Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[Tinordi]

Are you saying nuclear energy is cheaper than renewable energy? That statement is not based in any reasonable assessment of the facts on the ground.

On the whole renewables couldn't possible power a modern society or the world point. I don't think anyone is saying that they're going to power everything. But even so, that statement is not firmly rooted with the current thinking on renewables.

A number of studies are showing that renewables could power a significant portion of global energy demand. NREL showed how in the US one of the most energy intensive countries in the world could move to a 80% renewable electricity system with current technologies. Even so, if renewables get to 25% of the global energy mix then they would be a significant share of global energy supply. Most conservative low-carbon scenarios assume that this would be the role for renewables.

I ask again though, why are we even talking about this? No one is saying that renewables are going to take over the world. Just that they are going to quickly expand. Splitting hairs about nuclear versus renewables is a navel gazing exercise or a method to sow confusion and delay. We have demonstrable cases of countries quickly expanding renewables with little costs.

Pointing to Germany or Ontario as "failures" just is not rooted in any honest assessment of the data. Ontario's electricity system costs have very little to do with renewables (and a hell of a lot todo with nuclear energy btw). Ask any German if they regret going to renewables and the only people you'd find complaining are shareholders in the large utilities who bet on coal and have seen 80% of their market cap wiped out.

[heep223]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Are you saying nuclear energy is cheaper than renewable energy? That statement is not based in any reasonable assessment of the facts on the ground.

On the whole renewables couldn't possible power a modern society or the world point. I don't think anyone is saying that they're going to power everything. But even so, that statement is not firmly rooted with the current thinking on renewables.

A number of studies are showing that renewables could power a significant portion of global energy demand. NREL showed how in the US one of the most energy intensive countries in the world could move to a 80% renewable electricity system with current technologies. Even so, if renewables get to 25% of the global energy mix then they would be a significant share of global energy supply. Most conservative low-carbon scenarios assume that this would be the role for renewables.

I ask again though, why are we even talking about this? No one is saying that renewables are going to take over the world. Just that they are going to quickly expand. Splitting hairs about nuclear versus renewables is a navel gazing exercise or a method to sow confusion and delay. We have demonstrable cases of countries quickly expanding renewables with little costs.

Pointing to Germany or Ontario as "failures" just is not rooted in any honest assessment of the data. Ontario's electricity system costs have very little to do with renewables (and a hell of a lot todo with nuclear energy btw). Ask any German if they regret going to renewables and the only people you'd find complaining are shareholders in the large utilities who bet on coal and have seen 80% of their market cap wiped out.

If you can afford to subsidize development of renewables then that's great. Germany has a strong, diversified economy that allows for this. I think what that poster is referring to in Ontario is that they subsidize renewables and it costs the taxpayer at a time when the province is already broke. Like the feed-in tariff for solar development, not only does it cost the taxpayer but there's also a ton of uncertainty because renewable developers are always wondering if the government is going to pull it. Tough to make long term decisions on projects with that uncertainty.

Other places in Europe such as Portugal and Spain have large renewable generation and it cost them an arm and a leg to develop the industry. And they're also broke.

Alberta might be able to pull it off if we support the development of our O&G industry and use that as an anchor to continue to subsidize renewables. The problem is that the issue is polarizing and as such renewable supporters want to boycott the fossil fuel business.

When you talk about an honest assessment of the data you can't just ignore the cost to the taxpayer.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by heep223

When you talk about an honest assessment of the data you can't just ignore the cost to the taxpayer.

Especially at a time when public finances are under tremendous stress due to an ageing population of taxpayers and the flat-lining of the economy. What do you think voters are going to do when faced with some combination of increasing subsidies for renewable energy, cutting health care funding, cutting public pensions, and raising taxes?

[Tinordi]

Lets talk about the cost of the taxpayer and subsidies.

Such as the "global adjustment" on all Ontario power bills which was introduced to pay for Darlington which was 9 billion dollars over budget.

