The Energy Transition and technologies

[Azure]

At the end of the day all the morons have been walking around convincing governments that fossil fuels are bad and we should end them, nuclear is bad and we should end it, etc, etc and now when there is an energy crisis and there is no fuel available, suddenly coal is the ONLY alternative, which will blow emissions through the roof.

Of course all the morons are now nowhere to be found.

We basically wasted 20 years of nuclear development appealing to the woke side of 'green' energy and have nothing to show for.

Glad I live in a hydro province, but I feel sorry for those people on gas or other that will have to pay high costs.

But hey, at least inflation isn't real, amirite?

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by Azure

At the end of the day all the morons have been walking around convincing governments that fossil fuels are bad and we should end them, nuclear is bad and we should end it, etc, etc and now when there is an energy crisis and there is no fuel available, suddenly coal is the ONLY alternative, which will blow emissions through the roof.

Of course all the morons are now nowhere to be found.

We basically wasted 20 years of nuclear development appealing to the woke side of 'green' energy and have nothing to show for.

Glad I live in a hydro province, but I feel sorry for those people on gas or other that will have to pay high costs.

But hey, at least inflation isn't real, amirite?

Fossil fuels are bad. But we need them until we figure out how to replace them.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Fossil fuels are bad. But we need them until we figure out how to replace them.

It's very simplistic to say they are bad, considering we owe basically our entire modern standard of living to fossil fuels. There are certainly tradeoffs to be considered, but from plastics to medicine to clothes to makeup to travel, they are embedded in virtually every part of our life. Life as we know it is simply not possible without hydrocarbons, and without them, our standard of living takes a draconian step backwards.

The reality is that life and civilization requires an enormous amount of energy, and no matter what energy source one champions, it will require resource extraction. Batteries and chips need metals to be mined. Wind turbines need steel and cement (and there is no steel without coal) and plenty of land. Machines (and the machines to make the machines!) of all sorts constantly need to be built, and lubed, and replaced...all that requires a ton of materials that need to be explored and mined and processed. Life is extremely resource intensive.

It's partly why I'm personally such a big champion of nuclear. It will not completely replace our entire use of hydrocarbons (because that's impossible), but at least in terms of our electricity needs, it's by far the cleanest, most efficient, and reliable energy source we currently have.

[Azure]

And as we are seeing from the Bruce facilities in Ontario, they can last a LONG time, even after being refreshed.

[Fuzz]

This is from last year, but it's an interesting article about using nuclear power for the shipping industry. This feels like a really easy win, and despite the initial costs, I can't imagine it wouldn't save fuel costs tremendously. And it's not like it's a crazy idea, navy's have been power their fleets with it for over half a century.

As Gary Hoe points out, when steaming all-ahead-flank on all four screws, launching aircraft off all three steam catapults, cooking 4,500 meals for lunch, and desalinating sea water into fresh, the Kennedy got 13 inches to the gallon of marine distillate fuel oil.
That meant 1000 gallons were burned for the Kennedy just to travel its own length. Or over 125 million gallons to circumnavigate the Pacific Ocean once.

The Ike uses almost no fuel to carry out the same mission. The Ike steamed for 20 years on a chunk of uranium the size of a grapefruit, and is still active today. The Kennedy is mothballed.

Besides fuel savings, nuclear powered ships go about 50% faster than oil-fired ships of the same size. For the shipping industry, the increased number of runs per year, and the increased profits, appear to more than offset the increased operational costs of nuclear, according to an analysis by researchers at Penn State.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...ar-propulsion/

The real question is, why are they not already doing this?

[Azure]

Huge. CLT is a double whammy. We use less concrete or steel, and the more CLT we use, the more carbon we capture and store long term.

The New York City Council has approved the use of mass timber for the construction of buildings of up to 85 feet tall in the city.

