Here are the big pieces on Jonathan Wilkinson’s time in Saskatchewan last week. The Minister of Natural Resources came to Regina to speak about “just transition.” There’s still a few more to come from it for the rest of this week, including his faith that there will soon be electric tractors for our farmers (where will you charge them???)
Shorter version (if you can call it that)
Long version:
Wilkinson’s full speech on “just transition,” verbatim.
Video of whole speech included with both.
The Clean Electricity Standard discussion paper, released a little over a year ago, says, “A Canada-wide CES will complement carbon pricing by requiring the phase-out of all conventional fossil fuel electricity generation.”
And “Regulations to limit fossil fuel generation must be decisive and swift enough to prevent locking in new fossil fuel infrastructure that will persist beyond 2035.”
Also “As natural gas currently plays a critical role in the electricity sector by providing fast-response power, exploration of the continued operation of natural gas assets in special circumstances may be needed. This includes providing flexibility to essential uses of natural gas, such as for emergency events, back-up power to complement variable renewables, and potentially supplying power during seasonal peaks of demand.”
But I asked federal Minister of Natural Resources about this twice between Wednesday and Thursday, and got a different response. He appeared to be open to the continued usage of natural gas power generation, as long as it was coupled with carbon capture. This is a huge deal for Saskatchewan and Alberta, but means expensive CCUS schemes. It could also have national unity implications. Steven Guilbeault even threatened Scott Moe with jail time.
He even said coal with CCUS would be allowed.
Did the feds just blink?
And note: the morning of Wednesday, Alberta’s 3618 megawatts of wind power was producing 3, less than one-tenth of one per cent.
It turns out Mother Nature felt Alberta didn’t need any solar or wind power last night around midnight.
U of R professor Jim Warren writes in Pipeline Online: What can supporters of the conventional energy industry do to stem the tide of public opinion flowing against them? “Catch up”. This is part 4 of 4, concluding this series.
U of R professor Jim Warren asks on Pipeline Online: Can supporters of a rational, economically-feasible transition to renewable energy reasonably hope to convince enough policy makers and members of the public that the overly zealous goals of dogmatic environmentalists are irrational and potentially dangerous?
There’s no pleasing the Bloc, except to break up the country. But they had some interesting things to say about the Natural Resources Committee’s “just transition” report.
Also, on the longest day of the year, Saskatchewan’s grid scale solar averaged just 26.7 per cent capacity. But that’s okay. Texas knows what they’re doing. They built all sorts of solar and wind power. How’s that working out for them with a heat wave?
And with NATO arming Ukraine to fight a war with Russia before Russia crosses Ukraine and takes on NATO, the top dogs at NATO still have time to fight climate change. Shouldn’t they be more concerned about the Ruskies?
One more thing, folks. Facebook will start blocking media, including Pipeline Online, on Sunday. Say what you want about Facebook, but this is a huge issue. Social media is crucial to the business plans of all news media, mine included. Thanks for all the support from SDA, because it means a lot. This is going to be a tough row to hoe. And glib comments about Facebook not mattering simply aren’t true. It matters to people like me. Where else can you find 3 billion people to tick off?
As promised, here is the federal Conservative response to the Natural Resources Committee just transition report. They want to expand oil and gas, not make it go away.
Breaking News: Despite Greta Thunberg’s dire warning about ending fossil fuel usage in five years, five years later, humanity has not been wiped out
Entitled “Creating a Fair and Equitable Energy Transformation,” The 56 page report outlines nothing short of the utter transformation of Canada, its economy and workforce, by way of transitioning away from fossil fuels to a largely electric economy, with the possibility of hydrogen usage as well. In doing so it means to largely do away with the fossil fuel industry which is one of Canada’s largest industries and contributors to GDP, exports and wealth. The report provides recommendations as to what to do with the people involved in that industry, but not so much the companies who employ them, create those jobs or that wealth.
On Thursday, I’ll have the detailed Conservative response from MP Shannon Stubbs.
Late on Monday the federal Natural Resources Committee released its final report on the “just transition.” Pipeline Online will have several stories on it over the coming days, but the first is the verbatim 19 recommendations by the committee. Both the Conservatives and Bloc issued dissenting reports.
One of the things all this just transitioning is all about is switching from coal, oil and gas to wind and solar. Well, today, the day before the solstice, solar power in Alberta at noon was producing half its rated capacity.
U of R professor Jim Warren asks about freezing in the dark, 2023 Version. How many do Canadians do Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault anticipate the “just transition” will kill?
Also, on Friday a Wisconsin First Nation (what they call “tribe”) was successful in getting a judge to punt Enbridge Line 5 off their land, but gave them three years to do so. Given how long it takes to get environmental approval for anything pipeline, that could be a tall order. But the fact this order was given in the first place could be an enormous precedent in the US. If tribes can retroactively punt mainline pipelines off their land, there will be utter chaos. Think Standing Rock, times 100.
The irony is the current federal government wants to shut this all down, because coal is evil.
In the meantime, Saskatchewan – Regina, Estevan and Weyburn – showed off its decades of experience to worldwide experts on carbon capture, utilization and storage as they set international standards for the same.
Only sheer and utter incompetence at the top could result in Alberta again issuing electrical grid alerts. It did so again Wednesday afternoon. In November-December, it issued five alerts in three weeks.
And Saskatchewan is continuing down this path.
Wind power collapses across the central US, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba at the same time Wednesday morning. That’s 1100 miles north south, and 700 miles east west in the Canadian prairies.
Without it, nothing else matters.
I wrote this column nearly two weeks ago, and only shared it this morning. But it turns out this is playing out in real time, as I’m working on a big story about how SaskPower’s Poplar River Power Station is down, thus putting us out nearly 600 megawatts. This happened just as demand is spiking for air conditioning due to +30 temps this week. As a result, SaskPower is scrambling to reduce its internal demand, doing something called “load shedding.” Watch for that story once I’ve got it together.
Geez, wonder who the federal government likes best? Federal government gives $86 million to convert Newfoundland oil refinery to biofuel.
And you know it likes Newfoundland because when they wanted to open up a major new oilfield, the federal Liberal government bit their tongue and said, “Sure!”
But now Newfoundland will also got a taste of what Alberta usually chews on – delays on energy projects. The Bay du Nord sailed through federal approvals (sailed – see what I did there?) , only to find out that Norwegian proponent Equinor is going to delay it three years. Didn’t they know the federal government is supposed to delay oil projects three years, not the oil company?
I’m not much of a sports guy, but I think the term might be scoring an “own goal.”
Jim Warren writes about the environmentalists reaping what they’ve sown: how the anti-development approval processes demanded by environmentalists are now blocking green energy projects
One more time, Alberta’s wind power generation collapses. You’d think this was a feature, not a bug?
The new CEO of Cenovus, Canada’s second largest oil producer and Saskatchewan’s largest (after they bought Husky during the COVID pandemic), tells it like it is. There’s a healthy dose of reality in his comments, but Cenovus is also leading the charge for carbon capture in the oilsands. He also likes the idea of nuclear reactors usage in the oilsands.
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.