CanWEA, and wind power vs nuclear

At the CanWEA (Canadian Wind Energy Association) conference annual awards banquet and dinner this evening, I was treated to my friend and colleague, Stewart Russel, being elected to the board of directors. Stewart is an excellent Scottish bloke who has make Canada his home, gaining his Canadian citizenship and recently writing the exams for Professional Engineers Ontario. He has worked in the wind energy industry for his entire career, and we are all very proud of this latest accomplishment.

The keynote speaker at the banquet was Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of the Global Wind Energy Council. Steve is an excellent speaker and well worth going out of your way to hear.

He spoke with some disdain about the recent events in the United States, with the so-called climate change conference where nothing was committed. His comments about George W. Bush and Stephen Harper were short, to the point, and pulled no punches about the inadequacy of their level of commitment to this global threat.

In what was one of my favourite comments, “George Bush can’t even seem to properly pronounce the word ‘nuclear’. He says ‘nucular’ power. But either way, he’s for it.” Another choice comment was his reference to ‘aspirational targets’ as ‘procrastinational targets.” There were a few other guffaws within his speech as well.

He also made an argument for wind power and against other technologies, such as nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) that I had not heard before, but will not hesitate to use in future discussions as I could not find fault with his logic. It goes like this:

On the climate change front, (almost) all nations now agree with the scientists that we must cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts for our children and grandchildren. The scientists go further and say that our emissions must peak and start a downward trend before 2020 at the latest, and that the later we peak, the further we will have to cut by 2050.

There is plenty of time to argue about how far we need to cut between 2020 and 2050, but there is no wiggle room or time to waste in ensuring that our peak and downward trend is in the next 12 years.

Last year, 2006, three (3) new nuclear plants were commissioned in the world. Eight (8) were shut down.

In order to maintain the market share that nuclear power contributes today, the world needs to build between 120 and 150 nuclear power stations by 2020. Most of these are not yet on the drawing board, let alone through approvals and under construction, and we all know from hard won experience that it takes 10 years to put one of these stations in service. And this does not even mention the lack of available uranium ore for such a venture.

So, while the nuclear industry mounts their public propaganda campaign, portraying nuclear energy as the savior of our climate, the truth is that while nuclear may be able to play a part in the cuts between 2020 and 2050, it will have absolutely no part in the peaking and downward trend that must take place in the next 12 years.

The other technology often touted by the likes of the Bush administration and the Harper government is Carbon Capture and Sequestration.

While this is a promising concept for the use of coal, there are numerous technical hurdles. The first commercial scale plant in the world will be commissioned next year in Germany. Note that it is not commercially viable yet, just built to commercial scale. So how many of these can we build? How many can we afford to build, between now and 2020?

The fact is that there are only two possible solutions with current commercial viability to make the change over the next 12 years, and those are conservation and wind power.

We have a lot of work to do. And time is not on our side. So we can no longer afford to waste time with governments who refuse to take decisive action. It’s truly time for a new New Government.