In the sweltering hot July of 2023 I was at UN's High Level Political Forum as a part of the Canadian delegation and ended up in a conversation with a couple of German officials about electricity grids. I mentioned that Ontario's grid is roughly 90% non-emitting. Nuclear is about 54%, hydro is 27%, wind and solar around 10%. Coal has been at zero since 2014. They were skeptical. "90% renewable? Nobody has that." When I clarified that the backbone is nuclear, the conversation shifted pretty fast. They walked me through the problems with nuclear. And to be fair, the problems are real. Uranium mining is environmentally destructive. Waste storage is unsolved on any meaningful timeline. The upfront capital costs are enormous. And when things go wrong, they go catastrophically wrong. I get all of that. I'm not dismissing it. But sitting there, all I could think about was the comparison. Ontario's emissions intensity: roughly 40 g CO₂ per kWh. Germany's: over 300. That means that Ontario's grid is somewhere between 6 and 10 times cleaner per kilowatt hour. The reason is pretty straightforward, we phased out coal and kept nuclear as baseload. Germany phased out nuclear and kept coal as backup. They've built a ton of renewables, maybe 50-60% of the mix now, but wind and solar are intermittent. They actually have a name for this "Dunkelflaute," the "dark wind lull" when power costs rise on days with no wind or sun. When the renewable sources are not producing, something has to fill the gap. In Germany's case, that something is still lignite and natural gas. Lignite is brown coal. It's one of the dirtiest fuel sources that exists. Ontario made the opposite bet. Nuclear runs 24/7 regardless of weather. It's not glamorous, but it means you don't need fossil backup at the same scale. The part that stuck with me, the part I am still thinking about on this cold Monday morning, was their dismissiveness. These officials were genuinely critical of Ontario's approach. Confident about it. Roughly a quarter of Germany's grid is coal. (25%!!!!) They use so much coal because they PHASED OUT nuclear. I don't think nuclear is the answer to everything. But the numbers here are hard to argue with. Ontario eliminated coal. Germany didn't. And now our grid is 6x cleaner. I say this to brag. I am proud of our province. Whenever I think about it, it makes me smile. Ontario may not be a leader in many things, but we are truly a globally leading jurisdiction in one of the most important: energy. On this gray, non-sunny day, take some enjoyment from our energy grid. #energy #nuclear #Ontario
