A pitch to Alberta’s Premier to do something big First a disclaimer, because I can hear it already: There is a strong case to be made that governments should leave industry to sort things out for themselves, that picking winners and general meddling is the antithesis of what the free allocation of capital can accomplish. To suggest that governments should get involved is guaranteed to bring two responses from the spectrum’s ends - pure free marketers don’t want governments involved at all, [Read more]
Energy notes from the edge – taxes, the Middle East, and a marriage made in heaven
As springtime approaches, and everything thaws, as I walk through the streets of downtown and the bright tall sun chews away at the cold air emanating from the long frozen concrete, my thoughts echo those of every fellow pedestrian: What is that smell? And what the hell is that on the sidewalk? Are you all high? Why do I have to take every step as though in a minefield or pasture? And, of course and linearly, what’s the deal with those new taxes? Good Lord, run, here comes the tax [Read more]
Energy notes from the edge
Today, some bite sized energy-related pieces because some days that’s all I can handle. It’s like the difference between walking past a road-killed deer and spending the afternoon with one. You’ll see what I mean. Is growing AI power demand a problem or… did he really say that? Once, not long ago, there were a few of us braying in the pasture about what AI was going to do to energy/power demand. Now the chorus is much louder, less theoretical and much more precise. An AP/Reuters article [Read more]
Textbook examples of why new media beats old
Social media is a complex beast. It is simultaneously useful, annoying, addictive, helpful, destructive, and a hundred other things. It is tying humanity into knots. Many people, including yours truly, often deride it as a cesspool of bots and trolls and agitators for hire. All that is true. At the same time most of us, including yours truly, head there reflexively to see what our various symbiotic factions are up to. There are multiple reasons for that. Foremost is that social media [Read more]
444,000 semi-loads of food? Just another day on planet earth
A friend of mine, always with a keen eye on interesting things, passed on an interesting quote from the CERA Week energy conference the other week. The head of the International Energy Forum mentioned a surprising statistic, as quoted by Javier Blas on Twitter: “Heathrow airport in London uses more energy than the whole African nation of Sierra Leone [population ~8.5 million].” Yikes! Here’s another one that turned up randomly in the feed by a credible source: “If we keep growing our energy [Read more]
Energy wise, how do you even describe 2024
Huh. Look at that. It’s been ten years since I started writing about energy. Not that that particular trivia interests anyone, why would it, however it is interesting to look back at the impetus for writing and how that has changed. Ten years ago, as I worked in a communications department for an energy infrastructure business that did not like publicity of any kind whatsoever, it began to dawn on me how dangerous were the habits that formed thereof, and how far reaching the consequences. As [Read more]
MB/SK/AB NeeStaNan Utilities Corridor: First Nations-led utility corridor is a 21st-century nation-building initiative
“The trading of goods has been in our DNA as Indigenous People for centuries, but somewhere along the way this was lost. It’s time to regain our prosperity, for the betterment of our communities and for our country.” - NeeStaNan website Ever feel like you’re being neglected by either governments or the various power centers that dominate life? The big places get all the attention, have all the votes, have all the buzz. In Canada, fewer than ten such centers dominate the country. If you’re not [Read more]
The power of inheritances – changing the world in unexpected and often unfortunate ways
The other day, against my better judgement, I cut up a butternut squash to go into some recipe. You might be familiar; a smelly, obnoxious thing like an angry potato that turns into a truly hideous mushy texture when cooked. And then it stinks even more. The experience left me with a little pang of sorrow, because I couldn’t help but think of how hungry someone must have been at some point in history to think “Hey, I’m going to eat one of those.” Surely they had to have been standing there, [Read more]
NDP ‘anti-fossil fuel advertising’ draft legislation – worthy of both the 1956 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code or the other end of the political spectrum
Comedian Yakov Smirnov reminisced in 2014: “As a comedian in the Soviet Union, I was censored by the "Department of Jokes." Well, actually it was called the Humor Department of the Censorship Apparatus of Soviet Ministry of Culture. I think they were hoping that by the time you finished saying their name, you'd be too exhausted to tell more jokes.” The CIA, bless their hearts, translated the 1956 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code, which you may know as Ugolovnyy Kodeks RSFSR if you run in such [Read more]
Achtung! We must learn from Germany’s self-inflicted energy shambles, quickly
In 1880, a great author, Mark Twain, whom you may never hear spoken of again because he had the audacity to write in the vernacular of the day, wrote an extremely funny essay called The Awful German Language. “Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp…There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome…Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected…In [Read more]
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