Translation:

"Please don't put any more fuel economy regulations on us! This study we funded says we're doing just peachy in the CO2 emissions department, but only if you assume a wildly optimistic share of biofuels coming into the market AND you don't count the pesky land use and other emissions associated with biofuel production. And while we assume total global emissions will be cut by 50% by 2050, no real reductions will happen until after 2020 anyway."

I'd like to add that all these assumptions go out the window if the depletion profile for conventional oil production is steeper than we are planning for AND our unconventional plays pan out (Shale oil, Tar Sands, etc.). If we are forced to use Oil Shale, coal-to-liquids or any other climate nightmare to supply our liquid fuel habit, then all bets are off. And when you account for all the methane leaks from hydraulic fracturing drilling, then it looks like all bets are off right now.

Hopefully, better transportation planning and increasing vehicle electrification will make this study's rosy predictions pan out. However, 450ppm STILL locks us into several feet of sea level rise eventually, dangerously acidic oceans and dangerous extremes in weather that will be highly disruptive to the geopolitics of the 21st Century and beyond. We need to find some way to suck carbon already emitted out of the atmosphere to come back down to the 350ppm that the latest climate science tells us is the actual danger limit. Reforestation and greening desert regions might help and are FAR preferrable to crazier geoengineering schemes.

You can aim for anything you want, but the probability of success may be reduced. If you aim for perfection and nothing else will do you could end up with nothing.

Regardless of what too many posters claim, the real culprit seems to be North America and we are not doing any better, even if we transferred many manufacturing activities to China and Asia. .

Germany's per capita GHG went down -21% while ours went up by about +22%. We (USA and Canada) must be doing something very wrong?

Why is industrial Germany doing so well and we are not?

What we need are a list of "Ten Best Ideas" for reducing greenhouse gases, and not some simulated projections. Let's see:

1. Low till/No Till Agriculture can deal 30% of manmade GGE by tackling methane and CO2 sequestration, not to mention doubling agricultural productivity.

2. Reforestation, even to the point of planting tree and shrub barriers in the suburbs will reverse deforestation and desertification. The Sahel and Sahara still have enough seasonal grasses and savanah to form a basis for forests. Better and more aggressive forest management in North America, against low grade combustible stands and insect infestation.

3. Replace structural steel with as much lumber and cellulosic composites, including Acoya treated lumber, which is stronger than teak.

4. Bring marginal soils in the American South, Venezuela, Central Asia, etc. into better production for grazing, modified sugar cane, oil seed and legume substitutes (such as chick peas and pongamia), with deemphasis on maize.

5. BUT replacement of tundra forest in much of Alaska and Siberia with native grasses and grain production, to provide a reflective surface for methyl clathrate within the permafrost.

6. Sewage recycling and hydrothermal carbonization, such as demonstrated by Enertech of California, which will stop ocean dumping and provide about 1/4 of residential electrical and direct heating needs, more efficiently than coal. More effective recycling for fertilizer and soil amendment.

7.Nuclear, with fast-neutron and Thorium in MOX by way of an aggressive waste fuel remediation and storage effort. Coal baseload globally to be replaced in 30 years.

8. Full use of DC and superconductive generator and transformer technology, to cut gross power requirements for electricity by 30%. DC will certainly piggyback solar from the overall management perspective.

9. Natural gas conservation, predicated on 40% HVAC energy wasted in typical business or residential setting, due to outdated technology and building design. Will redound to the favor of natural gas vehicles and heat pumping, esp. geothermal.

10. Better mass transportation and urban space economies to anticipate it. It is a crying shame what so-called developing economies have locked themselves into.

There. None of this forces us to freeze in the dark or have trepidation of unfamiliar and untried technology, including and especially in the automotive sector.

Let's give credit to Germany for promoting more efficient clean energy usage for the last 10 to 15 years.

Canada's sky high per capita GHG (22-ton/year) is almost 100% due to Alberta's rocket high (62-ton/year) to produce Oil for export to USA. If the current trend is maintained, Alberta's per capita GHG may go up to 100+ ton/year in about 10-12 years.

Ontario, where 42.5% of the Canadian population lives has a per capita GHG of only (12-ton/year) due to the use of many NPPs.

Quebec, where 23.5% of the Canadian population lives has a very low per capita GHG of only (9-ton/year) due to the use of almost 100% clean hydro-wind electricity.

Ontario, where 42.5% of the Canadian population lives has a per capita GHG of only (12-ton/year) due to the use of many NPPs.

Only 50% higher than the EU average, and about double the level of France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

For atmospheric CO2 to stop increasing, we must cut per-capita emissions to about 1 ton.

Germany was doing OK until they turned off their nuclear power stations before they had reached end of life and replaced them with lignite burning power stations, and solar then the sun shines.

My view is that the government mandated crazy renewable quotas in the hope that German industry could achieve it, and then they would force the rest of the EU to adopt the same policies and buy loads of power equipment from German companies.

However, it backfired as it has not been achieved and the shortfall has been made up by lignite which generates huge amounts of CO2 and other pollutants.