Estimates of the Green energy act costs for subsidizing renewables were between 1.2 to 2 billion.

It's expensive to introduce renewables in a costly way, look at Spain. But now that Spain took the hit for being the first mover, the industry is maturing and they're becoming cost-competitive without much government support at this point. And yes, no one said reducing GHG emissions was going to be costless. We have to make a public policy decision to take some short term pain today to avoid much larger long-term pain in generations. That's the unfortunate business of trying to reduce carbon emissions. If it had no costs we wouldn't be having this conversation.

So if you think that yes, we should do something about carbon, then you are essentially buying into higher costs from the get-go. That then means we're talking about relative costs. I fail to see how a nuclear future is less costly. There will be some role for nuclear but it's a straw man to moan about renewables and point at nuclear.

[heep223]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Lets talk about the cost of the taxpayer and subsidies.

Such as the "global adjustment" on all Ontario power bills which was introduced to pay for Darlington which was 9 billion dollars over budget.

Estimates of the Green energy act costs for subsidizing renewables were between 1.2 to 2 billion.

It's expensive to introduce renewables in a costly way, look at Spain. But now that Spain took the hit for being the first mover, the industry is maturing and they're becoming cost-competitive without much government support at this point. And yes, no one said reducing GHG emissions was going to be costless. We have to make a public policy decision to take some short term pain today to avoid much larger long-term pain in generations. That's the unfortunate business of trying to reduce carbon emissions. If it had no costs we wouldn't be having this conversation.

So if you think that yes, we should do something about carbon, then you are essentially buying into higher costs from the get-go. That then means we're talking about relative costs. I fail to see how a nuclear future is less costly. There will be some role for nuclear but it's a straw man to moan about renewables and point at nuclear.

Interesting that you're bringing up Spain as "initially taken the hit and now now they're becoming competitive". Spain is around the same size of economy as Canada so it's a good comparison.

Hoping to stimulate a new green industry, for which sunny Spain seems ideal, the government increased the prices it paid for solar power to 12 times the market price for electricity.

Subsidies to solar energy rose from €190m in 2007 to €3.5 billion in 2012 (an 18-fold increase). Total subsidies to all renewables reached €8.1 billion in 2012, see chart. Since the government was unwilling to pass the full costs on to consumers, the cumulative tariff deficit (the cost of the system minus revenues from consumers) reached €26 billion, having risen by about €5 billion a year.

It has been a chastening experience. The government failed to cut subsidies when renewables were booming, so the cuts have had to be draconian. It imposed no cap on new capacity and stood by while that grew uncontrollably (this also happened in Germany). The promised jobs have vanished. The solar-energy business has lost tens of thousands of jobs from its peak. And after repeated retroactive cuts no one is willing to invest in renewable energy any more. Yet because projects often receive subsidies for 20 years, the costs remain. Even after the cuts, renewables subsidies are running at €7 billion-8 billion a year. It is not hard to think of better ways of spending such large sums of taxpayers’ money.

For 5 years, IER has warned of this problem beginning when Dr. Gabriel Calzada released his paper on the situation in Spain and testified before Congress. He found that Spain’s ‘‘green jobs’’ agenda resulted in job losses elsewhere in the country’s economy. For each ‘‘green’’ megawatt installed, 5.28 jobs on average were lost in the Spanish economy; for each megawatt of wind energy installed, 4.27 jobs were lost; and for each megawatt of solar installed, 12.7 jobs were lost. Although solar energy may appear to employ many workers in the plant’s construction, in reality it consumes a large amount of capital that would have created many more jobs in other parts of the economy. The study also found that 9 out of 10 jobs in the renewable industry were temporary.

The Spanish Government also slashed subsidies to solar power, subsidizing just 500 megawatts of new solar projects, down from 2,400 megawatts in 2008.27 Its solar sector, which once employed 60,000 workers, now employs just 5,000. In 2013, solar investment in Spain dropped by 90 percent from its 2011 level of $10 billion.


