Thanks to George Carty for pointing us to the Energy From Thorium Discussion Forum, where someone named Klaus Allmendinger has spotted something strange in the small print of a new report from WWF and Allianz insurance that claims to rank G8 countries in terms of their progress towards CO2 emissions targets:

… When noticing France AND Germany in similar places on the list, I looked a little further. France, according to this report, has still fairly high emissions from electricity production. A small footnote under one of the graphs though explains why:

“1 WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option. The indicators “emissions per capita”, “emissions per GDP” and “CO2 per kWh electricity” for all countries have therefore been adjusted as if the generation of electricity from nuclear power had produced 350 gCO2/kWh (emission factor for natural gas). Without the adjustment, the original indicators for France would have been much lower, e.g. 86 gCO2/kWh.”

So basically, France’s CO2 emissions from electricity production are produced by ideological bias, not by fossil fuel combustion. It looks like the German emissions are lower than actual tons of CO2 also because of emission trading schemes. Allianz is of course also a trader in CO2 certificates.

It seems like the new battle-cry is: Enrons of the world, unite !!!

Not only does the report clearly not do what it claims to do, and not only is this another instance of Big Insurance joining forces with Big Environment to whip up alarm (not to mention premiums) about environmental risks (Allianz join Munich Re, RMS and Catlin), but, by ranking countries in terms of energy – rather than CO2 – production, it also supports our suggestion that Environmentalism has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in human aspirations.