How Hydrogen Could Power The Ultimate Battery

By Irina Slav - Jan 24, 2021, 

Hydrogen as a fuel of the future is the talk of the town in energy markets. Pros and cons of green versus blue hydrogen, capacity building plans, new production technologies, you name it, researchers are working on it.

Hydrogen can be used as a fuel in fuel cell vehicles—still very expensive—and for heating—blended with natural gas. One other thing it can be used for is renewable energy storage.

Earlier this week, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on a company, LAVO, that had developed what is essentially a hydrogen battery that can take in electricity produced by solar panels and store it in the form of hydrogen, to be released on demand.

The battery, the size of a fridge, contains an electrolyzer that breaks water down into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then stored in a set of canisters full of hydride—a fibrous metal alloy. The battery can be connected to a solar panel array, store the excess electricity it produces as hydrogen and then release the hydrogen to act as a battery and power various devices.

Developed in partnership with the University of New South Wales, the battery can power a household for two to three days on a single charge, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Nick O’Malley noted. It is also more durable than lithium-ion household battery packs, with its lifespan at 20 years, according to the chief executive of the developer company, Alan Yu.

This Australian battery costs more than $30,000, but there are already early buyers attracted by the convenience and probably the reliability of the installation, whose risk of hydrogen combustion is eliminated by the solid-state hydride.

This is just one example of how hydrogen can be leveraged for energy storage, in a way shooting two birds with one stone. On the one hand, hydrogen is, depending on the method of production, a relatively cheap storage option compared to battery arrays costing hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other, here is one good use that hydrogen can be put to without the need for any major technological breakthroughs.

The hydrogen is produced from excess electricity generated by solar or wind farms, stored in underground caverns or repurposed pipelines, and when the grid needs more electricity, it is fed into power plants to power their turbines and produce the necessary difference.

“As gas turbines are inherently fuel-flexible, they can be configured to operate on green hydrogen or similar fuels as a new unit, or be upgraded even after extended service on traditional fuels, i.e., natural gas,” according to GE, which is one of the companies working on integrating more hydrogen into their operations. The company adds this would come at a cost, but the cost would depend on the initial configuration of the turbine.

So, a picture emerges of a future world in which every household has its own solar farm and a battery pack that may be lithium-ion if the tech advances sufficiently, or it could be hydrogen. When the sun shines, the battery will absorb the electricity the household does not use and then release it when it’s night or when the sky is overcast.

If this picture looks too good to be true, it’s because it is, for now. Green hydrogen is an expensive source of energy, and efficiency rates during its conversion back to water are not the best ones, either, which adds to the cost. According to Green Tech Media, the efficiency rate of converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis and then back to electricity has an efficiency rate of just 35 percent. Batteries, in comparison, have an efficiency rate of 95 percent.

But then there are products like the Australian battery developed by LAVO and the University of New South Wales. While its price tag is considerable, there is the option of sharing the hydrogen canisters, so if one buys the installations, they can then rent out the canisters.

This is a great solution at a household or small community level. Yet some governments, notably the EU, have much bigger plans for hydrogen and it is these plans that could run into the ground because of the steep cost of green hydrogen. As Rystad Energy said in a recent report, “good ingredients, bad cocktail.”

The consultancy looked specifically at the costs of producing green hydrogen using electricity from offshore wind farms, but solar is not much different because the costs of producing green hydrogen do not just include the costs of the electricity source—wind turbines or solar panels—but also the electrolyzer where water is actually turned into hydrogen and oxygen. Large electrolyzers are expensive equipment, so barring a breakthrough, green hydrogen will continue to be a lot more expensive than the hydrogen produced from natural gas.

Yet developments on the household and community level should not be underestimated. They represent small steps forward on a very long road towards energy transition, but they might turn out to be a lot more meaningful than, say, the EU’s plans to build 40 GW of green hydrogen capacity. Even if the costs of producing green hydrogen fall by 50 percent by 2050, as predicted by the International Council on Clean Transportation, they would be higher than the current prices of grey and blue hydrogen.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com 

COWBOYS & INDIANS VS KENNEY UCP 

Alberta just cancelled 11 controversial coal leases but open-pit mining could still happen. Here’s why

The UCP government’s about-face on coal mining in the Rockies and foothills comes amid a trio of court challenges and a growing chorus of outrage, from First Nations to country music legends

Ainslie Cruickshank Jan 18, 2021 THE NARWHAL

EXPLAINER LONG READ

The United Conservative Party government abandoned a 1976 coal policy, opening 1.4 million hectares of land on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to open-pit mining. The decision has drawn fierce backlash from ranchers, like those pictured here on the Mount Livingstone Range, and others who are concerned about the environmental risks of coal development. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

In response to growing backlash against the United Conservative Party government decision to open previously protected areas of Alberta’s Rockies and foothills to open-pit coal mining, Energy Minister Sonya Savage said the province has paused all future coal leases in some of the most contentious areas.

