Way clear to help poor pay heat bills

By Toronto Star


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Low-income households struggling to pay rising heating costs may soon get some long-awaited relief.

In a recent decision, Ontario's Divisional Court overruled the position taken by the Ontario Energy Board, as arbiter of natural gas and electricity prices, that it lacked the legal authority to implement a special pricing plan to protect vulnerable residents from rising rates.

The ruling means Ontario may soon join jurisdictions in the United States and Europe that have energy affordability programs to help low-income households pay their heat and electricity bills, say anti-poverty activists who have been working on the issue for more than two years.

"With natural gas prices expected to rise by 20 per cent next winter, this is definitely good news," said lawyer Mary Truemner, who argued the case on behalf of the Low-Income Energy Network, a coalition of community legal clinics and organizations that work with people living in poverty.

However, the court did not order the OEB to set special rates for the poor and noted in its decision that the province's Minister of Energy "has not issued any policy statement directing the board to base rates on considerations of the ability to pay."

As a result, the network is now turning to Energy Minister Gerry Phillips to keep the ball rolling, Truemner said.

"We want him to direct the OEB to hold a generic hearing on the impact of rising energy prices on low-income Ontarians facing choices between heating, eating and paying the rent and to consider a rate affordability program," she said.

Households that fall below Statistics Canada's low-income cut-offs should be eligible for help, Truemner said.

In 2006, that applied to any Toronto family of four with an after-tax income of $33,221 or less.

The province has an Emergency Energy Fund and other programs, but the network says they don't cover every household in need.

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Ottawa making electricity more expensive for Albertans

Alberta Electricity Price Surge reflects soaring wholesale rates, natural gas spikes, carbon tax pressures, and grid decarbonization challenges amid cold-weather demand, constrained supply, and Europe-style energy crisis impacts across the province.

 

Key Points

An exceptional jump in Alberta's power costs driven by gas price spikes, high demand, policy costs, and tight supply.

✅ Wholesale prices averaged $123/MWh in December

✅ Gas costs surged; supply constraints and outages

✅ Carbon tax and decarbonization policies raised costs

 

Albertans just endured the highest electricity prices in 21 years. Wholesale prices averaged $123 per megawatt-hour in December, more than triple the level from the previous year and highest for December since 2000.

The situation in Alberta mirrors the energy crisis striking Europe where electricity prices are also surging, largely due to a shocking five-fold increase in natural gas prices in 2021 compared to the prior year.

The situation should give pause to Albertans when they consider aggressive plans to “decarbonize” the electric grid, including proposals for a fully renewable grid by 2030 from some policymakers.

The explanation for skyrocketing energy prices is simple: increased demand (because of Calgary's frigid February demand and a slowly-reviving post-pandemic economy) coupled with constrained supply.

In the nitty gritty details, there are always particular transitory causes, such as disputes with Russian gas companies (in the case of Europe) or plant outages (in the case of Alberta).

But beyond these fleeting factors, there are more permanent systemic constraints on natural gas (and even more so, coal-fired) power plants.

I refer of course to the climate change policies of the Trudeau government at the federal level and some of the more aggressive provincial governments, which have notable implications for electricity grids across Canada.

The most obvious example is the carbon tax, the repeal of which Premier Jason Kenney made a staple of his government.

Putting aside the constitutional issues (on which the Supreme Court ruled in March of last year that the federal government could impose a carbon tax on Alberta), the obvious economic impact will be to make carbon-sourced electricity more expensive.

This isn’t a bug or undesired side-effect, it’s the explicit purpose of a carbon tax.

Right now, the federal carbon tax is $40 per tonne, is scheduled to increase to $50 in April, and will ultimately max out at a whopping $170 per tonne in 2030.

Again, the conscious rationale of the tax, aligned with goals for cleaning up Canada's electricity, is to make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive to induce consumers and businesses to use alternative energy sources.

