what gives French bread its incomparable structure, elasticity, crumb, and flavour.

Well, not quite incomparable. One of my brothers runs a bakery in Toronto’s east end. I’d say French bread compares favourably with his. His breads are leavened mostly with natural yeast, i.e. sourdough. But he also does commercial-yeasted breads like baguettes. The baguettes you get in France are almost as good. His raisin bread is also out of this world, as this writeup says (photo 7/10).

The use of natural carbon cycling processes for wine and breadmaking are ancient arts that honour mother nature and human ingenuity. The French after 1973 saw the right way forward and made smart national-level energy decisions that have carried their ancient arts gracefully and seamlessly into the modern age, allowing them to flourish alongside the latest technological innovations. One of those arts has established a formidable foothold in east Toronto, in a jurisdiction that is also mostly nuclear powered (see Tables 1 and 2 in the left-hand sidebar).

Hemlock Varnish Shelf (Ganoderma tsugae). This fungus takes the first opportunity to get its business done: I took the photo in Muskoka Ontario on April 23, two days after it had gone down to minus 10 at the end of a long and cold winter. Ganoderma tsugae eats dead wood, mostly hemlock, and turns the carbonaceous component of wood into carbon dioxide (CO₂). Fungi all over the world put around 80 billion tons of CO₂ into the air every year, and are the most important component of the natural carbon cycle.

Unlike France, however, Ontario has sometimes swung into facile groupthink and adopted silly policies such as deliberately discouraging electricity use. With so much of our electricity coming from the most efficient zero-carbon source in the world, and with our nuclear expertise, we Ontarians should electrify as much of our activity as possible. Let fungi and not power plants put CO₂ into the air: that is how the earth designed it.

Because expensive wind-generated electricity gets priority on the Ontario grid, the provincial hydro generators, which produce the cheapest power in our system, have to “spill”—i.e., waste—the water flowing through them. This waste is to the tune of millions of cubic meters of water every second. It is also to the tune of millions of dollars: the grid rule giving inefficient wind priority prevents our publicly owned electric utility, Ontario Power Generation, from earning much-needed revenue on behalf of the citizens of Ontario. This is all in the name of reducing carbon from electricity: wind power emits no carbon. But neither does hydro.

At the bottom of this post are two tables comparing the electricity output of Ontario’s 49 hydro generators with that of its 18 wind farms. The first table shows daily generation from May 1 to May 8; the second shows hourly generation on May 4 (last Saturday). I put the Hydro and Wind columns next to one another for easy comparison. You will note that generally increased wind output at night corresponded with lower hydro output. This is because of grid rules that favour wind. That is to say, when wind starts blowing and wind turbines produce more electricity, the market rules mean that other generators must throttle down so the grid doesn’t blow up.

The kicker is, wind costs at least 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, and hydro costs at most 4 cents. In other words, hydro costs less than half what wind does, but the rules say that wind gets priority.

Why does wind get priority? Because, according to mainstream environmental lobbyists, wind is “free” and wind power comes with no carbon emissions.

But running water is also “free” and hydro power also comes with no carbon emissions.

And if wind is really “free” then why does the cheapest wind cost us ratepayers more than double the price of the most expensive hydro?

The answer is, wind is a very unreliable and inefficient energy source when it comes to making electricity. If the owners of wind turbines received even half what they get for their cheapest output, their electricity would still cost more than the most expensive hydro. But they would go out of business. That is because their turbines are simply too inefficient, and make too little electricity: they couldn’t make enough revenue, even at the “low” rate, to be economically worth while. The only reason wind turbine owners are in the wind generation business in the first place is because the government forces you, me, and all other Ontario ratepayers to pay them ridiculously high prices.

Moreover, the government forces us all to buy this inferior product even when a much better and far less expensive alternative is available. As has been the case with hydropower over the last while.

And the mainstream environmentalists, who love all this water conservation stuff, support these rules—even though the rules mean hydro plants are currently wasting not cups but millions of cubic meters of water!

So there you are: this is just the latest environmentalist disconnect of the day. This is a crazy mixed up world.

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Coal-fired power plants create massive amounts of electricity, and CO₂. The current climate meeting in Bonn, Germany is about reducing the latter. But the host country is building a whole fleet of new coal-fired plants because it needs the former. Germany could have massive amounts of electricity with no CO₂ emissions, simply by restarting its nuclear plants which were idled in the media hysteria over Fukushima. Ontario has achieved huge CO₂ emission reductions by using nuclear energy. But then again our political leaders are not panic-prone or spineless like Germany’s are.

