Energy Probe

The latest cost of going green: your health

Posted on July 5, 2010 by energyprbe

Certifications ensuring that new homes and buildings are more environmentally-friendly and energy efficient do little in considering the health of their occupants, says a new report from Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human health. Focusing on the U.S. Green Building Society’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, which awards buildings with certificates ensuring they are “green”, the group says the program is implementing standards that “are clearly insufficient to protect human health,” yet are being adopted by lawmakers across the U.S. and other developed countries.

The result is that lawmakers are rushing through “green” legislation—some of which is based on the LEED standard—and putting the health of their citizens at risk, all in an effort to promote an appearance of environmentalism.

Put more simply, they may be attempting to solve an abstract environmental harm—global warming—for a real one, human health.

The group contends that the LEED program ensures tighter buildings, resulting in less of an exchange between indoor and outdoor air. Indoor air, the group says, is often more contaminated than outdoor air—and this may intensify the chemical exposures of residents in a building, increasing the likelihood of unintended health consequences.

The LEED program, as it is currently designed, shows almost a complete disregard for this phenomenon. And because, as EHHI highlights, many of the materials being used in LEED buildings contain known contaminants, residents may be facing an increased exposure to indoor chemical mixtures.

Worse still, developers can obtain the highest LEED standard, platinum, without receiving any points (the certificate is awarded on a points basis, 110 in total) in the human health category. In fact, out of the potential 110 points—80 are needed for platinum status—only 7 have the primary intent to limit hazardous chemicals within a building.

The organization behind the LEED certificate, the U.S. Green Building Society, is private—made up, predominantly, of engineers, architects, building product manufacturers, real estate and construction companies. But governments have been helping to promote this “green” building certificate by adopting new laws that reward LEED certification, including loan guarantees, lower-interest loans, mortgage interest rate reductions, income tax credits, property tax reductions and other public subsidies.

The Green Building Council does not make public its evaluation of individual building components and performance. It is also not beholden to the public, as it does not adhere to the Administrative Procedures Act or the Freedom of Information Act.

“The Green Building Council’s award…conveys the false impression of a healthy and safe building environment, even when well-recognized hazardous chemicals exist in building products,” the authors of the EHHI report say.

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Catastrophism collapses

Posted on July 3, 2010 by energyprbe

G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy

(Jul. 3, 2010) Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism. Continue reading →

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Catastrophism collapses

Posted on July 3, 2010 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
July 3, 2010

G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy

Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism.

One year ago, the G8 talked tough about cutting global temperatures by two degrees. In Toronto, they neutered that tough talk, replacing it with a nebulous commitment to do their best on climate change — and not to try to outdo each other. The global-warming commitments of the G20 — which now carries more clout than the G8 — went from nebulous to non-existent: The G20’s draft promise going into the meetings of investing in green technologies faded into a mere commitment to “a green economy and to sustainable global growth.”

These leaders’ collective decisions in Toronto reflect their individual experiences at home, and a desire to avoid the fate that met their true-believing colleagues, all of whom have been hurt by the economic and political consequences of their global-warming advocacy.

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s gung-ho global-warming prime minister, lost his job the day before he was set to fly to the G20 meetings; just months earlier Australia’s conservative opposition leader, also gung-go on global warming, lost his job in an anti-global-warming backbencher revolt. The U.K.’s gung-ho global-warming leader during last year’s G8 and G20 meetings, Gordon Brown, likewise lost his job.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had vowed to “save the human race” from climate change by introducing a carbon tax by the time of the G8 and G20, was a changed man by the time the meetings occurred. He cancelled his carbon tax in March, two days after a crushing defeat in regional elections that saw his Gaullist party lose just about every region of France. He got the message: Two-thirds of the French public opposed carbon taxes.

Spain? Days before the G20 meetings, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his popularity and that of global warming in tatters, decided to gut his country’s renewables industry by unilaterally rescinding the government guarantees enshrined in legislation, knowing the rescinding would put most of his country’s 600 photovoltaic manufacturers out of business. Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi similarly scrapped government guarantees for its solar and wind companies prior to the G8 and G20, putting them into default, too.