As Albertans experience sticker shock this winter, they should ask themselves — do we want the government intentionally making electricity and heating oil more expensive?

Of course, the proponent of a carbon tax (and other measures designed to shift Canadians away from carbon-based fuels) would respond that it’s a necessary measure in the fight against climate change, and that Canada will need more electricity to hit net-zero according to the IEA.

Yet the reality is that Canada is a bit player on the world stage when it comes to carbon dioxide, responsible for only 1.5% of global emissions (as of 2018).

As reported at this “climate tracker” website, if we look at the actual policies put in place by governments around the world, they’re collectively on track for the Earth to warm 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, far above the official target codified in the Paris Agreement.

Canadians can’t do much to alter the global temperature, but federal and provincial governments can make energy more expensive if policymakers so choose, and large-scale electrification could be costly—the Canadian Gas Association warns of $1.4 trillion— if pursued rapidly.

As renewable technologies become more reliable and affordable, business and consumers will naturally adopt them; it didn’t take a “manure tax” to force people to use cars rather than horses.

As official policy continues to make electricity more expensive, Albertans should ask if this approach is really worth it, or whether options like bridging the Alberta-B.C. electricity gap could better balance costs.

Robert P. Murphy is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.

 

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Cost, safety drive line-burying decisions at Tucson Electric Power

TEP Undergrounding Policy prioritizes selective underground power lines to manage wildfire risk, engineering costs, and ratepayer impacts, balancing transmission and distribution reliability with right-of-way, safety, and vegetation management per Arizona regulators.

 

Key Points

A selective TEP approach to bury lines where safety, engineering, and cost justify undergrounding.

✅ Selective undergrounding for feeders near substations

✅ Balances wildfire mitigation, reliability, and ratepayer costs

✅ Follows ACC rules, BLM and USFS vegetation management

 

Though wildfires in California caused by power lines have prompted calls for more underground lines, Tucson Electric Power Co. plans to keep to its policy of burying lines selectively for safety.

Like many other utilities, TEP typically doesn’t install its long-range, high-voltage transmission lines, such as the TransWest Express project, and distribution equipment underground because of higher costs that would be passed on to ratepayers, TEP spokesman Joe Barrios said.

But the company will sometimes bury lower-voltage lines and equipment where it is cost-effective or needed for safety as utilities adapt to climate change across North America, or if customers or developers are willing to pay the higher installation costs

Underground installations generally include additional engineering expenses, right-of-way acquisition for projects like the New England Clean Power Link in other regions, and added labor and materials, Barrios said.

“This practice avoids passing along unnecessary costs to customers through their rates, so that all customers are not asked to subsidize a discretionary expenditure that primarily benefits residents or property owners in one small area of our service territory,” he said, adding that the Arizona Corporation Commission has supported the company’s policy.

Even so, TEP will place equipment underground in some circumstances if engineering or safety concerns, including electrical safety tips that utilities promote during storm season, justify the additional cost of underground installation, Barrios said.

In fact, lower-voltage “feeder” lines emerging from distribution substations are typically installed underground until the lines reach a point where they can be safely brought above ground, he added.

While in California PG&E has shut off power during windy weather to avoid wildfires in forested areas traversed by its power lines after events like the Drum Fire last June, TEP doesn’t face the same kind of wildfire risk, Barrios said.

Most of TEP’s 5,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines aren’t located in heavily forested areas that would raise fire concerns, though large urban systems have seen outages after station fires in Los Angeles, he said.

However, TEP has an active program of monitoring transmission lines and trimming vegetation to maintain a fire-safety buffer zone and address risks from vandalism such as copper theft where applicable, in compliance with federal regulations and in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

 

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German renewables deliver more electricity than coal and nuclear power for the first time

Germany renewable energy milestone 2019 saw wind, solar, hydropower, and biomass outproduce coal and nuclear, as low gas prices and high CO2 costs under the EU ETS reshaped the electricity mix, per Fraunhofer ISE.

