“Alberta sees an energy transition 'happen before our eyes' “

[KinAlberta]

If it’s cheaper in the long run:

- Burning less at home means more to sell abroad!
(Basically fewer cooks eating the profits.)

- cheaper diesel for the trucks on our roads


Varcoe: Alberta sees an energy transition 'happen before our eyes' | Calgary Herald

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...efore-our-eyes




.

[Nayr]

Good for them, and I’m a trucker. Hauling in diesel on the ice road has to be expensive. Works at Fort chip, but how much room would it take to set up a solar farm to meet Edmonton’s requirements? Maybe solar panels on every rooftop would suffice, idk.

[Nyksta]

From what I hear about individual home rooftop solar systems, it takes about 14 to 18 years of not paying electrical utilities to pay off the cost of the hardware. That is calculated based on the manufacturer "25 year warranty" to fix it for free if anything isnt working. If you had to repair it out of pocket, not sure if a person would ever get ahead.

What is the process of manufacturing these solar panels? Where are the materials sourced and how much fossil fuels and pollution is created to make the "green climate change" item?

If it weren't for Chernobyl, i wonder if nuclear power would be given a stronger public approval for energy since there's such a hate on for oil and gas.

[elkhunter11]

Originally Posted by Nayr

Good for them, and I’m a trucker. Hauling in diesel on the ice road has to be expensive. Works at Fort chip, but how much room would it take to set up a solar farm to meet Edmonton’s requirements? Maybe solar panels on every rooftop would suffice, idk.

According to the article, it will provide up to 25% of the small communities electricity, that is a long ways from powering the community all year. As for supplying all of Edmonton's electricity, good luck with that, especially if we are going to transition to electric vehicles, and electric heat.

[New2Elk]

I like how the article states it has shown the world that things like this can happen even in the smallest communities. Only if you’re in the right locations however. You go to any of the northern communities in Canada and when you have your highest energy demand, you get 6 hours of twilight, solar obviously isn’t an option.

[Twisted Canuck]

Solar and wind, marginally more practical than low methane unicorn farts.

Elk also makes a good point about converting to electric vehicles (which is laughable imo). How much power would need to be generated, and how much would the power grid need to be beefed up, to convert all transportation needs? Once you start looking at those trifling practical matters, and start doing calculations and looking at the actual cost involved of building the necessary infrastructure, all of a sudden energy dense fuels like NG, gasoline and diesel don't look like such a bad idea.

When I see a jurisdiction like California talking about banning all non electric vehicles, when they can't even run their A/Cs without rolling brown-outs, I laugh.

Every place they tried to go to 'sustainable' energy it has been an unmitigated, stupidly expensive disaster. Germany. Ontario. California. Seriously, if the Germans couldn't make this work, that should be a pretty damn big red flag right there.

[Redhorse Ranch]

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/n...sized-battery/

Generation is one thing; storage is another. It's the one thing that greenies don't want to talk about.

[Nayr]

Originally Posted by elkhunter11

According to the article, it will provide up to 25% of the small communities electricity, that is a long ways from powering the community all year. As for supplying all of Edmonton's electricity, good luck with that, especially if we are going to transition to electric vehicles, and electric heat.

Yes I think we’re a long ways off from the tech to go totally renewable, that’s my point. As for Ft chip 25% is a good start, now they need three more and they do have the room to set them up.

[elkhunter11]

Originally Posted by Nayr

Yes I think we’re a long ways off from the tech to go totally renewable, that’s my point. As for Ft chip 25% is a good start, now they need three more and they do have the room to set them up.

It might work that way if there were as many hours of sun in the winter as in the summer, but that isn't the case. It works well in summer, because there are 18 hours of daylight, but in winter there are 6 hours of daylight. Not only is there not enough daylight in winter to charge the batteries, but the electrical demand is so much higher.

[Map Maker]

A bit of a game changer ( for me) is the geothermal power plants.
Not geothermal heating but drilling down deep to extract the intense heat to make steam to turn turbines.
Totally renewable and with our drilling expertise and past borelogs, we are in a good position to make this happen in Alberta.
And supposedly, Alberta is close to a fault line which makes it ideal for this type of energy production.
Of course, the challenges are the huge investment up front, and the holes are about 500 deeper than conventuals wells.

