Energy and Electricity - Introduction to Carbon Capture and Sequestration - page 28

number of barrels of oil. This would equate to a tax of $260 per barrel, or
approximately a 228% markup in oil prices (using $114 as the approxi-
mate April 2012 cost of a barrel of oil). This funding plan is not viable.
Conclusion: as to our original proposal, it seems the suggestion to
mandate that each person in the world accept half the global minimum
wage in order to power an electrical generator for one hour each day will
not make a significant dent in global carbon emissions (cutting them by
only 0.5%), and will not produce a significant amount of electricity (just
1% of the world's total demand).
On the plus side, the cycling program would have the benefit of edu-
cating people about the direct connection between energy consumption,
carbon emissions, and energy production.
Kyoto Protocol progress
Question: How many nuclear power plants would need to be built per month worldwide
to meet the Kyoto protocol by nuclear energy only?
Solution: Eun Hee Lim, Raven Julia McGuane, Joachim Seel, and Annie Teng.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The
agreement did not specify absolute global climate goals, but rather rela-
tive performance goals for a number of developed “Annex I” countries.
Developing countries, in contrast, were not bound by any concrete emis-
sion reduction goals. A list of selected Annex I countries and their CO 2
emissions targets is shown in Table 1.5.1 [1.14].
In general, the Kyoto Protocol dictates that by the end of 2012, the
average global CO 2 emissions for Annex I countries must decrease by
5.2% from their 1990 levels. However, some Annex I countries (notably
the United States) did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, effectively relieving
them from fulfilling their original pledges.
Politics aside, for our calculations we will use the original goal of a
5.2% emissions reduction and calculate the number of power plants
needed to fulfill that protocol. We will also make a few other broad
assumptions, namely: (1) that creation of nuclear power plants and their