 

Key Points

It marks H1 2019 when renewables supplied 47.3% of Germany's electricity, surpassing coal and nuclear.

✅ Driven by high CO2 prices and cheap natural gas

✅ Wind and solar output rose; coal generation declined sharply

✅ Flexible gas plants outcompeted inflexible coal units

 

In Lippendorf, Saxony, the energy supplier EnBW is temporarily taking part of a coal-fired power plant offline. Not because someone ordered it — it simply wasn't paying off. Gas prices are low, CO2 prices are high, and with many hours of sunshine and wind, renewable methods are producing a great deal of electricity as part of Germany's energy transition now reshaping operations. And in the first half of the year there was plenty of sun and wind.

The result was a six-month period in which renewable energy sources, a trend echoed by the EU wind and solar record across the bloc, produced more electricity than coal and nuclear power plants together. For the first time 47.3% of the electricity consumers used came from renewable sources, while 43.4% came from coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

In addition to solar and wind power, renewable sources also include hydropower and biomass. Gas supplied 9.3%, reflecting how renewables are crowding out gas across European power markets, while the remaining 0.4% came from other sources, such as oil, according to figures published by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in July.

Fabian Hein from the think tank Agora Energiewende stresses that the situation is only a snapshot in time, with grid expansion woes still shaping outcomes. For example, the first half of 2019 was particularly windy and wind power production rose by around 20% compared to the first half of 2018.

Electricity production from solar panels rose by 6%, natural gas by 10%, while the share of nuclear power in German electricity consumption has remained virtually unchanged despite a nuclear option debate in climate policy.

Coal, on the other hand, declined. Black coal energy production fell by 30% compared to the first half of 2018, lignite fell by 20%. Some coal-fired power plants were even taken off the grid, even as coal still provides about a third of Germany's electricity. It is difficult to say whether this was an effect of the current market situation or whether this is simply part of long-term planning, says Hein.

 

Activists storm German mine in anti-coal protest

It is clear, however, that an increased CO2 price has made the ongoing generation of electricity from coal more expensive. Gas-fired power plants also emit CO2, but less than coal-fired power plants. They are also more efficient and that's why gas-fired power plants are not so strongly affected by the CO2 price

The price is determined at a European level and covers power plants and energy intensive industries in Europe. Other areas, such as heating or transport are not covered by the CO2 price scheme. Since a reform of CO2 emissions trading in 2017, the price has risen sharply. Whereas in September 2016 it was just over €5 ($5.6), by the end of June 2019 it had climbed to over €26.

 

Ups and downs

Gas as a raw material is generally more expensive than coal. But coal-fired power plants are more expensive to build. This is why operators want to run them continuously. In times of high demand, and therefore high prices, gas-fired power plants are generally started up, as seen when European power demand hit records during recent heatwaves, since it is worth it at these times.

Gas-fired power plants can be flexibly ramped up and down. Coal-fired power plants take 11 hours or longer to get going. That's why they can't be switched on quickly for short periods when prices are high, like gas-fired power plants. In the first half of the year, however, coal-fired power plants were also ramped up and down more often because it was not always worthwhile to let the power plant run around the clock.

Because gas prices were particularly low in the first half of 2019, some gas-fired power plants were more profitable than coal-fired plants. On June 29, 2019, the gas price at the Dutch trading point TTF was around €10 per megawatt hour. A year earlier, it had been almost €20. This is partly due to the relatively mild winter, as there is still a lot of gas in reserve, confirmed a spokesman for the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industries (BDEW). There are also several new export terminals for liquefied natural gas. Additionally, weaker growth and trade wars are slowing demand for gas. A lot of gas comes to Europe, where prices are still comparatively high, reported the Handelsblatt newspaper.

The increase in wind and solar power and the decline in nuclear power have also reduced CO2 emissions. In the first half of 2019, electricity generation emitted around 15% less CO2 than in the same period last year, reported BDEW. However, the association demands that the further expansion of renewable energies should not be hampered. The target of 65% renewable energy can only be achieved if the further expansion of renewable energy sources is accelerated.

 

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Opinion: The awesome, revolutionary electric-car revolution that doesn't actually exist

Ecofiscal Commission EV Policy Shift examines carbon pricing limits, endorsing signal boosters like subsidies, EV incentives, and coal bans, amid advisory changes and public pushback, to accelerate emissions cuts beyond market-based taxes and regulations.

 

Key Points

An updated stance recognizing carbon pricing limits and backing EV incentives, subsidies, and rules to reduce emissions.

✅ Carbon pricing plus subsidies, EV incentives

✅ Advisory shift; Jack Mintz departs

✅ Focus on emissions cuts, coal power bans

 

Something strange happened at the Ecofiscal Commission recently. Earlier this month, the carbon-tax advocacy group featured on its website as one of its advisers the renowned Canadian economist (and FP Comment columnist) Jack M. Mintz. The other day, suddenly and without fanfare, Mintz was gone from the website, and the commission’s advisory board.

Advisers come and advisers go, of course, but it turns out there was an impetus for Mintz’s departure. The Ecofiscal Commission in its latest report, dropped just before Canada Day, seemingly shifted from its position that carbon prices were so excellent at mimicking market forces that the tax could repeal and replace virtually the entire vast expensive gallimaufry of subsidies, caps, rules and regulations that are costing Canada a fortune in business and bureaucrats. As some Ecofiscal commissioners wrote just a few months ago, policies that “dictate specific technologies or methods for reducing emissions constrain private choice and increase costs” and were a bad idea.

But, in this latest report, the commission is now musing about the benefits of carbon-tax “signal boosters”: that is, EV subsidies and rules to, for instance, get people to start buying electric vehicles (EVs), as well as bans on coal-fired power. “Even well designed carbon pricing can have limitations,” rationalized the commission. Mintz said he had “misgivings” about the change of tack. He decided it best if he focus his advisory energies elsewhere.

It’s hard to blame the commission for falling like everyone else for the electric-car mania that’s sweeping the nation and the world. Electric cars offer a sexiness that dreary old carbon taxes can never hope to match — especially in light of a new Angus Reid poll last week that showed the majority of Canadians now want governments to shelve any plans for carbon taxes.

So far, because nobody’s really driving these miracle machines, said mania has been limited to breathless news reports about how the electric-vehicle revolution is about to rock our world. EVs comprise just two-tenths of a per cent of all passenger vehicles in North America, despite the media’s endless hype and efforts of green-obsessed governments to cover much of the price tag, like Ontario’s $14,000 rebate for Tesla buyers. In Europe, where virtue-signalling urban environmentalism is the coolest, they’re not feeling the vehicular electricity much more: EVs account for barely one per cent of personal vehicles in France, the U.K. and Germany. When Hong Kong cancelled Tesla rebates in April, sales fell to zero.

Going by the ballyhoo, you’d think EVs were at an inflection point and an unstoppable juggernaut. But it’s one that has yet to even get started. In his 2011 State of the Union address, then president Barack Obama predicted one million electric cars on the road by 2015. Four years later, there wasn’t even a third that many. California offered so many different subsidies for electric vehicles that low-income families could get rebates of up to US$13,500, but it still isn’t even close to reaching its target of having zero-emission vehicles make up 15 per cent of California auto sales by 2025, being stuck at three per cent since 2014. Ontario’s Liberal government last year announced to much laughter its plan to ensure that every family would have at least one zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) by 2024, and Quebec made a plan to make ZEVs worth 15.5 per cent of sales by 2020, while Ottawa’s 2035 EV mandate attracts criticism too. Let’s see how that’s going: Currently, ZEVs make up 0.16 per cent of new vehicle sales in Ontario and 0.38 per cent in Quebec.