IMO the problem of reducing CO2 is that it causes up front costs in your current industry, making them less efficient compared to people who don't bother.

Thus, there is a tendency to cheat, especially for smaller nations.

While nuclear power is only indirectly related to transportation emissions, it will still not play a major part in fighting climate change in the 1st half of the 21st Century. We are finding out that the ghosts of nuclear power's past, namely huge cost and schedule overruns during plant construction, have not been exercised. Many reactors take 10 years or more to build and the longer they take, the higher the risk of ballooning costs becomes. The long lead times for nuclear plant construction also mean that the anticipated electricity demand the plant was intended to supply might have evaporated or migrated out of the plant's service area during the intervening years. All of these factors present a huge financial risk to utilities building these plants, and since their cozy relationship with state regulators has allowed them to offload this risk onto their ratepayers, the high financial risk inherent in nuclear plant construction hits a lot of us directly in the wallet.

If you want specifics on just the latest pile of risk the nuclear industry has offloaded onto the average Joe Sixpack utility customer, look up the "Cost Recovery" charges that ratepayers are having to eat in Georgia to pay for nukes that aren't even finished yet. And if these plants become financially untenable and are abandoned before completion (like dozens of reactors were back in the 70's and 80's), they DO NOT get their money back! It's like the utility gets all the upside and its customers get most of the downside (like "heads, I win, tails, you lose...").

The long plant construction times and huge financial risks associated with nuclear power mean that CO2 reductions will happen much slower and be more expensive if we take the nuclear power route.

The long plant construction times and huge financial risks associated with nuclear power mean that CO2 reductions will happen much slower and be more expensive if we take the nuclear power route.

All the more reason to streamline both regulatory approvals and construction paradigms for nuclear. Just because we have made mistakes in the past doesn't mean we can't improve. Nuclear fission power has very low fuel costs and is almost carbon free. Reducing capital costs is very doable, and is happening in other parts of the world (e.g. China).

Lower cost multiple (1000s) small NPPs.

Over 75% of the content of smaller, modular, transportable NPPs could be mass produced in China at a much lower cost.

Each module could be built into permanent transportable containers for easy shipment by land and sea.

Mass production rate could be as high as 1000 NPPs/year or more.

Local workforce could be used to prepare the selected sites and assemble (join-connect together) the imported modules. Many sites could be installed under ground, under mountains, lakes, rivers etc. ?

The same standardized mass produced modules could be installed on future large ships. Many existing ships could be retrofitted.

End of life radio-active modules could be put into concrete castings and sank into 20,000+ ft deep oceans.

If you can point to specific examples of unnecessary regulations holding up reactor construction, I'm all ears.

Since renewable energy facilities can be built in such a short time, financing costs aren't as important, but as long as the nuclear industry benefits from the stealth feed-in tariff of cost recovery, it is unfair that other energy sources, especially clean renewables, do not get this benefit.

In fact, containment dome hardening to prevent 911 like aerial strikes on nuclear plants is the kind of regulatory fetish that skyrockets costs with construction delay and does little good, as exemplified at Hinckley Point UK. The vast majority of reactors do not enjoy that level of protection. The answer to that one is better aviation security, like locking and bulletproofing pilot cabins, real-time black box communications and GPS monitoring. You'll find that thanks to Malaysian airlines, these concerns will be addressed more cost effectively than building more PV to avoid nuclear.

Also, many regulations become obsolescent as physical depreciation levels off. A few cracks in the concrete do not lead to a physical collapse: You simply patch things up. True structural obsolescence occurs when annual costs and benefits of repair cannot compete with new capital construction. At least we are at the point where the building and foundation can be reused even as the reactor and plumbing can be scrapped and replaced.

At least point to me an example of a scorecard in which a plant has ever flunked and been closed down. The environmentalists may huff and puff, but no such scorecard has ever been devised by them. I would say their form of reasoning consists of wangling out the best scare tactics to serve their ends.

Regulation should not be used in 50-50 hindsight to alter construction in midstream. On the other hand, substandard concrete, untrained construction crews (there was plenty of that on the Shoreham LILCO plant) etc. are clearly punished by the free market - the fairly workable theory is that investors get smarter as stupidities become evident. If nuclear can now compete against coal despite that investor obstacle, so much the better.

As for the feedbate analogy to cost recovery, you do not consider the very long payback schedule that such utility investments require. The standard is 38 years, utility heat cogeneration has been estimated to be 25. US nuclear fleets have an effective life of 55 years, while the life of coal mines equipped with rail and remediatory capital (such as ash ponds) may be decreasing to levels of speculative investments in the US. Which industry do you think is more capable of dealing with long-term environmental and health costs?

PS Price-Anderson is not really a subsidy, but a restriction on liabilities for nuclear accidents, the probability of which is hard to measure for actuarial purposes. You might say that about Exxon Mobil and BP, but face it. No corporation or industry sector can pay all the tort costs we would like without going out of business. On the other hand, class action lawsuits do nothing to make corporations safer and more responsible, while doing much for lawyers.

Interesting reading here; http://www.hybridcars.com/is-electricity-a-clean-energy-source/