The U.K may be making the biggest global-warming cuts of all, with an emergency budget that came down the week of the G20 meetings. The two government departments responsible for climate-change policies — previously immune to cuts — must now contract by an extraordinary 25%. Other U.K. departments are also ditching climate-change programs — the casualties include manufacturers of electric cars, the Low Carbon Buildings Program, and, as the minister in charge put it, “every commitment made by the last government on renewables is under review.“ Some areas of the economy not only survived but expanded, though: The government announced record offshore oil development in the North Sea — the U.K. granted a record 356 exploration licences in its most recent round.

Support for global-warming programs is also in tatters in the U.S., where polls show — as in Europe — that the great majority rejects global-warming catastrophism. The public resents repeated attempts to pass cap and trade legislation over their objections, contributing to the fall in popularity of President Barack Obama and Congress. Public opinion surveys now predict that this November’s elections will see sweeping change in the United States, with legislators who have signed on to the global-warming hypothesis being replaced by those who don’t buy it.

In the lead-up to the Toronto meetings and throughout them, one country — Canada — and one leader — Prime Minister Stephen Harper — have stood out for avoiding the worst excesses associated with climate change. Dubbed the Colossal Fossil three years running by some 500 environmental groups around the world, Canada — and especially Harper — are reviled among climate-change campaigners for failing to fall into line.

Not coincidentally, Canada has also stood out for having best withstood the financial crisis that beset the world. Fittingly, Canada and its leader played host to the meetings.

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Lawrence Solomon: Newsweek’s retractable article

Posted on June 29, 2010 by energyprbe

“Newspapers Retract ‘Climategate’ Claims, but Damage Still Done,” reads the headline in Newsweek this weekend, in a column over the latest controversy in the global warming debate. The headline, and the article beneath it, are so inaccurate that Newsweek should retract them.

For starters, no newspaper that the column describes retracted any claims about Climategate, the scandal that hit the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last November when private emails showed, among other things, that all of the IPCC’s temperature data was suspect. The newspaper retractions – all two of them, by the UK’s Sunday Times and a much earlier change of heart by a small German daily — dealt with Amazongate, one of the many scandals that followed Climategate.

Next, the Newsweek column states that “In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40% of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was ‘unsubstantiated.’ … The Times‘s criticism of the IPCC—look, its reports are full of mistakes and shoddy scholarship!—was widely picked up at the time it ran, and has been an important factor in turning British public opinion sharply against the established science of climate change.”

The Times article was hardly pivotal in turning British public opinion against the climate alarmists. For one thing, public opinion had turned against climate alarmism months earlier, even well before Climategate, so much so that the British government took out paid TV ads in 2009 in an explicit attempt to win back public opinion. For another, the retracted Times article did little to publicize Amazongate – by the time the Sunday Times article appeared, Amazongate was old news, having been covered by hundreds if not thousands of media outlets around the world. Here’s the timeline.

On January 25, the British blog site, EUReferendum broke the Amazongate story. The press coverage began the same day, with a London Telegraph headline announcing “After Climategate, Pachaurigate and Glaciergate: Amazongate.” Between then and January 31, when the Sunday Times article appeared in print, Amazongate became firmly established as an another example among many of shoddy, error-filled scientific work by the IPCC. None of the other articles published in that week have seen a need to retract. Even the Sunday Times’ retraction came only after months of litigation, indicating that some felt there was no need to retract. The basic thrust of the Amazongate stories remains valid, even if one of the many media outlets that covered Amazongate decided it had stepped over the line in its presentation of the story.

One thing the Newsweek column got right. The damage to the reputation of the IPCC has been done.

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, June 29, 2010

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Aldyen Donnelly: Evidence shows both HST and carbon taxes are regressive

Posted on June 28, 2010 by energyprbe

(June 28, 2010) British Columbians instinctively know what the Brits and other Europeans started to discover between 1999 and 2004. That is that value-added and carbon taxes are highly regressive and no government can cost-effectively administer the follow-up programmes whose stated objectives are to mitigate the highly regressive nature of the original income-to-tax shift.