[FCLightning]

Originally Posted by Map Maker

A bit of a game changer ( for me) is the geothermal power plants.
Not geothermal heating but drilling down deep to extract the intense heat to make steam to turn turbines.
Totally renewable and with our drilling expertise and past borelogs, we are in a good position to make this happen in Alberta.
And supposedly, Alberta is close to a fault line which makes it ideal for this type of energy production.
Of course, the challenges are the huge investment up front, and the holes are about 500 deeper than conventuals wells.

Iceland is doing this so it isn't like the data isn't available for what types of efficiencies could be expected. Which makes me think that if it was economically viable someone would be doing it here already. Of course in Iceland they don't have to drill down deep to access the heat.

[FCLightning]

Originally Posted by elkhunter11

It might work that way if there were as many hours of sun in the winter as in the summer, but that isn't the case. It works well in summer, because there are 18 hours of daylight, but in winter there are 6 hours of daylight. Not only is there not enough daylight in winter to charge the batteries, but the electrical demand is so much higher.

I think they acknowledge this in the article, but I find it rather disengenuous to make mention of the cost of trucking diesel on ice roads and not directly state that the system will have very little effect on that aspect.

[Sundog57]

https://deepcorp.ca/management/

It's already happening in Sask and in California and Texas

There is a tremenous amount of expertiese in Alberta in drilling HP/HT wells.
There is a huge resource all along the Eastern Slope as well as around Duvernay. This is a sector where the government could incentivise private industry to everyone's benefit - all that has to happen is somebody has to move on it.
You can't help but think that this is a considerably better solution than solar or wind.
It isn't affected by the weather or hours of daylight.
It shouldn't affect wildlife or farming or much of anything.

[Map Maker]

Double post

[Map Maker]

Originally Posted by FCLightning

Iceland is doing this so it isn't like the data isn't available for what types of efficiencies could be expected. Which makes me think that if it was economically viable someone would be doing it here already. Of course in Iceland they don't have to drill down deep to access the heat.

It’s because, All the infrastructure is in place to use fossil fuels and it is the cheapest by far. ( in the short term)
They are building Alberta’s first geothermal plant in grande prairie right now and should be producing energy in 2.5 years.
I’m not sure why everything is so hush-hush about it.

https://www.albertano1.ca/about

[FCLightning]

Originally Posted by Map Maker

It’s because, All the infrastructure is in place to use fossil fuels and it is the cheapest by far. ( in the short term)
They are building Alberta’s first geothermal plant in grande prairie right now and should be producing energy in 2.5 years.
I’m not sure why everything is so hush-hush about it.

https://www.albertano1.ca/about

To me that is awesome news.

[lmtada]

Originally Posted by FCLightning

Iceland is doing this so it isn't like the data isn't available for what types of efficiencies could be expected. Which makes me think that if it was economically viable someone would be doing it here already. Of course in Iceland they don't have to drill down deep to access the heat.

Exactly. Iceland is a volcanic island. The heat is right at surface. Look at Iceland, it’s just a rock, no exports except fish. Iceland is small population. 350-500k. Size of a Regina. What interesting about Iceland, is there World Cup soccer team. Unbelievably good. Better than America, Canada.

[comaderek]

I am in Manitoba and we have hydroelectric . I think we could run a ton of electric power sources with what we can produce. It appears we are on wind farm process as well. I believe if you can generate power anything u have can be put on the grids and sold. Biggest issue is transmission degradation where by the time it gets to US where it is sold we lose like 50% or more to the air via lines. I still think in the future we will be selling fresh water to the US via pipelines.

[Bushrat]

Originally Posted by comaderek

I still think in the future we will be selling fresh water to the US via pipelines.

I would think they would tap into the great lakes on their side of the border. Even if we did sell them water we would most likely get shafted in the deal, it's the Canadian way.

[KinAlberta]

Originally Posted by comaderek

I am in Manitoba and we have hydroelectric . I think we could run a ton of electric power sources with what we can produce. It appears we are on wind farm process as well. I believe if you can generate power anything u have can be put on the grids and sold. Biggest issue is transmission degradation where by the time it gets to US where it is sold we lose like 50% or more to the air via lines. I still think in the future we will be selling fresh water to the US via pipelines.

