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Originally Posted by Slava
But what does that actually mean? I’m not disagreeing with you, because it makes sense and I think most people would say we need to be less reliant on this industry. But what I find head is the government role in that. I don’t want them choosing which companies to give money to. I also wonder about you “just diversify” the economy. It’s really complicated and a lot of the heavy lifting is done in the market and not by the government and political will.
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I think a good start would be dumping a bunch of targeted money at Alberta universities to try develop centres of excellence and a burgeoning talent pool of people in said industry. The next step is to try and draw employers. This part gets tricky for sure, do you dump money at existing companies to try jump-start things? Do you put a bunch of incentives in place to draw venture capital to try grow it grassroots? Does the government act as a VC to get things going? I have no idea. I try elect people smarter than me to try figure it out
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Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
What do you mean by economics of renewables being more attractive? Could you be more specific? Which ones types of alternatives?
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Solar and wind have lower full cycle unit costs than coal or natural gas according to most of the recent studies on the matter. Yes.. yes.. storage, blah blah. We are so far from enough renewables on our grid to worry about it, and I'd rather the focus of innovation be in energy storage than burning up dinosaurs and figuring out how to capture all the pollution. One looks like a path forward, the other looks like clutching onto our past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_o...city_by_source
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Why do we have to absolutely obliterate one industry for another? It seems like that’s how people think.
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Alberta is not a cost friendly environment for businesses. Wages are still high compared to the rest of the country. Housing is far from cheap. Commercial real estate is the only draw right now. Everyone outside the oil industry considering setting up in Calgary knows they are one oil boom away from getting destroyed by ballooning costs. Letting the industry stagnate is the quickest path to diversification. Like I said before, we made great strides in the 90s and it largely got wiped out by the next oil boom in the 2000s.