Meanwhile, the host country scrambles to build new coal-fired electricity generating plants to cover the electricity shortfall that will come because of its panic retreat from nuclear power after the harmless Fukushima meltdowns of March 2011. Though the meltdowns occurred 802 days ago, and there have been no people killed or even injured by the minor radiation leaks from the reactors, the German government was spooked by the hysterical Green-Party-led exploitation of the media circus that accompanied the non-event. And lacking the qualities of true leadership, which oblige leaders to stand firm in the face of manufactured and agenda-driven hysteria, the German government buckled like wet cardboard and agreed to throw away the country’s nuclear generating fleet. And, knowing that it cannot possibly hope to replace its nuclear output with the much-touted but lamentably inefficient and unreliable wind turbines and solar panels the Greens have forever demanded, the German government has okayed a rush of new coal-fired plants. Germany is, after all, a modern jurisdiction that cannot live without electricity.

Coal-fired electricity generation produces upwards of one kilogram of CO₂ for every kilowatt-hour put into a grid. Which means that for every megawatt-hour (MWh), a coal-fired plant will dump one metric tonne, one thousand kilograms, into the air. See Tables 1 and 2 in the left-hand sidebar.

So, while the head of the UN climate change body goes about her business at Bonn, the host country’s coal-fired power generators will be adding to the atmosphere’s inventory of the man-made CO₂ the Bonn meeting is supposed to discuss, while perfectly good nuclear plants sit idle because of hysterical phony-green scaremongering.

Will these observations, or anything like them, make their way into the official communiqué when the Bonn meeting is over? If Bonn is anything like any of its innumerable predecessors, no.

Meanwhile, my home jurisdiction of Ontario has achieved a truly remarkable reduction in electricity-sector CO₂ emissions. These were around 43 million metric tons in 2000, and 16 million tons last year.

How did Ontario achieve this? By bringing refurbished nuclear generators back into service. This has occurred since 2003.

The refurbishments were carried out at two sites: the Pickering generating station just east of Toronto on Lake Ontario, and at the Bruce station on Lake Huron.

The Bruce station recently returned to full power, and now has eight operational units totaling around 6,300 megawatts. This makes it the biggest clean energy centre in the western hemisphere.

I doubt this achievement will be even mentioned at Bonn, let alone extolled as a proven way to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Which makes me wonder what the Bonn meeting is really about.

“Solar” and “Soirée.” There’s an oxymoron. How much solar electricity is generated during a typical soirée? Unless the soirée is held near the North or South pole in the respective polar summer, none. That is because soirées are typically held in the evening.

And why would you not need to worry about that? Because very few people know and fewer care about the sources that actually power the electricity grid. The grid is ubiquitous and taken for granted: you plug in an electric device and it runs. End of story.

I attended an event yesterday called Solar Soirée, which urged prospective attendees to “Be a part of Ottawa’s clean energy transition!” It started at seven p.m., and was an indoor event in a venue complete with electric lights, TVs for viewing presentations, microphones for post-presentation Q &A, etc. So, needless to say, Solar Soirée was not solar powered.

Solar Soirée featured two speakers from Europe, both firmly associated with the mainstream environmental movement. One of them, from Belgium, talked about how his renewable energy coop has signed up umpteen members and sells them electricity from solar panels, wind turbines, and small hydro installations.

I was not surprised to find that the dearth of solar photons during Solar Soirée was a matter of small concern to the other attendees with whom I spoke. In every conversation I led off with “do you support solar energy?” Invariably the answer was yes, to which I would respond “at this hour?” I thought it was funny, but nobody else did. Nor did they like my quip that the phrase Solar Soirée is an oxymoron.

The kicker in the Belgian speaker’s talk came when he described his cooperative’s encouragement of members to burn wood pellets for space heating. Why would these consumers of renewable energy need to burn a very heavy-emitting carbonaceous fuel? I mean, isn’t the whole idea of renewables to get us all off carbonaceous fuels? The speaker left that unanswered but the answer is obvious: “renewables” cannot provide enough electricity to run electric space heaters.

I found that a remarkable public admission at an event promoting solar power.

Even better, the speaker said that wood pellets are encouraged for cooperative members who don’t have natural gas hookups.

Both speakers were effusive in their praise for energy policies in “Europe,” and the Belgian was loudly and proudly anti-nuclear. A French man or woman in the audience might have been offput by such a German-centric conception of Europe. Isn’t France also in Europe? Isn’t France one of Europe’s leading states?

I say this because France runs mostly on nuclear power. As I mentioned in late March, France’s Train Grande Vitesse, the amazing high speed train, runs on nuclear electricity, thereby making train travel incredibly clean. Nuclear is also very cheap, which is why France encourages electrification of as much activity as possible, including space heating.

