Two major players in Alberta’s oil and gas industry announced a new hydrogen project recently. There was much rejoicing from people who think it’s a great step forward. The details say otherwise. Suncor is one of the last remaining oil and gas majors in Alberta’s oil sands. It’s a vertically … [continued]
Canada’s carbon tax that peaks at $170 per ton CAD in 2030 will add 40 to 50 cents to a liter of gas when well-to-wheel emissions are counted. The retail adder isn’t the entire story.
There’s a lot of lithium in the world. There’s no particular worries about running short, and many innovators such as E3 are working to make places where it isn’t dirt cheap and easy at least competitive. Canada’s oil and gas region might have a secondary product as demand for their primary output dries up.
Alberta’s crude oil from steam-assisted gravity drainage has a carbon debt just for extraction and in province processing that’s as large as the total annual global consumption of CO2. Shipping, refinement and use make that three times bigger.
Heat pumps and decarbonization of grids are the clear climate change winners. For building owners, the annual cost savings are greater, sometimes much greater, for efficiency measures.
With demand for oil from its tar sands down, Alberta is desperate to boost its economy. It thinks coal mining could be the answer.
Canada’s new $170 per ton carbon price will save commercial building owners who switch from natural gas to heat pumps up to $6,000 per year.
This is the power of carbon pricing. It makes business cases for fossil fuels and their applications stop making sense.
Today, Canada’s federal government dropped its new climate change plan, led by a very big number: $170 per ton of CO2 as a carbon price by 2030.
Electrifying everything at the same time as all electrical generation shifts to renewables are two of the key points in my Short List Of Climate Actions That Will Work. Heat pumps are only part of the answer, but at about 1% of Canada’s total GHG emissions reduction target, they are a surprisingly big one. Too bad about Alberta though.
