SaskPower awards major wind and solar projects to Meadow Lake Tribal Council, Mistawasis Nêhiyawak and Potentia partnerships
All-of-the-above approach: SaskPower Minister’s speech at wind and solar announcement
Meanwhile:
Energy Realities Podcast: Spain and Portugal’s major blackout
This is huge – Alberta wind and solar projects will have to put up the reclamation costs up front before going ahead. Should Saskatchewan do the same? Alberta releases new rules and no-go zones on wind and solar projects.
And the new rules mean when these turbines you see come down at end of life, they likely will not be replaced.
Also:
You can’t make this stuff up.
The Saskatchewan Green Party proposes to “Make Green Jobs the future of Saskatchewan’s economy by transitioning away from fossil fuels,” while financing its extensive socialist policy platform by modelling Norway which applies “a whopping 78 percent total tax” on oil and gas revenues.
Notably, it includes five pages discussing the Greens opposition to small modular reactors. And the policy document closes by saying on the last page, “How do we pay for it? The Saskatchewan Green Party is dedicated to building a prosperous future for our province. It is time to raise royalty rates in the oil & gas sector to levels that truly reflect the value of our resources. We would use Norway as an example. Norway has a 51 percent tax on petroleum-related income, on top of the 27 percent income tax. That amounts to a whopping 78 percent total tax. This is put into a fund to benefit all citizens.”
That page does not list any other major revenue source, or indeed any revenue source at all, other than heavily taxing oil and gas, the same oil and gas earlier in the document the party promises to transition away from. If the party does succeed in “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” (Page 17) it offers no other source of revenue on the “How do we pay for it?” page (Page 61).
Don’t block our mountains or mess with good farmland: #Alberta releases renewable power rules. And reclamation is going to be paid up front. This story is the full meat, potatoes, gravy and carrots on Wednesday’s wind and solar announcement.
And what’s the pool at for Trudeau resigning today? It’s 40 years to the day since daddy took his “walk in the snow.”
Alberta now has 44 wind farms, and Wednesday night they collectively produced next to no power (posted yesterday, but leads into the next two for context)
On Thursday, Alberta wind power had a hangover and the sun didn’t come out to play
What the Globe and Mail left out in its story on grid-scale batteries in Alberta
Key points:
The last day saw not only wind utterly collapse in Alberta, but solar AT THE SAME TIME, even at noon. And the narrative that we’ll simply build a lot of batteries for when that happens is disproven, as Alberta’s seven batteries only produced a 62 minutes of a wee bit of power all day on Thursday. And over the last 30 days, those seven batteries only produced 265 minutes out of over 300,000 minutes available to them. Yes, you read that right. And SaskPower is spending $26 million to buy one of these batteries. Seriously. It should be online any day.
So why, again, are we throwing away what we know works, natural gas and coal, for wind, solar and batteries? And it’s not even all that cold yet!
Bonus reading:
Can solar power essentially flatline for a whole day? It did in Alberta on Monday
How is it some people are arguing a pipeline treaty is “dormant?” Would that make other treaties, say those with First Nations, also dormant?
I’ve been writing about the phenomenal growth of the North Dakota Bakken for the better part of 15 years. In 2008, the state produced around 90,000 barrels per day. By 2014, it was something like 1.2 million. Currently it’s around a million or so. A major player was Hess Corporation, which currently produces about 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent in North Dakota. But curiously, none of the supermajor oil companies were involved in North Dakota. Well, that changed, as Hess is being bought by Chevron.
Four reactors could cost Saskatchewan $12 to $20 billion. The feds just gave us $74 million. But don’t worry, the money came from Guilbeault and Wilkinson. At least, those were the ministers quoted.
In the above, you will see that in 26 years, four months and 10 days, Saskatchewan could need as many as 27.5 nuclear reactors. At $3 to $5 billion a crack. Good luck, with that.
Also, Yukon might connect to the BC, and thereby national, electrical grid.
And Ford just milked the federal and Quebec EV cow for $1.2 billion
Clouds cause solar power to plummet in Alberta at supper time on Aug. 9. Who woulda thunk it? And something is going on with the grid-scale batteries.
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?
Pipeline Online column on Alberta’s two electrical grid alerts this past week. And it’s not even really cold there yet.
As evidenced twice this past week, the electrical grid can barely handle the demand we have, now, before we switch most of our transportation system to electric vehicles. What happens when half our cars and trucks are EVs? Then three-quarters? What happens when the wind doesn’t blow then? No one goes to work?
When will the other media take notice? When will they start to question this mad rush to wind and solar, and total adoption of electric vehicles? When will someone else in the Saskatchewan media declare “The emperor has no clothes?”