Greening the Oil Sands — Canada’s Greatest Opportunity of the Century!
Recently, the Canadian media reported quite extensively about the statements made by the former Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet. Both politicians eagerly declared that “oil is dead” and they “advised” the federal government against providing support for Alberta’s energy sector. And Elizabeth May even used an analogy to the famous bankruptcy of Blockbuster — a poster child of dated VHS/DVD technologies, that were replaced by innovative streaming offerings.
Not surprisingly, Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney called their statements “divisive” — to which Canada’s brightest columnist, Rex Murphy, responded: ”Jason Kenney was too kind. There are more vigorous words on call, but they do not belong in print”. So, I thanked Rex Murphy and pointed out that indeed — such statements demonstrate not only poor judgment but also a complete lack of empathy & low Emotional IQ. And we must react decisively to such lunacy! Here is why…
In Woody Allen’s “Love and Death” movie, he is giving a ride to the village idiot and takes him to the Idiots’ Convention in a large city. And there is a huge banner on the convention building saying: “Welcome Idiots”. The movie was produced in 1975 and it is still a truly hilarious comedy!
I am not sure if the Idiots’ Conventions still take place nowadays. If they do, Elizabeth May AND Yves-François Blanchet should be cordially invited as their honoured guests. I can only sympathize with Jason Kenney for having to deal with such nonsense. But it’s his job, I guess… and somebody has to do it!
As if there was a “magic switch” out there and you could just flip it & miraculously land in the Never Land — running 100% on renewable energy. Unless you are utterly delusional or clinically naïve — you must accept the fact that big changes take time. Even switching from Windows 1.0 to Windows 10 took Microsoft Corporation for more than 20 years! And your laptop still can’t keep you warm in winter or keep the lights on!
Fighting climate change has nothing to do with catchy slogans. It’s a massive shift toward greener energy and it’s so vast that it can succeed only if done gradually, thoughtfully, and responsibly.
The only consolation I take is that even Norway, with its 100% Green Grid and the most EVs per capita in the world, is still being criticized, too — for supplying natural gas and oil to countries around the world. Please see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-cop25-failed-how-fix-oleg-feldgajer/
At least Norway is energy-rich and self-sufficient. Germany, on the other hand, is one of the world leaders in switching to renewable energy — but still depends on Russian natural gas pipelines. So, would you rather see Canada wearing Germany’s shoes or the Norwegian clogs? BTW, it was a purely rhetorical question. And if you still struggle with finding the right answer, I suggest that you attend the aforementioned convention — together with Elizabeth May and Yves-François Blanchet…
But let’s call the spade, spade. Throwing around Blockbuster example by Elizabeth May is quite dumb for a simple reason: this company was sitting on its hands with an outdated technology without giving a damn about new developments. And new technologies are location agnostic and have nothing to do with any given geography.
On the other hand, Canadian Oil Sands are different. It’s our true Factor Endowment and geographical benefit. There are not too many places around the world that have it. Besides, billions of dollars are being spent on the most advanced research at Canadian Universities linked to “greening the extraction process” and R&D focused on mining, explorations, and prospecting.
And as Jason Kenney puts it: “Our oil & gas industry is the largest spender on enviro protection & cleantech in Canada. We are global leaders on ESG rankings compared to other producers. Despite COVID-19, all indicators point to an oil industry with a growing demand for many years to come”.
Now, I’m not sure if Yves-François Blanchet ever reads any scientific publications and how much he understands the advanced technologies linked to natural resources and renewable energy — as most are published in English… But Elizabeth May should know better!
Even the most hard-core environmentalists do understand that without “Green Hydrogen,” we will never achieve the proverbial Net Zero Energy in Transportation or Buildings. And using massive utility-scale wind/PV generators in addition to the stacks of electrolyzers is TOO EXPENSIVE!
To give you an example, a utility-scale 20MW solar farm costs at least $10MM — at the very ambitious cost of $0.50/W. And a 20MW electrolyzer will cost you even more. So, you do the math, especially, if the hydrogen generation capacity grows to 100MW and beyond…
Recently, Holland’s Port of Rotterdam and Shell announced an ambitious plan for producing green hydrogen that will be transported via a pipeline to Shell’s refinery. The CapeEx for building the announced 250MW electrolyzer and the offshore wind farms of 4GW amounts to $BILLIONS (which is hardly a surprise taking into account that even the most cost-effective offshore wind farm costs over $2/Watt).
Hence, welcome to the era of in situ “Green Hydrogen” produced at 1/10 of the cost of renewable energy — right at our oil sands! It’s Canadian ingenuity and hard-knocks entrepreneurship that makes such innovation possible! And it’s already proven and scalable process to produce the lowest-cost pure hydrogen from existing oil reservoirs — with ZERO emissions!
Countries like Australia are aiming to become the world’s largest providers of “Green Hydrogen”. But to do so, Australia must cover its vast lands with thousands of wind turbines and millions of solar PV panels. Any way you look at it, renewable energy “Green Hydrogen” is very expensive to produce.
Our oil sands can generate even a greater amount of “Green Hydrogen” today — than Australia will ever produce in 5, 10, or even 20 years. And we can do so without all such expenses! Yes, for the next 30 years, Alberta can supply both: a vast quantity of “Green Hydrogen” AND all the oil that Canada will need!
And as far as Quebec goes, I can demonstrate today how the government of Quebec can build pipelines for Alberta’s oil — without ANY environmental risks or appropriations of native lands. Disregard my advice & you will lose massive amounts of revenues…
Perhaps prior to COVID-19, it was “cool” for Yves-François Blanchet to “scale the barricades” and fall bear-chested on the “swords” of Alberta pipelines. However, not to even look at the innovative proposals today when the new revenues are so badly needed? — it’s simply scandalous!
There is only one way to explain the disturbing lack of progress at the 25th summit of the UN’s Conference Of the Parties (COP25). To me, it’s all due to a Lopsided Misalignment and I spoke about it at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-cop25-failed-how-fix-oleg-feldgajer/
One quick look at the global trends indicates that not all the continents demonstrate the same CO2 emission trends. While North America and Europe are reducing the overall emissions, countries in Asia do not!
And yet, most of the emissions criticism is oriented squarely toward NA and Europe! But the numbers don’t lie. We can clap our hands all we want to the “imagine-the-future” narratives of the biggest polluters.
But when China, India, Russia & Iran all INCREASE their emissions, and countries like Canada reduce it by 0.1% — it’s time to stop the generic blame and to focus on the biggest polluters instead.
Climate change and climate risk is a global problem that needs global solutions. Yet, unless the all-mighty pension funds start targeting countries such as China, Russia, India & Iran the same way they target Canada, Norway & Australia — it’s a lopsided bias!
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