Sunday, March 20, 2016

Carbon Credits

Hey guys,

Something that always intrigued me were carbon credits. The main thing that intrigued me was that they cant be used for nuclear power plants. So here is a little information on them.

1      Carbon credits are basically a license given to countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol. Each country that has signed it is given only a certain amount of credits that limit the amount of carbon they can produce. If a country produces less carbon than they have credits, the credits can then be traded to another country that may have produced more carbon than they have credits.

The United States nuclear power industry is not directly affected by the Kyoto Protocol because the U.S. is not a signatory of it. We do not have Cap and Trade laws. That being said, part of the Kyoto Protocol was that carbon credits are not able to be used to fund the construction of new Nuclear Power Plants. This means other countries cannot use their leftover credits to produce nuclear power.

This also means that companies that could build nuclear power plants will be hesitant to build new plants because the U.S. might someday sign the agreement. If this happens, the companies will be able to sell the leftover credits they may have to fund renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar.


http://www.nirs.org/climate/cop6/bonnnukelanguagefinal.htm

Hope this was a little interesting!

The Nuke Cow

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