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We are told that nuclear power is about to achieve a "green renaissance," "clean coal" is just around the corner, and municipal garbage is a "renewable resource," which, when burned, will yield "sustainable energy." On the other hand, sometimes we are told that solar, geothermal and tidal power are what we really need to "green" our energy system. How is a person to make sense of all these competing claims? Luckily, scientists have developed two sets of criteria that we can use to judge the "greenness" of competing technologies. The first is called "The 12 principles of green engineering" and the second is "The 12 principles of green chemistry."

HB 2623 defines nuclear power as a "renewable resource", defying common sense and hurting our real fledgling renewable industries. If this bill is passed, it will kill existing incentives to continue to develop renewable energy, especially solar energy, and lead Arizona down the wrong road. The United States defines "renewable energy" as biomass, hydropower, geothermal, solar, wind, ocean thermal, wave action and tidal action. Not a single state defines nuclear power as "renewable" energy. Last year, an attempt in South Carolina to call nuclear "renewable" was defeated.

"I am increasingly convinced that in order for us to survive the 21st century, we (individually and collectively) must accept two principles of living: 1) We are all connected to each other and to our environment. 2) All energy for our homes, firms, factories and farms must be clean and renewable. We probably have less than two generations to transition. Right now things are not looking good. We stand at a crossroads concerning how we fuel our vehicles and power our homes. Electric vehicles (EVs) are a good replacement for carbon-fueled cars, but only if we charge them with renewable energy (geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, even biomass). Any other approach will require greater demand for increasingly limited electricity. In fact, if every household in America suddenly bought an electric car averaging 5 kilowatt-hours to top off each day, household electric demand would increase about 20 percent (adding perhaps 10 percent more demand to an already overloaded grid nationally). "

"Not Wales, or Scotland….they want renewables The Welsh Assembly Government's new Energy Policy Statement 'A Low Carbon Revolution', sets out an approach to accelerating the transition to a low carbon energy economy in Wales, focusing on efficiency measures and the use of indigenous renewable forms of energy such as marine, wind, solar and biomass. It claims that by 2025 around 40% of electricity in Wales could come from marine sources and a third from wind. In addition to local community-level micro-generation projects, it proposes the use of offshore wind around the coast of Wales in order to deliver a 15 kWh/d/p (per day per person) of capacity by 2015/16 and to capture at least 10% (8 kWh/d/p) of the potential tidal stream and wave energy off the Welsh coastline by 2025, and it wants onshore wind to deliver 4.5 kWh/d/p of installed onshore wind generation capacity by 2015/2017. It will back small-scale hydro and geothermal schemes, where they are environmentally acceptable, in order to generate at least 1 kWh/d/p, and wants bioenergy/waste to deliver up to 6 kWh/d/p of electricity by 2020- 50% indigenous/50% imported- also offering an additional heat potential of 2-2.5 kWh/d/p."

SAINT JOHN - A prominent researcher and academic says New Brunswick should abandon its pursuit of the nuclear energy sector in favour of renewable energy and related new technology. Yves Gagnon, who holds the K.C. Irving Chair in Sustainable Development at the Université de Moncton, said after a presentation to an IT conference Tuesday that, if the province wants to become a leader in the energy sector, it should forget about nuclear energy and fossil fuel-based energy generation in favour of wind, solar and tidal power.

Several assumptions need to be corrected. Canada's energy mix is 59.8 per cent hydro, 16.1 per cent coal, 11.6 per cent nuclear, 6.7 per cent oil, 4.9 per cent natural gas and 0.9 per cent renewables. Hydro will continue to produce the same amount of electricity every year; however its proportion of the energy mix will decline due to net increases in demand. Wind generates power 30 per cent of the time, solar 20 per cent and other renewables 30 to 50 per cent. Replacing all nuclear and fossil fuel energy sources with renewables by 2040 would result in this mix: 47.2 per cent hydro; 13.8 per cent wind; 7.2 per cent solar; 5.5 per cent tidal/wave; 23.1 per cent geothermal; 3.2 per cent other renewables, such as biomass and waste water. This is a manageable expectation, especially in Ontario where we have made a commitment through the Green Energy Act. The GTA has made significant progress in both renewable sources of energy and energy conservation.

"Alongside rivers and lakes, on ocean shores and tidal bays, nearly 63,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste - which remains dangerous for longer than recorded history - sits in "temporary" storage. In some cases, it's been there for decades. And it's almost certain to remain for decades longer, scattered around 33 states. Some of that waste is squeezed into small pools housed inside flimsy buildings; some sits outside in storage containers never intended to be permanent. In both instances, the spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants is exceedingly vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks."

The nuclear industry has hitched a ride on the climate change bandwagon, proclaiming that nuclear power will solve the world's global warming and energy problems in one sweeping "nuclear renaissance." As you might expect, there's a catch. Nuclear energy faces escalating capital costs, a radioactive waste backlog, security and insurance gaps, nuclear weapons proliferation, and expensive reactor decommissioning that will magnify the waste problem.