Eleven recently issued coal leases will also be cancelled.

In her statement Monday, Savage said: “we have listened carefully to the concerns raised in recent days, and thank those who spoke up with passion.”

“This pause will provide our government with the opportunity to ensure that the interests of Albertans, as owners of mineral resources, are protected,” she said.

“It does definitely show that they are feeling the pressure,” said Katie Morrison, the conservation director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) southern Alberta chapter. But ultimately, it’s “too little, too late.”

“There’s another 420,000 hectares of leases in previously protected category 2 lands that this announcement doesn’t affect at all — it appears that that whole area will still be open for exploration and coal development,” she said.

The cancelled leases meanwhile, only cover 1,800 hectares, according to CPAWS.

“So, there’s still a big concern that they need to address,” Morrison said.

Alberta’s decision last May to open up parts of the Rocky Mountains and foothills to coal mining made allies of ranchers, First Nations, environmental organizations and country music stars as they turned to the courts and social media to raise the alarm over threats to lands, at-risk species and Indigenous ways of life.

Morrison said the government still isn’t hearing “the full concerns of Albertans’ who are saying we don’t want new open-pit coal mines in our Canadian Rockies in these previously protected areas.”

In a statement at the time of the original May 2020 announcement, Savage said “rescinding the outdated coal policy in favour of modern oversight will help attract new investment for an important industry and protect jobs for Albertans.”

The policy shift was swiftly denounced by First Nations leaders, environmental groups, ranchers and others concerned not only about the risk coal development would pose to water, sensitive habitats, wildlife and in some cases their livelihoods, but also the lack of consultation on a decision with such far-reaching consequences.

In January, country music stars including Corb Lund, Pauld Brandt and k.d. lang also added their voices — and platforms — to the fight.

In a Facebook post that had been shared more than 12,000 times by Jan. 18, Lund said: “in my opinion, it is inappropriate and short-sighted for government, regardless of party, to make decisions of this magnitude without wide consultation with the groups that could be irreversibly affected by open pit coal mines.”

Brandt was quick to lend his support, offering this take on Instagram: “We can’t put short-sighted economic benefit ahead of long-term consequences that could devastate our people and land for generations to come.”

Then on Saturday, lang tweeted: “There is no doubt in my mind. Opening the Rockies to coal mining is an irreparable and short sighted mistake.”

On Monday, the UCP retreated.

Ranchers, First Nations take legal action

The cancellation of recent coal leases does nothing to protect the grazing lands of the two ranchers who are challenging the government’s decision to abandon the coal policy in court, according to their lawyer.

In July, ranchers John Smith and Macleay Blades filed an application for judicial review to the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta asking the court to quash the government’s decision. In their application, they argue the decision effectively amended the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, which incorporates the coal policy.


John Smith looks for cattle during the Plateau Cattle Company’s fall round-up on their Mt. Livingstone grazing allotment with Cabin Ridge Mountain in the distance. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Richard Harrison, Smith and Blades’ lawyer with the firm Wilson Laycraft, explained that under section 5 of the Alberta Land Stewardship Act the government is required to consult the public before making changes to regional plans. No consultation took place prior to the coal policy change.

Harrison said since his clients are directly affected by the UCP government’s decision, the province also had a duty of procedural fairness to consult with them beforehand.

In an email to The Narwhal Monday afternoon, Harrison said the government’s decision to cancel recent coal lease sales and pause future sales “will not stop development on the category 2 lands in my clients’ grazing allotments.”

The mineral rights that affect Smith and Blades’ grazing lands are either owned by third parties or were already sold, he explained.

The government is also facing two other legal challenges of its decision to rescind the coal policy, one launched by Ermineskin Cree Nation and Whitefish (Goodfish) Lake First Nation #128 and another by Siksika Nation and Kainai Nation, which is also known as the Blood Tribe.

In both cases, the nations are asking the court to overturn the government’s decision to rescind the coal policy on the basis that the government had a duty to consult the nations, that the government made the decision without considering the nations’ rights and interests in the area and that the government failed to meet its obligation to consult under the Alberta Land Stewardship Act.

