Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by MissTeeks

They couldn't have given her a shorter podium?

Poor lady is exceedingly short. I actually like the person, but she seems to be taking more of a sycophant route in caucus... boo.

Next time a raised step for the podium or something lol.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

Poor lady is exceedingly short. I actually like the person, but she seems to be taking more of a sycophant route in caucus... boo.

Next time a raised step for the podium or something lol.

She looks like my mom driving our old 1987 Chevy Suburban. Just a pair of eyes looking over the dashboard.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by belsarius

Winning in court is the only Language they understand?

It seems like the people who don't understand language (especially regarding the constitution) are the ones in downtown Edmonton.

So let’s see it.

Come force us to use them.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Yoho

It’s on!!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1689722912587321344

https://twitter.com/user/status/1689733354956943361

You can just see old Stevie G in Ottawa getting twisted reading this.

I wonder how much input she has in this decision if she’s simply following the dictators orders.

[Fuzz]

I'm still ####ing amazed so many people voted in this disaster of a government, thinking they might be OK. Like, she literally told us she would not be listening to experts, and all of this is a result of that idocracy.


I'm starting to think maybe people are just too stupid for democracy? I dunno where we go from here. But I do know it's going to be an exceptionally rough 4 years.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm still ####ing amazed so many people voted in this disaster of a government, thinking they might be OK. Like, she literally told us she would not be listening to experts, and all of this is a result of that idocracy.


I'm starting to think maybe people are just too stupid for democracy? I dunno where we go from here. But I do know it's going to be an exceptionally rough 4 years.

I know just think of how quickly Notley would have rolled over. It’s almost like voters thought about it and voted who they wanted in charge in matters like this very thing.

[Stewie991]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm still ####ing amazed so many people voted in this disaster of a government, thinking they might be OK. Like, she literally told us she would not be listening to experts, and all of this is a result of that idocracy.


I'm starting to think maybe people are just too stupid for democracy? I dunno where we go from here. But I do know it's going to be an exceptionally 8-12 years.

Corrected it for you!

[TorqueDog]

Remember that time Alberta got to keep the carbon tax in the province?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ated-1.5050438

~$220,000,000 of the Alberta-based carbon tax from 2016 to 2018 went to reducing small business taxes. Literally taking from the citizens and reducing taxes on businesses, isn't that something any cold-blooded big-C Conservative can get behind?

Apparently not, because the UCP decided it thought it could stand up to Ottawa and cancelled it... and now we all pay a carbon tax to Ottawa instead, and they decide how to divide it up. The UCP has a storied history of losing to Ottawa and pretending it won, because the UCP's voters are impressed by posturing and inexcusable incompetence veiled by hubris, not by actually getting things done.

Originally Posted by Stewie991

Corrected it for you!

If this is what you think 'correcting' a sentence looks like, I think you might be who he's referring to by "too stupid".

An exceptionally what?

[Barnes]

This all comes at a weird time. The UPC is riling up the base when in just over a month Calgary will be hosting the World Petroleum Congress. This is only the second time it's taken place in Canada, fourth in North America. The theme for the 24th Congress is; Energy Transition: The Path to Net Zero.

Here are the Plenary sessions:

• Energy Transition: The Path to Net Zero
• Delivering Energy Responsibly for Society
• The Energy Transition and Technology
• Energy Security, Reliability and Resilience of Supply During the Transition
• Transformation of the Industry, People & Products
• Access and Affordability of Energy
• Building Partnerships in an Energy Transition
• Financing the Energy Transition Responsibly
• The Reality of Future Energy Markets

The much more numerous Strategic Sessions are focused around similar topics.

So, we have C-Suite and high-level execs from NOC's like Aramco, KNOC, OPEC leaders, IOC's and Super Majors Like Shell, Petronus, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Repsol, Kuwait Petroleum, BP, and Canadian upstream and midstream companies like Cenovus, Brookfield, TMX coming to our city to discuss what our disaster of a Provincial government is currently working against.

There will be leaders of companies that represent over 95% of the worlds production here to talk about energy transition. The Alberta government can fight it. They can say stupid #### to a cheering group of Yoho's on Twitter but it doesn't really matter in the end. They will be the ones left behind holding their buggy whip making tools.

