For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-for-the-first-time-in-more-than-150-years-albertas-electricity-is-coal/

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

178 215 2 years ago

theglobeandmail.com

kalupa• 2 years ago

Now it's mostly natural gas, instead! With a good chunk of wind, but the current government seems to dislike "renewables"

dagmx• 2 years ago

Yep. The Alberta government has their head stuck in the sand (pun intended) around renewables as they existentially threaten their current economy. They have repeatedly shown that they’d rather double down than try and diversify.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-alberta-set-b...

SketchySeaBeast18• 2 years ago

To boost your point - that is literally what the Alberta government has been doing. They instituted a seven-month renewable's pause to "evaluate" them (evaluating renewables in 2023????), which introduced a lot of investor uncertainty[1]. When the pause was over they introduced rules around preventing wind turbines and solar from being developed in areas to prevent obstruction in "viewscapes"[2].

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-renewables-pa... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-viewscapes-bu...

xandrius• 2 years ago

Which is worse in terms of greenhouse emissions but it's something I guess.

Instead of "natural gas", we should just switch to saying methane, which is what that generally is.

gpm2• 2 years ago

No? Methane produces less than half the CO2 per kwh than coal.

Which is still bad, but not worse or as bad.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

SketchySeaBeast18• 2 years ago

Well, it's hard to get someone to hate their source of income.

nightowl_games3• 2 years ago

As far as I understand it, the whole country is dependent on the tar sands, but the east still hates it.

bryanlarsen19• 2 years ago

Their current source of income. Alberta has more sun and more wind than any place else in Canada so renewables could be quite profitable to them in the future, but what government cares about anything further out than the next election? Alberta also used to be the only place in Canada where you could just build a solar power plant and hook it up to the grid with minimal red tape so had a massive advantage in terms of number of solar jobs.

Also Alberta is next door to BC which has vast sources of hydro-electric power so it could easily trade solar & wind power to BC when the sun is shining and/or the wind is blowing in exchange for hydro power when it isn't.

snarf21• 2 years ago

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

MisterDizzy• 2 years ago

Let's see how long it takes them to realize they should have gone with the latest nuclear power tech and will eventually be unable to meet demand with anything but coal or nuclear (unless something changes).

SketchySeaBeast18• 2 years ago

I'm wondering what scenario you're considering that natural gas won't suffice but coal will. Alberta is celebrating simply transitioning from one fossil fuel to another, slightly cleaner burning, one.

They are certainly still struggling with renewables when they are needed the most, such as -35 at 7PM, long after the sun has gone down and the wind turbine's hydraulics are too cold to function safely and all our furnaces are running and everyone is cooking and doing laundry. This is also when nuclear isn't a great solution, as it's a huge spike in demand.

adrianN4• 2 years ago

Why would you let your hydraulics freeze?

mywittyname3• 2 years ago

This is also when nuclear isn't a great solution, as it's a huge spike in demand.

Overproduce electricity, then burn off the excess to match load to demand.

It's counter-intuitive, but the cost structure of producing electricity via nuclear is different from fossil fuels. The unit costs per kW/h of nuclear is negligible compared to the capital costs of building a plant. Making it economically viable to "waste" electricity to match load to demand.

At some point down the road, people will do the cost benefit on capturing excess production in battery packs vs expanding the existing nuclear facilities to meet demand.

TheRealPomax2• 2 years ago

You... know how big Alberta is, right? It's twice the size of Germany/the same size as Texas, with a population of only a little over 4 million, with a pretty much linear trend in population for several decades now, so you're going to have to do a bit more work if you want to make the argument that they're going to run out of the power necessary to serve the province any time soon.

tossstone2• 2 years ago

Alberta’s population growth trend in the last 5 years is anything but linear. It has accelerated significantly driven in large part by new to Canada immigrants and those escaping higher cost of living provinces like BC and ON.

