Michael Zwaagstra: Your home should be your castle
Oh, and it turns out Climate Change you-know-who has a book about her time in government. And it turns out the implementation of the carbon tax, and the home heating oil exemption, was not all it was cracked up to be. Who woulda thunk it?
Why Atlantic hurricane season has gone silent.
It’s the time for peak hurricane season. You know, the ones that are supposed to get more numerous and more powerful due to my SUV, pickup truck, and the two coal fired power plants near Estevan? And yet there is nary a hurricane to be found…
CNN is tying itself up in knots.
Clearly, it is due to global warming caused by said coal plants.
The Coal Injunction, Part 4: Affidavits of a Manitoba activist farmer and a Saskatoon environmental podcaster
Okay, I can see the very much adult Saskatoon podcaster having some standing. She is at least and adult and in Saskathcewan, so likely uses power SaskPower produces. But if she lives in certain parts of the city, she could actually be a Saskatoon Light and Power customer.
The National Farmers Union activist farmer, on the other hand, is neither a Saskatchewan resident nor a SaskPower customer, unless he has a very long extension cord from east of Winnipeg to Moosomin.
The Coal Injunction, Part 2: Arguments against continued coal use made in injunction filings
A 12-year-old child, a podcaster and a Manitoban as well as Saskatchewan Environmental Society and Citizens for Public Justice have filed for an injunction to stop Saskatchewan’s recently announced plants to rebuild its coal fleet in its tracks. In Part 1, the stage is set. In Part 2, Pipeline Online digs into the legal filing, known as the “orginating application,” itself, laying out their arguments to end coal-fired power generation for good.
Pipeline Online does one of its deepest dives yet into the injunction application meant to shut down Saskatchewan’s coal-fired generation fleet, just as this province begins its rebirth. At stake are 1100 jobs, billions of dollars, and keeping 44% of Saskatchewan’s lights on. And just who gets to govern around here, anyhow?
I spent five days working on this five part series which starts Monday. The Saskatchewan Environmental Society and Citizens for Public Justice have put forward a 12-year-old non-binary child from Regina who has been in national headlines now three times in two years (attention seeking, perhaps?) as the Saskatchewan version of Greta Mark II as part of this. And be forewarned, the lawyer who did that said that if anyone said nasty things online about the child he put forward, there could be legal consequences. Is he using the child as bait? I dig into this in Part 3.
The other inviduals are a Saskatoon environmental podcaster who is taking a poli sci degree in her 50s. And the third is a Manitoba farmer who neither lives in Saskatchewan nor is a SaskPower customer.
And it was only at the end of this process I realized the lawyer filing the case has run unsuccessfully for office five times. Is he trying to accomplish through the courts what he failed at the ballot box?
This is lawfare, pure and simple.
I’ll have a piece each day. Watch for it and share if you’re willing.
Quick Dick McDick says the canola tariffs just cost his farm $100,000 overnight. Want to know what he thinks about that? That’s just ONE FARM, by the way. Just one.
I am working on a major five-part series to run next week on the efforts by some activists to use a court injunction to block Saskatchewan’s coal revival efforts before it even gets going. Among them is a Greta Mark II, a 12-year-old non-binary child who has been in the headlines at age 10 for the pronoun issue, then at age 11 for skipping school because of climate anxiety. Another doesn’t even live in Saskatchewan. You can’t make this up. As a prelude to that series, read Bronwyn Eyre’s column on judicial activism and lawfare. It ties directly into this coal injunction nonsense and is a good primer for what’s to come.
If you’re torqued about the Saskatchewan Roughriders game on Friday being postponed, you need to watch Quick Dick McDick tear it to pieces.
Quick Dick McDick: Air Quality Index cancels Rider game? People have had enough of this $#!+
Also, Bronwyn Eyre knocks it out of the park again, this time on Bill C-5 where everyone gets a veto.
Al Gore’s giving speeches again: Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth
Jim Warren: Don’t worry be unhappy and support efforts to defend the energy sector in the West
BREAKING: Saskatchewan to rebuild its coal fleet, despite federal regulations calling for its demise. In other words, to hell with the feds, we’re keeping the lights on. At 10 on Friday, Minister Jeremy Harrison will be on the Pipeline Online Podcast
So much for Canada becoming an “energy superpower.” With additional pipelines to the west coast, the idea is dead in its tracks. Eby says he won’t be changing mind on another B.C. pipeline, rebuffing Ford
But but but – everyone was so happy about their confab with the new prime minister.
Premiers heap praise on meeting with Carney, but no specific projects identified.
And from the day before the meeting:
Carney discusses “partnerships” with oil and gas executives in Calgary
So much for team Canada. On CJME Tuesday morning Premier Moe said he was “done” with trying to get a pipeline built through Quebec.
And for something completely different:
There’s more to the oilpatch than just work. You can’t hide these smiles. Lock and load
Carney’s mandate letter to ministers is dramatically different than Trudeau’s, with climate change an afterthought. Trudeau mentioned climate 27 times in his letter to Steven Guilbeault, 20 times to Jonathan Wilkinson. Carney? Once, and almost in passing.
Another major nuclear announcement, this time in Tennessee, which will have impact on SaskPower’s nuclear ambitions.
Jim Warren: The Canadian Deep Green State. Do you think current bureaucrats believe in BANANAs? (build absolutely nothing anywhere)
The shark gets swallowed: Whitecap closes Veren (formerly Crescent Point) strategic combination. The company that pretty much defined Saskatchewan’s Bakken Boom, gobbling up over 30 companies (most of them in southeast Saskatchewan) is no more.
