United Nations ranks Calgary among worst carbon emitters in world

Calgary isn't actually very close to the tar sands.. I'd say it's about 1000km away. Their biggest problem is that their population density is minuscule and almost all their electricity comes from oil or gas. On the whole, though, it's not that fair a comparison, because cold-weather cities will always be near the bottom no matter how hard they try.

Colin M: Nepal isn't exactly hot.

Yup back in the sixties and seventies, most of the world led by Greenpeacers, and Big Tobacco attorneys moonlighting at Big Oil/Coal managed to shut down nuclear power almost everywhere except France and Ontario. Alberta having no hydro resources was particularly enthusiastic about coal fired power.

A hundred million people woldwide including tens of thousands of Albertans are now dead, and millions more die every year because that campaign was so effective.

At least Alberta is now allowing nukes to be built, having seen that windmills only increase natural gas production and air pollution.

McGuinty, Ontario's oh so green premier is exercising executive privilege committing like the Gordo billions of taxpayer dollars in windmills and associated gas plant to cronies in the IPP industry replacing Ontario's coal plant at ten to twenty times the cost of nuclear.
seth

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that most of the oil companies that operate in Alberta and northern BC have their head offices in Calgary.

Global warming aside, I thought you Deniers were all for ridding us of nasty old air pollution. That kills lotsa folks for sure. Air pollution and GHG's go hand in hand

Since nuclear is the only real answer to both, and when mass produced is cheaper than coal or NG, I'd think a nuclear transition financed with a three year payback from ridding use of very expensive fossil fuels would be a win win for Deniers and Warmists alike.
seth

The vast majority of power produced in central and southern Alberta is not from oil or gas but from coal. Alberta has the largest number of coal fired electrical generating plants in Canada.

People who think nuclear is the answer need to do their research. Approvals, design, construction and going to operation takes more than a decade in North America and Europe. Financing expensive nuclear power plants, $3-$6 billion is problematic. Electricity rates for consumers will skyrocket. But one of the biggest challenges for the nuclear power industry, besides dealing with the long term radioactive waste, will be supply of uranium.

Bringing a uranium deposit to production is a 10 year process and the world nuclear power industry is already using more uranium than is produced. If not for the US stockpile of uranium, nuclear power plants would be shutting down due to lack of supply.

In the 1970's the nuclear industry began stockpiling uranium because they saw supply was not keeping up with world demand.

In 2005, the world demand for uranium was 170 million pounds annually yet only 90 million pounds were produced.

In 2008, 439 nuclear power reactors were producing electricity in 30 countries.

China currently has 14 nuclear power reactors operating with 18 more under construction and another 42 planned to be in operation by 2020 and a total of 160 to be operational by 2030. The amount of nuclear power facilities in China will surpass the number in operation in the US by 2030.

China is not the only country ramping up its plans and construction of nuclear power plants.

The question remains, besides still not having a safe way to dispose of the radioactive wastes, where will all the uranium come from to power these nuclear facilities?

Increased demand for uranium will drive the price of uranium skyward and lead to very high consumer electricity rates that will slow economic growth just as oil prices have done in the oil shortages of the 70's as well as the triple digit price for a barrel of oil in 2009 did.

How many corners in the energy alternative debate can we paint ourselves into?

Nuclear is just another way of passing the problem on to future generations. We are going to need all the oil that we can afford to burn to power the transition to decentralized renewable energy sources hooked up to a smart-grid.

If I were King I'd make one simple policy announcement: "Free electricity for all vehicles". Watch that transform the transportation industry.

Travis

This is a very drivellish article and I think you know that. The tar sands are nowhere near Calgary. But, Calgary, unlike Vancouver, does depend on coal fired thermal electricity. Toronto's electrical supply is partly coal-fired and partly nuclear, while Vancouver's is nearly all hydro.

Anyone who checks the link to the UN will find, not a complete report with comparable methodologies, but a grab bag of stats from various sources assembled into a single table. The table takes care to note the difference between Toronto City and the GTA, but in Vancouver's case there's only the City's own guesstimates and no metro figure, ... and the CIty's guesstimates were prepared quite disinterestedly, I'm so sure. I expect better of UN agencies, but maybe the people in this section were in a hurry to just get something out there.

Really Travis, the silly, cheesy spin you've put on this is just the old game of regional politics in Canada, jacked up with a bit of Vancouver urban-yahoo boosterism.

And when you think about it that kind of cheap, adolescent politics, displayed so openly, does have some value, however backhanded. It goes to show just how serious some city residents really are about climate change.

Rod Smelser

Rod, I feel that some of your points are valid. I've reclassified the article as a politics blog post (as opposed to a news story, as it was originally published). Perhaps that addresses some of your concerns.

Actually when you look at it on a global scale, the three lowest carbon-polluters are Norway, Finland, and Sweden (I think--You may want to double check this)--all three cold countries, and Norway has an oil industry similar to Alberta.

Yes, the tar sands are far away from Calgary, but the environmental carelessness that is common in the oilfields is rampant in the city. It has to do with never ending suburbs, shoddy transit, car culture, and every other mainstream cultural definition of calgary (what? meat? stampede? oil and gas? I could go on).

Travis-- I don't think you are being Vancouver-urban-yahooer, or however it was worded--this is what it is. Calgarians pollute. A lot.

And for the record, I don't live in Toronto, or Vancouver... I live right here in Canada's biggest carbon footprint-maker, and I grew up in Northern Alberta. Concerns for the environment are not a political game of Toronto and Vancouver vs Calgary but a genuine reaction to the culture and infrastructure of Calgary and reality of life in Alberta.