Natural Gas News. How Ontario Is Putting an End To Coal-Burning Power Plants by Keith Schneider. 02 Apr 2013: Report by keith schneider By most measures of environmental policy and progress, Ontario, Canada ranks well. Over the last half-century, Canada’s most populous province required cities and industries to treat every gallon of wastewater, dramatically reduced the level of sulfur and other pollutants that caused acid rain, and convinced the big and politically powerful pulp and paper industry to install state-of-the-art emissions control equipment. Next year, though, Ontario is scheduled to complete a 21st century environmental cleanup project that distinguishes it among North American jurisdictions. After a decade of work by the Liberal Party government, Ontario at the end of this year is scheduled to close the last of its big coal-fired generators, and leave a single small coal-fired unit available during periods of peak electrical demand until it closes next year.
Toban Black via Flickr The last unit at Ontario's Lambton plant will be shut down this year. MORE FROM YALE e360. Ontario's Decision to Close Coal Plants: Air Quality/Emissions Savings Likely Overstated. The Ontario government has finally announced the closure of the remaining coal-fired units at Lambton and Nanticoke. For some time the message has been that the government was on track to meet it's revised goal of 2014 (initially 2007 - then 2009), and yet there are no generation projects planned that make the ability to turn off the plants any greater in 2014 than they have been since September of 2012. Premier Dalton McGuinty was in Newmarket today to announce the Lambton and Nanticoke coal plants will stop burning coal by the end of 2013. The early closure is a result of Ontario's strong conservation efforts, a smarter electricity grid and a diverse supply of cleaner energy. Shutting down the last coal plants in Southern Ontario will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save the province $95 million.
I think the move will save money, and I'll not question $95 million. The reducing greenhouse gas emissions I will question. Postscript ... or Update 1: Recommendations 30.
Ontario ‘deliberately dismantling’ environmental protections: Watchdog. Zoom Premier Kathleen Wynne is “deliberately dismantling” protections for everything from Crown land to prized species like polar bears, snapping turtles and lake sturgeon, Ontario’s environmental watchdog warns. In his 190-page annual report, Gord Miller sounded the alarm over an “obscure” change in last spring’s budget that allows Wynne’s cabinet to delegate powers over government-owned wilderness to private companies. That paves the way for “wide open exploitation” of Ontario’s north without proper checks and balances to safeguard wildlife and precious natural resources, the environmental commissioner charged.
“Why would they change it?” Miller told a news conference, noting 87 per cent of Ontario is Crown land. “The door is open to make it the wild west . . . without them telling us what they’re up to,” he added. “There’s a lot of wealth, a lot at stake here.” “No one’s saying have your way with it. “There’s a process for opening a mine, for starting a forestry business. Lbnl-6362e. The New Climate Economics by Felipe Calderón and Nicholas Stern. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – This Friday, in its latest comprehensive assessment of the evidence on global warming, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will show that the world’s climate scientists are more certain than ever that human activity – largely combustion of fossil fuels – is causing temperatures and sea levels to rise.
In recent years, a series of extreme weather events – including Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey, floods in China, and droughts in the American Midwest, Russia, and many developing countries – have caused immense damage. Last week, Mexico experienced simultaneous hurricanes in the Pacific and in the Gulf of Mexico that devastated towns and cities in their path. This puts a new debate center stage: how to reconcile increased action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with strong economic growth. It is a debate that is already mired in controversy. Real Politic: Carbon Tax Pessimism (Part I) By Kenneth P. GreenAugust 8, 2013 “The day after enactment, environmentalists will start calling for raising the carbon tax, decoupling it from revenue neutrality to finance more wind and solar boondoggles. And they’ll still want additional regulations to drive emissions down faster. If conservatives resist this, they’ll get the same ‘denier’ routine they get now.”
I first started working on climate policy in 1997, first in California, then Canada, and then in Washington, D.C. In the states, I watched the U.S. edge nearer-and-nearer to very bad climate policy, that being a mixture of cap-and-trade and ad hoc regulation. Study after study warned that national mitigation policies would cause significant economic damage, be regionally discriminatory, be economically regressive, and reduce U.S. competitiveness internationally. Caps vs. In that policy environment, I co-authored a study at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) with Kevin Hassett and Steve Hayward in 2007. [Part II tomorrow] Www.teebforbusiness.org/js/plugins/filemanager/files/TEEB_Final_Report_v5.pdf. None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use. The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles.
