Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
After 5 years, Medicine Hat powers down $12M solar thermal power plant
This is a perfect example of why a carbon tax needs to be the backbone of our climate policy. This project was producing cheap energy (though apparently did go over budget) but now has to shut down because of how cheap natural gas is in Canada. Unless we ensure that burning fossil fuels has a predictable price penalty, then private investors will never be able to invest in clean projects. We will have to use ad hoc government subsidies and initiatives which are guaranteed to cost more than the guy burning gas.
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Natural gas is a clean burning fossil fuel, it's ridiculous to suggest to move away from that source of power generation today, especially with gas prices so low.
As I have provided is a separate post, when comparing natural gas to hydro...
Quote:
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/...ric-power.html
Interesting read here regarding the environmental impacts of hydro dams.
Notably:
"current estimates suggest that life-cycle emissions can be over 0.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour
To put this into context, estimates of life-cycle global warming emissions for natural gas generated electricity are between 0.6 and 2 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour"
I didn't realize hydro dams and gas fired power plants potentially emit almost the same amount of CO2... I italicized "potentially" because I am obviously poaching the lower end of the spectrum for gas fired power plants. Nonetheless, I believe the gas fired power plants are a clean burning source of energy if comparisons like that can be made to hydro energy.
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