[Zarley]

It's interesting this topic popped back up as the Globe has an article today dealing with the naivety around mass electrification. Essentially there is a massive delta between predictions / targets and the actual capital investment needed to support electrification.

Not a surprise to anyone who pays attention to energy, but it's rare to see this reported in the media.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...ity-expansion/

A recent report from Royal Bank of Canada predicted Canadian electricity consumption will rise by 50 per cent over the next decade alone. Earlier this year, one by the Canadian Climate Institute said the nation’s electricity generation capacity will need to grow between 2.2 and 3.4 times larger by mid-century than it is today. Last year, another report by the Institut de l’énergie Trottier – Polytechnique Montréal said electricity production from variable sources such as wind and solar must grow dramatically to achieve net-zero objectives.

The investment required to build all that capacity has been likened to wartime spending. But Canada’s major utilities aren’t preparing for anything of the sort. Nor are major planning bodies such as Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) telling them to. That’s the main take-away from annual reports and planning outlooks published by these organizations and reviewed by The Globe and Mail, and interviews with decision makers within these organizations.

“I don’t think you can point anywhere to any utility that is actually pursuing this in its system plans, or its capital plans,” acknowledged Jason Dion, mitigation research director at the Canadian Climate Institute, a co-author of the report his organization released in May.

This summer, the AESO published a report examining scenarios for reaching a net-zero grid in Alberta by 2035. It was openly skeptical about achieving that target, noting the various scenarios explored “face significant implementation challenges,” not the least of which is that there’s just 13 years remaining. Then there’s the cost: achieving net zero would require capital investments of between $44-billion and $55-billion, it said.
To understand utilities’ skepticism, it’s worth noting that new generating plants aren’t the only way to satisfy rising demand. BC Hydro hopes to achieve significant savings through energy efficiency initiatives, along with programs that encourage users to shift consumption to times of the day when there’s more power available. That’s partly why its latest 20-year plan predicted no need for new capacity until 2037.

More importantly, though, not everyone believes buildings and vehicles will be rapidly electrified. Prof. Winfield said current government policies by no means assure that outcome. “So there’s a question on the part of the utility: is that demand growth actually really going to be realized?”

Kevin Dawson, the AESO’s director of forecasting and analytics, said his organization doesn’t think electrification will proceed as quickly as aggressive think tanks assume. “When we look at it, there’s a certain amount of inertia in the system – there’s a certain amount of cost advantage that the historical technologies have, that might take some time to overcome,” he said.

TransAlta’s Mr. Van Melle questioned whether utilities could afford rapid mass electrification. “If you were to electrify everything that is now using some sort of fossil fuel, the companies that would have to do it don’t have that sheer amount of capital to invest,” he said. “I don’t think it’s possible.”