The latest sensational but bogus EV news out last week was France’s government announcing the “end of the sale of gasoline and diesel cars by 2040,” and Volvo apparently announcing that as of 2019, all its models would be “electric.” Both announcements made international headlines. Both are baloney. France provided no actual details about this plan (will it literally become a crime to sell a gasoline car? Will hybrids, run partly on gasoline, be allowed?), but more importantly, as automotive writer Ed Wiseman pointed out in The Guardian, a lot will happen in technology and automotive use over the next 23 years that France has no way to predict, with changes in self-driving cars, public car-sharing and fuel technologies. Imagine making rules for today’s internet back in 1994.

Volvo, meanwhile, looked to be recycling and repackaging years-old news to seize on today’s infatuation with electric vehicles to burnish its now Chinese-owned brand. Since 2010, Volvo’s plan has been to focus on engines that were partly electric, with electric turbochargers, but still based on gasoline. Volvo doesn’t actually have an all-electric model, but the gasoline-swigging engine of its popular XC90 SUV is, partly, electrical. When Volvo said all its models would in two years be “electric,” it meant this kind of engine, not that it was phasing out the internal-combustion gasoline engine. But that is what it wanted reporters to think, and judging by all the massive and inaccurate coverage, it worked.

The real story being missed is just how pathetic things look right now for electric cars. Gasoline prices in the U.S. turned historically cheap in 2015 and stayed cheap, icing demand for gasless cars. Tesla, whose founder’s self-promotion had made the niche carmaker magically more valuable than powerhouses like Ford and GM, haemorrhaged US$12 billion in market value last week after tepid sales figures brought some investors back to Earth, even as the company’s new Model 3 began rolling off the line.

Not helping is that environmental claims about environmental cars are falling apart. In June, Tesla was rocked by a controversial Swedish study that found that making one of its car batteries released as much CO2 as eight years of gasoline-powered driving. And Bloomberg reported last week on a study by Chinese engineers that found that electric vehicles, because of battery manufacturing and charging by fossil-fuel-powered electricity sources, emit 50-per-cent more carbon than do internal-combustion engines. Still, the electric-vehicle hype not only continues unabated, it gets bigger and louder every day. If some car company figures out how to harness it, we’d finally have a real automotive revolution on our hands.

Kevin Libin, Financial Post

 

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Emissions rise 2% in Australia amid increased pollution from electricity and transport

Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rose in Q2 as electricity and transport pollution increased, despite renewable energy growth. Net zero targets, carbon dioxide equivalent metrics, and land use changes underscore mixed trends in decarbonisation.

 

Key Points

About 499-500 Mt CO2-e annually, with a 2% quarterly rise led by electricity and transport.

✅ Q2 emissions rose to 127 Mt from 124.4 Mt seasonally adjusted

✅ Electricity sector up to 41.6 Mt; transport added nearly 1 Mt

✅ Land use remains a net sink; renewables expanded capacity

 

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions rose in the June quarter by about 2% as pollution from the electricity sector and transport increased.

Figures released on Tuesday by the Morrison government showed that on a year to year basis, emissions for the 12 months to last June totalled 498.9m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That tally was down 2.1%, or 10.8m tonnes compared with the same period a year earlier.

However, on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis, emissions increased to 127m tonnes, or just over 2%, from the 124.4m tonnes reported in the March quarter. For the year to March, emissions totalled 494.2m tonnes, underscoring the pickup in pollution in the more recent quarter even as global coal power declines worldwide.

A stable pollution rate, if not a rising one, is also implied by the government’s release of preliminary figures for the September quarter. They point to 125m tonnes of emissions in trend terms for the July-September months, bringing the year to September total to about 500m tonnes, the latest report said.

