Posts Tagged ‘energy efficiency’
No need for Trans Mountain Pipeline
This post is really just a way for me to have easy access to some recent articles which pretty much show that by the time they have finished building the Kinder Morgan expansion, it will be redundant. There are two articles, one in The Tyee and one on DeSmog Blog, which cite research by David Hughes for CCPA.
As part of Alberta’s climate plan, announced November 2015, oilsands emissions are capped at 100 megatonnes per year which eliminates growth of future production.
According to Hughes’ analysis, when considering restrictions placed on Alberta oil production under the province’s greenhouse gas emission cap, “Kinder Morgan overestimated oil supply by 43 per cent in 2038.”
Arguments for the necessity of the Trans Mountain pipeline have also been overstated, according to the new analysis, because of alternate pipeline approvals.
In addition to the Trans Mountain pipeline Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also approved the Enbridge Line 3 project and more recently President Donald Trump approved TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
“If these projects are built, which seems likely, there will be a 13 per cent surplus of export pipeline capacity without the [Trans Mountain pipeline].”
But even more damning is Bloomberg’s review of the work by Rocky Mountain Institute and the IEA.
“If you take a large bite out of transportation fuels, then suddenly the economics of the whole downstream oil and gas business look dramatically different,”
So while the KM CEO stands up and blusters about “no concessions” it really begins to look all very irrelevant.
A bit like the 45th US President making a song and dance about withdrawing from a voluntary agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quite how a deal that had no teeth at all – there are no mandated penalties for failing to meet obligations under the Paris agreement – can be characterised as “unfair” beats me.
Here are some hostages to fortune: there will not be a great boom in BC LNG. There won’t be a Transmountain Pipeline expansion and there won’t be a Site C dam. They are all absolutely pointless because the rest of the world has already moved on, and renewable sources of energy are just getting more competitive every day. And even if they weren’t, sensible people are already reaping the economic benefits of better energy efficiency which we seem to be missing out on.
Just like we seem to have ignored the possibility that BC could get all of its energy from geothermal resources (that links to an article from 2014!).
Climate Heroes
The intention of this post is to offset some of the gloom created by yesterday’s offering. Canada is not a good example to the rest of the world in tackling climate change, but that should not deter us from seeing what we could do, if we want to see change. And usually this blog bangs on about policy – because that is the field that I used to work in. So this is a departure, for this blog.
It also is due to the emergence in recent days of an alternative to facebook, which seems to have been sucking up a lot of my online time. I am not very happy about that, but the content that I find on facebook is what matters, more than the medium itself. If there can emerge another social medium that does not share some of Facebook’s characteristics, that would be a very good thing. I do not know if Ello will do that, but I hope so. This trailer for a new documentary was posted to Ello by Darren Barefoot – someone I met way back when I started blogging and went to Northern Voice to learn how to do that. He was involved in producing the trailer, and promoted it on Ello.
I did actually watch the whole thing and if you do nothing else I urge you to check out the making of bamboo bikes. The role of the Chinese government in the final segment also provides an interesting contrast to the way we do things here.
Conservatives vote against helping Canadians save on home energy costs
This is actually a Green Party of Canada Press Release. My expectation is that this topic is unlikely to get much coverage in the mainstream media.
I have to say as well that I did try to take advantage of the ecoEnergy Home Retrofit program, despite its somewhat cumbersome requirements. I did not get a penny from it. The simple reason being that while it was available it was almost impossible to get hold of tradespeople, who in any event at that time were also very much occupied on fitting out new build housing which was flooding the market. So when I bought an older townhouse in Richmond I got a new high efficiency gas furnace. I had to replace the hot water tank too and found there was no realistic alternative to like for like (tankless systems being only viable for larger households). I was then told by a City of Richmond gas inspector that if I installed a sealed system gas fire – to replace the negative efficiency open flame one – he would insist on the installation of a totally unnecessary air brick in an outside wall. This was because he did not understand the words “coxial flue” and thought the new gas fire would need an additional supply of combustion air. At that point I gave up on a campaign with the strata council to speed up replacement of the windows and doors identified by the mandatory house inspection required by the ecoEnergy program which disqualified me from all rebates. And having replaced the extractor fans in both bathrooms I was not in a hurry to go back into the loft and add insulation up there.
Even so, and recognising that there is much more energy to be saved by cutting transportation emissions, I still think that retrofitting homes is a sensible thing to do, as the payback periods are shorten when energy costs rise. Of course the current glut of natural gas due to excessive fracking is not helping there either.
(Ottawa) September 25, 2014– In a House vote on September 24, 2014, Green Party Leader and MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands Elizabeth May and Green Deputy Leader Bruce Hyer, MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, voted in favour of a motion to have the government establish a program to support energy efficient home renovation.
Once again, the Harper Conservatives put partisanships ahead of good policy and voted it down.
“Canada wastes more than half the energy we use,” said Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP for Saanich–Gulf Islands. “Heating the outdoors in the winter and then cooling it in the summer just doesn’t make any sense. I am stunned that the ecoEnergy program was cancelled by the Conservatives in 2012, at a huge cost to homeowners. This motion would have brought the program back – yet sadly, the Conservatives voted against saving Canadians thousands of dollars in energy costs.”
NDP MP François Choquette’s motion M-497 stated that an energy efficiency program would help to combat climate change while reducing Canadians’ energy bills and creating jobs.
“It was disappointing, if not unexpected, to watch almost every Conservative MP in the House stand against a proposal that could have restored the successful energy efficient home retrofit program,” Hyer said. “This motion was a no brainer. The Conservatives could have killed two birds with one stone – creating jobs while lowering carbon emissions. It’s beyond me why any government would oppose it.”
In 2012, the Conservatives cancelled their own ecoEnergy Home Retrofit program without warning. The ecoEnergy program gave out grants of up to $5,000 to homeowners to help pay for energy efficient upgrades like replacing furnaces, improving insulation and sealing windows and doors.
The program helped over 750,000 Canadians during its five years, saving users an average of 20% on their home energy bills every year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and adding up to $4 billion to the Canadian economy. It increased government revenue and created thousands of jobs.
“EcoEnergy brought huge benefits to the environment, the economy and the average Canadian. It was particularly significant in Northwestern Ontario, where the cost of home heating is rising rapidly,” concluded Hyer.
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