Energy - Fossil, Renewable, Nuclear

So you're saying you don't really care enough to ask.
I'm not willing to put myself out to what's "essentially" the world stage by asking a celebrity (essentially) an open question that then people will pile on to in every direction. Not interested.

In "relative private" here, where the people are remarkably well-informed (on the whole) and I can usually get answers without such exposure? Sounds a LOT better.
 
I'm not willing to put myself out to what's "essentially" the world stage by asking a celebrity (essentially) an open question that then people will pile on to in every direction. Not interested.

In "relative private" here, where the people are remarkably well-informed (on the whole) and I can usually get answers without such exposure? Sounds a LOT better.
After multiple deleted attempts at a reply, I'd better just go with...
:facepalm:
 
UK does not generate any electricity with coal on Friday. This is believed to be the first time Britain has gone 24 hours without any coal powered electricity generation since 1882. Before anyone gets too excited about renewables though it's worth noting that roughly half of the electricity generated was still done so via fossil fuels - natural gas. And another quarter came from Nuclear power stations. We're still a long long way from being able to meet all our energy demands via "green" energy.
 
In a related story, Bob Murray and Don Blankenship (from prison, thank God) demand the Trump administration declare war on the UK. :p
 
UK does not generate any electricity with coal on Friday. This is believed to be the first time Britain has gone 24 hours without any coal powered electricity generation since 1882. Before anyone gets too excited about renewables though it's worth noting that roughly half of the electricity generated was still done so via fossil fuels - natural gas. And another quarter came from Nuclear power stations. We're still a long long way from being able to meet all our energy demands via "green" energy.
Yeah. Not-Coal doesn't mean green. Ontario's been coal-free for about 3 years now, and most (more than half) is nuclear, with hydrelectric and natural gas plants taking up nearly the rest of the burden.

One big improvement, though, seems to be an absence of smog in Toronto. The air has been much nicer thhe last few years.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Not burning coal is a non-trivial contribution to improving air quality, but also bear in mind one of the big reasons why natural gas has become much more viable as a fuel source is because its cost has dropped and its availability has skyrocketed since we started fracking. So, pick your poison, environmentalists, cause there's no such thing as a free lunch (or free energy for that matter).
 
And once they've finished fracking your neck of the woods, they move on and don't come back. So good luck filling all those extra hotel rooms you built thinking the gas field workers would always be there.
 
And once they've finished fracking your neck of the woods, they move on and don't come back. So good luck filling all those extra hotel rooms you built thinking the gas field workers would always be there.
You build hotels for workers?

Fuck, we just have mobile camps.
 
So I posted in another thread about a home explosion in my town, because a cut pipe that wasn't sealed off from a well piped unrefined natural gas right into the soil around their basement. Colorado is now trying to pass legislature saying that all the oil and gas companies need to map their lines and make them accessible to the public. This is especially important where I live, because there are a lot of horizontal fracking wells set up going through residential areas, and a lot of older wells that may not be properly mapped. However, it looks like the energy lobby is paying a lot of money to see this not happen.
 
Energy lobby is by and large scum and should be hanged (along with most lobbies). But that's not news.
 
So I posted in another thread about a home explosion in my town, because a cut pipe that wasn't sealed off from a well piped unrefined natural gas right into the soil around their basement. Colorado is now trying to pass legislature saying that all the oil and gas companies need to map their lines and make them accessible to the public. This is especially important where I live, because there are a lot of horizontal fracking wells set up going through residential areas, and a lot of older wells that may not be properly mapped. However, it looks like the energy lobby is paying a lot of money to see this not happen.
Dei, sorry to say you're being given the old bait-and-switch tactic here.

Fracking wells are nearly 8000 feet deep ON AVERAGE: Source(this is NOT a pro-oil website, the opposite in fact)

From the link you gave, if you follow the chain of links, you get to this statement
The uncapped, abandoned line was about 5 feet from the foundation of the home, investigators said.
So if a (typical) foundation goes no deeper than 10 feet, and this line was BELOW it (it's unclear, who's to say it wasn't to the side?) then this line was about 15 feet down at maximum. In other words, it had ZERO to do with fracking, or anything related to exploration, or even mass-scale transport of natural gas. This was the same depth as any lines that would be going to/from your house if you were hooked up to gas for heat/cooking. So it was somebody probably already breaking a regulation about how/where pipes can go, and how they should be capped, etc. But it has ZERO to do with fracking. Could be from any type of gas well.


