Doug Koplow got a nasty surprise at his last Harvard Business School reunion. He’d missed the Saturday speakers because of family duties, but at the dinner that evening, he got an earful. “I was the token environmentalist in my class,” he recalls, “so everyone came up to tell me that there had been a great speaker on climate change—and that it was just not a big deal for business.” Why not?

With this week's application to build a new nuclear plant – the first such filing in nearly 30 years – the industry says the US is on the verge of a nuclear power renaissance.

With virtually no greenhouse-gas emissions, reactors are touted as part of the solution to global warming. Over the next 15 months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects a tidal wave of similar permit applications for up to 28 new reactors, costing up to $90 billion to build.

But the renaissance may be less robust than it looks...

"To ease financial concerns, the nuclear power industry has turned to Congress. Among the biggest reasons for renewed interest in nuclear power are the tax breaks, loan guarantees and other subsidies in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Those benefits were "the whole reason we started down this path," Crane said after filing NRG Energy's license application. "If it were not for the nuclear provisions in there, we would not have even started developing this plan two years ago."

Nature, Editorial page.  Mentions Earth Track's estimates of subsidies per mt CO2-equivalent, calculated for the IISD:

.."Boosting ethanol production is the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie these days. Politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as presidential candidates eager to do well in Iowa, the nation's No. 1 ethanol-producing state, are behind the measure, unglamorously named the "Renewable Fuels Standard." The RFS, part of the energy bill in the Senate, is so popular that it may be enough to ram through energy legislation this year, despite bitter disagreements over other parts of the bills...

Farm subsidies are the ultimate cash crop. Farmers in rich countries get $1 billion per day in government hand-outs. To be fair, that figure rounds up the numbers, counts agribusinesses and small farmers, and defines subsidies broadly to include tariffs, export credits and other supports. But, give a million or two a day, the order of magnitude is right. By that measure, agriculture is far and away the world's the most protected industry.

...Promoters of the ethanol mandate assert that it would help the United States achieve energy independence and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Evaluating the scientific and economic claims being made for bioethanol can be vexing, but a few urgent questions come to mind: if bioethanol is such a good energy deal, why must refiners and consumers be forced to use it?

December 6, 2007.  "Cheap No more: Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices," The Economist. Cites data, though unfortunately without attribution: