Saskatchewan’s own Quick Dick McDick offers his take on federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault. He talks about the implicit threat of criminal sanctions for keeping the power on, and how Guilbeault should know a thing or two about wearing handcuffs. Quick Dick picks up on a lot of the stuff I’ve been writing about recently.
Keep the Lights On session comes to an end
The Saskatchewan Legislature ended its 2022-23 session on Thursday. The very first bill was about keeping the lights on, and the very last debate was also about keeping the lights on. This was the keeping the lights on session.
Moe comes to Estevan to explain its power generation future
This past week the Saskatchewan government spent a lot of time on power generation and this “Net Zero by 2035” idea the federal government is trying to force upon the provinces.
This is the “energy transition” decision making in real time, folks. The impacts are enormous for this province, which is why I’ve been hammering these stories so hard.
The week summed up with Premier Scott Moe coming to Estevan to explain to local officials what the provincial government’s plans are for power production. For generations, Estevan has been home of the highest concentration of power generation in this province. However, the addition of multiple gas plants and wind facilities has largely diluted the percentage of power from Estevan. But as the province is clearly indicating a move towards nuclear, Moe all but said that Estevan will be home to some of the first small modular reactors. Pay attention to how he corrects himself from saying “nuclear” to “small modular reactors.” In this video, Moe addresses many of the concerns I’ve been raising over the last 17 months. As for adoption of nuclear – if future Saskatchewan governments follow Moe’s lead, this won’t be a small thing. Twenty years from now, as all our coal is retired and as older natural gas plants also reach retirement age, it looks like Saskatchewan will be moving to a largely nuclear grid for baseload power. And when Moe says baseload, he repeatedly refers to 80 per cent of the grid. That’s a lot more than four reactors down the road. That’s a sea change.
There’s also response from Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig on what this all means.
We’re going nuclear, but will handcuffs be involved if we keep burning coal?
Regarding this impending Clean Electricity Standard, which would force a massive energy transition in Saskatchewan in just 12 years:
Without committing to nuclear, Saskatchewan is pretty much committing to nuclear
Asking Scott Moe: What if the feds order power plants be shut down, and the Supreme Court backs them?
It turns out Steven Guilbeault has an answer for that: He said burning coal would be a violation of Canada’s Criminal Code. So will the feds be arresting the premier, SaskPower minister, SaskPower CEO, coal miners or power plant operators? All the above? And will they be arrested the same way Guilbeault was, when as a Greenpeace protestor, he scaled the CN Tower?
Saskatchewan will not attempt the impossible regarding Net Zero by 2035
Saskatchewan will not meet Net Zero by 2035, but will aim for 2050. Here’s a lot more depth than you’ll find from any of the other Saskatchewan media. And there’s more to come regarding what this means for federalism. Follow up story is about how we’re going nuclear.
Y2Kyoto: #SKExit
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Earlier this month, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said the federal government’s goal for net-zero emissions wasn’t realistic.
He doubled down on that statement Tuesday while announcing the province’s plans for electricity generation to 2035 and beyond.
“The federal government’s standards for zero emissions electrical generation by 2035 are unrealistic and unaffordable,” Moe said in a media release. “They mean SaskPower rates would more than double and we may not have enough generation to keep the lights on.
“I’m not going to let that happen.”
That which can be ignored no longer: Alberta’s wind power drops to 2 megawatts out of 3618 on Friday, the lowest level we’ve seen yet
SaskPower’s billion dollar bet on carbon capture pays off, for the US, at least
Nine years after SaskPower pioneered carbon capture on coal, the US intends on adopting it wholesale. Now, if only the Canadian federal government would get behind it, especially when it comes to enhanced oil recovery.
You get carbon capture, and you get carbon capture …
When the SaskPower Boundary Dam 3 carbon capture project opened in 2014, nobody followed. The tech looked doomed as recently as a few months ago. On May 11, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed that all coal and most natural gas power plants have carbon capture applied by 2038, or shut down.
Interestingly enough, last year, when I asked Crown Investments (and SaskPower) Minister Don Morgan if we would be doing any more carbon capture on coal, he said it was “not an option.” So, in Canada, it’s not an option, but in the US, it looks like it may soon be mandatory.
Why did SaskPower so quietly go ahead with a new power plant?
Is national unity at stake?