Source: https://www.alberta.ca/population-statistics

photochemsyn2• 2 years ago

Alberta's tar sands are even dirtier than coal - because large amounts of natural gas are required to convert the tar sands into syncrude, which is like a crude oil that requires more refining to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from it. The residue from tar sands refining is petcoke, which gets burned in regional power plants and exported overseas:

https://skepticalscience.com/legal-fight-leave-dirtiest-foss...

Since the coke is being exported to India and China for consumption in power plants there, there's zero change in the amount of fossil CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, so any effort to promote this as 'cleaning up the tar sands' is just fossil industry greenwashing.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-marke...

nightowl_games3• 2 years ago

As far as I understand it, Canada's economy is wholly dependent on the tar sands.

seanmcdirmid2• 2 years ago

Alberta. Ontario and even Quebec and maybe BC actually have industry.

SketchySeaBeast18• 2 years ago

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction accounts for 8.21% of Canada's GDP. So, not so much, but let's all take a moment to stare at the horror show that is the 13% that is real estate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada

Edit: I realize that source is from 2020, which may be skewing those numbers, but it seems that statista still roughly agrees in 2024.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/594293/gross-domestic-pr...

danans• 2 years ago

It's 1.7% of Canada's GDP. Significant, but not wholly dependent.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1319179/canada-oil-sands...

But it's 1/3 of Alberta's GDP.

The GHG impact is pretty huge though (2.2x regular oil extraction per barrel).

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

That used to be the case, now it's real estate.

moralestapia• 2 years ago

Not at all and has never been the case, maybe only in some regions of Alberta like a century ago [1].

The largest oil reserves in the planet, though, are in Canada, unfortunately it's all unconventional.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_petroleum_indus...

photochemsyn2• 2 years ago

Once upon a time, whale oil from whaling was a major factor in the Canadian economy. Then whale oil was replaced by kerosene and then the electric lightbulb. Tar sands will go the same way, and Canada's booming wind turbine economy will replace it to some extent (wind power can be exported in several different forms).

softfalcon4• 2 years ago

Ah yes, you've been fooled by the oil and gas propaganda. The entire oil and gas industry is only 3.2% of Canada's GDP. However, you'll never hear that from the army of O&G lobbyists who permanently reside in Alberta 24/7.

JamesCoyne• 2 years ago

Alberta is somewhat unique within Canada, with electricity trading on a market operated by AESO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Electric_System_Operat...

exacube• 2 years ago

Doesn't Ontario's IESO also do this?

bryanlarsen19• 2 years ago

Not really. Talking to energy producers, it's a lot easier to add new generation in Alberta than it is in Ontario.

toomuchtodo6• 2 years ago

ElectricityMaps zone CA-AB: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/CA-AB?wind=false&solar=...

Total fossil gas generation capacity is ~12.7GW. Seems straightforward to replace with solar, wind, batteries, and interconnects with neighboring grids.

Wind and Solar Potential resource: https://www.pembina.org/pub/wind-solar-alberta

tonyarkles2• 2 years ago

If you're curious, you can actually see the real-time stats for what's going on in Alberta: http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServle.... There's lots of solar and wind installed but wind right now isn't producing much at all. Solar's doing decent though!

toomuchtodo6• 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing that resource! ElectricityMaps parses it [1] for showing real time data as well as creating a data source for carbon intensity estimation models. Alberta has the most favorable wind and solar resources in Canada (citation in my root comment), so solving for the remaining fossil gas generation should occur in due time simply out of economics [2].

[1] https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/b...

[2] https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.c...

generic920342• 2 years ago

Honest question: Is it clear that wind really could not produce more electricity right now? Depending on the way producers are chosen and the net is "congested" the wind farms might just not be allowed to contribute.

Teever4• 2 years ago

It seems straightforward but it isn't.

Alberta is about twice the size of Germany, 50% larger than California and has a meager population of 4.3 million spread out across that area.With a latitude that ranges from 48' to 60' and a wide variety of geography there's a range of availability in solar and wind.

