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Patrick Moore Statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

By Eric McErlain
From the transcript (MS Word):
The climate change debate has made one thing abundantly clear: Global warming is an environmental reality that requires action. Our nation must step up to the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and I commend the Committee and Chairman Boxer in particular for holding today’s hearing.

As the co-founder and former head of Greenpeace, and an environmentalist, I feel compelled to speak to the clean air benefits of nuclear energy and the need for our nation to embrace nuclear energy as a key component of any greenhouse gas mitigation strategy.

Nuclear energy plays the single-largest role in the U.S. electric industry’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. According to the newly released annual report to the U.S. Department of Energy from Power Partners—a voluntary partnership between DOE and the electric power industry—nuclear energy accounted for 54 percent of greenhouse gas reductions reported, the equivalent of taking 100 million automobiles off the road.

Furthermore, nuclear energy has the smallest environmental impact of any clean-air electricity source. Nuclear power produces no controlled air pollutants during daily operations. According to the University of Wisconsin, the life-cycle emissions of nuclear energy are lower than coal, natural gas, hydropower, biomass, and solar. The only electricity sources with lower life-cycle emissions are wind and geothermal.

[...]

In its October 2006 report, A Progressive Energy Platform, the Progressive Policy Institute urges the nation to “Expand nuclear power…It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change. And new plant designs promise to produce power more safely and economically than first-generation facilities.”

I agree with PPI. Nuclear energy is clean, safe, affordable and reliable—and needs to be part of the climate change solution. This is something that all Americans should embrace on a bipartisan basis.

I encourage this Committee and the Congress to take the appropriate steps to ensure the expansion of nuclear power so we can truly achieve the emission savings that our nation and the world so desperately need.
For more on the PPI report that Moore refers to, click here.

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