Tag: Other Org Action

Energy efficiency is the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis

Interview in The Guardian with Amory Lovins, HERE:

But just as with the 1970s oil shocks, the problem today is not where to find energy but how to use it better, he says. The answer is what he calls “integrative, or whole-system, design,” a way to employ orthodox engineering to achieve radically more energy-efficient results by changing the design logic.

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“In 2020 the world added 0.4 gigawatts more nuclear capacity than it retired, whilst the world added 278 gigawatts of renewables – that’s a 782-fold greater capacity. Renewables swelled supply and displaced carbon as much every 38 hours as nuclear did all year. Where nuclear is cheap, renewables are cheaper still and efficiency is cheaper than that. There is no new type or size or fuel cycle of reactor that will change this. Do the maths. It is game over.”

New Brunswick’s offshore wind energy resources could replace our coal and nuclear energy

NB Power must close its Belledune coal energy plant by 2030. The utility is betting that new nuclear reactors (SMRs) will be built by that date to generate replacement energy. However offshore wind power could replace not only Belledune but also the Point Lepreau nuclear plant, and developing wind power would eliminate the need for more nuclear reactors. We can look to the U.S., the U.K. and the E.U. for guidance. Read the article by Martin Bush, published by the NB Media Co-op, HERE.

Climate Change Won’t Wait for Politics

Geopolitical events are persuading some governments to re-invest in fossil fuel infrastructure. Jim Emberger from the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA, a CRED-NB core group) wrote a letter in response to a commentary in Brunswick news calling for more fossil fuel extraction in Canada. He writes:

Climate change is happening so rapidly that many plants and animals may not be able to adapt or move in time to survive.  Crop losses due to climate related weather, and diseases due to invasive species, whose expansion is enabled by warmer conditions, are all on the rise.

None of these trends cares a whit about Ukraine, or Canada’s fossil fuel industry. The laws of physics do not respond to political and economic events, nor can you bargain with them.  If we burn more fossil fuels – the climate will warm – period.

Read the letter HERE, on the NBASGA website.

Video: Decarbonization, Lock-in and Transition in Eastern Canada

Do you know what carbon “lock-in” is, and how it keeps us tied to fossil fuel infrastructure in New Brunswick? If not, check out this video by JP Sapinski, professor of environmental studies at Université de Moncton. The story with the video link was published by the NB Media Co-op, HERE.

The video is Sapinski’s a zoom presentation, hosted by the Environment & Society program at St. Thomas University and the RAVEN project at the University of New Brunswick (both CRED-NB core members).

Green Budget Coalition submission

The Green Budget Coalition (GBC) is 23 leading Canadian environmental organizations working together to present an analysis of the most pressing issues regarding environmental sustainability in Canada. Every year, the GBC makes a consolidated annual set of recommendations to the federal government regarding strategic fiscal and budgetary opportunities.

The report for the federal 2022 budget is HERE. Check out the Recommendation on page 47: Eliminate federal funding and reject calls to rollback accident liability for SMRs, and reallocate investments towards renewable technologies that are proven, socially acceptable and scalable now.

New report: Towards a Clean Atlantic Grid

The Pembina Institute published a report in January that will interest anyone looking for information about how to transform our electricity grid using real clean energy (not dirty nuclear or fossil fuels). Check it out HERE.

In this study, they examined the cost of providing reliable electricity in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia using balanced mixes of clean energy technologies and resources (clean energy portfolios) compared against natural gas and nuclear power plants, which are currently proposed as the default replacement for coal. Clean energy portfolios included a mix of commercially available zero-carbon electricity supply and demand management options, including solar, wind, battery storage, energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and imported hydroelectricity. In all cases, they found that clean energy portfolios provide the same services as gas and nuclear power plants at a lower cost per unit of energy over the lifetime of the energy source, even without reliance on imported hydroelectricity