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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

#181

Post by bryanlarsen »

triceratops wrote: post #179
bryanlarsen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just answered your own question. Developing nations aren't at 100% renewable because they already have a large amount of installed non-renewables.

Err...no. Developing countries tend to not have a large amount of anything. Definitionally they're poor and under-resourced. If their economies are growing, the grids are constantly playing catch-up with demand. Otherwise they're in a state of managed decline, or are an actual dumpster fire. Whatever the case may be, the one thing they don't have is reliable base generation capability. A safety net for when renewable…

Arg, typo.

Developing -> Developed in my original comment.

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

#182

Post by triceratops »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #181
triceratops wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err...no. Developing countries tend to not have a large amount of anything. Definitionally they're poor and under-resourced. If their economies are growing, the grids are constantly playing catch-up with demand. Otherwise they're in a state of managed decline, or are an actual dumpster fire. Whatever the case may be, the one thing they don't have is reliable base generation capability. A safety net for when renewable…

Arg, typo. Developing -> Developed in my original comment.

Gotcha. That's also why developing countries can't go 100% renewable.

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

#183

Post by Waterluvian »

486sx33 wrote: post #176
Waterluvian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian it’s hard for me to be upset given we still emit far more carbon per capita than China or India.

“Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit” https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carb...

If “all this undeveloped land is a huge carbon sink we want to take credit for,” then we’re going to have to take responsibility for the terrible amount of carbon release as peatlands continue thawing.

This is frankly a dumb article. It’s an unhelpful reframing of the issue at hand by trying to take credit for what’s happening across large swaths of undeveloped land that happen to be within our border. It will quickly be abandoned the moment the natural carbon release of former permafrost regions cause us to be a colossal emitter instead.

Consider how unhelpful it would be if countries began trying to solve their emissions issues by laying claim to vast swaths of ocean, to take credit for algal carbon sinks.

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

#184

Post by skiexperte »

chollida1 wrote: post #117
ben_w wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by this population density map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Canada_P... And the ever-useful "The True Size Of…": https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTU1OTcwMjU.MTI5MjQ... I think you're overstating the difficulty given that population distribution. And those two large splotches on the map representing Calgary and Edmonton and with most of the population pretty close by, they're o…

Appreciate the response but I'll be honest I don't understand what point you are making. My only point is that Alberta being larger than Germany means its more expensive to deliver power to all its various small towns distributed around the province. That seems pretty tautologically correct to me given that power lines have a cost and must be constantly maintained and built to support new power demands. I'm unsure ab…

We currently transport already energy from big producers to small towns left and right.

Solar Energy reduces the load of the grid because the renewable energy will be consumed locally first. This puts less strain on it.

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

#185

Post by tossstone »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #89
tossstone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]. Sur…

I'm not debating the merits of renewables, I'm just stating that the population growth in Alberta is not linear. And the population IS growing by hundreds of thousands annually. To quote directly from Alberta population statistics:

"Alberta’s population growth continues to accelerate. In the 12 months preceding April 1, 2024, the province’s population expanded by 204,677 people, or 4.41%." [1]

"This represents a significant increase from the previous year (3.67% between 2022-23) and the highest April 1 year-over-year growth rate since 1981. Alberta’s population expanded by 49,138 residents over the first quarter of 2024, or 1.02%." [1]

The vast majority (over 160,000) of those new residents of Alberta were immigrants to Canada, driven by the federal government's massive immigration ramp-up. The immigration levels plan targets a continued increase in immigration through 2026 [2] and with Alberta having a comparatively low cost of living and very high quality of life, it's hard to believe that trend in population growth will not continue.

[1] https://www.alberta.ca/population-statistics

[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...

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

#186

Post by Gibbon1 »

486sx33 wrote: post #171
jogjayr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Indian immigrant to Canada, it is frustrating to see people believe it's a choice. I also hear a lot of hate for the carbon tax and rebate program in Canada. I support the program, even though it costs me money. > someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money Which means Canada has money. India is much poorer on a per-capita basis. They can become wealthy by developing their economy. India can't spend…

India needs to focus on decreasing its birth rate, which it completely ignores. They can’t just keep making more people and expect things to world out

India's birthrate is 2.01

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

#187

Post by ianburrell »

mrguyorama wrote: post #99
randomdata wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's all take a moment to stare at the horror show that is the 13% that is real estate. 12% in both USA (2023) and Mexico (2015). Other countries that use a similar classification seem to also be in the same range. Japan, for example, also sits at 12% (2022). Is a single percentage point really that horrific?

This is the most interesting bit of information in this entire comments section: Japan, which has a completely different view, model, and concept of real estate that does NOT treat it as an investment, ends up with the same portion of GDP locked/used/coming from real estate. I feel like there's important information in that tidbit, but I am not equipped to grasp it.

Real estate is 3-5% of GDP for construction of new homes. And 12-13% for housing. That includes rent, but also the owner's imputed rent that they would pay. I think sales are counted as capital gains and I think not included in GDP.

I'm not too surprised that countries have similar housing, there is percent of rent that can afforded. I'm surprised that higher home prices aren't reflected, but that may show up as higher overall GDP.

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

#188

Post by Gibbon1 »

bastien2 wrote: post #97

Unfortunately they did it by switching to natural gas instead of the massive sustainable buildout they needed. Good job on reducing thorium and uranium emissions, at least.

Other hand when talking about functional operation. Solar, Wind plus Nat Gas works well together. Where Solar, Wind plus Coal doesn't.

It's technically easy to shutdown, restart, and take Nat Gas plants in and out of standby to make up for shortfalls in solar and wind production. Where you can't do that with coal and nuclear for both technical and economic reasons.

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

#189

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

cm2187 wrote: post #133
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada emits more Co2 per capita than China today, by 1.5x. But Co2 doesn't only count in 'last years'. It counts as a cumulative effect. The Co2 damage of Canada per capita is way beyond that of China, cumulatively. In cumulative terms, China has emitted 'only' 7.5 times as much Canada despite having 35x the population. In other words, Canada's per capita cumulative emissions are about 4.5x those of China. And that'…

Ratios matter little to the climate. Total volumes do. When you build your infrastructure from scratch, it makes sense not to go for XIX century technologies.

On the other side of the argument, borders also don't matter to the climate, so everyone should be doing everything they can instead of finger-pointing, no?

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

#190

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #162
triceratops wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's such slam-dunk, why aren't all Western nations already at 100% solar and wind?

New builds are ~100% solar and wind.

Not all. In Alberta, all that coal has switched to natural gas, and we have had large natural gas powered plants come online as of late.

https://www.aeso.ca/market/market-updates/2023/new-assets-ca...

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