Wednesday 12 May 2010

That 'Green Economy': GDP Still Trumps GHG

Back to business. While we were otherwise engaged, the EC delayed implementation of the new round of combustion emissions regulations that would otherwise have precipitated early closure of many coal-fired power plants, possibly including the mighty Drax in Yorkshire, Europe’s largest.

This new round is targeting NOx - not itself a major-league greenhouse gas: but forcing early closure of such plants would tend to reduce CO2 as a side-effect. (The longstanding Large Combustion Plants Directive, which targets SO2, is not affected: owners of coal plants have already decided whether they will be complying with this - Drax will - or closing after a set number of operating hours.)

As we’ve said before, economic considerations generally trump environmental when the chips are down – GDP beats GHG. The much-trumpeted Con-Lib enthusiasm for the ‘Green Economy’ will need to be tempered by this very basic consideration – what can we afford ?

ND

4 comments:

CityUnslicker said...

to wit, we can only afford gas. Does'nt sound very green though. Will be interesting to see what Huhne decides once the mandarins have engaged in a bit of real life education on him.

Richard Elliot said...

Save Didcot A!

Nick Drew said...

that's a subtle one, Richard !

the new nuke policy will be interesting, CU

Pogo said...

As I see it, our "betters" are eventually going to take steps to cripple Europe's (and possibly the USA's) economies in order to provide a "solution" to a non-problem.

The much-touted "consensus" on climate change has proven to be a church built on sand as many of its proponents are shown to be either incompetent or dishonest scientists. IMHO, NOTHING should be done to control "climate change" until a complete revamp of all the science has been done - from scratch, transparently and in the open.