Pipeline Online Podcast: Ep. 9 E. Craig Lothian, CEO of Lex Capital.
AFN chief calls for review of natural resource deals amid talk of Alberta separation
How does the saying go? Gradually, then suddenly?
In case you missed it, posted last night
Moe declares “Saskatchewan is now a carbon tax free province”
BC is scrapping its consumer carbon tax
B.C. to bring in legislation to end its carbon tax on consumers starting April 1
Saskatchewan is looking to rejuvenate coal, not abandon it: in-depth with Minister Jeremy Harrison.
If SaskPower carries through with rejuvenating coal, it will save three power plants, two mines, ~1000 jobs and two communities.
The significance of the shift on coal cannot be understated. When SaskPower’s then-CEO Mike Marsh came to Estevan in 2018 to say they would not be installing carbon capture technology on Boundary Dam Units 4 and 5, it wasn’t the obituary for the community, but it sure felt like the cancer diagnosis. And with no talk of carbon capture for Coronach’s Poplar River Power station, it seemed all but certain that town would whither away once the coal plant and related mine shut down by the federally mandated 2030 deadline. The January, 2025, announcement of SaskPower looking to rebuild both Boundary Dam and Poplar River, if carried out, would be a decades-long reprieve for both communities.
To extend the metaphor, effectively Estevan and Coronach just went into chemotherapy, and the results may be positive.
The implications of this change in direction, from the impending death of coal, to its possible rejuvenation, have local, provincial, national and international aspects, detailed in the story.
Watch for the Pipeline Online Podcast, Episode 2, to be broadcast on LinkedIn, Facebook and X at 1 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 24.. Crown Investments Corp Minister Jeremy Harrison is the guest, where we will delve even further into this new direction on coal-fired power generation.
X (works best): https://x.com/Pipeline_Online
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianzinchuk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pipelineonlineca/
It will eventually be posted to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify
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Government of Saskatchewan says coal has a future. SaskPower is to look at running Poplar River and Boundary Dam Units 4,5 and 6 for decades to come, considering rebuilding them and ignoring federal coal mandate to shut down by 2030. Minister Jeremy Harrison was in Coronach and Estevan telling coal workers that coal has a future.
Here’s the op-ed he submitted exclusively to Pipeline Online, explaining what was going on. I just had a detailed interview with him which will be published Monday.
This is an enormous turnaround that cannot be understated. Saskatchewan is not giving up on coal. Estevan and especially Coronach get a huge reprieve.
And it’s a giant up yours to the feds. I’m sure Guilbeault will have a canary, and a cow. But he won’t eat the cow because my get is he’s a vegan.
Hopefully my 100+ stories talking about the unreliability of wind and solar, and imploring we shouldn’t throw away what works for what we know absolutely doesn’t work had some impact on this.
I’ll have more to write about this in the coming days. There are lots of implications. For instance, since we own the coal, we charge ourselves basically nothing for it. We do pay for the mining, however. But for natural gas, since our domestic production has dropped like a stone, most of our gas comes from Alberta. So every dollar we spend on their gas is a dollar leaving the province, never to come back (sound like Trump?) And here’s the kicker – when LNG Canada goes online, what do you think is going to happen to gas prices? Does anyone think it’ll stay around $2/gigajoule another 10 years? Or will it go up – maybe to $4, or even $6? All of a sudden, gas won’t be so cheap anymore, nor will the electrical power derived from it. But our nearly free coal will be. And once the carbon tax is gone – smooth sailing!
Also, this just happened (gradually, then suddenly…)
BREAKING: With “second carbon tax” in jeopardy, FCL and AGT pause renewable diesel and crush plant projects. The carbon pendulum is swinging, hard.
Trudeau’s Done! And the oilpatch rejoices! For everyone who put a “F— Trudeau” sticker on their truck or hardhat, Monday was a day of celebration.
Enbridge’s Weyburn wind project open house, Part 3: Consultation, renewable energy, turbine size.
Also: Canadian carbon removal company scores US$40M grant from fund backed by Bill Gates
Here’s the story on Guilbeault’s updated Clean Electricity Regulations, and it includes an at-length discussion with SaskPower Minister Jeremy Harrison explaining why Saskatchewan is rejecting it.
Here’s the key thing: Other media are acting like this is a win – that the deadline has simply been punted to 2050. Well, I actually read through the regulations and realized it’s a bait and switch. In fact, the regulations include an impossible to meet emissions standard for anything that burns anything by 2035. Even if you put carbon capture on every single natural gas and coal power plant in Saskatchewan and Alberta, if the CCS behaves anything like Boundary Dam 3, you won’t get anywhere close to the new standard of 65 tonnes CO2 per gigawatt-hour. So the federal government slyly let people think they’ve punted, when really they haven’t punted at all. Like Lucy, they’re pulling the football away in 10 years and 12 days. (That’s the amount of time we have to build carbon capture on everything. And even if we do, it won’t be good enough. Good luck with that.)
Enbridge’s Weyburn wind project open house, Part 2: Enbridge’s opening statements
It’s as if I should change the name of the website to SaskPowerOnline.ca. Jeepers – this week is almost all power related.
“They pushed us to the limit,” Danielle Smith says in fighting oil and gas emissions cap. Saskatchewan has already started on this path.
Expect similar action from Saskatchewan in the next 10 days. If you remember back in September, Saskatchewan issued its Economic Impact Assessment Tribunal take on this emissions cap, calling it a production cap.
Sask NDP gas tax motion runs out of gas