In 1999, the UK Treasury commissioned a study of the “Effects of taxes and benefits on households”, to get a better sense of the balance in their tax system. This study is now repeated, annually, to let parliamentarians see whether the government is succeeding at its stated objective of making their tax system more neutral or even progressive. But over the last 10 years, the system continues to become more, not less regressive.

The official government analysis clearly shows that this is due to the overall shift of the basis of taxation from income to consumption taxes.

At this time, in the UK, the VAT eats up almost 11% of poor families’ disposable income and only 6% of wealthy families’ disposable incomes. Given the fact that wealthy households disposable incomes are 11 to 16 times higher than the poorest 20% of families in BC, such a regressive tax could only be mitigated if our taxmen exempted the poor families from ALL income AND consumption taxes.

British Columbians don’t understand what the Premier and the academic economists are saying to them because it does not make sense in the context of their day-to-day experience. In the Premier’s defence, a large share of the academic community says that financing corporate tax cuts with a shift to HST/VAT is a good idea. All of the available European data indicates that the instinct of angry BCers is correct and the academic arguments are incorrect.

It is important, I think, to start separating the—valid, in my view—argument that tax burdens have to be reduced for business income from the—invalid, in my view—arguments that we should finance corporate income tax cuts by introducing new value-added taxes. We should be financing corporate income tax cuts with reductions in direct corporate subsidies, first, and then significant adjustments to the treatment of capital gains and investment income in a neutral-to-progressive personal income tax regime, second.

The UK Treasury currently offers significantly more VAT exemptions and discounts than are incorporated in the BC/Canada GST regime, with the sole objective of mitigating the impact of the income-to-consumption tax shift on poorer families. For example, the UK VAT on any home energy purchases (fuel or electricity) is 5%—1/3 the GST rate that BCers will start paying next week. Residential energy consumption is also exempt from the UK’s “carbon tax” (the Climate Change Levy), but not from BC’s carbon tax.

Even with these differences, the UK tax regime has proved highly regressive—which means, by definition, the BC regime will prove even more regressive than the UK regime.

To see how regressive VAT is in the UK, take a look at the 2008/09 “Effects of taxes and benefits on households here. Go to Table 3 to see that all “indirect taxes” (which are consumption taxes) combine to eat up 28.2% of the incomes of the poorest 20% of UK families after counting income support payments, home heating rebates (which were just cancelled in the new UK budget) and VAT rebates.

But these consumption taxes combined to eat up only 12.8% of the disposable incomes of the wealthiest 20% of families.

I actually find Figure 4 in the workbook of the UK tax system analysis most interesting. It shows that in order to balance the systematically unbalanced/unfair basic system, it is now the case that 60% of UK families receive more in government cash subsidies and free “in-kind services” than they pay for in combined net income and consumption taxes. Given that it costs roughly 8 pence on the pound to collect taxes and 20 pence on the pound to administer the tax rebate and in-kind service delivery programmes, the UK government would now operate more efficiently if it simply terminated all forms of taxation (consumption and income) for 60% of families.

In fact, if the result is an opportunity to cut out many of the government-administered cash recycling programmes for lower income families, after exempting 60% from all forms of taxation, the UK government could well also afford to cut marginal tax rates for the 40% wealthiest of families!

BCers instinctively know we don’t need to make this big mistake, even if they are unaware of the widely available evidence that we should not finance corporate income tax cuts with new consumption taxes. What I find astounding is the complete lack of awareness of the widely available European evidence in the analysis completed by a majority of Canada’s “leading” economists.

Aldyen Donnelly, June 28, 2010

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Avertible catastrophe

Posted on June 28, 2010 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
June 26, 2010

How U.S. labour and environmental rules blocked Dutch spill-cleanup technology.

Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company’s expense. “If there’s a country that’s experienced with building dikes and managing water, it’s the Netherlands,” says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with “Thanks but no thanks,” remarked Visser, despite BP’s desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer — the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment — unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, “We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water—the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that.” In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they offload their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls “crazy.”

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer — but only partly. Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. “Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands,” he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history — until the BP Gulf spill.

