No calling in sick or waiting for a nice day – The grid has to perform on the worst of them

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Terry Etam

Saturday night, the middle of the cold snap, was something to be endured

Saturday night, the middle of the cold snap, was something to be endured. Things break at -36 degrees. A quick run to the grocery store was rerouted by a fleet of city vehicles tearing up the street in a considerable manner, most likely chasing a broken water main or some such. Imagine being without water on a night like that.

Half an hour later it got worse – the provincial grid operator issued an alert for people to “immediately limit their electrical use to essential needs only.”

Keep in mind the staggering circumstance, and location, of that alert: Alberta. Even the province’s biggest naysayer would have to admit that the province is an energy juggernaut, blessed with resources most of the world can only dream of, including and especially energy.

If power consumption levels were not reduced, there could have been rolling blackouts. Anyone care to imagine what that would have been like at -35 degree temperatures?

Hopefully every single voter in Canada, and the US for that matter, is paying attention. The false prophecies of utopian energy transitions visions are, quite clearly, dangerously false.

The media feeds you dumbed-down pablum; don’t take it at face value. Instead of listening to blathering about “new installed capacity”, pay attention to actual output. In extreme cold, wind and solar output fall to zero, or very close. It doesn’t matter if there are a billion gigawatts of ‘capacity’ installed.

Everyone needs to understand the fundamental issue that was best described by Nassim Taleb via his turkey analogy. A turkey has 364 days of a very good life, followed by one very bad day come Thanksgiving. It is the bad day that matters, not 364 good ones. A deadly day is a deadly day.

It’s the same with renewables penetration, and how it makes the news ‘on the good days’. Activists and simplistic policymakers (but I repeat myself) tout how a particular jurisdiction may have at such and such a time sourced “xx percent” of power from renewables. Yay, look at the progress, marching ever higher. But it’s not what it sounds like. It doesn’t matter if a country or state or province gets 80% of its power from solar at the peak of a good sunny day, nor if 80% comes from wind on a particularly windy day. Those are misleading numbers, because the system must be fully capable of meeting peak demand every day, and not just ‘on a good day’.

According to AESO, the provincial grid operator, Alberta has 4,481 MW of wind power capacity. At the peak of last weekend’s deepfreeze, it was producing about 1/3 of one percent of that total. Not just useless, but far worse: useless when needed exactly the most.

What matters is: how does the system perform at peak times – what is going to show up on demand?

Just like everyone else that’s trying to bring rationality to this conversation, I need also point out that wind and solar are welcome additions, in moderate amounts, sited where they do the least damage, and as supplements to a grid.

But that’s where the conversation needs to get serious. The real danger out there are people that want an energy transition so badly, or are employed as ‘climate architects’ such that their career depends on it, who sweep some mighty big things under the rug.

“We just need more storage, then wind and solar will be able to carry the load.” Not possible, not if batteries are the vision. Imagine a day’s worth of battery power supply for the entire province. Or two days. The cost would be off the charts, and, then after two days of ‘usage’, how would the batteries get recharged if the cold spell persisted more than a few days? Is that the kind of backup anyone would accept? We’ll have power again if the wind picks up strongly and consistently for the next week, if not, well, good luck?

“Sure we can handle an all-EV world because users can charge at night.” I’ve seen this argument now and then, based on some simplistic studies that show, correctly, that financial enticements can get people to charge EVs at off peak hours. But that’s a red herring in the world we are headed for, “electrify everything”. If we do electrify even half of what we could, then peak demand will still go way up, as will our life-perched dependency on it. More EVs just mean more load. And not all EVs will shift to night charging; it is some pretty weak thinking to imagine that all EV owners will have that optionality, or live in a place that allows it, or won’t be travelling, etc. And remember that the feds’ plan is for all vehicles to be electrified. So maybe J. Consumer in suburbia can shift his EV to night charging, but what about a fleet of city buses, or Uber drivers, or forklifts, or taxis, or…the list is endless.

“We can switch to heat pumps.” This one takes the cake. Heat pumps will exacerbate the problem at the exact worst time – when it is coldest, and when power demand is highest, and when the grid is maxed out. It is the opposite of proponents who say EVs can charge at off peak hours – heat pumps will be called into full service precisely at peak hours. Taleb’s turkey again: a mass-heat-pump system will be wonderful on many days, but on the very worst day, all goes black. And cold.

There is no joy in this silly debate we seem to be in with ideologues, particularly when the threat of rolling blackouts is announced by the grid operator. But there is also no time to waste indulging people who want to rewire the grid with “well academic studies say this should work.” Set up your own commune somewhere and experiment for a few years and at least one winter cold snap, then let us know how it goes.

