[Top News] from [REUTERS]
[Green Business]
CALGARY, Alberta
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:11pm EST
Canada shift on reviewing energy projects critiqued
(Reuters) - Ottawa's plan to shift responsibility of environmental assessments to Canada's main energy regulator fails to address fundamental problems surrounding major oil and gas projects, a green think tank said on Friday.
But the oil industry, which had complained that the regulatory process for such developments as oil sands projects and pipelines was overly cumbersome and expensive, welcomed the streamlining initiative.
Canada's federal budget, delivered on Thursday, contained a provision to move impact assessments from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to the National Energy Board and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which the government said have more expertise than CEAA.
"The way to actually streamline the assessment process is to address some of the environmental issues up front and do the planning there. I don't see how that's going to be helped by making that move," said Simon Dyer, oil sands program director for the Pembina Institute, which is critical of the approval policy for major energy developments.
He said federal authorities should formulate regional standards for such things as water use, wildlife habitat and monitoring so developers can address them in the early planning stages rather than fostering an adversarial process.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the assessment measure as part of an effort to cut red tape in industry.
The C$16.2 billion ($15.7 billion) Mackenzie Gas Project in the Far North, for instance, has been vetted by both the National Energy Board and a Joint Review Panel that included the federal assessment body. The process has taken several years.
The JRP released its report on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of Mackenzie at the end of last year and the NEB is expected to hear final arguments in April, so the changes will not affect that project.
But future oil and gas developments will benefit from the government's move, said Greg Stringham, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
He said he did not believe that environmental standards would suffer under the new system.
"To have the CEAA delegated to the NEB does provide a cleaner single window going forward," Stringham said. "It doesn't change the regulations that all these projects have to go through, but as we've seen with some of the joint review panels and so on, putting it with the NEB really will, I believe, improve the process."
(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones); Editing by Frank McGurty
[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SANTA BARBARA, California
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:14pm EST
U.S. needs fresh look at nuclear waste issue: Chu
(Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the United States needs to come up with a better system for storing or disposing of radioactive nuclear waste than a planned repository near Las Vegas.
"The president has made it very clear that we are going to go beyond Yucca mountain. You should go beyond Yucca mountain," Chu said. "But instead of wringing my hands, let's go forward and do something better."
The Obama administration, in January, announced it was stopping the license application for a long-planned multi-billion dollar nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas, which is opposed by environmental groups.
The Energy Department formally asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week to withdraw the application.
Chu said when the waste site was first started, there were conditions put in the requirements for the repository that didn't really mesh with what scientists knew even back then.
"Long, long ago, it began looking less and less ideal," he said. "As time wore on, it's got to be one of those things: 'oops this might have happen, oops the Supreme Court says this...',"
"Wouldn't it be nice to step back and take a fresh look?" he asked.
The energy secretary said he would like to have the new blue ribbon panel of experts the administration recently created study the issue of managing nuclear waste on a long-term basis rather than spend money building a waste storage facility.
"Yucca mountain was designed at a time when we didn't think we would start the nuclear industry again," Chu said.
The Yucca mountain storage site, planned about 90 miles from Las Vegas, has endured years of bureaucratic delays and scientific foul-ups.
Yucca Mountain was designed to store millions of pounds of radioactive waste from 104 U.S. nuclear power reactors along with tons of leftovers from the country's nuclear weapons program.
Currently, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are stored at 121 temporary locations in 39 states across the country.
(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; editing by Carol Bishopric)
[Green Business]
FRANKFURT
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:49am EST
Q+A: Germany's nuclear extension debate
(Reuters) - Germany's government is committed on paper to extend the life-cycles of its 17 nuclear reactors beyond what is laid down in a 10-year old law saying operators must pull out the technology by 2021 at the latest.
As there are many stakeholders and political sensitivities, there are fierce debates about the issue ahead of a wider national energy plan expected in October, which will assign nuclear a role alongside other fuels and favored renewables.
WHY DOES GERMANY WANT TO RENEGE ON THE EXODUS PLAN?
Left-wing and green forces that pushed for the withdrawal plan 10 years ago highlighted security and waste risks. They did so at a time when carbon emissions, of which nuclear is mostly free, were not penalized through costly cap and trade systems.
Conservative and liberal forces argue the world has changed, dictating a more environmentally friendly regime, in which nuclear must have a place.