The government has made much of Australia “meeting and beating” climate targets. However, the latest statistics show mostly emissions are not in decline despite its pledge ahead of the Glasgow climate summit that the country would hit net zero by 2050, and AEMO says supply can remain uninterrupted as coal phases out over the next three decades.

“Nothing’s happening except for the electricity sector,” said Hugh Saddler, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University. Once Covid curbs on the economy eased, such as during the current quarter, emission sources such as from transport will show a rise, he predicted.

Falling costs for new wind and solar farms, with the IEA naming solar the cheapest in history worldwide, are pushing coal and gas out of electricity generation, as well as pushing down power prices. In seasonally adjusted terms, though, emissions for that sector rose from 39.7m tonnes the March quarter to 41.6m in the June one.

Most other sectors were steady, with pollution from transport adding almost 1m tonnes in the June quarter.

On an annual basis, a 500m tonnes tally is the lowest since records began in the 1990s, and IEA reported global emissions flatlined in 2019 for context. That lower trajectory, though, is lower due much to the land sector remaining a net sink even as some experts raise questions about the true trends when it comes to land clearing.

According to the government, this sector – known as land use, land-use change and forestry – amounted to a net reduction of emissions of 24.4m tonnes, or almost negative 5% of the national total, in the year to June.

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“The magnitude of this net sink has decreased by 0.6% (0.2 Mt CO2-e) on the previous 12 months due to an increase in emissions from agricultural soils, partially offset by a continuing decline in land clearing emissions,” the latest report said.

For its part, the government also touted the increase of renewable energy, as seen in Canada's electricity progress too, as central to driving emissions lower.

“Since 2017, Australia’s consumption of renewable energy has grown at a compound annual rate of 4.6%, with more than $40bn invested in Australia’s renewable energy sector,” Angus Taylor, the federal energy minister said, while UK net zero policy changes show a different approach. “Last year, Australia deployed new solar and wind at eight times the global per capita average.”

ANU’s Saddler said the main driver had been the 2020 Renewable Energy Target that the Coalition government had cut, and had anyway been implemented “a very considerable time ago”.

Tim Baxter, the Climate Council’s senior researcher, said “the time for leaning on the achievements of others is long since past”.

“We need a federal government willing to step up on emissions reductions and take charge with real policy, not wishlists,” he said, referring to the government’s net zero plan to rely on technologies to cut pollution in pursuit of a sustainable electric planet in practice, some of which don’t exist now.

 

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Bangladesh develops nuclear power with IAEA Assistance

Bangladesh Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant advances nuclear energy with IAEA support and ROSATOM construction, boosting energy security, baseload capacity, and grid reliability; 2400 MW units aid development, regulatory compliance, and newcomer infrastructure milestones.

 

Key Points

A 2400 MW nuclear project in Rooppur, built with IAEA guidance and ROSATOM, to boost Bangladesh's reliable power.

✅ Two units totaling 2400 MW for stable baseload supply

✅ IAEA Milestones and INIR reviews guide safe deployment

✅ ROSATOM builds; national regulator strengthens oversight

 

The beginning of construction at Bangladesh’s first nuclear power reactor on 30 November 2017 marked a significant milestone in the decade-long process to bring the benefits of nuclear energy to the world’s eighth most populous country. The IAEA has been supporting Bangladesh on its way to becoming the third ‘newcomer’ country to nuclear power in 30 years, following the United Arab Emirates in 2012 and Belarus in 2013.

Bangladesh is in the process of implementing an ambitious, multifaceted development programme to become a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041. Vastly increased electricity production, with the goal of connecting 2.7 million more homes to the grid by 2021, is a cornerstone of this push for development, and nuclear energy will play a key role in this area, said Mohammad Shawkat Akbar, Managing Director of Nuclear Power Plant Company Bangladesh Limited. Bangladesh is also working to diversify its energy supply to enhance energy security, reduce its dependence on imports and on its limited domestic resources, he added.

#google# In the region, India's nuclear program is taking steps to get back on track, underscoring broader momentum.