Alberta politics is also a factor.

Alberta is a complete aberration in North American democracy in that more or less one party have been in power there for over 50 years. While the party has always been blatantly pro O&G industry at the expense of everything else when they issued an unexpected moratorium on a solar and wind projects last year.

This has thrown the renewable industry in Alberta into chaos and has likely damaged investor confidence in Alberta for decades[0]

https://www.theenergymix.com/tsunami-engulfs-alberta-renewab...

energy1232• 2 years ago

Being larger isn't a disadvantage. Wind correlation drops exponentially as a function of distance. Land use becomes a non issue.

1over137• 2 years ago

Alberta is a complete aberration in North American democracy

Hmm, seems to me several US states have been the same: Vermont, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Idaho...

DowagerDave3• 2 years ago

> more or less one party have been in power there for over 50 years.

you know we had a majority left-leaning (NDP) government < 10 years ago, right?

The province splits pretty predictably between Calgary, Edmonton and Rural.

neonate• 2 years ago

https://archive.md/sEZIL

softfalcon4• 2 years ago

Hey folks, I live in Alberta. This isn't as big of a win as you all think it is. We replaced coal burning with natural gas and gasoline burning power generation.

For those who will say, "but Alberta has wind and solar!" please know that our current premiere (similar to a governor) is actively attacking all of our renewable energy investments. Her name is Danielle Smith and she's quite literally a former oil and gas lobbyist.

The only reason this is being touted is because big oil in Alberta is happy we've switched over to burning their carbon emitter of choice.

Take that into account when you read this feel good piece about Alberta being "coal free".

xxpor• 2 years ago

Actual gasoline? Unless you're talking about super-isolated northern communities on generators [which should still be using diesel rather than gasoline], that seems... insane.

Symbiote• 2 years ago

As posted elsewhere anyway, Alberta doesn't have any oil-fired power stations: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/CA-AB

softfalcon4• 2 years ago

They fire up gasoline generators when the load is high as a back-up to natural gas generation.

There have been periods of rolling brown outs due to high industrial demand where I live. I know people in the industry and also watch the local news where they report that the gasoline backups have been activated and the brown outs should stop. Can confirm, they sometimes burn gasoline for power generation.

nemomarx• 2 years ago

How much is natgas? I Do think it's still better than coal in terms of emissions and particulates and such.

jes51992• 2 years ago

I'll still count it. Natgas is much cleaner than coal. And economics will eventually force their hand as solar costs continue to fall

slavik81• 2 years ago

At present, solar is about 6% of Alberta's electric generation capacity.

The provincial government suspended planning permission for all renewable energy projects across the province for six months, then outright banned the installation of grid-scale solar in much of the province. This resulted in the cancellation of tens of billions of dollars worth of private investment in renewable energy in Alberta.

Solar is also not as cheap as elsewhere in the world, as Canada has import duties on the cheap Chinese solar panels are driving the change elsewhere. The duties roughly triple the price, with a tax of ~160% on the purchase price and per-watt charges on the panel's rated output.

I'm sure that in five years things will start to shift. Heck, there's workers installing solar panels on my neighbour's roof right now — but it's not going to change much while Danielle Smith is in charge.

djaychela• 2 years ago

It's not as much cleaner as we often think. Only a small % of leakage means that overall the warming potential (from leaks and burnt gas) can be more than coal.

chollida16• 2 years ago

It is frustrating as someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money to remove coal that India and China have said FU to the world and increased their coal usage.

I guess given that those two countries are keeping Russia afloat by buying their oil it shouldn't be a surprise, but its still disappointing to see those countries choosing the path they did.

Waterluvian3• 2 years ago

As a Canadian it’s hard for me to be upset given we still emit far more carbon per capita than China or India.

brailsafe• 2 years ago

I suppose there could be worse problems though. According to Bloomberg, as of a few years ago there were more people in India who didn't have access to electricity at all than live in all of Canada, and not insignificant portion of our population is of recent Indian descent. This source reports ~10% of their population https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/access...