Included as part of a major update to the New York City Construction Codes, the new regulations mean that mass timber, including cross-laminated timber, can be used as a structural material for low and medium-rise buildings across the city.

The new regulations mean that buildings up to 85 feet (25.9 metres) tall can be built from the materials. This equates to structures of six or seven storeys.

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/10/13/ne...ber-buildings/

[DoubleK]

RBC released a pretty decent white paper on Canada's pathway to net zero. Thought you guys might like it.

https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/th...special+report

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Azure

Huge. CLT is a double whammy. We use less concrete or steel, and the more CLT we use, the more carbon we capture and store long term.

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/10/13/ne...ber-buildings/

I was curious how many buildings this might apply to. I thought 35 feet would be a good lower bound(over 3 stories? Not sure if it would be used on shorter ones?) and 85 upper. In the past 20 years, that's 13 000 buildings. At 30-85 feet it's 27 000. So a lot of potential just in New York City. Total buildings in the database is over 1 million.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

This is from last year, but it's an interesting article about using nuclear power for the shipping industry. This feels like a really easy win, and despite the initial costs, I can't imagine it wouldn't save fuel costs tremendously. And it's not like it's a crazy idea, navy's have been power their fleets with it for over half a century.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...ar-propulsion/

The real question is, why are they not already doing this?

Because the people who typically operate shipping vessels globally are definitely not the people you want to be handling uranium of any size. Certainly not grapefruit size.

Conversely, if someone could get a reasonable Thorium- saltwater reactor working it would likely be PERFECT for this application.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I was curious how many buildings this might apply to. I thought 35 feet would be a good lower bound(over 3 stories? Not sure if it would be used on shorter ones?) and 85 upper. In the past 20 years, that's 13 000 buildings. At 30-85 feet it's 27 000. So a lot of potential just in New York City. Total buildings in the database is over 1 million.

Yeah, the potential is crazy.

On the manufacturing side we are seeing some big investment into CLT production as well, which creates an entire ecosystem of jobs. Design, architectural, forestry, lumber processing, actual CLT production, shipping, on site installation, etc, etc.

There are so many positives and yet we move so slow in adopting it.

[Azure]

An old steel mill is getting a new lease on life in Pueblo, Colorado. The company will be the first in the world to get the majority of its energy from solar power.

The EVRAZ Rocky Mountain Steel factory is opening a new chapter in its history. On Wednesday, a partnership called Lightsource BP—yes, that BP—unveiled the Bighorn Solar project, a new 300-megawatt solar farm. Most of the project’s 750,000 solar panels lie on the EVRAZ property itself, making the farm the largest on-site solar project in the nation dedicated to a single customer. The project was first announced in 2019 and is already partially operational. The companies say it will be fully online by next month.

Solar-powered steel is great. The iron and steel sector is responsible for 2.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, accounting for 8% of all global energy demand and 7% of energy-related carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Those emissions are roughly on par with all of India’s in a year. The reason for steel’s large carbon footprint is because manufacturing it largely relies on coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, as both a feedstock and an energy source. The EVRAZ mill has been powered by coal for most of its time in operation.

The venture claims the project will enable Xcel Energy—the utility that’s part of the partnership—to avoid 433,770 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s equivalent to removing more than 92,000 cars from the road each year. Even before this new development, the EVRAZ steel mill has been recycling scrap metal to produce rails for railway lines and other products. Solar power, Lightsource BP said, will “enable the mill to produce some of the world’s greenest steel and steel products.”

https://gizmodo.com/the-world-s-firs...ontent=gizmodo

[Street Pharmacist]

These types of articles drive me insane. They do it with medicine too. Some think tank with a bias publishes a "study" and it's taken at face value. The Fraser Institute is literally funded by coal producers and O&G. They "study" wind energy and say it's too expensive... using costs from years ago of $118/MW when it's now $38/MW and still falling. They also incorrectly use the assumption that coal powers 40% of generation (it's below 30%). It makes me so frustrated when we've got an existential crisis we need to move fast on, yet you have these @$$#oles actively trying to slow it down for a buck.