Spain’s 20% renewable energy share of generation from wind and solar power has come at a very high cost to the nation.

Germany, who actually were on this before Spain was, is actually investing massively in coal consumption because of the loss of nuclear and the high cost of renewable:

Coal consumption in Germany in 2012 was the highest it has been since 2008, and electricity from brown coal (lignite) in 2013 reached the highest level since 1990 when East Germany’s Soviet-era coal plants began to be shut down. German electricity generation from coal increased to compensate for the loss of the hastily shuttered nuclear facilities. Germany is now building new coal capacity at a rapid rate, approving 10 new coal plants to come on line within the next 2 years to deal with expensive natural gas generation and the high costs and unreliability of renewable energy.31 As a result, carbon dioxide emissions are increasing.

Germany has some of the highest costs of electricity in Europe and its consumers are becoming energy poor. In 2012, the average price of electricity in Germany was 36.25 cents per kilowatt hour,35 compared to just 11.88 cents for U.S. households, triple the U.S. average residential price.36 These prices led Germany’s Energy Minister to recently caution that they risk the ‘‘deindustrialization’’ of the economy.

The poor suffer disproportionately from higher energy costs because they spend a higher percentage of their income on energy. As many as 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because of an inability to pay for rising energy costs, including 200,000 of Germany’s long-term unemployed.

Germany’s power has been strained by new wind and solar projects both on and offshore, making the government invest up to $27 billion over the next decade to build about 1,700 miles of high-capacity power lines and to upgrade existing lines. The reality is that not only is renewable energy more expensive, but it also requires expensive transmission investments that existing sources do not, thus compounding the impact on consumers and businesses.

You talk about an honest assessment of the data but it seems like you're leaving out some pretty key data. In Canada we have access to huge amounts of cheap natural gas to generate electricity and it's a pretty clean burning fuel. We already have the infrastructure (transmission, refining, production) in place to develop and consume natural gas.

If we can use some public profit from the Oil & Gas industry to support renewables then we should but I would draw the line there. But it would be completely irresponsible to continue to fund or introduce large scale support for this industry. I'm all for phasing out dirty coal completely in favour of cleaner natural gas, but taxpayer funding of large scale solar and/or wind industry is bound to end in disaster just like it has all over the world.

Let the renewable industry become competitive naturally, or with small reasonable support.

http://www.economist.com/news/busine...s-cost-del-sol

http://energyskeptic.com/2015/renewa...ly-and-the-uk/

[IliketoPuck]

[jayswin]

Haha, wow, tinordi takes it again. How does this keep happening? The tone in his one line drive bys suggests everyone's uninformed and stupid, but then he expands and gets drilled every time.

[Fuzz]

I suspect it is because he gets his information form a cult with tailored messaging to push an agenda, instead of researching his points himself.

[stampsx2]

So let me get this straight. The ndp puts in a carbon tax which will massively raise everybody's energy bills to the point that people on low incomes won't be able to afford it. Low income, the exact people who the ndp is suppose to help and voted for them. We'll see if the carbon credit covers it.

The ndp, the government that will raise the minimum wage to the point that there will be hours cut back and layoffs, also mostly affecting low income individuals.

I guess the math really is hard.

[peter12]

I give Tinordi a lot of credit for getting back up after every single consecutive knock-out. Wish that he could learn to dodge the punches though.

[Tron_fdc]

Last time I looked at wind power was in 1999 on the eve of deregulation. We went so far as purchasing land in Ft Mcleod, got a space allocation from Transalta to a local transformer, and engineered the site for a 10 MW wind farm. We ran an anemometer for 3 years gathering wind data that we could present to the bank for a loan (around 10 million at the time).

At the end of the 3 years we overlaid all the data (wind speed and duration) on the spot price of power to check the economics. It made sense, but barely. I believe the price had to be $0.08/kWh to be viable. No bank would touch us to go ahead with the development.

