In 2014, representatives of the International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling committee jetted to southern Alberta from 14 countries including South Africa, China and Denmark to tour the world’s first solar community. Of course they did. Fifty-two homes tapped 800 solar panels at a cost of $7 million to achieve “90 percent solar energy” and GHG emissions reductions of, brace yourself, 5 tonnes of CO2e per home per year, or 260 tonnes per year for the complex. At today’s carbon price of [Read more]
Why there is no energy transition
An intelligent and thoughtful reader asked if I could speak to a group about energy, and he had a sequence of questions he posed as the basis for discussion. They centred on the ‘energy transition’. A few issues arose instantly. First, how to avoid speaking to a group, because I generally hate that (y’all don’t bug me but I feel like a preacher in a pulpit), and secondly because the way he framed his questions vexed me greatly. His questions framed the topic in a way I hadn’t thought of [Read more]
Thinking big: Winning trade is one thing, but creating the biggest country in the world? Trump written all over it
President Trump has come out like a Tasmanian devil, with a level of productivity nothing short of astonishing. His new policies, directives, and orders span the entire spectrum – from HR issues to crime to historical injustices to everything in between, and are being implemented with mind-bending speed. From the most personal to the most geo-significant, he’s changing everything. And across this entire spectrum, one item in particular seems to be agitating him like no other, that causes his [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: Engaging Articles of the Week
Quick Trump Tariff update: I listened/watched to the whole inauguration speech and two things stood out: First was how peculiar it was to see Trump shake hands with Biden, then spend 20 minutes explaining how Biden destroyed the country in every conceivable way, then see them shaking hands again and parting ways. At least Kamala looked annoyed. But anyway the second thing was that Trump seemed to veer somewhat form earlier speeches (surprise surprise) when talking about immediate priorities. As [Read more]
Weekly Word Wandering: Engaging Articles of the Week
My inbox is flooded with things worth reading and writing about, and I can't keep up, so here you go, the best of them for the week. First up is an article by someone that calls herself The “Electric Grandma”, which is not something I would do because it conjures up images I can’t get out of my head, but I’ll cut her some slack because it kind of works and she's earned the right to call herself whatever she wants. Meredith Angwin is a formidable energy expert, author of the book “Shorting [Read more]
What is Trump up to? Building Fortress North America, brick for BRICS
It is greatly painful to wade into the political arena, even as a bystander, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. The way it is these days, simply approving (or disapproving) of anything one of the leaders says is enough to send some slice of the population into howling outrage, and they will banish you forever (or vice versa). But just like a doctor visit for the annual “digit”-al physical exam, we can’t always avoid the unpleasant things in life. Delving into politics has a great deal in common [Read more]
A New Year, and a New Energy Page
To be clear up front, there’s not much below about The Great Ottawa Sinkhole. Everyone from Uganda to Inuvik is analyzing that train wreck, and no one needs yet another take. In the spirit of moving on from a bad dream, time to take a look at 2025 from other vantage points. First off, let’s take a pulse: Is anyone out there still interested in stuff not generated by AI? Because that this is. (No apologies for such awkward sentences; they are now a necessity to prove this is human-derived ((or [Read more]
Here’s to productivity: An average Canadian energy worker produces, every day, fuel to heat a home for a year, move a big truck a thousand miles, create 14,580 toothbrushes…and a hundred other things
You might look out at the vast landscape of ultra weird crap going on all around you, and think something odd is going on here that even AI couldn’t make up. And yet I look at the same thing and think “It’s all coming together.” Sort of. I’m referring to a specific aspect that is coming together, not things in general, or, because it’s just everywhere, politics. You would cross the street to avoid anyone that thought the political landscape is “coming together”. I’ll avoid politics to the [Read more]
Proposed $70 billion AI data centre in MD of Greenview could launch an incredible new chapter for western Canadian energy
In case you missed it the other day, the Municipal District of Greenview, in west-central Alberta, announced some rather huge plans: to develop the “world’s largest AI Data Centre industrial Park”. The potential total value of the project could exceed a staggering $70 billion. This might, just might, be the tip of a big iceberg, because it shows the first indications that word is spreading about what some people have known for a while: there is no better place for these power-hungry data [Read more]
Unstable times, globally and for energy – what should Canada do?
Want an example of how upside down the whole world is? Consider these two quotes, retrieved from the web this past weekend, about whatever the hell is going on in Syria: “There are posts on X discussing this event, with some suggesting that Assad might have fled to Moscow, though these should be treated with caution as social media can spread unverified information. Official state responses or confirmations from the Syrian government were not detailed in the provided sources… This situation [Read more]
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