The Alberta government asked the court to consolidate all three applications for judicial review on the basis that all three claims relate to the same decision and “seek substantially the same remedy” — for the coal policy to be reinstated.

The government also filed an application to dismiss Smith and Blades’ application for judicial review and, in its application to consolidate the three cases, said it anticipated it would file similar applications to dismiss all or part of the judicial review applications filed by the First Nations.

On Wednesday, the second day of a two-day hearing, Justice Richard Neufeld consolidated the three cases, but reserved his decisions on whether to allow the case to move forward and whether to grant intervenor status to the various groups that have sought to participate, Harrison said.


According to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Alberta government’s January decision to pause future coal lease sales in former category 2 lands has no impact on 420,000 hectares of existing leases. Map: CPAWS
Abandoning the 1976 Alberta coal policy

The land classification system dividing the province into four categories, allowing various levels of coal exploration and development, was the last element of the 1976 coal policy to remain in effect until the UCP government scrapped it last year, doing away with restrictions on category 2 and 3 lands.

Previously, open-pit coal mines were banned on category 2 lands, which included parts of the Rocky Mountains and foothills, and exploration and underground mining was limited in these areas. Exploration had normally been allowed on category 3 lands but mine development was restricted.

The area previously protected as Category 2 includes important headwaters that provide drinking water for millions of Albertans downstream.

These areas are also important habitat for grizzly bears, elk, endangered caribou and the threatened westslope cutthroat trout.

In May, the province said the coal policy is replaced “by modern regulatory processes, integrated planning and land use policies.” The government echoed that language this week when it announced it was pressing pause on coal lease sales on former category 2 lands.

But Harrison said “that’s simply not the case at all.” Instead, the government’s May 2020 decision has left significant gaps in land management policies — something officials were aware of ahead of time.

Harrison pointed to a March 2020 document titled “Advice to minister for decision about Alberta’s coal policy.” The document was filed in court as part of the affidavit of Michael Moroskat, the director of coal and mineral development with Alberta Energy.

“Despite existing land use policies, there is risk that rescission could result in policy gaps because several integrated resource plans that remain active within the eastern slopes rely on the coal categories to establish baseline conditions (mostly in the South Saskatchewan region, but also a portion of the upper Athabasca region),” it says.

“The full extent of the policy gap risk will not be quantified until Alberta Energy completes its review of the coal categories with input from Environment and Parks,” the document continues.

And while Alberta Energy said last May that protections would remain in place for category 1 lands, where coal leasing, exploration and development had been prohibited, Harrison said there are outstanding questions about which policies protect them future coal development.


A ranch in the Livingstone Range. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal
Coal mining on eastern slopes would affect First Nations hunting, fishing

Even with some leases cancelled, concerns remain about the potential for future coal mining activities to affect the traditional activities of First Nations in the area. Coal development on the eastern slopes would directly affect the traditional territories and treaty lands of the four nations that have filed requests for judicial review.

Kainai Nation and Siksika Nation, both signatories to Treaty 7, continue to hunt, fish, trap and gather in the area, according to their application.

“The ability to use their traditional lands for a range of practices and access to traditional resources is extremely important for the nations as the land and resources underpin their culture, tradition, identity, well-being, spirituality and rights,” the court document says.

The region similarly continues to be of vital importance to Ermineskin Cree Nation and Whitefish Lake First Nation, both signatories to Treaty 6.

The nations hunt and harvest along the eastern slopes and the area is “of critical importance to the nations for the exercise of their treaty rights and related cultural practices,” according to their application for judicial review.

“Importantly, it is one of the few areas that continues to support the practice of the nations’ Treaty Rights and culture,” the document says.
Proposed Alberta coal mine would destroy prime grazing lands

Since the policy was rescinded, the Alberta Energy Regulator has allowed coal exploration on lands Smith and Blades use to graze their cattle, Harrison said.

At the same time, companies including Australia’s Atrum have been pushing forward with plans for open-pit coal mines in regions previously protected as category 2 lands. In her statement Monday, Alberta’s energy minister said the cancellation of 11 separate coal leases “has no impact on existing coal projects currently under regulatory review.”

Under the rescinded coal policy, Atrum and others would have needed exemptions to develop an open-pit mine in these areas.