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/calgar...33075.amp.html

The Fraser Institute, an independent Canadian public policy group, says data they've examined shows that if Alberta shut down its coal-fired power plants, which account for about 40 per cent of the province's energy generation, it would have a marked effect on greenhouse gas emissions. It estimated they would drop by between 26 and 40 per cent

"Based on cost estimates from Alberta, and Ontario's experience with subsidies to renewable energy, the costs of relying on changes to electricity generation (essentially eliminating coal and replacing it with renewable energy sources and gas) to reduce national CO2 emissions by about 7.4 per cent range from some $16.8 billion to $33.7 billion annually. This constitutes some one to two per cent of Canada’s GDP."

Then it ends with this wonderful inuendo:

Late last month, ATCO announced it would be building two solar power generation projects in the city of Calgary.

The Barlow and Deerfoot installations would generate 27 and 37 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 18,000 homes for a year.

Construction is expected to commence next year.

ATCO did not reveal how much it would cost to build the projects, which would be the largest in a major urban centre in Western Canada once completed.

Do they reveal how much it would cost to build any other non renewable generation projects?

[Azure]

Yeah, there is an angle. I don't really understand why it is even up for discussion if Alberta has access to as much gas as it needs.

Alberta also has the unique advantage of being able to produce more efficient solar than many other areas in Canada. Combined with some storage utilities, they could leverage solar & wind more effectively as peaker offsets for the gas or coal plants.

[Fuzz]

Coal is even less than that. It's got a max capacity of 3000MW(about 30%) but typically is generating half that. The Frasier Institute manipulating numbers? Well I never! There reports should be banned from use by governments, corporations and 770 talk show hosts. It's always so deceptive.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Coal is even less than that. It's got a max capacity of 3000MW(about 30%) but typically is generating half that. The Frasier Institute manipulating numbers? Well I never! There reports should be banned from use by governments, corporations and 770 talk show hosts. It's always so deceptive.

Less frustrated by the Fraser Institute doing things the Fraser Institute is paid to do (obfuscate), but more frustrated that CBC Calgary just runs it as news. I mean "Flat Earth Society study shows no curvature of the Earth" wouldn't be published.

It seems small, but so many of these "news" articles over time are the reason many in places like Alberta think renewables don't work, or lithium mining is super toxic, etc. Places like the Fraser Institute float nonsense out there and some gets ingrained into the collective electors minds. That affects voter sentiments and that really matters when public policy is needed for this transition.

[Fuzz]

What irritates me is that they have charity tax status. Why do we, as a country, allow a factory of misinformation to benefit like that? They actively work against the betterment of the country through deception, and get rewarded for their efforts.

[CliffFletcher]

How would you craft a law that prevented the Fraser Institute from promoting its agenda without also preventing private environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club from doing the same?

[Fuzz]

No group that benefits through tax dollars should be able to lie and deceive. I don't know how you word that, I'm not a lawyer. And yes, I understand that also includes churches.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Do they reveal how much it would cost to build any other non renewable generation projects?

Generally yes. Most of the generators are public, and so they report project costs to their shareholders as a matter of disclosure. These are probably too small to require that, although often they would anyway.

From an investor point of view, if these were expected to be highly economic generators it is very likely they'd want to brag about the cost to their shareholders.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

No group that benefits through tax dollars should be able to lie and deceive. I don't know how you word that, I'm not a lawyer. And yes, I understand that also includes churches.

Does the Fraser Institute post blatantly false data? Or do they selectively choose and frame facts in order to further their agenda - like a whole host of other organizations do to further their agendas?

I regard the reports of the Fraser Institute with a skeptical eye. But I regard the reports by the Parkland Institute, Greenpeace, and every other advocacy group the same way. They all employ and manipulate information in the service of an agenda.