I also found it ironic that the event took place in Ontario. At the time of the event, most of the electricity running the Solar Soirée was coming from Ontario nuclear plants. During the event, gas-fired electricity generators in Ontario dumped around 1,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the principal man-made greenhouse gas, into our air.

Well it turns out that the speaker from Belgium, who I must assume was pushing solar power because it emits no CO₂, supports the dumping of those 1,200 metric tons of CO₂. As an anti-nuke, he would rather Ontario’s power come mostly from gas plants instead of nuclear, which emits no CO₂.

Had Ontario’s nuclear plants been replaced with gas plants, as the allegedly green Belgian speaker would prefer, we would have dumped 6,856 metric tons of CO₂ in the hour of Solar Soirée. They would continue dumping that amount long after he had departed in his kerosene powered airplane to go back to Belgium and his wood pellets.

We don’t need that kind of advice.

Warrior 3: one of the standing poses that collectively comprise the crescendo of physical and mental work in the most intense part of a hot yoga session. The hot-yoga crescendo is a period that lasts maybe five or ten minutes. Imagine remaining in the crescendo for one hour; it is impossible. Electric power generators, like nuclear plants, steadily maintain literally tens of millions of times that output for hundreds of days at a time.

Lately I have gotten into Crossfit, which is constantly varied functional and “old fashioned” exercises like pushups, burpees, kettleball swings, box jumps, lots of weightlifting, and lots of gymnastic-type stuff that I was no good at during grade-school and that I am still no good at. You do a Crossfit workout at high intensity, i.e. at a sprint, all-out pace. It is brutal, and addictive. The only good news is, it is short: often less than ten minutes and rarely more than 20 minutes. It is also very effective.

At the peak of a hot yoga class (i.e., the standing posture portion, which lasts usually around five to ten minutes), or all through a Crossfit Workout of the Day (WOD), you are cranking out more or less peak energy. In a normal male human, that amounts to a work output of between 300 and 400 watts. Chris Horner, a Tour de France rider, is reported as having output 422 watts during one ten-minute uphill stretch. Catalyst Athletics has a great online calculator that might help you roughly calculate your output in a Crossfit WOD.

If during your hot yoga or Crossfit session you could somehow convert your physical energy into electricity, you might, if you really go for broke, do enough work to power one 100-watt light bulb. When the session was finished, ten to twenty minutes later, you would be gasping for air, lying in a puddle of sweat and drool. The lightbulb would be dark.

This is what you look like after a Crossfit WOD. At this point, you are doing no work. Well, in a Crossfit WOD you are, if you really go for broke, outputting maybe 300 or 400 watts of power—enough perhaps to light a single 100-watt lightbulb.

If you have never tried either hot yoga or Crossfit, I urge you to at least give it a try. It is a sobering, humbling experience. Especially when you realize how much work it takes to power one lousy 100-watt lightbulb. I mean, you go all out, to the point of serious exhaustion, and you can keep it lit for maybe 20 minutes at most. You might be ready for another 20-minute session four or five hours later. And that is it for the day.

Think about that, and then think about how much sheer energy it takes to produce enough electricity to run a city. You may have noticed that I said your 300-to-400-watt effort might, while that effort is underway, translate into enough energy to light a single 100-watt lightbulb. That is because you cannot convert mechanical energy into electricity, a higher form of energy, with perfect efficiency. That conversion is inherently inefficient: to make one unit of electrical power, you have to put in at least three units of mechanical power.

How many fit humans, working at a hot yoga or Crossfit pace, would it take to power your house, let alone the city you live in? Too many. That is why we have the grid.

The Ontario grid has not experienced a single general failure since August 14 2003. In the 3,541 days since then, Ontario’s power generation fleet has provided indispensable electricity to every man, woman, and child every second of every hour, 24 hours a day, without letup. There is no possible way humans could have done that work. Again: try hot yoga or crossfit. Then imagine working at that pace for even one hour, forget about 24 hours straight.

Most Ontario electricity comes from three relatively tiny locations which host nuclear plants. Have a look at Tables 1 and 2 in the upper left sidebar. Imagine how much energy it takes to clock those kinds of numbers, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour.

I’d rather machines do that work than humans. So, to the humans that run these machines, a big shout out. Too few people know what you do, and fewer appreciate it.

This is huge good news, for Ontario, for Canada, and for the planet. Bruce Power is the biggest clean energy centre in the western hemisphere. It is a model of what we humans need to do in order to develop our economies without destroying the environment.

With this massive clean energy centre running on all eight cylinders, the carbon intensity per kilowatt-hour (CIPK) of Ontario electricity is, as of three p.m. on Monday April 22 2013, a very clean 60.8 grams. Wind is playing only a very minor role in this: the whole wind fleet at this time is not even running at 17 percent.

So, happy Earth Day, Mother Earth.