They also say the technology is becoming safer and uranium is available without creating dependency on exporters.
Jobs are at stake and industrial consumers need reliable nuclear supply to continue choosing Germany as a base.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR POLITICAL POSITIONS IN THE DEBATE?
While the conservative CDU wants longer life-cycles, its own Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen wants only a 40 year maximum for nuclear followed by total closure, to allow renewables to provide the bulk of power more quickly.
He says the population is not in support of nuclear and Germany must instead take a lead in renewable technologies.
Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle of the Free Democrats wants a longer period and a more diverse energy mix overall.
Utilities and engineers say that renewable energy supplies will always be unstable and need back-up such as nuclear.
A party donations scandal in Germany's most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia has questioned the CDU's re-election chances in state polls on May 9, which raises the possibility of a local partnership with the anti-nuclear Greens.
The CDU might have to pay for that at national level via concessions on nuclear run times and by allowing bigger public use of additional nuclear power earnings.
Fierce nuclear opponents vow to demonstrate against the technology in the streets.
WHAT HAPPENS IF NO EXTENSIONS ARE MADE?
The last reactor will go permanently offline in 2021. At least a quarter of power production will have to come from other sources as demand is forecast to keep rising, if only slightly.
Although the population will no longer be exposed to the plants they must be decommissioned and waste stored permanently.
Power bills are likely to increase because neighboring European markets do not have surpluses to export to Germany and utilities will pass on additional costs to consumers.
WHAT HAPPENS WITH PROFITS IF LONGER LIFE CYCLES ARE GRANTED?
Amid a raft of estimates, UniCredit bank believes 7.5 billion euros ($10.26 billion) a year could be reasonable additional earnings by the four nuclear operators, RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe.
At least half of the monies will have to go into public uses including helping fledgling renewable industries to reach commercial maturity to the benefit of customers.
WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT?
Despite opposition in many industrialized countries, nuclear plants continue to be planned and built, including in Britain and Finland, involving German plant builders and utilities.
Germany's neighbor France has 58 reactors. Switzerland and the Czech Republic plan new reactors and a Dutch reactor has just been allowed to operate for 60 years. The Obama administration is also planning to build new plants in the U.S.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert)
[Green Business]
CALGARY, Alberta
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:11pm EST
Canada shift on reviewing energy projects critiqued
(Reuters) - Ottawa's plan to shift responsibility of environmental assessments to Canada's main energy regulator fails to address fundamental problems surrounding major oil and gas projects, a green think tank said on Friday.
But the oil industry, which had complained that the regulatory process for such developments as oil sands projects and pipelines was overly cumbersome and expensive, welcomed the streamlining initiative.
Canada's federal budget, delivered on Thursday, contained a provision to move impact assessments from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to the National Energy Board and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which the government said have more expertise than CEAA.
"The way to actually streamline the assessment process is to address some of the environmental issues up front and do the planning there. I don't see how that's going to be helped by making that move," said Simon Dyer, oil sands program director for the Pembina Institute, which is critical of the approval policy for major energy developments.
He said federal authorities should formulate regional standards for such things as water use, wildlife habitat and monitoring so developers can address them in the early planning stages rather than fostering an adversarial process.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the assessment measure as part of an effort to cut red tape in industry.
The C$16.2 billion ($15.7 billion) Mackenzie Gas Project in the Far North, for instance, has been vetted by both the National Energy Board and a Joint Review Panel that included the federal assessment body. The process has taken several years.
The JRP released its report on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of Mackenzie at the end of last year and the NEB is expected to hear final arguments in April, so the changes will not affect that project.
But future oil and gas developments will benefit from the government's move, said Greg Stringham, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
He said he did not believe that environmental standards would suffer under the new system.
"To have the CEAA delegated to the NEB does provide a cleaner single window going forward," Stringham said. "It doesn't change the regulations that all these projects have to go through, but as we've seen with some of the joint review panels and so on, putting it with the NEB really will, I believe, improve the process."
(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones); Editing by Frank McGurty
[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SANTA BARBARA, California
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:14pm EST
U.S. needs fresh look at nuclear waste issue: Chu
(Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the United States needs to come up with a better system for storing or disposing of radioactive nuclear waste than a planned repository near Las Vegas.
"The president has made it very clear that we are going to go beyond Yucca mountain. You should go beyond Yucca mountain," Chu said. "But instead of wringing my hands, let's go forward and do something better."
