|
June 21, 2011
This is via Barry Brook's post at his Brave New Climate blog. It's a session addressing the energy problem on Steve Paikin's show The Agenda at the Equinox Summit at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, which Brook attended.
The Summit aimed to reboot the global conversation on energy and learn how cutting edge science and technology may advance an electrified and sustainable future. It was about what options are currently on the table that would allow us to decarbonize the economy by cutting emissions to ease the rise in world temperatures.
The Equinox Communique's recommendations centred on four key ideas: changing the baseload of the current energy system, smart urbanization, electrified transport, and rural electrification. The communique identified three alternative means of delivering baseload power: geothermal power; solar with storage and advanced nuclear.
The talk of nuclear as one option for baseload power recalls the destruction of the uranium nuclear power plants at Fukushima, which seems to have dropped off the radar in Australia. This update suggests that the problems are much worse than we have been led to believe. Brook favours the thorium nuclear reactor in an energy mix, but this technology is a long way off being commercially viable in Australia, but not China).
Australia is still planning to build more coal fired power stations to replace our aging generating plant despite Labor saying that its environmental policy would be on renewables – both wind and solar.
|
Baseload power????
What is baseload power and why, presumably, is it so important?
Here is some input from Prof. Quiggin:
http://johnquiggin.com/2009/07/22/the-myth-of-baseload-power-demand/
He states:
*There is no relevant sense in which baseload power demand is a meaningful concept in our current electricity supply system.
*Any electricity supply system likely to exist in the next 40 years and capable of meeting peak power demand will have no problems meeting baseload demand.