Year: 2011

My latest in The Globe and Mail: Oil sands monitoring plan a good step forward

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Environment Canada has released the second of two phases of a proposed environmental monitoring plan for the oil sands, and one need only look at the second name on the list of authors on the first page to understand its significance: Dr. David Schindler. Dr. Schindler is one of the most high-profile and well-respected personalities … Read more

Keep Alberta Oil in the Ground

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In case you missed it, today’s Globe and Mail features an op-ed by 350.org founder Bill McKibben entitled Keep Alberta Oil in the Ground. In the article, McKibben specifically mentions an Economy Lab post of mine on the Keystone XL pipeline debate.  I have also run some similar numbers on this blog here and here. … Read more

Influences on the way to 10,000 Tweets

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Today, I will hit a milestone that I never would have imagined – I will send out my 10,000th Tweet. When I started using Twitter, I saw it as a way to provide a real-time reading list for my students, but I have since found it to be so much more than that.  I decided to reach the 10,000 tweet level with a 5 tweet series of works that have influenced my thinking about energy and climate policies and politics, and a thank you with #10000.  Here are the items I chose:

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The AUC and Maxim Power: No steps forward, 3 steps back.

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Last week, on June 30th, the Alberta Utilities Commission approved the Milner Expansion Project, a 500Mw coal-fired generating facility, to be built 20km north of Grande Cache, west of Edmonton. This decision raises more issues that I can possibly cover in a single post, so I’ll narrow it down to my top 3.

First and foremost, I do not understand how it makes sense for the Alberta Utilities Commission, based on a request from Maxim Power,  to provide expeditious approval (see item 5 on page 1 here) based on the need for the plant (which the AUC is no longer supposed to consider in our de-regulated power market), and so that a utility project can be built in Alberta before federal GHG regulations come into place.

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David Roberts and Stephen Gordon are saying almost the same thing about green jobs

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Over the last couple of days, my Twitter feed has been swamped with discussion about green jobs.  Yesterday, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blogger and Laval Professor Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) posted a piece on the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab arguing that presenting, “the employment opportunities generated by a set of proposals…as an additional benefit of the policy agenda..(is) a mistake.” I expected this would generate some push-back when I read the headline, but didn’t expect that Grist.org blogger David Roberts (@drgrist) would be one of those weighing in.  He did, with this post. I think they agree on more than either might believe.  Here’s why.

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Twice the offsets, half the credibility for the offset system

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The Governments of Alberta and Canada announced today that a final funding formula had been reached for Shell’s Quest project, a carbon capture and storage operation housed at Shell’s Scotford Upgrader in Fort Saskatchewan.  The fact that the funding model has been agreed upon is great news, since although I have been critical of Alberta’s carbon capture and storage strategy in the past, I think that these pilots provide a crucial opportunity for technological advancement.  In this case, proving that CCS can work, at scale, in an oilsands upgrader has the potential to be a game-changer.

The good news in this press release ended for me when I read, “Alberta is updating its carbon offset program to allow multiple-credits…(for)…large-scale, direct injection CCS projects.”  Under this arrangement, projects, “will receive a bonus credit for every tonne of offset credit created through the capture and storage of their CO2.” In other words, capture and store 1, get 2.  A similar bonus credit regime for CCS had been proposed under both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bills in the US.

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EEDC Oilsands Event Recap

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This morning, join 650 other interested and engaged people at Shaw Conference Center, for Edmonton Economic Development Corporation’s “Oil Sands: What’s Really Going On?” event. As you can see from speaker line-up, it bound to interesting day. It lucky enough to attend as guest of David Kane and EEDC, for grateful. Click below for recap, with few links your reading pleasure.

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Attn: Andrew Nikiforuk. If you’re going to make accusations, you should back them up.

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In this article in The Tyee, Andrew Nikiforuk levels some very serious allegations with respect to the National Energy Board, suggesting that the Board has been captured (see * below for definition) by industry, that it cannot be objective because it is industry-financed, and that it does not appropriately balance the interests of energy companies with those of rural Canadians.

If you are going to level an accusation that the country’s most powerful regulatory body has been captured by industry, you would likely want to have the backup of experts in legal process, perhaps a regulatory economist (I might be biased on this one), and certainly you should be armed with a long list of citations to previous Board decisions which demonstrate your case. In this article, Nikiforuk’s primary source is Dave Core, director of federally regulated projects for the Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations (CAEPLA), described on the CAEPLA website as, “…one of Canada’s foremost and leading landowner advocates.” In other words, he works on behalf of those people who are most negatively affected by energy infrastructure – those with pipelines literally in their backyards. With that kind of backup, Mr. Nikiforuk is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Nikiforuk’s argument that the NEB has been captured is supported with a quote from a 2000 report (which is not online) on the NEB’s effectiveness by Purvin & Gertz saying that, “there is a disturbing perception that the National Energy Board has in some sense been ‘captured’ by the western based producer and pipeline industries.”  The perception of capture does not, in and of itself, imply capture, and I am sure if that report had any more damning evidence, it would have been cited.  Further, as you will see below, Nikiforuk is not afraid to take a quote out of context.

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Gas prices, fuel economy, electricity prices, etc.

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Last night, I posted a simple calculation to Twitter.  Based on gasoline energy content of 32.2 MJ/l LHV, and a conversion of 3.6 MJ/kWh, I calculated 8.94 kWh/l of gasoline, and thus stated that $1.30/l gasoline was approximately equivalent to 14.4c/kWh electricity.  This had, in a sense, the desired result.  Many of my followers followed … Read more