As a Canadian (but not Albertan) I've never had direct access to the residual economic effects of oil resources, or the slight tax offset that comes with having no Provincial Sales Tax, aside from general gov redistribution. I've never not had electricity, and I've never not had renewable electricity, which is quite remarkable.

azinman2• 2 years ago

But would that be true if Canada had 1 billion people?

486sx335• 2 years ago

“Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit”

https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carb...

bryanlarsen19• 2 years ago

Note that China's coal usage was basically flat in 2023 and expected to decline in 2024.

China's coal capacity is increasing dramatically, but they're increasingly using their coal plants as peaker plants rather than for base production.

mrguyorama2• 2 years ago

For those unaware, China and India do NOT like getting their power from coal. They've both had decades now of abysmal smog and pollution that literally (like, statistically trackable) kills people every year, including people otherwise productive in society. China is absolutely dumping the price of solar panels. A fully renewable energy China is one that is harder for Western countries to sanction, has more prestige with bright blue skies, and exports cheap solar panels to everyone else. India will trend the same way.

Every geopolitically relevant country will feel more secure with renewable, and therefore utterly independent, energy generation.

A reminder that Texas, a uniparty state literally run by Oil Barron families for decades, still gets at least a third of it's power from renewable sources, because it's so goddamned cheap. It doesn't matter how profitable oil is, or how much you pump, it will always be cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to replace it with power that just manifests itself out of the sky or wind for merely the cost of maintenance.

Each oil well requires tens of highly skilled, rather well paid tradespeople to manage, drill, run, explode, etc. An entire field of wind turbines requires one or two small teams of somewhat well paid maintenance engineers.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 years ago

Medium term - China is going to lead the world in emissions reductions. They have the most to reduce and the most to lose if they don't move to renewables rapidly.

Short term - nothing much is happening. Rome wasn't built in a day.

The US can idly sit around and burn it's own natural gas and oil. The US at least has the option to maintain the status quo for a long time (it won't). But China doesn't even have this option.

Additionally, auto manufacturing (ICE cars) accounts for ~5% of US employment. For China ICE auto manufacturing is ~0, and they have the opportunity to produce a huge chunk of the worlds EVs. They're not only incentivized massively to get off oil - they're incentivized to get EVERYONE ELSE off of oil, too.

China needs to IMPORT natural gas and oil. They'd much rather lead the world in renewables EXPORT EVs and renewable generation than be reliant on Russia & KSA for energy (the basis of their current economy)...

China will likely cut their emissions faster than the US has - which if you're realistic - the US has done an impressive job.

The US emits ~30% less carbon per capita than it did in 2000. And we're on pace to be at ~40% less by the end of 2030: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...

In 20 years, China is likely to be around ~75% less than today. The US probably won't get from ~40% to ~75% over that time.

The lobbying from our own energy producers will too much to cut that deep that quickly.

The US and China are close to ~50% of emissions: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...

No one else besides India is really going to move the needle (certainly not in the wrong direction - no one else is growing fast enough).

India will be the wild card. Will they import renewable energy generation from China or fossil fuel from Russia and KSA?

matt2000• 2 years ago

I can understand the frustration from a climate change perspective, but you still get the benefits of cleaner air locally, increasing energy independence and freedom from commodity cost fluctuations.

dheera2• 2 years ago

India and China

Oof. Before we start pointing fingers, over 50% of China's energy consumption is manufacturing, and a significant chunk of that manufacturing is western countries outsourcing their manufacturing needs, i.e. claiming to be coal-free while really just burning the coal elsewhere and then blaming the landowner.

If you want to truly be coal-free, don't just pay for it to be built in Canada for your wooden house that consumes a few kilowatts. Pay for it to be built in China for all your manufacturing outposts that make your computer, TV, phone, kitchen gadgets, kitchen ware, disposable items, containers for food delivery, and everything else, that take an enormous amount of power to create. They are equally a part of your energy footprint.

