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For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#11

Post by photochemsyn »

Alberta's tar sands are even dirtier than coal - because large amounts of natural gas are required to convert the tar sands into syncrude, which is like a crude oil that requires more refining to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from it. The residue from tar sands refining is petcoke, which gets burned in regional power plants and exported overseas:

https://skepticalscience.com/legal-fight-leave-dirtiest-foss...

Since the coke is being exported to India and China for consumption in power plants there, there's zero change in the amount of fossil CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, so any effort to promote this as 'cleaning up the tar sands' is just fossil industry greenwashing.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-marke...

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#12

Post by nightowl_games »

photochemsyn wrote: post #11

Alberta's tar sands are even dirtier than coal - because large amounts of natural gas are required to convert the tar sands into syncrude, which is like a crude oil that requires more refining to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from it. The residue from tar sands refining is petcoke, which gets burned in regional power plants and exported overseas: https://skepticalscience.com/legal-fight-leave-dirtiest-foss...…

As far as I understand it, Canada's economy is wholly dependent on the tar sands.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#13

Post by nightowl_games »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #9
kalupa wrote: post #2

Now it's mostly natural gas, instead! With a good chunk of wind, but the current government seems to dislike "renewables"

Well, it's hard to get someone to hate their source of income.

As far as I understand it, the whole country is dependent on the tar sands, but the east still hates it.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#14

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

MisterDizzy wrote: post #8

Let's see how long it takes them to realize they should have gone with the latest nuclear power tech and will eventually be unable to meet demand with anything but coal or nuclear (unless something changes).

I'm wondering what scenario you're considering that natural gas won't suffice but coal will. Alberta is celebrating simply transitioning from one fossil fuel to another, slightly cleaner burning, one.

They are certainly still struggling with renewables when they are needed the most, such as -35 at 7PM, long after the sun has gone down and the wind turbine's hydraulics are too cold to function safely and all our furnaces are running and everyone is cooking and doing laundry. This is also when nuclear isn't a great solution, as it's a huge spike in demand.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#15

Post by bryanlarsen »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #9
kalupa wrote: post #2

Now it's mostly natural gas, instead! With a good chunk of wind, but the current government seems to dislike "renewables"

Well, it's hard to get someone to hate their source of income.

Their current source of income. Alberta has more sun and more wind than any place else in Canada so renewables could be quite profitable to them in the future, but what government cares about anything further out than the next election? Alberta also used to be the only place in Canada where you could just build a solar power plant and hook it up to the grid with minimal red tape so had a massive advantage in terms of number of solar jobs.

Also Alberta is next door to BC which has vast sources of hydro-electric power so it could easily trade solar & wind power to BC when the sun is shining and/or the wind is blowing in exchange for hydro power when it isn't.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#16

Post by gpm »

silverquiet wrote: post #7
gpm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? Methane produces less than half the CO2 per kwh than coal. Which is still bad, but not worse or as bad . https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

Methane burned for electricity is better than coal no doubt. But methane that escapes into the atmosphere is way worse than CO2 in the nearish term. And not every extraction company is super thrilled about proper containment.

Released methane is 27-30 times worse than released CO2 per unit mass measured over the next 100 years of warming [1]. Burning methane releases 1 CO2 molecule per CH4 molecule (CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O), or 2.743 it's mass in CO2 [2].

To make up the difference in CO2 you'd have to be losing ~5% of the methane to the atmosphere along the way from extraction to burning.

Do you have reason to believe anywhere near that much is lost?

"Worse than coal" has set a very low bar for how not-bad methane needs to be.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=molecular+weight+of+CO2...

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#17

Post by TheRealPomax »

MisterDizzy wrote: post #8

Let's see how long it takes them to realize they should have gone with the latest nuclear power tech and will eventually be unable to meet demand with anything but coal or nuclear (unless something changes).

You... know how big Alberta is, right? It's twice the size of Germany/the same size as Texas, with a population of only a little over 4 million, with a pretty much linear trend in population for several decades now, so you're going to have to do a bit more work if you want to make the argument that they're going to run out of the power necessary to serve the province any time soon.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#18

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nightowl_games wrote: post #12
photochemsyn wrote: post #11

Alberta's tar sands are even dirtier than coal - because large amounts of natural gas are required to convert the tar sands into syncrude, which is like a crude oil that requires more refining to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from it. The residue from tar sands refining is petcoke, which gets burned in regional power plants and exported overseas: https://skepticalscience.com/legal-fight-leave-dirtiest-foss...…

As far as I understand it, Canada's economy is wholly dependent on the tar sands.

Alberta. Ontario and even Quebec and maybe BC actually have industry.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#19

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

nightowl_games wrote: post #12
photochemsyn wrote: post #11

Alberta's tar sands are even dirtier than coal - because large amounts of natural gas are required to convert the tar sands into syncrude, which is like a crude oil that requires more refining to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from it. The residue from tar sands refining is petcoke, which gets burned in regional power plants and exported overseas: https://skepticalscience.com/legal-fight-leave-dirtiest-foss...…

As far as I understand it, Canada's economy is wholly dependent on the tar sands.

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction accounts for 8.21% of Canada's GDP. So, not so much, but let's all take a moment to stare at the horror show that is the 13% that is real estate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada

Edit: I realize that source is from 2020, which may be skewing those numbers, but it seems that statista still roughly agrees in 2024.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/594293/gross-domestic-pr...

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#20

Post by silverquiet »

mminer237 wrote: post #10
silverquiet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane burned for electricity is better than coal no doubt. But methane that escapes into the atmosphere is way worse than CO2 in the nearish term. And not every extraction company is super thrilled about proper containment.

A very small percent is not contained though, and even most vented is flared.

I am under the impression that methane levels in the atmosphere have spiked significantly in the last decade or two, and the origin is not really understood. Extraction could be one source, but if it's from another source, that could be more bad news as it would mean that some tipping point has possibly been triggered. I'm far from an expert on this though.
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