It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs. While the notion is incredibly useful, especially in folding ecological concerns into economics, I’ve always had my reservations about it. Environmentalists these days love speaking in the language of economics — it makes them sound Serious — but I worry that wrapping this notion in a bloodless technical term tends to have a narcotizing effect. It brings to mind incrementalism: boost a few taxes here, tighten a regulation there, and the industrial juggernaut can keep right on chugging. It’s a huge task; obviously, doing it required a specific methodology that built in a series of assumptions.
Oh, Canada - By Andrew Nikiforuk. For decades, the world has thought of Canada as America's friendly northern neighbor -- a responsible, earnest, if somewhat boring, land of hockey fans and single-payer health care. On the big issues, it has long played the global Boy Scout, reliably providing moral leadership on everything from ozone protection to land-mine eradication to gay rights.
The late novelist Douglas Adams once quipped that if the United States often behaved like a belligerent teenage boy, Canada was an intelligent woman in her mid-30s. Basically, Canada has been the United States -- not as it is, but as it should be. But a dark secret lurks in the northern forests. Over the last decade, Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate.
It's no longer America's better half, but a dystopian vision of the continent's energy-soaked future. That's right: The good neighbor has banked its economy on the cursed elixir of political dysfunction -- oil. Jamie Lee via istockphoto. Infographic: What Climate Change Means for Africa and Asia. Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century. The report, reviewed by some of the world’s top scientists, is being released ahead of the next comprehensive studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013/14, and follows the Bank’s own Strategic Framework for Development and Climate Change in 2008 (Check out: Development and Climate Change - A Strategic Framework for the World Bank Group for FY09-11) and the World Development Report on climate change in 2010.
"Turn Down the Heat" combines a synthesis of recent scientific literature with new analysis of likely impacts and risks, focusing on developing countries. It chronicles already observed climate change and impacts, such as heat waves and other extreme events, and offers projections for the 21st century for droughts, heat waves, sea level rise, food, water, ecosystems and human health. "This report reinforces the reality that today’s climate volatility affects everything we do," said Rachel Kyte, the Bank’s Vice President for Sustainable Development. Peak Oil solved, but climate will fry: BP report. BP's recently released "BP Energy Outlook 2030" report claims that a dramatic rise in new unconventional sources of oil -- tight oil, tar sands and NGLs -- will solve the "peak oil" problem.
These new sources of "oil" are primed to gush forth and allow the world to burn lots more oil for decades to come. BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said bluntly: "Fears over oil running out – to which BP has never subscribed – appear increasingly groundless. " And it's not just oil. According to BP, a combination of powerful new extraction technologies, growing populations and extremely weak climate policies mean humanity is on track to excavate and burn lots more fossil fuels of all kinds by 2030: 15% more oil, 26% more coal and 46% more methane (aka natural gas). Off the climate cliff Unfortunately for just about everyone, this "most likely" energy comes with one very big downside. How bad is 4OC? So far the world has warmed around 0.8OC. "This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2011/STAGING/local_assets/pdf/BP_World_Energy_Outlook_booklet_2013.pdf.
Skeptic Rebuttals in one line. 99 One-Liners Rebutting Denier Talking Points — With Links To The Full Climate Science. By Joe Romm and Climate Guest Contributor "99 One-Liners Rebutting Denier Talking Points — With Links To The Full Climate Science" Progressives should know the disinformers’ most commonly used arguments — and how to answer them crisply. Those arguments have been repeated so many times by the fossil-fuel-funded disinformation campaign that almost everyone has heard them — and that means you’ll have to deal with them in almost any setting, from a public talk to a dinner party. You should also know as much of the science behind those rebuttals as possible, and a great place to start is SkepticalScience.com.
BUT most of the time your best response is to give the pithiest response possible, and then refer people to a specific website that has a more detailed scientific explanation with links to the original science. That’s because usually those you are talking to are rarely in a position to adjudicate scientific arguments.
Indeed, they would probably tune out. Skeptic Rebuttal One Liners. Article: Feasability of conversion. 6 Myths About Renewable Energy, Busted! The evidence is in: Renewable energy is viable, reliable, and ready to go – all that’s missing is the political will to kick start an energy revolution in South Africa. On this page we’ve grouped some of the most common myths about renewable energy, explaining why they are just that – myths that don’t stand up to reality. But here’s the thing, although we’ve busted the myths here, we need you to make the myth busting go beyond this page.
Please share it widely. Tweet, Facebook, and talk about it freely. Now, let’s get going! Right now, renewable energy is actually already cheaper than coal and nuclear power at every step. A unit of electricity from Eskom’s new coal plants will cost about 97c while a unit of electricity from renewable energy will only cost 89c. The Hidden Costs of Coal and Nuclear Market price aside, coal and nuclear power have huge hidden costs that aren’t included in the price that you and I pay for electricity.
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