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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

#21

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #15
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. The times they are a-changing, but we have a particularly regressive government at the moment that is actively blocking renewable production. The unfortunate bit about having the most sun is that during winter we still don't get much of it. It seems to me we need as much storage as we do production.

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

#22

Post by soperj »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #18
nightowl_games wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

BC has Coal as it's number 1 export, and logging a close second.

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

#23

Post by danans »

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.

It's 1.7% of Canada's GDP. Significant, but not wholly dependent.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1319179/canada-oil-sands...

But it's 1/3 of Alberta's GDP.

The GHG impact is pretty huge though (2.2x regular oil extraction per barrel).

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

#24

Post by lbrito »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #18
nightowl_games wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a high share on Alberta, but definitively not close to "the entire economy"

According to the most recent Statistics Canada's National Economic Accounts, the Mining and Oil and Gas Extraction industry accounted for approximately 26% of Alberta's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, an increase from 23.3% in 2010.

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

#25

Post by etblg »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #19
nightowl_games wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/gr…

And worth saying that not all of the petroleum industry in Canada is oil sands, wikipedia (I'm lazy) gave a figure of 64% for the oil sands, so 36% is still the conventional pumpjack crude that's not as polluting (albeit still polluting) as oil sands, and not as dependent on gas prices being high to be viable.

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

#26

Post by bryanlarsen »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #21
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. The times they are a-changing, but we have a particularly regressive government at the moment that is actively blocking renewable production. The unfortunate bit about having the most sun is that during winter we still don't get much of it. It seems to me we need as much storage as we do production.

Alberta isn't very cloudy in the wintertime, the reduced insolation is mostly due to lower angles and shorter days. AFAICT, winter sunshine is more than a third of summer sunshine in Alberta. In Europe the number is often 10%.

It's cheaper to size production for winter sunshine than to build a lot of storage. AKA it's cheaper to put down 3X as many panels than to build seasonal storage.

Alberta doesn't lack for hills, which is what's needed to build pumped storage which is what's cheapest for seasonal storage.

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

#27

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

nightowl_games wrote: post #13
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is really not. I don't think there are any numbers justifying narrative, and numbers presented in this thread prove it. The dependency is really just Albertan advertising.

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

#29

Post by pfdietz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The times they are a-changing, but we have a particularly regressive government at the moment that is actively blocking renewable production. The unfortunate bit about having the most sun is that during winter we still don't get much of it. It seems to me we need as much storage as we do production.

Alberta isn't very cloudy in the wintertime, the reduced insolation is mostly due to lower angles and shorter days. AFAICT, winter sunshine is more than a third of summer sunshine in Alberta. In Europe the number is often 10%. It's cheaper to size production for winter sunshine than to build a lot of storage. AKA it's cheaper to put down 3X as many panels than to build seasonal storage. Alberta doesn't lack for hills…

> It's cheaper to size production for winter sunshine than to build a lot of storage.

Which means enormous amounts of surplus power in the summer (even with PV angled to optimize winter production.) So storage doesn't have to go far to be worthwhile, and in particular with nearly free input energy it doesn't have to be very efficient.

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

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

ElectricityMaps zone CA-AB: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/CA-AB?wind=false&solar=...

Total fossil gas generation capacity is ~12.7GW. Seems straightforward to replace with solar, wind, batteries, and interconnects with neighboring grids.

Wind and Solar Potential resource: https://www.pembina.org/pub/wind-solar-alberta

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