Hydro destroys ecosystems by flooding over huge areas valley environments.

Hydroelectric is distinctly worse from strip mining in that hydro permanently wipes out the natural ecosystem wheras areas strip mined for coal or oil have to get reclaimed in a few decades.

[Map Maker]

Originally Posted by Sundog57

https://deepcorp.ca/management/

It's already happening in Sask and in California and Texas

There is a tremenous amount of expertiese in Alberta in drilling HP/HT wells.
There is a huge resource all along the Eastern Slope as well as around Duvernay. This is a sector where the government could incentivise private industry to everyone's benefit - all that has to happen is somebody has to move on it.
You can't help but think that this is a considerably better solution than solar or wind.
It isn't affected by the weather or hours of daylight.
It shouldn't affect wildlife or farming or much of anything.

Here some recent news on the DEEP project in Saskatchewan.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/financia...c7dfc7b1a/amp/

Also with geothermal power generation is that it works best when there is a big differential in temperatures ( ie cold winter produces more electricity) plus the waste product of this power is heat.

[ward]

Originally Posted by lmtada

Exactly. Iceland is a volcanic island. The heat is right at surface. Look at Iceland, it’s just a rock, no exports except fish. Iceland is small population. 350-500k. Size of a Regina. What interesting about Iceland, is there World Cup soccer team. Unbelievably good. Better than America, Canada.

800,000 sheep.🙂

[FCLightning]

Originally Posted by ward

800,000 sheep.🙂

And all the sheep farmers are going broke because the gov't allowed import of cheap New Zealand meat products. The gov't answer to their plight was for them to get into tourism of some sort.

[KinAlberta]

Article from September:

BP says oil demand may have peaked last year - CNN

BP is less bullish, which is why it is trying to pivot away from oil after a century of exploration. This week the company will provide investors with more detail on its new strategy, which involves a 10-fold increase in annual low carbon investments to $5 billion by 2030, when it expects its oil and gas production to have fallen by 40% from 2019 levels.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/busin...rus/index.html

[Grizzly Adams]

Originally Posted by FCLightning

And all the sheep farmers are going broke because the gov't allowed import of cheap New Zealand meat products. The gov't answer to their plight was for them to get into tourism of some sort.

Tourism is the universal answer for a failing economic system. it assumes someone elsewhere is affluent enough to travel and interested in seeing what you have to offer.

Grizz

[KinAlberta]

I’m not sure what we have of could have that could come even remotely close to the revenue and capital investment generating ability of oil and gas exports.

We basically have all our eggs in one basket. Forestry, Ag., other mining all pale in comparison. Petrochemicals might offer us a future. Electric generation possibly a diversifier. Technology? Good luck picking a winner.



$170 trillion:

Carney: Factor climate change into financial decisions - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=7t-uYuLPATg



Carney trivia:

Carney was born on 16 March 1965, in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories,[3][4] the son of Verlie Margaret (née Kemper) and Robert James Martin Carney.[5][6][7]

When Carney was six, his family moved to Edmonton, Alberta.[4] ... Carney attended St. Francis Xavier High School, Edmonton[8] before studying at Harvard University.[4][9]

Carney graduated from Harvard in 1988. ...”

[KinAlberta]

Good news?

Denmark set to end all new oil and gas exploration - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55184580

[Bushrat]

Originally Posted by KinAlberta

Good news?

Denmark set to end all new oil and gas exploration - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55184580

Hmm, 30 years from now eh? Will be interesting to see how soon this virtue posturing anti carbon agenda fluff will be forgotten about. Betting Denmark will be extracting more fossil fuel then than now or perhaps if they do stop extracting I would like to see just how much they will be importing. Whether they do or don't extract fossil fuel is mute, what matters is how much they consume.

[RandyBoBandy]

All this stuff is way above my pay grade BUT I cannot wrap my head about the World quitting the use of petroleum products?? HOW??
I just don't understand

[MountainTi]

Originally Posted by RandyBoBandy

All this stuff is way above my pay grade BUT I cannot wrap my head about the World quitting the use of petroleum products?? HOW??
I just don't understand

Those that believe the world will quit using petroleum products just don't understand either..