SaskPower will be building a new $850 million natural gas power station near Lanigan, starting in under a year. More than half of its power will go to the BHP Jansen potash mine, the crown jewel of Saskatchewan’s economy. But Steven Guilbeault and Justin Trudeau want to shut down all natural gas power stations by 2035.
Irresistible force is about to meet immovable object, and national unity is on the line.
Oh, and for good measure, Bill C-69 is involved.
Coal to gas conversion?
Will Shand and/or Boundary Dam be converted from coal to gas-fired? No, but SaskPower is looking at it. If they do, that’ll be a whole lot of coal miners and coal processing staff out of work.
Cameco buying Westinghouse is going to pay dividends, with new SMR
Last fall, Saskatoon-based Cameco bought 49% of Westinghouse for a song. Westinghouse was in rough shape over delays on a pair of US reactors that took decades. But one is now operational, the second will be in months, and the war in Ukraine, cutting off of Russian gas, and “climate change” means the whole world is waking up to a nuclear renaissance, in a big way. (That includes Saskatchewan). On Thursday, Westinghouse publicly released its competitor in the 300 megawatt small modular reactor space. And they say it can be had for about a billion US??? On Wednesday, SaskPower’s minister told the legislature he’s thinking GE-Hitachi’s might cost us all-in around $4.5 billion CDN, for similar size reactor. But that would include grid and other items, too.
Anyhow, Cameco has long been supplier of nuclear fuel, but buying Westinghouse made it enormously more vertically integrated. All this new nuclear could have tremendous impact in Saskatchewan.
What’d ya mean, we’re not pipeline supporters!? Them’s be fightin’ words!
Pipeline supporter? NDP Leader Carla Beck booted from Saskatchewan legislative assembly after saying minister had lied about NDP‘s support for pipelines and opposition to carbon tax.
Enough of this Net Zero by 2035 fantasy. Saskatchewan can’t do it
Moe draws the line in the dirt: “We will not attempt the impossible when it comes to power production”
The Saskatchewan Liberal Party
The feds may want Net Zero by 2035, but Moe’s not having it
Net Zero by 2035? Not going to happen in Saskatchewan, according to Scott Moe. Natural gas, renewables, nuclear, and maybe even coal will be part of the mix. But Saskatoon is not going to freeze in the dark on Jan. 1, 2035.
(From Kate: SDA gets results.)
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Prairie Innovation: Snow Planes
Jenny Hagan is also a good Twitter follow.
And Let Me Remind You, He Ran A STOP SIGN
An 8 year old kid knows what a stop sign is. Jaskirat Singh Sidhu didn’t run a stop sign because the laws governing truck drivers were inadequate. Moral panic is no substitute for good governance.
Had Jaskirat Singh Sidhu killed only one or two when he ran that stop sign, he’d be deported without fanfare.
Perversely, he’s become a celebrity because the Humboldt crash was a mass casualty event. Enough, already. Send him packing.
Moe on Guilbeault’s ‘social cost of carbon’
Pipeline Online spoke to Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe on Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s ‘social cost of carbon’. Moe is concerned it could lead to much higher carbon tax, and pave way for Clean Electricity Standard impossible for Saskatchewan to meet.
Poland is planning on 20, possibly more, SMRs of the same design SaskPower chose
I’ve been waiting to see a story come out about this for a while. A few weeks ago I saw that Poland may be building as many as 79 of the General Electric Hitachi BWRX-300 reactors, the exact same design chosen as SaskPower. This story indicated 20 at this point, but hints it could be more.
Ontario Power Generation is building the first one. Tennessee Valley Authority is building the second. Saskatchewan may have thought we were all that and a bag of chips by announcing four. But we won’t finish our second until around 2038. In the meantime, Poland might have built all 79 by that time.
We might have thought we’d be driving the bus on this SMR rollout. We’re not. In other words, the instruction manuals will likely be written in Polish. But it also means a lot of confidence is being expressed by the Poles in the design, if they build 20, or 79, or whatever.
As for how much uranium will go into these, I sat at a banquet a few weeks ago with some Cameco reps. They explained that SMRs actually use very little uranium. You fill them up at the start, and basically that’s it. That was very insightful, I thought, because that’s exactly how current US nuclear submarines (with small reactors) work.
“Well, We Needed The Moisture”
Winter storm watches now line parts of the Prairies for a mid-week system that threatens heavy snow and strong winds, so people can expect travel interruptions