The skill sets that keep Ontario clean. Most Ontario electricity comes from nuclear plants, which puts these skill sets, plus the ones required in major special projects like refurbishments, at the forefront of workforce renewal efforts.

However, unlike real dark matter and energy, the human aspects of my consulting work are not a mystery. The central problem, in every project with which I am now involved is: getting good people into a position that will move the project or organization forward, while keeping other good people who are already moving projects and organizations forward employed in that capacity. That is a very large part of what I do, and it is the same for anybody else who has a stake in the outcomes created by organizations of people.

In industries relying on very high levels of technical expertise, such as the energy industry, it is so important to solve this central problem that attracting and retaining skilled workers occupies, or should occupy, a large and increasing part of senior executives’ attention. This is because the pool of skilled workers is shrinking. And the pool is shrinking because the skilled workforce is ageing. Managers who like me spend their days running projects by ensuring the skilled people currently working on these projects keep doing what they’re doing are feeling a terrific squeeze. On one side, the skilled people know they are in high demand and can shop themselves to the highest bidder, which puts upward pressure on labour costs. On the other side, that same skilled workforce, even if it remains in place, is close to retirement. Organizations everywhere, and especially the energy, and especially electric utilities, are scrambling to avoid or at least survive the effect of this squeeze, which has been described as a demographic tidal wave.

This is a serious issue, and not just for electric utilities. Failure to effectively address it will have bad implications for regional and national economies, as well as for the global environment. Generating and distributing electricity is a highly technical enterprise, consisting of distinct but interlocking parts that must always work in perfect synchronicity in real time. This requires a very skilled and specialized workforce—all the more so in jurisdictions like Ontario that make electricity using nuclear fission.

On projects where I am fortunate enough to have an influence in how this issue should be handled, the strategy has been to focus on internal workforce development, in which senior skilled workers—either employees or consultants—mentor younger workers. Our explicit aim in one particular project was to convert, as rapidly and effectively as possible, the raw technical talent of the most promising young recruits into mature organization-level bench strength. This was done systematically by evolving, in direct collaboration with the recruits and mentors, staged statements of qualifications, closely tied to frequent performance reviews.

Success in this is directly related, I can tell you from sometimes painful professional experience, to the organization’s ability, and willingness, to develop that internal bench strength. If ability and/or willingness are high, then you are cooking. If not, then you are a de facto farm team—i.e., a cheap developer of top talent—for other organizations.

There are several critical factors that produce success in this methodology. The quality of the mentorship program is of course one of them. The recruiting process is another. For both these components, getting the right people at the outset gives your effort a much better chance of paying off.

Recruiting the raw talent starts at universities and colleges, and involves close collaborations with professors and instructors who supervise low-cost research projects. These projects give excellent opportunities to see which students respond most effectively to challenges beyond the research itself. How do they work with others? What leadership skills do they exhibit? How attuned are they to the industry partner’s business considerations?

There are low-cost ways to get fast answers to these questions. The recently announced federal government training program is one of them. Other federally and provincially supported research grant programs are another. Utilized creatively and systematically, these programs can make all the difference.

Nowhere is this more important than in the Ontario nuclear sector. Nuclear plants are the Number One reason Ontario’s electricity is clean, and electricity makes Ontario viable as an economic player. Right now (just before 8 a.m. on Wednesday April 17), nuclear plants are providing over 60 percent of Ontario’s electricity. They are the Number One reason Ontario’s CIPK (carbon intensity per kilowatt-hour) is 100 grams. See tables 1 and 2 in the left-hand sidebar.

To keep Ontario’s CIPK at this low level, the provincial nuclear plants must maintain their excellent operating record. That means maintaining the skilled workforce. So maintaining and growing the nuclear workforce is critical to the province’s, and country’s, long term economic and environmental goals.

If this graphic is true, then fossil-fired power generation is also carbon-neutral.

As you may have noticed, the Other category typically produces around 170 megawatts at any given time. (As I write this at four p.m. on Thursday April 11, it is producing 210 MW—for some reason Lennox unit 2 is producing 30 MW; Lennox rarely produces any power.)

And you may have also noticed that the tables show the Other category producing relatively low emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) compared with the other emitting fuels, gas and coal. That is because one of the four non-Lennox generators in the Other category used to be gas-fired. When it changed to biomass, I did not change the carbon factor that generates the CO₂ figures for the tables. That was because I could not decide if biomass really is carbon neutral.

It is a tricky question. Wood will eventually wind up in the atmosphere as CO₂ anyway: it is eaten by fungi, which play an essential role in the natural carbon cycle. But that is just the point. Fungi are part of the natural carbon cycle. Is wood combustion by humans for power generation part of the natural carbon cycle?