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Alberta

Alberta’s Next Frontier: Space Resources

Published

4 years ago

5 minute read

The United States is aiming to return people to the Moon with the Artemis program. In addition to the rockets, astronauts, space stations, and robotic arms, the mission will also place a permanent base on the lunar surface.

For this program to work, there will have to be industrial equipment on the Moon. It will contribute to the sourcing of raw materials for the operation of the facility and rocket flights between the Moon and Earth. Water is an extremely valuable resource in space. Right now it costs about $2,700 USD to get a litre of water into orbit. That’s $430k a barrel for water in space if you want to compare to oil prices on Earth. It’s much cheaper to get the water in space than to bring it up from Earth.

This is where Alberta comes in.

We have extensive knowledge in the extraction, processing, and storage of liquids. We also have the best engineers, technicians, and trades in the world when it comes to modular construction and process equipment. Alberta is perfectly positioned to supply equipment to the space resource industry that’s about to take off in the US.

On April 6th, the White House signed an executive order allowing US corporations to mine the Moon. This announcement is in line with the 2015 law that the US Congress passed that allowed American companies to use resources from the Moon and asteroids. President Trump is very clear in his intentions, as the order states “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space.”

In short, the US is preparing to open up space for business and they are looking for international partners.

This is an opportunity for Alberta manufacturing to do what we do best: build. US aerospace firms are starting to look at how they are going to design, build, install, and operate industrial equipment on the Moon. The first commodity they are going to be looking to harvest from the lunar surface is water.

There is plenty of water on the moon that can be harvested for rocket fuel. It is frozen in ice and buried in the Lunar regolith. To convert it to usable fuel, it needs to be collected, transported to a central processing facility, treated, and stored. Then it will be sold to companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin where they will split it into oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel.

If you work in the Alberta oil sands, this is all a familiar song and dance. Fueling the new space race requires much of the same technology that was developed to extract bitumen from sand in Western Canada. And with oil prices at historic lows, there are thousands of idle engineers and millions of dollars of equipment with nothing to build.

This is an astronomical opportunity for Western Canada.

We have been building module processing equipment for remote facilities for decades. The same skills that built our economic engine in fossil fuels can be re-tooled to supply machinery and process equipment to build fueling stations on the Moon.

Canada is world-famous for the Canadarm. It’s a symbol of national pride and is printed on our $5 bill. Our astronauts are recognized everywhere they go. Western Canada now has an opportunity to show the world what we are capable of.

It’s Alberta’s time to shine.

 

More to come…

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

 

 

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Alberta

Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans

Published on May 2, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill

Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.

And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.

Why should Albertans care?

First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.

For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.

Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.

Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.

In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.

By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.

Authors:

Spencer Gudewill
Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
and
Tegan Hill
Associate Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Official statement from Premier Danielle Smith and Energy Minister Brian Jean on the start-up of the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Published on May 1, 2024

By

Alberta is celebrating an important achievement for the energy industry – the start-up of the twinned Trans Mountain pipeline. It’s great news Albertans and Canadians as this will welcome a new era of prosperity and economic growth. The completion of TMX is monumental for Alberta, since this will significantly increase our province’s output. It will triple the capacity of the original pipeline to now carry 890,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast.
We are excited that Canada’s biggest and newest oil pipeline in more than a decade, can now bring oil from Edmonton to tide water in B.C. This will allow us to get our energy resources to Pacific markets, including Washington State and California, and Asian markets like Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Alberta now has new energy customers and tankers with Alberta oil will be unloading in China and India in the next few months.
For Alberta this is a game-changer, the world needs more reliably and sustainably sourced Alberta energy, not less. World demand for oil and gas resources will continue in the decades ahead and the new pipeline expansion will give us the opportunity to meet global energy demands and increase North American and global energy security and help remove the issues of energy poverty in other parts of the world.
Analysts are predicting the price differential on Canadian crude oil will narrow resulting in many millions of extra government revenues, which will help fund important programs like health, education, and social services – the things Albertans rely on. TMX will also result in billions of dollars of economic prosperity for Albertans, Indigenous communities and Canadians and create well-paying jobs throughout Canada.
Our province wants to congratulate the Trans Mountain Corporation for its tenacity to have completed this long awaited and much needed energy infrastructure, and to thank the more than 30,000 dedicated, skilled workers whose efforts made this extraordinary project a reality. The province also wants to thank the Federal Government for seeing this project through. This is a great example of an area where the provincial and federal government can cooperate and work together for the benefit of Albertans and all Canadians.
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