We ended up selling the data to a private company who spun it off to Enmax who had a project nearby, and also sold our "spot" in line on the transmission end. We also sold the land at about a 200% profit to the hutterites for a cattle farm, so that was nice.

Looking at the spot price these days and taking into account inflation on the manufacturing end for the turbines, I have a real tough time believing it's anywhere near viable let alone profitable. I would have to see the actual numbers, but without heavy subsidies I don't see private industries touching it.

Another factor to consider is the location. You can't just stick a wind tower wherever it's windy; you need the distribution infrastructure to service it. Last I checked (admittedly 10 years ago) the windiest spots in Alberta (Pincher Creek to Lethbridge) we using up all the available capacity. There are viable sites, but no way to get it to the grid and on the market.

So that all begs the question: Who pays for all this? I love renewables, but it's a tough sell economically to private business or to the average joe who doesn't want to see tax increases (especially now) to subsidize the generation and transfer of renewable energy.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by peter12

I give Tinordi a lot of credit for getting back up after every single consecutive knock-out. Wish that he could learn to dodge the punches though.

One thing I've noticed about tinordi is he's very good at "page waiting". He's smart enough to leave a beat down alone and wait til the discussion moves along by someone else's doing, usually a page or two later, and then he'll jump back in like nothing happened.

By that time everyone's fully engaged in the new discussion and it look bad/off topic for anyone to bring up the last thing.

[northcrunk]

Wind Turbines are just the worst. They barely make financial sense in the first place and there are no financial incentives to fix them if they break or take them down. They just end up big rusty eye sores.

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

Wind mills are just the worst. They barely make financial sense in the first place and there are no financial incentives to fix them if they break or take them down. They just end up big rusty eye sores.

I find them really efficient for grinding grain and pumping water.

[burn_this_city]

Wind and solar are garbage power sources with current technology. Nuclear is the best available option to reduce GHG substantially. Anyone who believed the green jobs stuff needs a head exam. What quality jobs come from wind and solar once they are constructed? Panel duster and turbine grease tech sound like great careers. Both solar and wind are a blight on the landscape and will require massive tracts of land to produce any volume of intermittent power. The base load needs to be nuclear built to the latest standards, the other options are fluff and a complete waste of money.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by jayswin

One thing I've noticed about tinordi is he's very good at "page waiting". He's smart enough to leave a beat down alone and wait til the discussion moves along by someone else's doing, usually a page or two later, and then he'll jump back in like nothing happened.

By that time everyone's fully engaged in the new discussion and it look bad/off topic for anyone to bring up the last thing.

Doesnt bother me any, I dont forget Tinordi's uses.

[Hack&Lube]

My favorite windmill:


On a more serious note, for profitability what about the feasibility of finding another economic use of the land under the windfarm to offset the cost? IE: have the windfarm but also run the cattle farm on the ground that Tron spoke about?

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

My favorite windmill:


On a more serious note, for profitability what about the feasibility of finding another economic use of the land under the windfarm to offset the cost? IE: have the windfarm but also run the cattle farm on the ground that Tron spoke about?

There are guys doing that. You can plant crops or run cattle if you want. I really don't know how common it is, but it's been done.

Funny story: I was at a meeting back in '99 when they were announcing all this development, and someone piped up asking if the turbines were bulletproof. Apparently someone planned on shooting it.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

My favorite windmill:


On a more serious note, for profitability what about the feasibility of finding another economic use of the land under the windfarm to offset the cost? IE: have the windfarm but also run the cattle farm on the ground that Tron spoke about?

Oh great mystical windmill. My dad's worked for Old Dutch for 20 years and I have never seen this. I call shenanigans!!

[Locke]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

Oh great mystical windmill. My dad's worked for Old Dutch for 20 years and I have never seen this. I call shenanigans!!

Has he worked for Old Dutch...in Holland?