Macleay Blades of Rocking P Ranch poses in his family’s 100 year-old cabin on the Mount Livingstone Range. In July, Blades and fellow rancher John Smith filed an application for judicial review of Alberta’s decision to alter its 1976 coal policy. Photo: Leah Hennel / The Narwhal

Atrum’s Elan Hard Coking Coal Project is located along a formation called Cabin Ridge, which falls within Blades’ grazing allotment on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The company’s exploration area lies between the Old Man River and the Livingstone River, according to Blades’ July 2020 affidavit.

“When the coal policy was rescinded, that barrier to mining in my Cabin Ridge grazing lease allotment was also rescinded,” Blades said in his affidavit.

He not only raised concerns that coal mining would add pressure to already stretched water resources, but also about the risks of selenium, a mineral known to cause deformities in fish.

In neighbouring British Columbia, selenium from metallurgical coal mines has polluted the Fording and Elk rivers for years. (Metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel, is also the focus of the proposed Alberta projects.)

Read more: For decades B.C. failed to address selenium pollution in the Elk Valley. Now no one knows how to stop it.

Smith and Laura Laing, third-generation ranchers who run a calf-cow operation south of Calgary, hold a grazing allotment next door to Blades’, just north of Cabin Ridge in the Livingstone Mountain Range.

Each summer they take about 35 per cent of their herd of cattle to graze those lands. A coal mine would “substantially change our operation and our ability to be sustainable,” Laing told The Narwhal.

Like Blades, Smith and Laing’s grazing lands lie directly in the path of potential mountaintop-removal coal mines — development that would be “irreparable and devastating to the area,” Laing said.

“The grass is really important, not just for us but for the whole environmental landscape.”

Trying to repair the damage once those grasses have been stripped away would be like trying to rebuild the mountaintop itself — “just about impossible,” Smith said, noting “it just never comes back the way they were.”

Read more: Meet the people saving Canada’s native grasslands

Alongside concerns about the threat to the grasslands and water, Smith said he’s worried about the risks of contaminated dust from coal mines blowing across the range, possibly reaching their home ranch.

“I’m actually old enough that I can remember when Mount St. Helens erupted and there was ash here in Nanton — it was quite a bit further than these proposed mines,” he said.
The water source for the prairies

Much of the concern that ultimately pushed the Energy Minister to pause new coal leases focused around open-pit mines and their impact on water quality.

Research published in early January identified the eastern slopes of the Rockies as a key hotspot for ecosystem services and an area that should be protected.

The region holds some of Alberta’s “most ecologically sensitive areas” and serves not only as habitat for threatened fish and other wildlife, but also as the source water for the Canadian prairies,” CPAWS’ Morrison told The Narwhal.

“It is a really important place, which is why that [coal] policy was created in the first place,” she said.

The organization has applied to be an intervenor in support of Blades and Smith’s application for judicial review, arguing that given the potential impact of the government’s decision to rescind the coal policy, the public — and CPAWS as a public interest group — should have been consulted as well.
Lack of consultation, timing of coal policy decision ‘speaks volumes’

“It’s Alberta’s water and these are Albertans’ mountains and everybody should have a say,” Laing said.

“We have people contacting us on a daily basis saying, ‘how come I’m just hearing about this now,’ and we don’t have an answer for them,” she said.

Harrison, the lawyer for Smith and Blades, said the UCP government’s decision to rescind the coal policy stands in stark contrast to the way the policy was developed back in the 1970s.

“There was a four-year, approximately, period of consultation, hearings, government review, recommendations, that went into actually creating the coal policy,” he said. “They heard from ranchers, farmers, First Nations, coal companies, recreational users, scientists, geologists — they heard from everybody.”

“And when you have that extensive process that went into creating the coal policy and then to rescind it on the Friday of May long weekend during the middle of a global pandemic when the courts are shut down, I think really speaks volumes.”

In a statement Monday, Chris Smith, the parks coordinator with CPAWS’ northern Alberta chapter, said the government’s decision to cancel some leases and pause future sales does not address underlying concerns about possible coal mining in previously protected areas.

“We are asking the Government of Alberta to fully reinstate the coal policy, hold public consultations on the issue and permanently prohibit new coal proposals, exploration and open-pit mines in these important areas,” he said.

Update Tuesday January 19, 2021 8:44 a.m. PST: This article was corrected to note Energy Minister Sonya Savage’s statement about “rescinding the outdated coal policy” occurred in May 2020 and not May 2019 as previously stated.