Posted in Energy Probe News, Fossil Fuels | 1 Comment

A few Rubber Duckies of my own

Posted on June 27, 2010 by energyprbe

Dan Gardner
The Ottawa Citizen
June 27, 2010

Over at the National Post, last week was “Junk Science Week,” during which Post writers like Peter Foster and Lawrence Solomon identify and denounce widely publicized “science” that is, in reality, shoddy nonsense. The editors also give a sardonic award — the “Rubber Ducky” — “to recognize the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who each year advance the principles of junk science.”

It’s a great idea. There is plenty of snake oil around and those who peddle it should be called to account. And mocked mercilessly. In that spirit, I’d like to award my own Rubber Ducky. Ahem.

Ladies and gentlemen, for twisting the statements of scientists and scientific institutions and misleading the public on an urgent scientific matter, the Rubber Ducky goes to … Peter Foster and Lawrence Solomon.

Junk scientists everywhere find inspiration in Foster’s and Solomon’s opposition to the theory of anthropogenic climate. It’s not merely that they think the theory is wrong. Debate is the lifeblood of real science. It’s that they are dead certain the theory is wrong.

Certainty poisons real science, but it’s vital nourishment for the junk variety because it determines how the junk scientist handles new evidence. If there were some possibility of being wrong, after all, evidence would have to be judged carefully and weighed against countervailing evidence. That’s how real scientists do it. But the junk scientist can dispense with all that because there is no possibility he’s wrong. And so, logically, new evidence always supports his conclusion, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. This is how the nuttiest fruitcakes are baked.

Speaking of which, here’s Peter Foster writing last week about “unprecedented set-backs” to the theory of anthropogenic climate change: “Britain’s Royal Society recently released a statement that ‘Any public perception that the science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect,’ thus contradicting its own former president, and true believer, Lord May. And if the science isn’t settled, there can hardly ever have been ‘consensus’ on the issue.”

Another blow to the junk science of climate change! Peter Foster was right all along!

Or so Foster seems to think. But here is what the Royal Society actually wrote: “There is a wide variety of views across the Fellowship on any active area of science, not just climate science, and this diversity is an essential component of the testing that scientific knowledge must always undergo. Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect — there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements, etc. However, the existence of some uncertainty does not mean that scientific results have no significance or consequences, or should not be acted upon. The enormous beneficial impact of science over the last 350 years is testament to the success of this balancing of uncertainty with action in the application of science.”

Clearly, the Royal Society was referring to science in general, not climate science specifically. Its point was a truism in scientific circles: Science does not deliver absolute certainty, only degrees of certainty, and so science is never truly “settled” in the sense of being chiselled in stone and treated as unquestionable truth. As geophysicist Henry Pollack wrote, “the normal state of affairs in science is unsettled and uncertain.”

If it weren’t possible for scientists to form a consensus on a scientific question until the science on that question is “settled,” as Foster seems to think, there would never be a scientific consensus about anything. Which demonstrates how fundamentally Foster misunderstands the nature of science.

I should also point out that in quoting the Royal Society Foster added a “the” that isn’t in the original, which seems like a tiny detail until you realize that the addition of a “the” was necessary to make the sentence read as if it referred to climate science and not science in general. Foster often accuses others of acting in bad faith, but I’ll assume this was an honest mistake and chalk it up, instead, to a mind so determined to confirm what it believes that it unconsciously misread the statement.

Which brings me to the relentless Lawrence Solomon.

Solomon recently announced some shocking news on the National Post website: A prominent climate scientist who worked with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published an academic paper in which he admitted the IPCC “misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming…. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was ‘only a few dozen experts,’ he states.”

Solomon’s post went viral on the Internet. Another blow to the junk science of climate change! Lawrence Solomon was right all along!

But then the author of the paper in question noticed and took exception. “I did not say the ‘IPCC misleads’ anyone,” Mike Hulme wrote in a statement he posted to his website.

He’s right. He didn’t. Hulme is a widely respected observer whose nuanced and thoughtful writing couldn’t be more different than the extremism and zealotry — from both sides — that dominates the public debate about climate change. In the paper in question, Hulme made some modest, cautious, and precisely defined comments about IPCC process. Solomon misread them and crudely spun them into another climate-change-is-falling-apart story.

