These days I’ll take any sign of improvement within the Federal government as a victory. The by-election, being in Montreal, will be a slam dunk for the Libs nonetheless.
Earlier in the day, Carney said he wishes Guilbeault “all the best” in whatever he chooses to do with his career next.
Carney said he understands that “things change.”
SaskPower packs the room with contractors and suppliers, eager for work on coal refurbishments
The same day the legislative session wrapped up in Regina, with fiery rhetoric about how horrible it would be if Saskatchewan refurbished its coal-fired power plants, a seminar was held in Estevan for suppliers who were eager to work on that very project.
The guys at Triggernometry recently posted this great interview with Lucy Biggers, a former self-described “useful idiot” in the climate alarmist movement.
A real conservative would have pointed out the absurdity of essentially having to pay protection money to get a pipeline built. It’s a dead loss for every Canadian, not a victory.
At least, that’s how much Alberta taxpayers could be asked to pay in order to prop up Smith’s new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ottawa that, among other things, promises to ratchet up carbon taxes to $130 per tonne by 2040. Under Friday’s agreement, Alberta and the feds promised to spend up to $1.2 billion toward that end, splitting the cost equally between both parties.
NDP say coal reburbs will cost $26 billion, but applying the same methodologies to their own plan comes up with similar numbers
Beck says she misspoke on LNG for power generation, asks about coal refurbishment costs
“Mr. Speaker, I’m going to stand in my place today and do something that is sometimes hard for politicians — particularly, it seems, for the Premier — and I’m going say that when I said LNG, I misspoke. I meant natural gas, Mr. Speaker.” – Carla Beck
The international committee responsible for the official scenarios that feed into climate modeling that are the basis for most projective climate research and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios.
Big news: The new framework has eliminated the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades — specifically, RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0. This is an absolutely huge development in climate science which will have lasting impacts across research and policy.
The future is not what it used to be.
Gore Effect! The ultimate authority on all questions involving life on earth, Al Gore, is now declaring that global warming is out, and global freezing is in.
IBEW 2067 reaction to NDP power plan: Come down to Estevan and Coronach and tell us about it
The Saskatchewan New Democratic Party has been taking its “Grid and Growth Plan 2026” on the road, promoting their new electrical grid strategy in Prince Albert and Yorkton. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2067 would like to see them do the same in Estevan and Coronach, and see what reaction they get.
I’m sure a few hundred coal workers who would lose their jobs and possibly their homes would be happy to have that discussion.
A Vancouver climate news site, the National Observer, is the nation’s heaviest user of Department of Canadian Heritage grants, newly-disclosed records show. The “independent news site” received more than $1.3 million in taxpayers’ aid to cover the equivalent of 23 employees’ salaries while its CEO served on a volunteer board responsible for approving grants: “The National Observer record speaks for itself regarding our independence from any government.”
@bcbluecon – Yup. Tides owns the National Observer for example: Publisher Linda Solomon Wood
Boundary Dam Unit 4 fired up on April 22, and it’s more significant than you might think
Up until now, the coal-fired power refurbishment may have seemed like a lot of talk. On Wednesday, April 22, it became real. And that’s significant for a number of reasons.
Not the least of which is it is in total defiance of federal coal regulations. Saskatchewan is giving Ottawa the bird.
Brian Zinchuk: LNG, the NDP’s electrical plan and Spaceballs
End of series on NDP’s electrical plan:
Digging deep on the NDP’s “Grid & Growth” plan for Saskatchewan’ electrical grid, Part 3: Wind, Solar, Storage, Transmission & Interties
Digging deep on the NDP’s “Grid & Growth” plan for Saskatchewan’ electrical grid, Part 4: Governance, Labour, Carbon Taxes & Rates
SaskPower minister responds to NDP Grid and Growth Plan
Also:
SaskPower and Bruce Power sign memorandum of understanding to inform Saskatchewan large reactor technology assessment
Frontier Centre for Public Policy: Lee Harding: Canada is losing billions by holding back its oil and gas industry
Now that Carney has a majority, expect his government to start taking these fools seriously again.
“It feels to me like this (climate) has been somewhat deprioritized. And that’s why we’re going to, as an industry, keep it at the top of the table,” Rowan Saunders, the CEO of the country’s fourth-largest property and casualty insurer Definity, said in an interview.
