Friday, September 18, 2015

Nuclear Powered Follow up

In a follow up to yesterday's post about the importance of nuclear power to our lower carbon future, National Geographic posts this article about which cities are the closest to nixing fossil fuels.

The takeaway, if you don't live on top of a volcano (Reykjavik), are unable to turn around without bumping into a fast moving river (Oslo, Seattle,),  or use electricity at 1/4 or 1/5 of the rate of the top tier economies (Argentina, Brazil) you're probably going to be using a lot of nuclear energy.

National Geographic failed to examine if those greener cities in second tier economies would be able to boost their renewable output if their populations became rich enough to buy more electricity.  Since Argentina is mostly building natural gas and nuclear plants to meet an annual expansion of 6%, I'd guess the low hanging hydroelectric fruit has already been plucked.

Of course, I suppose another way to cut down a city's use of fossil fuels is to impoverish the population so they can not afford to use as much electricity,


No comments:

Post a Comment