So now comes the test: Lawrence Solomon says Mike Hulme’s paper is a smoking gun; Hulme says Solomon is completely wrong. Being rebuked by the author of a paper you are citing for having misread the paper would give most writers pause. Will Solomon acknowledge that, just maybe, he was off by a smidge?

If you said “yes,” you really need to open a psychology textbook and bone up on cognitive dissonance theory.

Solomon dug in. Mike Hulme is wrong about what Mike Hulme wrote, he insisted. Don’t listen to him! Lawrence Solomon was right all along!

Bravura performances, gentlemen. A Rubber Ducky to you both.

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Avertible catastrophe

Posted on June 26, 2010 by energyprbe

How U.S. labour and environmental rules blocked Dutch spill-cleanup technology.

(Jun. 26, 2010) Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, Jun. 26, 2010

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Lepreau 2 revived

Posted on June 25, 2010 by energyprbe

Chris Morris
Telegraph-Journal
June 25, 2010

FREDERICTON – The New Brunswick government is in discussions with French-owned nuclear giant Areva about construction of a second reactor at Point Lepreau, the Telegraph-Journal has learned.

Energy Minister Jack Keir is travelling to Florida on Sunday for several days of talks with officials of the state-controlled Areva group that could lead to a letter of intent for a second reactor and major spinoff benefits for the province.

Keir said in an interview on Thursday the possibility of a second reactor with AECL and Team Candu – a consortium of private-sector companies – is now virtually dead. But he said Areva has arrived on the scene with an attractive package that deserves serious consideration.

“They’re excited about our province for a couple of strong reasons,” Keir said of the French firm. “One is our geographical location, which presents great opportunities as we all know.

“The second thing that excites Areva is we are a bilingual province and we have a French university that could provide them not only with research but also with human resource opportunities in both languages. They see a real opportunity with New Brunswick not only for the Canadian market, but for their North American market as well.”

Keir said the province has been talking with Areva for several months. He said negotiations with the firm were proceeding even as the province was trying to finalize a deal for the sale of NB Power assets to Hydro-Québec.

“I’ve probably talked to them on at least three or four occasions,” he said.

“They are in constant communication with our staff in the Department of Energy. I would categorize the talks as more than preliminary, but I’ll have a much better feel after my discussions in Florida with them. I don’t want to raise expectations, but I can tell you I’m excited about the opportunity.”

Areva is a French-owned conglomerate known mainly for its nuclear developments. Its main shareholder is the French public-sector company, the CEA.

“They’re a first-class company,” Keir said.

“They are the largest nuclear technology company in the world.”

Keir said Areva first came to the table three years ago when the province invited companies to consider a second reactor at Lepreau. The Lepreau facility was constructed with room for three more reactors at the site.

Keir said that at the time, Areva did not offer the kind of spinoff benefits the province wanted in association with a second reactor.

“We were looking for private-sector investment in a merchant plant where the government wasn’t putting money into it, if we didn’t want to, but we wanted more than just a reactor – we wanted a centre for excellence in nuclear, we wanted to build the industry around nuclear with two power plants beside each other,” he said.

“AECL and Team Candu – with Hitachi, SNC Lavalin and Babcock and Wilcox – came forward with a pretty good proposal at the time in terms of more add-ons than just building the reactor. At the time, Areva just wanted to build and sell us their technology and we weren’t interested. So we moved down the road with Team Candu.”

Keir said that until last year, there was hope the Team Candu project would come together. But he said the project unravelled as AECL became increasingly distracted by the problematic refurbishment at the current Point Lepreau reactor.

“We talked to AECL and Team Candu and we all acknowledged it’s not going to move forward at this time,” Keir said.

“So, as the premier always says, when one door closes another one opens. If this one is opening I want to take advantage of it.”

Under the so-called “merchant model,” the first such model for a nuclear project in Canada, the private sector would finance the construction and publicly-owned NB Power would contract to operate the plant.

“Areva now has come forward with a plan to build the merchant plant to look to the New England area to sell that electricity and they’ve come forward with discussion about setting up a centre of excellence in nuclear.”

He said if a letter of intent is signed in the near future, transmission capabilities would be an issue that would have to be addressed.

