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The Climate Change Thread

I took a quick look at electrical production by source by province from statscan data. The only province’s significantly reliant on fossil fuels in coal or nat gas form are Alberta, Sask, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Everyone else is getting to 95% renewable plus nuclear.

If we built one nuclear reactor in the prairies and one in the maritime plus Ontario could import a small amount of Quebec hydro power, Canada could essentially go carbon free with respect to our power grid.

Why go on about the power grid? Because I feel the emphasis is on transportation fuels which is backwards. It’s great that people in Japan take electrified public transit and California is pushing EV adoption but if your power grid is 80% burning fossil fuels those measures are incredibly inefficient at reducing CO2 emissions.

Canada has a real chance at making cuts in CO2 emissions because of the electrical grid not being reliant on fossil fuels. An EV for instance in Canada would cut almost all it’s operational carbon footprint over a conventional vehicle whereas in Japan or the US it would only cut something like 20%.
 
Can't wait. The shit I have to clean off my windows and balcony railing is disgusting, especially when I consider I have to breathe it in. Oh, yeah, keep those diesel trains running and keep those internal combustion engines revving.....nothing to see here folks.

I live right above the Lakeshore tracks and Lakeshore Boulevard/Gardiner and damn does it remind me of communist Europe in the 80s. Have some soot on your eggs.
 
TrickyRicky said:
I took a quick look at electrical production by source by province from statscan data. The only province’s significantly reliant on fossil fuels in coal or nat gas form are Alberta, Sask, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Everyone else is getting to 95% renewable plus nuclear.

If we built one nuclear reactor in the prairies and one in the maritime plus Ontario could import a small amount of Quebec hydro power, Canada could essentially go carbon free with respect to our power grid.

Why go on about the power grid? Because I feel the emphasis is on transportation fuels which is backwards. It’s great that people in Japan take electrified public transit and California is pushing EV adoption but if your power grid is 80% burning fossil fuels those measures are incredibly inefficient at reducing CO2 emissions.

Canada has a real chance at making cuts in CO2 emissions because of the electrical grid not being reliant on fossil fuels. An EV for instance in Canada would cut almost all it’s operational carbon footprint over a conventional vehicle whereas in Japan or the US it would only cut something like 20%.
Click to expand...

There is one nuclear generator at Point Lepreau NB and I think they recently voted to build a second reactor.

One problem is energy production is a provincial responsibility with varying degrees of privatization. The province of Saskatchewan is roughly Ottawa and nuclear plants come with a huge upfront capital cost.
As with all things founded on tax dollars, what few billion can we free up? Pharmacare? Defence? Transit?
 
Australia: Activists outraged as Siemens backs Adani mining project

The German engineering firm has reaffirmed plans to support the controversial Adani coal mine project. Siemens has come under fire for the project's climate implications, with bushfires currently raging across Australia.

www.dw.com

Activists outraged as Siemens backs Australian coal project – DW – 01/13/2020

The German engineering firm has reaffirmed plans to support the controversial Adani coal mine project. Siemens has come under fire for the project's climate implications, with bushfires currently raging across Australia.
www.dw.com www.dw.com
 
Oh, Adani. The gem of Queensland. It used to be the Great Barrier Reef, but fuck that old thing.....coal, baby!
 
What’s the cost of a new nuclear plant these days? The province that really needs it if we really want to tackle climate change is Alberta as that province is the main source of power grid emissions in the country and the only province where emissions are increasing significantly. So forgetting about fairness etc. the most effective and lowest cost initiative we could take as a nation to reduce emissions might not be emissions pricing or renewable subsidy etc. It might be just building Alberta a 30 billion dollar nuclear facility.
 
TrickyRicky said:
What’s the cost of a new nuclear plant these days? The province that really needs it if we really want to tackle climate change is Alberta as that province is the main source of power grid emissions in the country and the only province where emissions are increasing significantly. So forgetting about fairness etc. the most effective and lowest cost initiative we could take as a nation to reduce emissions might not be emissions pricing or renewable subsidy etc. It might be just building Alberta a 30 billion dollar nuclear facility.
Click to expand...

That seems like a rather dubious idea.

No nuclear plant has been constructed in Canada or the U.S. since the 1990s.

No nuclear plant has ever been built in a liberalized electricity market (not state controlled).

The cost per 1,100 megawatts is generally in the range of 13B Canadian, which means 26B for a 2,200 megawatt plant.

Those costs do not include maintenance of nuclear waste in the long term.

Canada still has no interim or long-term nuclear waste storage site (at plant locations only).

No one has purchased the CANDU design in decades; Canada has no experience/expertise w/any other design.

There a plethora of cheaper power sources per Kw/hour when weighting capital and operating together over a 40-year time period.
 
^I certainly don't know what I'm talking about but what is the cost of all the proposed subsidizes and taxes we are using to shift CO2 emissions versus the action I was proposing? Environmentalists don't like nuclear and to some extent hydro power. I get that and even accept it but climate change is an existential crisis much larger than concerns such as those you listed. On a macro scale so far pet projects of the environmental movement such as solar and wind power, electric cars, etc. (which I like and certainly would like to incorporate more into my own life) have done what amounts to nothing to alter global carbon emissions trajectories.
 
TrickyRicky said:
On a macro scale so far pet projects of the environmental movement such as solar and wind power, electric cars, etc. (which I like and certainly would like to incorporate more into my own life) have done what amounts to nothing to alter global carbon emissions trajectories.
Click to expand...

Pet projects? Wind and solar, as an example, have seen per unit of energy generated costs crater in the last decade and are currently still on a downward trajectory.

Just saying.
 
TrickyRicky said:
^I certainly don't know what I'm talking about but what is the cost of all the proposed subsidizes and taxes we are using to shift CO2 emissions versus the action I was proposing? Environmentalists don't like nuclear and to some extent hydro power. I get that and even accept it but climate change is an existential crisis much larger than concerns such as those you listed. On a macro scale so far pet projects of the environmental movement such as solar and wind power, electric cars, etc. (which I like and certainly would like to incorporate more into my own life) have done what amounts to nothing to alter global carbon emissions trajectories.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced of the accuracy of your statement.

Carbon emissions have grown because of population growth and a rising standard of living in developing world nations driving up power consumption levels.

Solar and Wind are both in their relative infancy, and make up a very small part of the grid to date. But with declining costs that generally show cheaper per kw/hour costs than most fossil fuels for wind and solar closing on that target quickly as well, I would expect far greater uptake in the years ahead.

The main limitation on those forms of power and their remaining key cost driver is that we don't yet have good power storage (so the power is only their when the wind blows or the sun shines).

This, however, is set to change and large-scale battery tech rolls out.

That will improve the utility and lower the costs of renewable further.

Conservation remains a great tool as well. If (as is planned) we require all appliances and electronics to meet higher energy efficiency standards, and nearly universally convert to LED lighting (including street lights), its entirely possible to reduce developed world consumption rates by 20% per person, easily.

That's not to say nuclear won't have a place; but we need to address safe storage issues first, we also need honest accounting w/capital and storage costs factored in to nuclear calculations.

Ontario's emissions are down despite population growth, and we haven't full tapped renewable or conservation yet. So there are many possibilities for other jurisdictions around the world.
 
Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help

14 January 2020

Climate change is set to cause major changes across the world: sea levels will rise, food production could fall and species may be driven to extinction.

www.bbc.com

Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help

We look at how hot the world has got and what can we can all do to tackle global warming.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
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