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69 comments on A Political Storm Over Canadian Energy Security
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As an eastern Canadian, the lack of action on these fronts is appalling. We really, really need a major political party to stand up soon and say "we're pulling out of NAFTA". The Americans have shown little respect for the rules anyway (softwood lumber most famously), so we're really beating ourselves to death with rules that only we follow. A platform point of "Americans have no rights to our resources, under any circumstances" would play well in Canada, to say the least. Canada has maintained it's first world status as much due to the shear amount of raw materials we have as anything else. It's not just oil we ship without doing any of the truly profitable work to, the same happens for wood (sold to US, bought back as furniture), metals, water, grains, fish, etc. It's time to throw away the old rules and start building towards self-sufficiency. We should be making our our products not because it's the most profitable way (it's not), but because we'll need to eventually.
Within Canada, the eastern provinces have been sending such large numbers of people westward over the past decades that Alberta saying "let the easterners freeze in the dark" might not go over as well as it did 30 years ago. We're well-positioned to make the industry grind to a halt, just by not providing workers to the dirty beast of northern Alberta.
As an American, I'll ask you to please do anything that you can to undermine and overturn NAFTA. It certainly doesn't sound like it is in Canada's best interest, and I don't like it for America either.
Good fences make good neighbors, and I've about had my fill of globalism.
Good luck,
Steven in Dallas
I agree with my countryman Steven from Dallas.
You don't need to be co-dependent on our addiction problem. It will just make you sick, too. Get yourself to an Oilanon meeting and learn how to care for a sick relative, without supporting the addiction.
You have a beautiful country, don't mess it up just so my neighbor can buy yet another Hummer.
Jeff
Here in Arizona, very few people use clotheslines, even though it's often as hot outside as inside the drier. However, Canadian gas is so cheap, why bother stepping into the dry heat outside when you can stay inside where it's cool?
At some point in the future, Canadians will run through their NG and be shivering in the dark. At that point, Arizonans will be forced to step outside to hang up their wet clothes.
I'm amazed at the political push to ban incandescent light bulbs and there is such little talk about clothes dryers.
The clothesline is a low cost, low maintenance solar clothes dryer that can save a huge amount of electricity and gas. It is awful hanging clothes out in the heat in Arizona, it's even worse doing it in the middle of winter in Canada, but the RH is low in both cases and clothes will dry. My mother used to hang almost everything out and didn't like the smell of clothes from a dryer, but we also lived on a grain farm and weren't short of fresh clean air.
Instead, clotheslines are banned in many urban areas:
NDP hangs out energy-saving proposal
People aren't necessarily too lazy to hang out laundry, but so many families have both spouses with careers. I fall into this group and we don't have a clothesline and we both have a busy schedule and think we don't have time to hang laundry out.
Or they could just build more nuclear power plants...
Good point. Canada has a great nuclear power plant design in the new CANDUs. But they would still be wise in the meantime to consider how much oil and gas they need internally before committing so much of it to the U.S.
No one is running a 'new' CANDU (ie a 3rd Generation one) so I'm not sure if they can be proven to be a 'great' design?
The old CANDUs were a complete disaster for Ontario Hydro, effectively bankrupting the company. The taxpayer of Ontario is still carrying the $30bn liability.
However many of them are running again, and running fairly well. Except for 2/14 units (?) which are complete writeoffs. There is an outline application to build 2 new ones at the Darlington site.
The policy decision taken (which makes sense economically) is that nuclear capacity will not exceed baseload. Ontario will never be giving electric power away at periods of low demand.
Of course, the eternal problem of transmission line capacity persists. There isn't enough capacity to get all the power into the centre of the GTA, at summer peak demand.
Quebec I can't see ever making a big new commitment to nuclear. New Brunswick I don't know what the plans are. The other Maritime Provinces I can't see going nuclear.
Electricity is roughly 1/3rd of the energy use in the economy, so if half Ontario's terrawatt hours are nuclear, then about 1/6th of its' energy will come from nuclear. If we really pushed heat pumps, etc., I could see that rising to 40%, so say 20% nuclear.
Canadians don't use that much NG in their homes...plus heat is relatively easy to generate (burn things, run current through them, etc.). When you've run through all the gas you can use, Arizonans will be forced to live through 35-45 degree days without endless supplies of air conditioning. Plus you'll run out of water (you can't have ours).
Basically, we're all screwed, right?
There is now $3500+ of rebates available to install a ground source heat pump AKA Earth Energy System in Canada. A province like Manitoba has 98% of it's electricity supplied by hydroelectric generation.