Do you have iPhones in Alberta? It takes about 1 GJ or 278 kWh to make a single phone [1], which is about enough to heat an entire house for a month. For a computer you're looking at about 1 MWh, about a large house's heating usage in an entire year.

[1] https://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2011/papers/hotnetsX...

chollida16• 2 years ago

I mean, you basically ignored the point about them buying Russian oil/gas, thus enabling the Russian war. But yes, I agree that China makes things. India doesn't really have that excuse for using coal.

jogjayr2• 2 years ago

As an Indian immigrant to Canada, it is frustrating to see people believe it's a choice. I also hear a lot of hate for the carbon tax and rebate program in Canada. I support the program, even though it costs me money.

someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money

Which means Canada has money. India is much poorer on a per-capita basis. They can become wealthy by developing their economy. India can't spend as much per-capita on clean energy as Canada or any other wealthy nation.

India has much more to lose from climate change compared to Canada. The heatwaves are already horrific, and many cities have water supply problems so drought due to climate change could spell disaster.

The air quality in most Indian cities is terrible. No one is burning coal for fun.

Gasoline is CA$1.81/l in Mumbai, in a country with a fraction of the per-capita income of Canada. Cars are much smaller on average and most people take public transport.

The electricity grid isn't as reliable as Canada and of course most people don't live in houses. It's mostly apartments, often with no assigned parking. Despite that I saw many electric cars and scooters on my last trip, even in small towns. I don't know how they charge. But I began to question why the US or Canada can't build enough charging for apartment-dwellers.

The "choice" India and China are making is no choice at all. They can either develop their economies or languish in poverty. Poverty means less food, less medical care, less education. It means lower life expectancy, higher infant and maternal mortality, an overall lower quality of life. Staying poor means when climate change gets worse, they'll have less money to mitigate it.

If you want developing countries to decrease their carbon emissions, invest in cheaper clean energy. Support programs and policies that give developing countries subsidies on clean energy technologies.

486sx335• 2 years ago

India needs to focus on decreasing its birth rate, which it completely ignores. They can’t just keep making more people and expect things to world out

bryanlarsen19• 2 years ago

India needs electricity to develop their economy. The cheapest electricity is solar.

NoLinkToMe4• 2 years ago

Canada emits more Co2 per capita than China today, by 1.5x.

But Co2 doesn't only count in 'last years'. It counts as a cumulative effect. The Co2 damage of Canada per capita is way beyond that of China, cumulatively.

In cumulative terms, China has emitted 'only' 7.5 times as much Canada despite having 35x the population. In other words, Canada's per capita cumulative emissions are about 4.5x those of China.

And that's a lot. It means Canada has damaged way more, and should have a bigger burden to reduce future damage, or undo damage already done.

Generally yes it's always frustrating to see any country keep emitting Co2. But Canada is a worse offender, both in the past, as well as now, and that's a pretty sad record for one of the richest countries in the world which also happens to be the country with probably the biggest per-capita natural renewable resources of all time. (land for wind and solar, as well as insane hydro).

cm21876• 2 years ago

Ratios matter little to the climate. Total volumes do. When you build your infrastructure from scratch, it makes sense not to go for XIX century technologies.

quacked2• 2 years ago

Please cite the raw numbers you used to make your claims, and their sources.

I don't doubt that on a per capita basis Canadians emit more than Chinese do; furthermore, China is the source of many of the goods that western nations consume, and so they're producing emissions "for" the western nations in a sort of de facto shell game.

However, China has no interest in giving its manufacturing base "back" to the west, and does not take emissions reduction seriously. It is a deceptive claim that Canada is "worse than China"; China is out-emitting Canada, doesn't take emissions reduction seriously, and plans to continue to out-emit Canada into the future.

threesevenths• 2 years ago

I’m not sure you can say China’s total is 7.5x Canada’s total and say Canada has caused more damage. It might well be true that per capita is higher however you seem to be comparing apples to oranges here.