[Yoho]

Or the only ones who are not left out to freeze in the winter with this “reliable” energy.

Albertans don’t care about your black tie affair.

There is nothing strange about the timing. Smith knows exactly what she’s doing play ball or we can embarrass us both.

The fact that most are blindly cheering for higher energy bills and more expensive gas because someone told you to save the environment is the saddest part of it all.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1689760346490523650

[Faust]

Real Talk Ryan Jespersen

Energy economist @andrew_leach says Danielle Smith isn't wrong to point a finger at Ottawa.

But, he says Alberta can't just dismiss the federal government's call for a #netzero grid by 2035...

�� FULL: rtrj.info/081023Leach

�� FULL: rtrj.info/081023 #abpoli #cdnpoli

https://twitter.com/realtalkrj/statu...400402432?s=21

[PostandIn]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm still ####ing amazed so many people voted in this disaster of a government, thinking they might be OK. Like, she literally told us she would not be listening to experts, and all of this is a result of that idocracy.


I'm starting to think maybe people are just too stupid for democracy? I dunno where we go from here. But I do know it's going to be an exceptionally rough 4 years.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm still ####ing amazed so many people voted in this disaster of a government, thinking they might be OK. Like, she literally told us she would not be listening to experts, and all of this is a result of that idocracy.


I'm starting to think maybe people are just too stupid for democracy? I dunno where we go from here. But I do know it's going to be an exceptionally rough 4 years.

I’m still ####ing amazed that people think the Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment aren’t anything but climate ideologues when they impose policy on the country (read Alberta and Saskatchewan) that just isn’t ####ing achievable. Imagine how delusional you have to be to abolish natural gas in a matter of decades WITHOUT A WHISPER of what technology(ies) will replace those joules. ####ing amazing how these pure imbeciles get re-elected. You are right. People are too stupid for democracy.

With KNOWN AND RELIABLE technologies, transitioning our economy and energy system is a 40-50 year project. We actually can’t keep lights on with the simplistic binary argument that you frame every utterance of Daniel Smith on energy policy. We get it Fuzz: Danielle Smith is malign and uninformed, on every policy position, every time. I bet she hasn’t even seen Don’t Look Up!

We need practical solutions that industry and the public can absorb and support, that move with RELIABLE technology and with an understanding of the country’s capacity to change. Not unilateral imposition of the latest, completely disconnected from reality, idea of a radicalized greenpeace activist, who had the good fortune of stumbling off the second floor balcony of the court house, to fall magically into a chair at the Trudeau cabinet table.

[Yoho]

Who thinks PostandIn nailed it?

[Muta]

Yoho, you do realize that's a clip of Jim being sarcastic right? Focus on the end of the gif if you don't know what I'm talking about.

You can't even meme right.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Leach is protesting too much these days. His policy advice has led to poor outcomes, and instead of coming clean and correcting the errors, he's reinforcing his position and setting snark phasers to maximum. Not a good look IMO.

https://www.ieso.ca/en/Sector-Partic...al%20guarantee.

I would almost use this rather than ban solar and wind, but that is just me. Seems to work in other jurisdictions.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

For a dispassionate, non-partisan assessment, I would suggest tracking the Quarterly and Annual Reports put out by the Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA).

In the Q1 2023 report, they outline a combination of factors that require addressing if Alberta is going to continue putting more VRE generation on the system.

Yes, the congestion and storage requirements are problems, but perhaps the largest problem is how we handle forward pricing.

Generators are permitted to set their own price on providing the stabilizing power required to balance a renewable heavy grid. And we ain't even that renewable heavy yet!

"The ability of companies to exercise market power was lower in Q1 2023 relative to Q3 2022 and Q4 2022, in part because of mild temperatures and increased wind and solar generation. Some larger suppliers continued to exercise market power in Q1 2023. One supplier withheld a large amount of capacity by pricing it above $900/MWh regardless of market conditions. Another supplier generally offered large amounts of capacity between $700 and $900/MWh when market conditions were tighter."
[...]

"As documented previously in this section the increase in wind and solar generation means that:
• there will be higher ramping requirements in the future,
• there will be more thermal generation capacity commercially offline, and
• larger wind and solar forecast errors will occur more often.