The Obama administration, in January, announced it was stopping the license application for a long-planned multi-billion dollar nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas, which is opposed by environmental groups.
The Energy Department formally asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week to withdraw the application.
Chu said when the waste site was first started, there were conditions put in the requirements for the repository that didn't really mesh with what scientists knew even back then.
"Long, long ago, it began looking less and less ideal," he said. "As time wore on, it's got to be one of those things: 'oops this might have happen, oops the Supreme Court says this...',"
"Wouldn't it be nice to step back and take a fresh look?" he asked.
The energy secretary said he would like to have the new blue ribbon panel of experts the administration recently created study the issue of managing nuclear waste on a long-term basis rather than spend money building a waste storage facility.
"Yucca mountain was designed at a time when we didn't think we would start the nuclear industry again," Chu said.
The Yucca mountain storage site, planned about 90 miles from Las Vegas, has endured years of bureaucratic delays and scientific foul-ups.
Yucca Mountain was designed to store millions of pounds of radioactive waste from 104 U.S. nuclear power reactors along with tons of leftovers from the country's nuclear weapons program.
Currently, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are stored at 121 temporary locations in 39 states across the country.
(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; editing by Carol Bishopric)
[Green Business]
FRANKFURT
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:49am EST
Q+A: Germany's nuclear extension debate
(Reuters) - Germany's government is committed on paper to extend the life-cycles of its 17 nuclear reactors beyond what is laid down in a 10-year old law saying operators must pull out the technology by 2021 at the latest.
As there are many stakeholders and political sensitivities, there are fierce debates about the issue ahead of a wider national energy plan expected in October, which will assign nuclear a role alongside other fuels and favored renewables.
WHY DOES GERMANY WANT TO RENEGE ON THE EXODUS PLAN?
Left-wing and green forces that pushed for the withdrawal plan 10 years ago highlighted security and waste risks. They did so at a time when carbon emissions, of which nuclear is mostly free, were not penalized through costly cap and trade systems.
Conservative and liberal forces argue the world has changed, dictating a more environmentally friendly regime, in which nuclear must have a place.
They also say the technology is becoming safer and uranium is available without creating dependency on exporters.
Jobs are at stake and industrial consumers need reliable nuclear supply to continue choosing Germany as a base.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR POLITICAL POSITIONS IN THE DEBATE?
While the conservative CDU wants longer life-cycles, its own Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen wants only a 40 year maximum for nuclear followed by total closure, to allow renewables to provide the bulk of power more quickly.
He says the population is not in support of nuclear and Germany must instead take a lead in renewable technologies.
Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle of the Free Democrats wants a longer period and a more diverse energy mix overall.
Utilities and engineers say that renewable energy supplies will always be unstable and need back-up such as nuclear.
A party donations scandal in Germany's most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia has questioned the CDU's re-election chances in state polls on May 9, which raises the possibility of a local partnership with the anti-nuclear Greens.
The CDU might have to pay for that at national level via concessions on nuclear run times and by allowing bigger public use of additional nuclear power earnings.
Fierce nuclear opponents vow to demonstrate against the technology in the streets.
WHAT HAPPENS IF NO EXTENSIONS ARE MADE?
The last reactor will go permanently offline in 2021. At least a quarter of power production will have to come from other sources as demand is forecast to keep rising, if only slightly.
Although the population will no longer be exposed to the plants they must be decommissioned and waste stored permanently.
Power bills are likely to increase because neighboring European markets do not have surpluses to export to Germany and utilities will pass on additional costs to consumers.
WHAT HAPPENS WITH PROFITS IF LONGER LIFE CYCLES ARE GRANTED?
Amid a raft of estimates, UniCredit bank believes 7.5 billion euros ($10.26 billion) a year could be reasonable additional earnings by the four nuclear operators, RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe.
At least half of the monies will have to go into public uses including helping fledgling renewable industries to reach commercial maturity to the benefit of customers.
WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT?
Despite opposition in many industrialized countries, nuclear plants continue to be planned and built, including in Britain and Finland, involving German plant builders and utilities.
Germany's neighbor France has 58 reactors. Switzerland and the Czech Republic plan new reactors and a Dutch reactor has just been allowed to operate for 60 years. The Obama administration is also planning to build new plants in the U.S.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert)
※コメント投稿者のブログIDはブログ作成者のみに通知されます