And as others have mentioned sources for numbers greatly help the collective conversation.

refurb3• 2 years ago

Unless you're not a big fan of productions - things like food, you can't compare CO2 emissions alone. It all comes down to cost-benefit.

The goal is the maximum production per unit of CO2 - for every unit of CO2 you maximize what is produced from it.

Yes, the US produces 13.49% of all global CO2, but it also produces 25.22% of all output.

China produces 31% of all CO2 emissions, but only 17% of all production.

maxglute3• 2 years ago

Canada (and US) has no leg to stand on because domestic emissions reduction is offset by simply choosing to be increasingly large net crude exporters after domestic use. At the end of the day, Canada is trending to enable more net fossil fuel use, whereas PRC is trending to reduce net fossil fuel (coal used for peaking not baseload) and via renewable exports that reduce demand for fossil.

As Canadian, the only disapointment is influence ops against Canadian fossil industry has stalled development so much for so long that we're not a larger fossil exporter and reaping in benefits of current geopolitical turmoil. EU could have been buying overpriced Canadian oil + lng.

t0bia_s• 2 years ago

So gaining wealth by burning coal by US or Europe was fine back then and now you want to ban developing country to achive wealth in same way?

matthewdgreen• 2 years ago

India and China have said FU to the world and increased their coal usage.

China is building an unbelievable amount of renewables and nuclear, more than the rest of the world combined. Like every other part of the world, they're backstopping these variable power sources with fossil generation -- mainly by building modern coal power plants that can be spun down when renewable generation is high. They've also developed a framework to pay coal plants not to generate. And of course they're leading the world on the deployment and pricing of battery storage, pumped hydro and HVDC grid upgrades.

I'm posting this because your conclusion ("China has said FU" to the world) is almost the polar opposite of what's actually happening. If we survive the climate crisis, it's going to be because of what China is doing with renewable buildouts and manufacturing.

CMCDragonkai• 2 years ago

I really think you should be taking responsibility over your own current and historical consumption and production patterns instead of pointing fingers at countries who have much larger populations and are much more poorer per capita. Lead the world with better technology, show everybody how it can be done. Everybody does their bit and we will all benefit.

CuriousIndian3• 2 years ago

You do realise that vast majority of India's new electricity generation is renewable right? And Canada just replaced coal with petroleum not green sources.

Its amazing how most western countries bash coal so much and then proceed to generate electricity using natural gas.

To me it's Canada that is saying FU to the world and then preaching about it.

bastien2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately they did it by switching to natural gas instead of the massive sustainable buildout they needed. Good job on reducing thorium and uranium emissions, at least.

Gibbon12• 2 years ago

Other hand when talking about functional operation. Solar, Wind plus Nat Gas works well together. Where Solar, Wind plus Coal doesn't.

It's technically easy to shutdown, restart, and take Nat Gas plants in and out of standby to make up for shortfalls in solar and wind production. Where you can't do that with coal and nuclear for both technical and economic reasons.

DowagerDave3• 2 years ago

Note: even though this is published by a large and pretty well respected newspaper it's an op-ed piece from a left-leaning environmental organization (which should be obvious if you read it). Dropping coal is pretty different from dropping fossil fuels, especially right now when natural gas is dirt cheap. It's also debatable if Alberta currently needs any more solar or wind; what we definitely need is storage for these generative sources. The other components of industrial use and transportation are probably more effective targets for big wins than getting gas out of the electricity grid.

bryanlarsen19• 2 years ago

Due to its abundant wind & solar, Alberta could easily get to ~70% renewable generation without any storage. So until Alberta hits that 70% mark, investing in a dollar on wind or solar generation will provide far more fiscal and decarbonization return than investing that dollar in storage.

Similar, investing a dollar in wind & solar will pay itself back very quickly. Investing that dollar into transport or industrial decarbonization will have a much longer return.

For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

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