Unfortunately, Gamma has no opposable thumbs and couldn't write his ideas on the board, so he's asked if you could finish the calculations for him. Here's what he told the group:

1. Assume a typical coal-fired power plant is rated at 1,000 Megawatts of electrical power (1,000 MWe). If it operates for 6,600 hours out of the year, it would produce _______ Megawatt-hours of electric energy (MWhe) over one year.

If this coal plant emits 0.37 metric tons of carbon per Megawatt-hour of electricity generated, the total annual carbon emissions would be ________ metric tons.

2. A typical natural gas combined-cycle plant operating at the same capacity for the same number of hours per year emits 0.12 metric tons of carbon per Megawatt-hour, for a total of _________ metric tons of carbon emissions per year.

3. Suppose that two natural gas plants could be built for the same overall cost as building one nuclear plant.* How many metric tons of carbon emissions are avoided in each scenario?

(*Note from Gamma: The actual number of combined-cycled natural gas plants that could be build for the same cost as nuclear depends both on the fuel price of natural gas and the capital costs for nuclear power. Since these two factors can vary widely, actual carbon reductions can also vary. See Table on costs.)

a) One nuclear plant with zero carbon emissions replaces 1 coal plant for a total reduction in carbon emissions of: _______metric tons/year.

b) Two natural gas plants, with combined carbon emissions of __________ metric tons/year, replace two coal plants with combined carbon emissions of ___________ metric tons/year.

c) For each scenario, the net annual reduction in carbon emissions is the total avoided emissions from displaced coal plants minus the total new emissions. The net annual reduction for each scenario is therefore:

a. (nuclear scenario) __________________ metric tons of carbon/year
b. (natural gas scenario) __________________metric tons of carbon/year

Carbon reductions in scenario ____ are greater than those in scenario _____ by ________%.

NOTE: Gamma ignored carbon emissions other than at the power plant itself for these calculations. He also ignored greenhouse impact of slightly increased methane emissions from use of natural gas, which would need to be offset by relatively minor investments.