The issue on whether the public should have easy access to the maps of where the lines are at all times seems to me like a red herring. Do you have that for the electric company's buried (or even on poles if it's a remote area) transmission lines? How about the water and sewer lines? WHY does the public as a whole need them easily accessible? As long as you can call a number and get people out there to tell you where you can't dig (which is typical in cities, the "call before you dig" thing), then what's the issue? Seems like a "now we know where to protest (or worse stuff)" type of enabling bill, as opposed to having actual utility.
 
Dei, sorry to say you're being given the old bait-and-switch tactic here.

Fracking wells are nearly 8000 feet deep ON AVERAGE: Source(this is NOT a pro-oil website, the opposite in fact)

From the link you gave, if you follow the chain of links, you get to this statement

So if a (typical) foundation goes no deeper than 10 feet, and this line was BELOW it (it's unclear, who's to say it wasn't to the side?) then this line was about 15 feet down at maximum. In other words, it had ZERO to do with fracking, or anything related to exploration, or even mass-scale transport of natural gas. This was the same depth as any lines that would be going to/from your house if you were hooked up to gas for heat/cooking. So it was somebody probably already breaking a regulation about how/where pipes can go, and how they should be capped, etc. But it has ZERO to do with fracking. Could be from any type of gas well.


The issue on whether the public should have easy access to the maps of where the lines are at all times seems to me like a red herring. Do you have that for the electric company's buried (or even on poles if it's a remote area) transmission lines? How about the water and sewer lines? WHY does the public as a whole need them easily accessible? As long as you can call a number and get people out there to tell you where you can't dig (which is typical in cities, the "call before you dig" thing), then what's the issue? Seems like a "now we know where to protest (or worse stuff)" type of enabling bill, as opposed to having actual utility.
What you have to understand is that there are a lot of old vertical wells in Colorado, and housing development and these wells are very close to each other. Right now, those lines aren't part of public record, and houses are being built and sold without full disclosure to the people buying then. I worry less about the new horizontal wells (There are two sets of these right by my neighborhood) but they don't make up the bulk of wells yet. The conflict between development (Colorado has a housing shortage right now) and drilling is a huge point of contention right now, because state regulations are trumping local regulations, and the line that wasn't capped was incredibly negligent.
 
Interesting article about the Ontario electricity market: Ontario’s Fair Hydro Act ‘a Ponzi scheme’

Anybody from Ontario have a bill they can scan in or whatever (black out your personal stuff) and post here? I'm afraid I don't understand what they're talking about. What percentage of your fees are this "Global Adjustment" charge? Is it taking your prices from $0.10/kWh to $0.30/kWh or is it only like $0.02? That's still a 20% increase for nothing, but I wanted to ask for clarity here.

For reference, in NS I'm paying $0.15/kWh. Which sucks, considering it's my heat too.
 
I'll tell you the change if I ever think to do so when I'm at home..

But most - so very much - of Ontario's energy comes from its nuclear, hydro, and gas generators, that I'm rather sure that paying only market value for the "green" stuff will have a negligible effect.

The real problems we've been having go back decades, from the massive waste (of money) spent on our nuke plants, from privatizing the delivery services, and then the repayment surcharges that get tacked onto our bills that probably just go into the government's general funds.

The Sun is just using this to attack the Liberals, but the Conservatives and even the NDP are to blame for our energy shit too. And the NDP hasn't been in power for nearly 30 years.
 
So,

a Global News article suggests that the global adjustment charge actually accounts for about 75% of our price per kilowatt-hour (and doesn't show upon our residential bills separately)

And then actually looking at what this GAC actually is, it turns out that it's really just a fancy phrase that translates into marking up the price to make a profit earmarked for maintenance and expansion.

That is, we're gonna be paying this money in taxes this way or another.
 
So,

a Global News article suggests that the global adjustment charge actually accounts for about 75% of our price per kilowatt-hour (and doesn't show upon our residential bills separately)

And then actually looking at what this GAC actually is, it turns out that it's really just a fancy phrase that translates into marking up the price to make a profit earmarked for maintenance and expansion.

That is, we're gonna be paying this money in taxes this way or another.
Ya but the difference is that if it's on income tax, low-income people aren't hammered with it like they are now. That the NDP isn't all over this for exactly that reason boggles my mind, but they have too many Watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) in their party, and thus energy cost up = good to them, because then more are dependent on the government to give BACK the money via rebates/programs, rather than having it cheap to begin with.

Remember for the NDP and those further "left" that any program that makes you more dependent on government decisions is a GOOD thing.

Edit: link on the global story please? I'd like to read about how you're paying 4x what your actual cost should be because of government contracts. That seems very quotable.
 
The market value of generated electricity is apparently less than 3 cents per kilowatt-hour (that's from that global news article saying the GAC jacks up the price threefold). So your province is jacking up the price, too.