From NRCAN:
Earth-energy systems intended for ground-water or open-system applications have heating COP ratings ranging from 3.0 to 4.0, and cooling EER ratings between 11.0 and 17.0. Those intended for closed-loop applications have heating COP ratings between 2.5 and 4.0, while EER ratings range from 10.5 to 20.0.
That's a really odd thing to say re Canadians and natural gas.
Toronto boy here.
I would say 80-90% of people heat their homes with natural gas.
Probably at least half cook with gas as well.
At least half have gas hot water heaters.
So 4.5m people in GTA, say 3m of whom are dependent on gas for at least home heating, if not cooking and hot water.
Also Ontario Energy is building gas-fired stations to replace Nanticoke. There's a 500MW one going in on Toronto Waterfront.
Fair enough, I lived in Toronto, but was always in apartment buildings. I know (well, stats can says) that about 1.4 million people in Ontario live in apartment buildings (5 stories or more), and almost none of these buildings use natural gas in the apartments themselves (almost all electricity).
Almost no one in Nova Scotia uses natural gas, and I didn't notice anyone using it in BC while I was there either (although I was in Victoria, which might have a different infrastructure in place).
And have they finally settled and decided to actually build that damn power plant? It'll take more than a few of large gas plants to replace the Nanticoke behemoth, but NG beats coal (followed eventually by non fossil fuels, hopefully).
Hmmm... I thought most apartment buildings *did* use gas. It's just the furnace is in the basement? I'll have to consult my local expert ;-).
At least in NB, I *think* most people use wood and/or bottled gas. Bottled gas comes from the same place as natural gas?
(I once had an incredibly funny drunken discussion about natural gas with a guy from New Brunswick, a Phd engineering student. He thought we were teasing him, when we said that the gas in the house came out of a pipe in the ground. He found the idea completely frightening ;-).
I don't think there is a gas pipeline to Vancouver Island, but I could be wrong on that.
Yes the Toronto Harbour gas fired plant is well underway, last time I was home (last December). They wanted to do a smaller, combined heat and power unit, but they couldn't find an easy way to connect it to the central district steam heating system. A lost opportunity, in my view.
http://www.portlandsenergycentre.com/ nice photos
Honestly if you turned the gas off in Toronto, people would freeze to death. Natural gas is far and away the most common urban fuel source for Golden Horseshoe home owners.
Apartments I shall have to check.
I'll take your word for it, I guess I've just never lived directly in a place with NG access or direct NG heat, so I assumed there just weren't many. I know most large apartment buildings don't have a furnace in the basement providing heat (via hot air flow and ventilation), they have either hot water or electric heat in the walls. I guess the hot water could be from a NG fired hot water heater, and some of the electric heat would trace back to NG.
In NS, most houses use wood or oil furnaces (although I lived in a house with a heat pump at one point). I honestly can't recall what it was in Victoria...I think it's a mix of wood, gas, oil, and electric.
Mostly heating oil in Victoria. Electric on the mainland for apartments, gas for houses.
I also agree with Steven.
The U.S. needs our friends in Canada to show us how to live with less energy.
All addicts need the intervention of friends to kick the habit. I trust the Candian populace will continue to be good neighbors to the U.S. and convince broaden the debate to who is doing without energy when the U.S. continues to consume vast quantities.
I doubt you're going to get a good lesson from Canadians - we consume roughly the same energy per capita as USians do, and that is 50% more than French, Russians or Germans and double what the Japanese consume per capita. You know, Japan, that country with absolutely no heavy industry whatsoever? :-)
http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11-621-MIE/2005023/tables/table1....
Another source:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_usa_per_per-energy-usage-per-perso...
Part of this is just the Canadian lifestyle. A big spread out country, with hot summers and harsh winters.
Part is the degree of very heavy resource industry we have: aluminum smelters, pulp mills, mining, tar sands etc. All of which burn lots of energy.
Part is just a huge lost opportunity. The R2000 home design has been around since the 80s, but most new homes are not built to anything like that standard. Swedes, with a similarly harsh climate, manage to make do with far lower energy consumption.
The process of suburbanisation eg in the GTA has been built entirely around low density, private cars etc.
Diesel cars are rare to unknown, whereas in Europe they are half of cars sold (though much less in Sweden-- I believe the cold morning start problem has been solved, but maybe the Swedes don't think so!).
Americans seldom take inspiration from Canada on anything, certainly not healthcare!
They see us as their slightly slow half brother, I think. Pleasant but a bit dull.
California has the same electricity consumption per capita now that it did in 1980, whereas the US as a whole it is 40% higher than it was then. Studies have shown this is not just shifting industry.
California has pioneered in energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances etc.
*that* is a model for Americans of what can be achieved, with a little sweat and applied Yankee know-how.