Keir said the second reactor would breathe new life into New Brunswick’s ambitions as an energy hub. He complained that Opposition Leader David Alward has been saying the energy hub is dead, raising the possibility that the issue will be hotly debated in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 27 election.

“The energy hub is alive and well in New Brunswick,” Keir said.

Toronto-based energy consultant Tom Adams questioned the fundamental need for a second reactor in New Brunswick with the prospect of new gas supplies and low prices on the horizon.

“However, if nuclear expansion is going to ignore consumer need, Areva is worth considering,” he said.

“Areva is far ahead of AECL in technology development, with several units under construction applying advanced safety features like aircraft crash barriers and extra protection in the event of a meltdown … Areva’s reactors have also proven to be much cheaper to operate than Candu and benefit from a much larger pool of reactors in the world fleet.” Adams said Areva is having difficulties with some of its latest construction projects.

“The Olkiluoto project in Finland, which was to be Areva’s flagship, is about as well managed as the Point Lepreau refurbishment,” he said. “And Areva recently lost a major competitive bid in the United Arab Emirates to a Korean company.”

Norm Rubin of the Toronto-based energy watchdog group Energy Probe said Thursday he doesn’t think the project will ever proceed.

“I think it’s somewhere between a long shot and an impossibility unless New Brunswick’s government becomes generous and agrees either to subsidize this venture or to accept a bunch of the downside risks,” Rubin said.

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New Brunswick talks with French firm about building 2nd nuclear reactor (NB-Nuclear)

Posted on June 24, 2010 by energyprbe

(Jun. 24, 2010) FREDERICTON _ The New Brunswick government has renewed efforts to see a second nuclear reactor built in the province, but at least one industry observer doesn´t believe it will ever happen.

Energy Minister Jack Keir is heading to Florida for three days of discussions with French nuclear engineering group Areva, starting Sunday.

“I would categorize it as more than preliminary,” Keir said Thursday of the discussions. “I don´t want to raise expectations until I come back, but I´m excited about the opportunity.”

Keir said he has talked with company officials a number of times since they contacted him before Christmas last year.

“They´ve come forward with plans to build the merchant plant to look to the New England area to sell that electricity, and have come forward with discussions about setting up a centre of excellence in nuclear,” Keir said.

He said Areva, which is controlled by the government of France, likes New Brunswick´s geographic location and the fact the province is bilingual. He said universities in the province could conduct research and produce employees who speak both English and French.

A group called Team Candu _ which included Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Hitachi Canada, SNC-Lavalin Nuclear Inc., Babcock and Wilcox Canada and GE-Hitatchi Nuclear Energy Canada Ltd. _ looked into the same possibility a couple of years ago.

However, Keir said they´ve had no talks in more than a year and he wants AECL to concentrate on the refurbishment of the first reactor at Point Lepreau. That project is at least 18 months behind schedule and an estimated $400 million over budget.

Keir said Areva was also interested a couple of years ago, but only recently was willing to consider providing the extras that New Brunswick wants.

He said the next step in talks with Areva would be to sign a letter of intent that would lay out the challenges and opportunities for the province and the company, and provide “off-ramps” if either side doesn´t see a business case in their favour.

Norm Rubin of the Toronto-based energy watchdog group Energy Probe said Thursday he doesn´t think the project will ever proceed.

“I think it´s somewhere between a long shot and an impossibility unless New Brunswick´s government becomes generous and agrees either to subsidize this venture or to accept a bunch of the downside risks,” Rubin said.

“Areva is under cost pressure because their taxpayers are tired of bailing them out just like Canadian taxpayers are tired of bailing out Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.”

Areva is currently facing major cost overruns on a plant it is building in Finland.

“As long as minister Keir leaves his chequebook at home, and as long as he´s not seduced by a type of time-share sales effort in Florida … then it´s going to be between Areva and the French taxpayers to see if they want to take a flyer on creating another Point Lepreau and paying for it,” Rubin said.

Still, Keir said he´s confident that New Brunswick will stand out as a good place to invest as the global recession ends.

“From an international perspective, investors are there and have lots of money to invest in the energy sector, and the energy hub is alive and well in New Brunswick,” Keir said.

The Canadian Press, Oilweek Magazine, Jun. 24, 2010

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