I imagine every jurisdiction in North America charges a mark up.

I have no idea what to say to this other than "yeah, I've thought for a long time that electricity should be provided by the government similar to how our road network is, or our police and fire services. That it's such a fundamental aspect of our society that it needs to just be."

But damn, we spend a fortune on our road system, too. We don't bitch about it the same because we don't see the bill.
 
I thought this article would be complete biased bullshit, but it actually wasn't: Opinion: Pipeline approvals based on faulty assumptions
One of the key assumptions made in approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion was that Alberta’s bitumen is being unfairly discounted by U.S. buyers and that its price can be maximized by getting it to tidewater and then to Asian markets.

The federal and Alberta governments and the oil industry argue that expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline would unlock Asian markets and result in a revenue windfall. However, a review of international and North American oil prices reveals that a significant ‘tidewater price premium’ doesn’t exist.

Government and industry enthusiasm for tidewater pipeline access arose from a large premium that existed between international and North American oil prices between 2011 and 2014 due to a pipeline bottleneck in the U.S. caused by a rapid increase in U.S. oil production. This bottleneck has since been eliminated and the price differential retreated to just US$0.82 per barrel in 2016. Given the higher transportation costs of exporting oil to Asia compared with the U.S., Canadian producers are likely to receive less from oil sold in Asia than if the oil was sold to U.S. refineries.
I think not having all your eggs in one basket (the USA) is a good idea, and thus it should be built on that idea alone, but the points raised aren't all bad. Some of the others below there about Climate Targets and reductions in production (ya right) I think are... naive, but that just IMO.

Either way, not a bad point, but what happens if the bottleneck they mentioned re-asserts itself? Or if greater growth in Asia spurs greater demand versus USA? There's just a number of good reasons to not have only one buyer, even if they're relatively equal. What's true today won't necessarily be true in the future, and if somebody thinks they can make money off of it, all the better.
 
Wasn't sure of the best thread to post this in, but it's definitely energy-centric, so I'm putting it here: Key Republicans call for probe to see if Russia funded anti-fracking groups
The letter pointed to reports that Russian entities may have funneled millions through a Bermuda shell company, Klein Ltd., to the Sea Change Foundation in San Francisco, which has in turn provided grants on anti-fracking groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.

...

Allegations of a connection between Russian president Vladimir Putin and environmental advocacy groups are hardly new.
In 2014, former U.N. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Russia has “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale gas—to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a private 2014 meeting that Russia had funded “phony environmental groups” to fight pipelines and fracking, according to an email leaked last year by WikiLeaks from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account.
Bolding is mine

Thoughts? Obviously not just Republicans who have accused Russia of doing this, and IMO it makes sense for them to do so.
 
Weird. I mean, the best reason I can think of for doing so would be to increase market demand for "Soviet" oil, but that seems a stretch.

--Patrick
 
Fracking has dramatically lowered oil prices which has badly hurt the russian economy.
I think it's more accurate to say it's dramatically reduced the price of natural gas which has then by proxy reduced the demand for oil, which has then lowered that price. But I could easily be wrong there.
 
Weird. I mean, the best reason I can think of for doing so would be to increase market demand for "Soviet" oil, but that seems a stretch.

--Patrick
Well, Russia's been acting for decades to harm the US in various ways. This would be just one little salvo in their attack on your economy.
 
Definitely Canadian politics, but also definitely energy: Supreme Court quashes seismic testing in Nunavut, but gives green light to Enbridge pipeline

Given the past history of the Supreme Court, I found this a refreshing check on indigenous rights:
The court sent a shot across the bow in its ruling, warning the NEB and energy project proponents that "any decision affecting Aboriginal or treaty rights made on the basis of inadequate consultation will not be in compliance with the duty to consult."

But the ruling said consultations are a two-way street and Indigenous Peoples alone should not be given the final say on whether a project should proceed. Aboriginal rights must be balanced against "competing societal interests," the court said.

"This does not mean that the interests of Indigenous groups cannot be balanced with other interests at the accommodation stage," the justices wrote. "Indeed, it is for this reason that the duty to consult does not provide Indigenous groups with a 'veto' over final Crown decisions."
However:
The top court found that the NEB, acting as an agent of the crown, simply did not do enough in the Clyde River case, holding only one meeting with the community where officials from the oil company could answer few pressing questions.
So ya. Refreshingly balanced actually. If you do lots of consulting, it's enough to satisfy, but it's also clarified explicitly by our Supreme Court that the indigenous do not have a veto over pretty much everything in our country, which IMO is a good thing.
 
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