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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

#81

Post by Qwertious »

gpm wrote: post #5
xandrius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is worse in terms of greenhouse emissions but it's something I guess. Instead of "natural gas", we should just switch to saying methane, which is what that generally is.

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

>No? Methane produces less than half the CO2 per kwh than coal.

The important metric is CO2e, not CO2. Critically, CO2e includes measurements of methane emissions.

The problem with methane is that the methane leaks are self-reported, by an industry who have every incentive to under-report and who have a history of massively underreporting. Methane isn't clearly better than coal, and might well be worse.

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

#82

Post by pfdietz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #64
pfdietz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For seasonal storage, it would be either an e-fuel (like hydrogen) or bulk storage of thermal energy (basically, artificial geothermal). The latter could produce very hot rock at rather shallow depth, yet still have thermal time constants of many years.

Both of those are more expensive than pumped storage.

This depends on the time scale. For days or weeks? Pumped hydro is better. But for seasonal storage? The size of the reservoir becomes prohibitive.

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

#83

Post by bryanlarsen »

chollida1 wrote: post #74

It is frustrating as someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money to remove coal that India and China have said FU to the world and increased their coal usage. I guess given that those two countries are keeping Russia afloat by buying their oil it shouldn't be a surprise, but its still disappointing to see those countries choosing the path they did.

Note that China's coal usage was basically flat in 2023 and expected to decline in 2024.

China's coal capacity is increasing dramatically, but they're increasingly using their coal plants as peaker plants rather than for base production.

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

#84

Post by jes5199 »

chollida1 wrote: post #76
energy123 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being larger isn't a disadvantage. Wind correlation drops exponentially as a function of distance. Land use becomes a non issue.

> Being larger isn't a disadvantage. It most certainly is for distribution and generation near population density.

the nice thing about solar is that it's naturally diffuse, it's actually more effort to push it into a dense urban area than to have it spread over a rural place

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

#85

Post by skiexperte »

chollida1 wrote: post #76
energy123 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being larger isn't a disadvantage. Wind correlation drops exponentially as a function of distance. Land use becomes a non issue.

> Being larger isn't a disadvantage. It most certainly is for distribution and generation near population density.

Or easier. With germany you can't just put solar panels around a big city because either the city is too big or the land is occopied by something else.

But hey good that we talked about it :D

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

#86

Post by bryanlarsen »

exacube wrote: post #56
JamesCoyne wrote: post #28

Alberta is somewhat unique within Canada, with electricity trading on a market operated by AESO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Electric_System_Operat...

Doesn't Ontario's IESO also do this?

Not really. Talking to energy producers, it's a lot easier to add new generation in Alberta than it is in Ontario.

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

#87

Post by jes5199 »

softfalcon wrote: post #62

Hey folks, I live in Alberta. This isn't as big of a win as you all think it is. We replaced coal burning with natural gas and gasoline burning power generation. For those who will say, "but Alberta has wind and solar!" please know that our current premiere (similar to a governor) is actively attacking all of our renewable energy investments. Her name is Danielle Smith and she's quite literally a former oil and gas l…

I'll still count it. Natgas is much cleaner than coal. And economics will eventually force their hand as solar costs continue to fall

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

#88

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

mywittyname wrote: post #66
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 furna…

> This is also when nuclear isn't a great solution, as it's a huge spike in demand. Overproduce electricity, then burn off the excess to match load to demand. It's counter-intuitive, but the cost structure of producing electricity via nuclear is different from fossil fuels. The unit costs per kW/h of nuclear is negligible compared to the capital costs of building a plant. Making it economically viable to "waste" elec…

The fun with overproducing nuclear is it requires the ability to successfully forecast growth a decade from now.

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

#89

Post by TheRealPomax »

tossstone wrote: post #43
TheRealPomax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Alberta’s population growth trend in the last 5 years is anything but linear. It has accelerated significantly driven in large part by new to Canada immigrants and those escaping higher cost of living provinces like BC and ON. Source: https://www.alberta.ca/population-statistics

That page shows population change measured in several tens of thousands, not several hundreds of thousands, so as a year over year increase that's basically still linear, just with a slightly higher coefficient, but nowhere near enough to scream population boom. Just an above average increase.

If we look at the population numbers for the last 24 years there's nothing particularly out of the ordinary going on [1].

Sure, the last two years could be the start of an explosive increase, but the drop in year-over-year increase as indicated by the charts from your own link suggests it's far more likely to return to the overall trend.

But of course: even if the population doubled over the next 5 years, Alberta is still the size of Texas, and has plenty of room to address those energy needs using renewables.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/569880/population-estima...

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

#90

Post by dghughes »

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.

You can't eat cars, coal, and oil. If you're trying to say only those matter.
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