Wishful thinking doesn’t turn many wrenches, nor does it heat homes. Wishful thinking is not what an energy system can or should be built on. Energy is life or death in extreme weather. Ideology is the last thing that should be involved in energy supply, and yet we are up to our ears in it, a situation that is becoming dangerous.

People can see this. They may not understand how grids (and energy) work, but they know when something smells bad. That’s why federal government support is at such lows, and why distrust in the media is at such highs. Political scientists telling you “Don’t worry, we know how to design a new grid” are no match for the likes of, for example, real-world experiences such as this relayed by a gentleman named John Wright on LinkedIn: “Currently out at our cabin trying to help out our heat pumps (we run three geothermal units and they are running full out with auxiliary/ supplemental heating coils engaged). We have two propane fireplaces burning full time in addition to all the firewood that we’re also splitting and burning, and all of the burners on the cooktop are on. It’s probably about +12.5° C inside here vs -36°C outside…Everyone seems to ignore the fact that heat pumps are a huge draw on the power grid. Our power bill could easily be $1500.00 to $2000.00 for January…By the way, the power consumption and poor performance is the same in the summer when it is +36°C here.”

And finally, it is important to note that the gradual but persistent undermining of the hydrocarbon industry will have massive consequences, because hydrocarbons underpin everything we use and do. Governmental and media animosity will drive away capital (don’t wonder why dividends are such a popular thing in the oil and gas sector – capital flight in full view) and ultimately weaken a pillar of our economy. Until nuclear energy is ubiquitous, or some technological breakthrough happens, we need reliable, baseload power, which at this time in history means hydrocarbons, here and around the world. That baseload is not guaranteed, it is not a right, it is not going to be sustained if capital is chased away from it.

Voters, it’s up to you. Demand more from your politicians, but also demand better conversations from the entire energy industry as well. We owe you that.

Terry Etam is a columnist with the BOE Report, a leading energy industry newsletter based in Calgary. He is the author of The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity. You can watch his Policy on the Frontier session from May 5, 2022 here.

Related Topics:#AlbertaPowerGrid #FrontierCentreForPublicPolicy #ProvincialPowerGrid #TerryEtam

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Federal government’s GHG reduction plan will impose massive costs on Canadians

Published on July 26, 2024

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From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

Many Canadians are unhappy about the carbon tax. Proponents argue it’s the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is true, but the problem for the government is that even as the tax hits the upper limit of what people are willing to pay, emissions haven’t fallen nearly enough to meet the federal target of at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Indeed, since the temporary 2020 COVID-era drop, national GHG emissions have been rising, in part due to rapid population growth.

The carbon tax, however, is only part of the federal GHG plan. In a new study published by the Fraser Institute, I present a detailed discussion of the Trudeau government’s proposed Emission Reduction Plan (ERP), including its economic impacts and the likely GHG reduction effects. The bottom line is that the package as a whole is so harmful to the economy it’s unlikely to be implemented, and it still wouldn’t reach the GHG goal even if it were.

Simply put, the government has failed to provide a detailed economic assessment of its ERP, offering instead only a superficial and flawed rationale that overstates the benefits and waives away the costs. My study presents a comprehensive analysis of the proposed policy package and uses a peer-reviewed macroeconomic model to estimate its economic and environmental effects.

The Emissions Reduction Plan can be broken down into three components: the carbon tax, the Clean Fuels Regulation (CFR) and the regulatory measures. The latter category includes a long list including the electric vehicle mandate, carbon capture system tax credits, restrictions on fertilizer use in agriculture, methane reduction targets and an overall emissions cap in the oil and gas industry, new emission limits for the electricity sector, new building and motor vehicle energy efficiency mandates and many other such instruments. The regulatory measures tend to have high upfront costs and limited short-term effects so they carry relatively high marginal costs of emission reductions.

The cheapest part of the package is the carbon tax. I estimate it will get 2030 emissions down by about 18 per cent compared to where they otherwise would be, returning them approximately to 2020 levels. The CFR brings them down a further 6 per cent relative to their base case levels and the regulatory measures bring them down another 2.5 per cent, for a cumulative reduction of 26.5 per cent below the base case 2030 level, which is just under 60 per cent of the way to the government’s target.

However, the costs of the various components are not the same.

The carbon tax reduces emissions at an initial average cost of about $290 per tonne, falling to just under $230 per tonne by 2030. This is on par with the federal government’s estimate of the social costs of GHG emissions, which rise from about $250 to $290 per tonne over the present decade. While I argue that these social cost estimates are exaggerated, even if we take them at face value, they imply that while the carbon tax policy passes a cost-benefit test the rest of the ERP does not because the per-tonne abatement costs are much higher. The CFR roughly doubles the cost per tonne of GHG reductions; adding in the regulatory measures approximately triples them.