As a result, the scale of investment in wind and solar generation has implications for how efficiently resources are allocated in the electricity market under the existing ISO rules."

[...]

"This calls into question whether the existing ISO rules, which were developed in the past based on the prevailing understanding and expectations, remain ideal in the face of changing technology. As a general matter, there is no reason why they need to be so and the flexible nature of the electricity market, including the ability to change these rules within the market construct itself, makes plain that some degree of change and adaptation is expected to occur.

As documented above, the production profile of wind and solar generation impacts the nature of the net demand that must be satisfied by other generators. These impacts are readily visible in the electricity market and will grow in the future.

In the short run (when installed generation capacity is effectively fixed), wind and solar capacity lowers the pool price when it is producing. However, this impacts the commitment decisions that large thermal generators make on a day-to-day basis which affect sequences of hours irrespective of realized wind and solar production.

The reduction in committed thermal supply can offset the impact of additional wind and solar production, though disentangling this effect from the exercise of market power is not a trivial undertaking."

MSA Q1 2023 Report (105 pages, mixed text & graphs)

MSA Q1 2023 Presentation (47 Slides)

It's pretty simple.

The lowest cost kWh in the system is NOT the marginal unit. The marginal unit is the NEXT UNIT REQUIRED. When we allow the supplier of that unit to have discretionary control of when to release capacity into a system signaling demand, how is anyone on earth shocked that the supplier will choose to wait a little and withhold their stuff until a buyer is willing to pay infinity dollars?

Like someone said, these aren't potatoes that you just go to another store for. These are the guys on the side of a road in a heat wave or evacuation, charging $250 for a bottle of water.

And guess what, this gets worse as the duck curve gets deeper. Alberta has it's own duck now. When you factor in the capacity that is in application queue, it resembles California. (Slides 12 & 15).

Costs up.
Emission Intensity flat.
Land use way up.

Sorry, but I'd rather have a society that recognizes energy as the base currency and primary input into the entire machine. I don't give a flying F that a small handful of generators and line owners get to make insane returns if that means that people suffer in normal conditions, die in severe conditions, and everyone downstream who uses the power to DO THINGS is doing less total, and the output they do perform has lost a tremendous amount of relative value. Those producers can and will leave. This is a severely BAD trade.



The moratorium is necessary. Not because of the rebuildables themselves, but because the system is busted in a way that allowing the in queue projects online will have a severe impact in the short term. That bleeding needs to stop.

But the fun won't end there. It's demonstrable that this is the effect high VRE penetration has on markets of all types. MOST markets experience increases in real household prices when VREs are built out. MOST VRE buildouts never exceed ~35%, which seems to imply some kind of practical limitation.



AND, best of all... All of this over a tiny SLIVER of our actual fuel type consumption. We barely use any electricity at all in this province, compared to the elephant in the room: natty. Electricity is roughly 274 PJ annually, natural gas is 10x that at 2,340 PJ. Refined pet products clock in the middle at 1,370 PJ.

Good times!

It will get worse as electricity demand increases (doubles?) in the future. That demand could conceivably be met with renewables, with storage to handle 24 hour a day demand and to smooth peaks and dips of production. We will still need to build out almost equivalent net output (not nameplate) with gas or nuclear to handle extended renewable low output scenarios.

What are the economics of building generation complete with CCUS when output is at the whim of renewable production. That marginal kWh is always going to be exorbitant, if that capacity gets built at all.

On the other hand if they say each new renewable installation needs to include backup generation (with CC) then what does that do to renewable economics?

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by PostandIn

I’m still ####ing amazed that people think the Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment aren’t anything but climate ideologues when they impose policy on the country (read Alberta and Saskatchewan) that just isn’t ####ing achievable. Imagine how delusional you have to be to abolish natural gas in a matter of decades WITHOUT A WHISPER of what technology(ies) will replace those joules. ####ing amazing how these pure imbeciles get re-elected. You are right. People are too stupid for democracy.

With KNOWN AND RELIABLE technologies, transitioning our economy and energy system is a 40-50 year project. We actually can’t keep lights on with the simplistic binary argument that you frame every utterance of Daniel Smith on energy policy. We get it Fuzz: Danielle Smith is malign and uninformed, on every policy position, every time. I bet she hasn’t even seen Don’t Look Up!