“Bangladesh is introducing nuclear energy as a safe, environmentally friendly and economically viable source of electricity generation,” said Akbar.  The plant in Rooppur, 160 kilometres north-west of Dhaka, will consist of two units, with a combined power capacity of 2400 MW(e). It is being built by a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM. The first unit is scheduled to come online in 2023 and the second in 2024, reflecting progress similar to the UK's latest nuclear power station developments.  “This project will enhance the development of the social, economic, scientific and technological potential of the country,” Akbar said.

The country’s goal of increased electricity production via nuclear energy will soon be a reality, Akbar said. “For 60 years, Bangladesh has had a dream of building its own nuclear power plant. The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will provide not only a stable baseload of electricity, but it will enhance our knowledge and allow us to increase our economic efficiency.

 

Milestones for nuclear

Bangladesh is among around 30 countries that are considering, planning or starting the introduction of nuclear power, with milestones at nuclear projects worldwide offering context for this progress. The IAEA assists them in developing their programmes through the Milestones Approach — a methodology that provides guidance on working towards the establishment of nuclear power in a newcomer country, including the associated infrastructure. It focuses on pointing out gaps, if any, in countries’ progress towards the introduction of nuclear power.

The IAEA has been supporting Bangladesh in developing its nuclear power infrastructure, including in establishing a regulatory framework and developing a radioactive waste-management system. This support has been delivered under the IAEA technical cooperation programme and is partially funded through the Peaceful Uses Initiative.

Nuclear infrastructure is multifaceted, containing governmental, legal, regulatory and managerial components, in addition to the physical infrastructure. The Milestones Approach consists of three phases, with a milestone to be reached at the end of each.

The first phase involves considerations before a decision is taken to start a nuclear power programme and concludes with the official commitment to the programme. The second phase entails preparatory work for the contracting and construction of a nuclear power plant, as seen in Bulgaria's nuclear project planning, ending with the commencement of bids or contract negotiations for the construction. The final phase includes activities to implement the nuclear power plant, such as the final investment decision, contracting and construction. The duration of these phases varies by country, but they typically take between 10 and 15 years.

“The IAEA Milestones Approach is a guiding document and the Integrated Work Plan (IWP) is the important means of bringing all of the stakeholders in Bangladesh together to ensure the fulfilment of all safety, security, and safeguards requirements of the Rooppur NPP project,” said Akbar. “This IWP enabled Bangladesh to develop a holistic approach to implementing IAEA guidance as well as cooperating with national stakeholders and other bilateral partners towards the development of a national nuclear power programme.”

When completed, the two units of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will have a combined power capacity of 2400 MW(e). (Photo: Arkady Sukhonin/Rosatom)

 

INIR Mission

The Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) is a holistic peer review to assist Member States in assessing the status of their national infrastructure for introducing nuclear power. The IAEA completed its first INIR mission to Bangladesh in November 2011, making recommendations on how to develop a plan to establish the nuclear infrastructure. Nearly five years later, in May 2016, a follow-up mission was conducted, which noted the progress made — Bangladesh had established a nuclear regulatory body, had chosen a site for the power plant and had completed site characterization and environmental impact assessment.

“The IAEA and other bodies, including those from experienced countries, can and do provide support, but the responsibility for safety and security will lie with the Government,” said Dohee Hahn, Director of the IAEA’s Division of Nuclear Power, at the ceremony for the pouring of the first nuclear safety-related concrete at Rooppur on 30 November 2017. “The IAEA stands ready to continue supporting Bangladesh in developing a safe, secure, peaceful and sustainable nuclear power programme.”

Supporting Infrastructure for Introducing a Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh: the IAEA Assists with the Review of Regulatory Guidance on Site Evaluation

How the IAEA Assists Newcomer Countries in Building Their Way to Sustainable Energy

"Exciting times for nuclear power," IAEA Director General Says

 

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