“We’re at a point now in Canada where we can have what used to be a year’s worth of severe weather losses happening in a single day. And we don’t have the level of public investment commensurate to that reality right now,” said David Leibl, vice president of sustainability and corporate affairs at Winnipeg-based insurer Wawanesa. “We need to close that gap.”
Does the government want Canadians to buy more EVs or not? The way to encourage people to adopt a particular technology is to allow them to source it as cheaply as possible. But the ultimate goal in this case seems to be nearly the opposite: Canadians are supposed to buy EVs at whatever price Canadian automakers and their unions demand, and in similar quantities to a much lower price point. Good luck with that.
Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly has also voiced opposition to the plan to ship cars in kits to Ontario, but the federal government has revealed little about how its plan for China to ship 49,000 electric vehicles to Canada at a 6.1 per cent duty rate will work, including who will choose which models are sent.
I spent 11 hours working on this story, which I broke into four parts. These are the first two, the next two will come out early next week.
The NDP again want to see coal-fired power go away, “as practical.” The want to convert coal plants to natural gas, even though Saskatchewan has lots of coal but not much in the way of natural gas anymore. We drilled ten gas wells over the last decade, and Alberta did that many by noon today.
There is of course the obligatory massive buildout of wind and solar, and storage. And just coincidentally, three hours after the press conference, wind output in Alberta fell to next to nothing, again.
Digging deep on the NDP’s “Grid & Growth” plan for Saskatchewan’ electrical grid, Part 1
NDP want to increase net-metering rate
Also:
Jim Warren: A History of Oil Production and Price Crises 1973-1991
Cushion the blow? That sounds like the Feds will hand out free Squishmallows at the gas pumps. Could’ve had some pipelines, but it’s getting a bit late even for that. An end to the industrial carbon tax would help, but I’m not holding my breath.
Oil prices have surged since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, averaging more than $1.80 per litre across Canada today, compared with about $1.32 a year ago.
Carney says his government wants to help “cushion the blow” for Canadians.
The Saskatchewan coal refurbishment plan, laid out by year until 2035.
This is the most detail I’ve seen so far, laying out expected cost per unit, and a year-by-year plan to rebuild them. And I go into some detail into how much cheaper this would be than building new natural gas-fired power plants. It’s a lot.
The first article in this feed details Carney’s plans to buy votes in the Maritimes, so there’s not a whole lot new there. The second one is more interesting for what it doesn’t mention, as opposed to what it does. Given the current geopolitical situation, you’d think Ottawa’s priority would be to streamline the process for building oil and gas pipelines as opposed to wind farms, but then again this is the Liberal Party we’re talking about here.
The prime minister went on to cite Houston’s ambitious plan for the Wind West project, which calls for building Canada’s first offshore wind farms at an enormous scale.
On Wednesday, Hydro-Québec said it has issued a formal request for information from energy developers to help it determine timelines and costs for building transmission lines to potentially connect Quebec’s electricity grid with Nova Scotia’s proposed offshore wind farms.
Turns out, net zero was easier to reach than anyone dared dream: Australia has 403 billion barrels of shale oil — 17.5 billion of which is immediately recoverable. But it banned fracking. So now it’s begging for diesel from countries that don’t have a gallon to spare 🤡
Mais oui, it was finalement, euh, within zee reach, non? French energy giant TotalEnergies says it will no longer aim to reach net zero emission targets by 2050
More: I’m out of diesel. All the farmers are out of diesel.
[an] ESRI review published last week found very little variation in actual energy consumption between homes with different BER energy ratings.
The review called it “a striking observation” that “average energy consumption is similar for an A-rated house and a G-rated house”.
It referred to a study that showed households consume around 10,869 kWh of energy per year and that this does not vary considerably by BER rating.
It said the median cost of a deep retrofit ranged from €16,000 to €43,000 depending on whether it was an apartment or a detached house.
It also said the monetary cost of the disruption and having to vacate a home during a retrofit ranged between €9,000 and €24,000.
Three in-depth pieces on coal-fired power today:
NDP say coal refurbishment will double electricity rates by 2050, prefer natural gas and renewables instead
NDP analysis of coal refurbishment and its impact on rates, in depth
SaskPower Minister responds to NDP study on refurbishing coal and its impact on rates
In cased you missed this major related story on Monday:
BREAKING: Data centre hinges on dispatchable baseload power, including coal refurbishment
I would like to point out that the Leader Post, CTV and CBC failed to mention, or perhaps even realize, that it will be coal powering that new data centre in Regina. Where did they think that power is going to come from? I know! Solar, at night!