We need practical solutions that industry and the public can absorb and support, that move with RELIABLE technology and with an understanding of the country’s capacity to change. Not unilateral imposition of the latest, completely disconnected from reality, idea of a radicalized greenpeace activist, who had the good fortune of stumbling off the second floor balcony of the court house, to fall magically into a chair at the Trudeau cabinet table.

WTF are you talking about? Every other province (except SK) has found and implemented these elusive KNOWN and RELIABLE energy sources.


Canada Electricity Generation by source (2019)



Same thing for just Alberta - note the legend changes




This is just my back of napkin math, but Canada generates 69.5 TWh via natural gas...Alberta does 41.1 of them and the rest of the country does 28.4.

Canada generates 44.3 TWh from coal...Alberta is 27.4 of that and the rest of the country only 16.9

Those numbers are insane.


I'm not a huge fan of hydro as it has some substantial drawbacks, but it could also play a big role in flood resiliency.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

JFC it was the CONSERVATIVES who deregulated the industry. They were warned DECADES ago that this would happen, and now it's Trudeau's fault?????

Is this satire?

Their narrative in the 2000's was "Deregulate and the industry will build generation to meet demand"

But now that the capacity isn't there, demand is spiking (along with price) their talking points are "F-Trudeau and Notley"?????

You have potato salad for brains if you believe this.

Have you met Yoho?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by PostandIn

I’m still ####ing amazed that people think the Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment aren’t anything but climate ideologues when they impose policy on the country (read Alberta and Saskatchewan) that just isn’t ####ing achievable. Imagine how delusional you have to be to abolish natural gas in a matter of decades WITHOUT A WHISPER of what technology(ies) will replace those joules. ####ing amazing how these pure imbeciles get re-elected. You are right. People are too stupid for democracy.

With KNOWN AND RELIABLE technologies, transitioning our economy and energy system is a 40-50 year project. We actually can’t keep lights on with the simplistic binary argument that you frame every utterance of Daniel Smith on energy policy. We get it Fuzz: Danielle Smith is malign and uninformed, on every policy position, every time. I bet she hasn’t even seen Don’t Look Up!

We need practical solutions that industry and the public can absorb and support, that move with RELIABLE technology and with an understanding of the country’s capacity to change. Not unilateral imposition of the latest, completely disconnected from reality, idea of a radicalized greenpeace activist, who had the good fortune of stumbling off the second floor balcony of the court house, to fall magically into a chair at the Trudeau cabinet table.

It's not that there are not challenges in Alberta that have to be been solved. I've brought up winter green energy storage issues before, and that we'd need to build baseload to handle that. The issues is that everything is a war with her, she blatantly lies about what the feds propose, and she has zero interest finding solutions that don't fit her narrow world-view.


Is Steven Guilbeault also awful? Yes, he is. But lets face it, these goals are just that. Goals, targets, etc. Why not see how far we can get, and take the federal money that will help? Why kill a booming modern industry? I'll tell you this much, O&G jobs are not coming back, and as someone in the industry(not sure how much longer, given the trajectory) I'd really love it if there was some help for me to transition my career, but the ideological premier will have none of that.

[PostandIn]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

WTF are you talking about? Every other province (except SK) has found and implemented these elusive KNOWN and RELIABLE energy sources.


Canada Electricity Generation by source (2019)



Same thing for just Alberta - note the legend changes




This is just my back of napkin math, but Canada generates 69.5 TWh via natural gas...Alberta does 41.1 of them and the rest of the country does 28.4.

Canada generates 44.3 TWh from coal...Alberta is 27.4 of that and the rest of the country only 16.9

Those numbers are insane.


I'm not a huge fan of hydro as it has some substantial drawbacks, but it could also play a big role in flood resiliency.

It really begs the question then, why our Federal policy makers are so fussed about this tiny 6% of the problem. Which can’t even be measured in global terms. Before you reply, remember, this is the same Minister of the Environment/Industry/Finance, who thinks we can transition from fossil fuels to renewables with no role for nuclear.

Where is Alberta getting hydro and tidal from?