Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal manmade greenhouse gas, are pushing toward 400 parts per million. Item A1 on the left shows the daily readings from the Keeling CO2 observatory in Hawaii (courtesy of the Scripps Institution of U.C. San Diego). Table A1 shows how much CO2 the Ontario electric power generation sector contributes each hour to increasing the global atmospheric concentration. It takes roughly 7.8 billion tons of CO2 to increase the global concentration by 1 ppm, so Ontario’s power generation sector is a small contributor. But we easily could—and, I would argue, should—be a zero contributor. We could do that by building a couple of new nuclear reactors, and then running our power system on nuclear and hydro, thereby totally eliminating fossil fuels from the generation sector. Imagine, a grid-power CIPK of zero. The Toronto subway would be the cleanest mass-transit system in the world. It is easily achievable.
CO2 concentrations since the Industrial Revolution. Graph courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Click to enlarge.
Whether or not Ontario chooses to act on my humble suggestion, its leaders can certainly tout their role in reducing provincial CO2 from electricity generation. I have said before and I will say again: I believe that this CO2 reduction—from 40 million tons annually in the year 2000 to less than 13 million tons in 2013—is the biggest reduction in any sector anywhere in North America. It was achieved mainly because Ontario returned to service six nuclear-powered generators. I have also argued that nuclear power is the only way that countries around the world will reduce the CO2 from their electric power generating sectors.
Last week saw unprecedented public action on the climate front. This was on the occasion of another United Nations summit on the climate issue. I have been watching this issue grow, over the past two decades, in the public’s consciousness. The awareness trajectory has been as inexorably up as the CO2 concentrations shown in the Scripps graph above. And that trajectory has risen as sharply over the past few years as the CO2 line since 1950.
The United Nations summit took up the matter of the Green Climate Fund, which was first announced at the Copenhagen summit in 2009. Under the GCF, developed (rich) countries would help developing (poor) countries make the transition from fossil fuels to low- or zero-carbon energy sources.
The U.N. summit also discussed putting a price on carbon emissions. Though the summit chair’s summary indicated there is significant support for such a measure, others noted that it does not have the support of the U.S. and Canada, among other countries.
Nevertheless, the growing support for the GCF and carbon pricing makes a couple of things quite clear.
- Carbon pricing (that is, meaningful carbon pricing, as opposed to symbolic prices seen in the European ETS and the American RGGI) will put an intolerable burden on jurisdictions that fall into quadrant II of the Electricity Carbon and Retail Price (ECRP) Matrix. Germany and Denmark, two Q2 grids, pay high prices already.
- Developing countries will hurt themselves both economically and environmentally if they choose the wind-and-solar renewable energy path to clean energy.
The climate representative for the United Kingdom, David King, recognizes this. He was quoted a couple of weeks ago in The Hindu as saying that the U.K. wants to see the GCF as a vehicle to finance a “Global Apollo Programme” that focuses on technology transfer to developing countries. Among the technologies he mentioned was nuclear power.
I would go further. The GCF will be largely a waste of money unless most of the funds go to nuclear projects.
While climate scientists tell the world that only immediate, drastic action will limit this problem to something we can manage (and even so it’ll get much worse before it gets better), our “leaders” move by baby steps.
Not even the world leaders in climate progress, Sweden, France and Ontario, are unambiguously advocating for nuclear energy. China and Russia are selling it world-wide, but they are very high emitters and Russia has no interest in losing oil and gas sales.
yes, and the leaders of a huge nuclear uptaker, the UAE, were chastised for not (flying, in kerosene powered airplanes) to New York. Much disconnect between CO2 emissions and the content of the NY talk.
The U.N. says we all have to agree to reduce CO2 by 6 billion tons by 2020. So talk about baby steps — that’s less than 1 ppm’s worth in the atmosphere.
What we tax, we get more of.
It is instructive to note that CO2 has been shown by reputable scientific bodies to have no correlation to fluctuations in climate. Further, CO2 is certainly not a pollutant any more than water, which in its vapor form is earth’s main “greenhouse gas”, followed by methane.
CO2 concentrations, are a lagging indicator of earth’s 25,000 year glaciation cycles consistent with cyclical solar and cosmic phenomena. Little CO2 is generated when we are in an ice age. And an increase in CO2 may actually help reverse desertification.
My take on the whole CO2 controversy is that one smart feller by the name of Maurice Strong came up with a cool way to tax the air we breathe to fit his then U.N. agenda to hobble Western industry. And to date the only beneficiaries have been Al Gore and other profiteers in the fraudulent Carbon Market scam. Check out the Chicago Carbon Exchange.
I find this whole thing part of the despicable attempt at commoditization of breathing air.
It’s worth noting that your comment is a list of denialist talking points and would be banned by any proper canard-detector.
Water vapour although a greenhouse gas also has high albedo causing reflection into space of massive amounts of solar energy. CO2 does no such thing, it accepts solar energy but then retains re-emitted infrared energy.
Climate deniers either have strong self interest or idealogy keeping them from facing reality. Or they need more education on the topic. Perhaps both.