The economic impacts are easiest to understand by translating these costs into per-worker terms. I estimate that the annual cost per worker of the carbon-pricing system net of rebates, accounting for indirect effects such as higher consumer costs and lower real wages, works out to $1,302 as of 2030. Adding in the government’s Clean Fuels Regulations more than doubles that to $3,550 and adding in the other regulatory measures increases it further to $6,700.

The policy package also reduces total employment. The carbon tax results in an estimated 57,000 fewer jobs as of 2030, the Clean Fuels Regulation increases job losses to 94,000 and the regulatory measures increases losses to 164,000 jobs. Claims by the federal government that the ERP presents new opportunities for jobs and employment in Canada are unsupported by proper analysis.

The regional impacts vary. While the energy-producing provinces (especially Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick) fare poorly, Ontario ends up bearing the largest relative costs. Ontario is a large energy user, and the CFR and other regulatory measures have strongly negative impacts on Ontario’s manufacturing base and consumer wellbeing.

Canada’s stagnant income and output levels are matters of serious policy concern. The Trudeau government has signalled it wants to fix this, but its climate plan will make the situation worse. Unfortunately, rather than seeking a proper mandate for the ERP by giving the public an honest account of the costs, the government has instead offered vague and unsupported claims that the decarbonization agenda will benefit the economy. This is untrue. And as the real costs become more and more apparent, I think it unlikely Canadians will tolerate the plan’s continued implementation.

Author:

Ross McKitrick

Professor of Economics, University of Guelph

Economy

Kamala Harris’ Energy Policy Catalog Is Full Of Whoppers

Published on July 25, 2024

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

The catalog of Vice President Kamala Harris’s history on energy policy is as thin as the listing of her accomplishments as President Joe Biden’s “Border Czar,” which is to say it is bereft of anything of real substance.

But the queen of word salads and newly minted presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has publicly endorsed many of her party’s most radical and disastrous energy-related ideas while serving in various elected offices — both in her energy basket-case home state of California and in Washington, D.C.

What Harris’s statements add up to is a potential disaster for America’s future energy security.

“The vice president’s approach to energy has been sophomorically dilettantish, grasping not only at shiny things such as AOC’s Green New Deal but also at the straws Americans use to suck down the drinks they need when she starts talking like a Valley Girl,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at Institute for Energy Research, told me in an email this week. “To be honest, she’s no worse than many of her former Senate colleagues who have helped cheer on rising energy costs and the fleeing American jobs that accompany them. She doesn’t seem to understand the importance of reliable and affordable domestic energy, good skilled jobs or the national security implications of domestically produced energy, but maybe she will go back to school on the matter. No doubt on her electric school bus.”

During her first run for the Senate in 2016, Harris said she would love to expand her state’s economically ruinous cap-and-trade program to the national level. She also endorsed then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s harebrained scheme to ban plastic straws as a means of fighting climate change.

Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told me proposals like that one would lead during a Harris presidency to the “Californication of the entire U.S. energy policy.” “Historically,” he added, “the transition of power from a president to a vice president is designed to signal continuity. This won’t be the case, because a Harris administration will be much worse.”

But how much worse could it be than the set of Biden policies that Harris has roundly endorsed over the last three and a half years? How much worse can it be than having laughed through a presidency that:

— Cancelled the $12 billion Keystone XL Pipeline on day one.

— Enacted what many estimate to be over $1 trillion in debt-funded, inflation-creating green energy subsidies.

— Refused to comply with laws requiring the holding of timely federal oil and gas lease sales.

— Instructed its agencies to slow-play permitting for all manner of oil and gas-related infrastructure.

— Tried to ban stoves and other gas appliances.

— Listed the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as an endangered species despite its protection via a highly-successful conservation program.

— Invoked a “pause” on permitting of new LNG export infrastructure for the most specious reasons imaginable.

— Drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for purely political reasons.

As Biden’s successor for the nomination, Harris becomes the proud owner of all these policies, and more.

But Harris’ history shows it could indeed get worse. Much worse, in fact.

While mounting her own disastrous campaign for her party’s presidential nomination in 2020, Harris endorsed a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing, i.e., fracking. She later conformed that position to Biden’s own, slightly less insane view, but only after being picked as his running mate.

Consider also that while serving in the Senate in early 2019, Harris chose to sign up as a co-sponsor of the ultra-radical Green New Deal proposed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. It is not enough that the Biden regulators appeared to be using that nutty proposal and climate alarmism as the impetus to transform America’s entire economy and social structure: Harris favors enacting the whole thing.

As I have detailed here many times, every element of climate-alarm-based energy policies adopted by the Biden administration will inevitably lead the United State to become increasingly reliant on China for its energy needs, in the process decimating our country’s energy security. By her own words and actions, Harris has made it abundantly clear she wants to shift the process of getting there into a higher gear.

She is an energy disaster-in-waiting.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.