CCS NOT CLEAN NOR GREEN

These 2 oil companies say they've reached 'net-negative' emissions through carbon capture 

A CLOSED SYSTEM SO OF COURSE IT HAS NO EMISSIONS

CO2 is stored using carbon capture technology, which also helps produce more oil

ANOTHER FORM OF FRACKING


Kyle Bakx · CBC News · Posted: Jan 25, 2021 

The injection well at Enhance Energy's Clive project is used to send CO2 emissions bought from an oil refinery and fertilizer factory underground. The CO2 is cooled, so there is always frost on the wellhead, and used to help extract more oil. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)

Banks, grocery stores, soda pop makers — it seems like every day, another company is pledging to become a "net-zero" emitter of greenhouse gases — at some point years or decades in the future.

But a pair of Alberta companies say they've not only achieved the mark but are actually storing more emissions underground than they are producing from their operations.

Enhance Energy and Whitecap Resources both use carbon capture technology to stash emissions far below the surface.

For Enhance, the company buys the CO2 from a refinery and a fertilizer plant in central Alberta. The CO2 is transported through a pipeline to its facility north of Red Deer, where it is pumped into an old oil reservoir. The CO2 helps to free up more oil and increase the amount of crude produced at the site, a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

The private Calgary-based firm began operations last fall. So far, executives say about 4,000 tonnes of CO2 is stored underground every day, which they say is the equivalent of taking 80,000 vehicles off the road — a point of pride for the company.

Because they're getting the CO2 from the two large plants but only extracting a small amount of oil at this point, on balance, they say they're burying more CO2 than their oil will produce.

"I get a warm feeling when I come on site and see that injection well," said chief executive Kevin Jabusch. "That's very rewarding. It makes the 10-year effort to put this project together worth it."

Federal goal is net zero by 2050

Many in the industry, as well as some environmental groups, support the development of carbon capture technology, although there are concerns about how emission reductions are calculated and whether capturing carbon disincentivizes industries from taking action to produce fewer emissions in the first place.

The federal government has set a target of reaching net zero by 2050 and released a blueprint to achieve that goal in December, including hiking the carbon tax from the current price of $30 per tonne to $170 by 2030.
The world should be looking for the cheapest, lowest-carbon source of energy.- Kevin Jabusch, Enhance Energy

Instead of calling Enhance an oil company, Jabusch describes it as a "carbon mitigation company" and said if the carbon tax rises as expected, the day might come when Enhance no longer will need to produce oil anymore to be profitable.

Currently, the company generates revenue from oil production and from selling the carbon credits it gets for sequestering emissions. Alberta charges a carbon tax on heavy industrial emitters, but the province also has a system for companies to earn credits by reducing or storing emissions.

Jabusch said the Alberta government's carbon tax program for large industrial emitters measures and monitors the carbon they sequester, but that data is not available publicly.

Injecting CO2 to increase output

Production from Enhance's Clive field is around 200 barrels of oil per day, but with CO2 injection, the company expects output to gradually grow to between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels per day over the next five years.

"We're very negative today over the full cycle of our of our operation," said Jabusch, "and in the long term, we think it would be very close to zero.

"Where carbon pricing is headed, we think there's going to be a strong incentive to maximize the amount of CO2 we put in the ground."

Enhance Energy is part of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line project, which takes emissions from the Nutrien Redwater fertilizer factory and the North West Redwater Sturgeon refinery northeast of Edmonton to Enhance's oil reservoirs near Clive. (CBC News Graphics)

Whitecap has a similar, but much larger, carbon capture project in Saskatchewan. Emissions from a coal power plant in the province and from a coal gasification facility in neighbouring North Dakota are transported to an oilfield near Weyburn, south of Regina.

In each of the last two years, about two million tonnes of CO2 were injected and stored, executives said. The figures are currently being audited.

The Weyburn facility has operated since 2000 and was acquired by Whitecap in 2017. With growing focus on sustainability and climate change, investor interest in the project has intensified over the last year, said chief executive Grant Fagerheim.

"We're starting to get some of the bigger funds, not just from Canada, but in the U.S. for sure, and around the world," he said.

Unlike Enhance, Whitecap does not account for the emissions that will be generated from the eventual use of its oil, saying it has no control over how it is used, making it difficult to calculate.

Enhance Energy says it currently produces about 200 barrels of oil per day, but with the help of carbon capture technology, plans to expand to 4,000 or 5,000 barrels a day. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)

Varying definitions of 'negative' emissions

How a company determines whether it claims net-zero or net-negative status varies across the industry and can depend on the emissions that a given company is counting, which are often broken into three groups, or scopes:

Scope 1 includes direct emissions from the activities of an organization, such as its industrial operations or the heating of its buildings.

Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions, such as if the company uses electricity from a CO2-generating source, such as a gas-fired power plant.

Scope 3 also includes indirect emissions, but ones that are out of the organization's control. For an oil company, Scope 3 includes tailpipe emissions from vehicles or when oil is converted into plastics. The combustion of fuel is often the largest source of emissions from a barrel of oil, compared to production, transportation and refinery activity.

Alberta carbon capture project hits another milestone ahead of schedule and below cost

CBC EXPLAINS 

ITS NOT FIGHTING CLIMATE CHAMGE ITS FRACKING OLD WELLS

Carbon capture: What you need to know about catching CO2 to fight climate change

For Enhance, the company said it is net negative on Scope 1, 2 and 3 while Whitecap said it's net negative on Scope 1 and 2.

By that definition, Whitecap expects to remain net negative even as its oil production increases by an estimated 65 per cent this year following deals to acquire Torc Oil & Gas and NAL Resources Management.

"We will still be a net-negative emitter," he said. "It is nice to be in this position at this particular time."

Projects can carry hefty price tag

Fagerheim says he would like to build new carbon capture facilities but that they can be complex projects requiring a large capital investment and new infrastructure, including pipelines.

"I believe that people will see the light of day, but ultimately, we're doing what's best for ourselves, and carbon capture utilization and storage is potentially a way into the future," he said.

The two largest carbon capture projects in Alberta, including the Carbon Trunk Line that Enhance is part of, cost more than $1 billion to develop, and both required hundreds of millions of dollars in government support.

There's growing interest in carbon capture projects. Last week, Tesla chief and billionaire Elon Musk promised a $100 million US prize for development of the "best" technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

In Canada, one of the challenges with investing in a carbon capture project is the uncertainty about the level of carbon tax in the future since the approach to carbon pricing varies by political party.

WATCH | Is carbon capture a solution for the oil industry and climate change?

VIDEO AT THE END

Debating the value of enhanced oil recovery

There are differing viewpoints on the technique to capture carbon emissions and use the CO2 to produce more oil from aging reservoirs. 

Environmental concerns

Environmental leaders have often had mixed feelings about carbon capture facilities because while harmful emissions are stored underground, the technology may just be enabling industries to maintain the status quo and not focus enough on reducing the use of fossil fuels.

"The science is fairly clear: we are going to need carbon capture in order to tackle the climate crisis," Jan Gorski, an analyst with the Pembina Institute, a non-profit organization that produces research, analysis and recommendations on policies related to Canadian energy.

"Enhanced oil recovery is a way to ramp up carbon capture and drive down the costs and improve the technology as we work to eventually deploy that to tackling these more challenging sources where we really don't have a great way to deal with the emissions right now."

Knowledge gained from carbon capture projects operating now could eventually help reduce emissions in tougher-to-tackle industries such as cement plants and steel production, he said.

Jan Gorski with the Pembina Institute sees developing carbon capture and storage technology as beneficial, especially to eventually help with hard-to-decarbonize industries such as cement and steel production. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)

Some environmental groups suggest the investment in carbon capture facilities would be better spent elsewhere, such as building renewable energy projects. For example, a company could slash emissions in producing the oil, but consumers would still pump out emissions when they use it as a fuel for transportation or heating.

'The devil is really in the details'

There is also the issue of double counting. Experts say it's important for any action toward reducing emissions to be properly assessed. For instance, if the emissions from a power plant are used by an oil company to increase the production of an oilfield, both companies can't take credit for the carbon-capture project.

"I think the key thing is to be clear-eyed about the end goal," said David Keith, a Harvard University professor of applied physics and public policy based in Canmore, Alta.

Keith also founded and sits on the board of Carbon Engineering, which aims to capture emissions directly from the atmosphere.

"For me anyway, the end goal has to be driving emissions down to zero to protect us from climate disaster and also doing it in a way that does the least damage to our economy and, in Alberta, trying to find a way forward to provide good jobs for people," he said.

"Enhanced oil recovery can play some role, but I doubt if it's going to be very big."

IHS report forecasts emissions intensity drop of 16-23% for oilsands 

ANALYSIS Why Kenney is having a rougher ride than Trudeau with his pipeline purchase

If oil can actually be entirely net neutral or net negative from its production all the way to its end use, such as powering a vehicle, that would truly be fantastic, said Keith, but "whether or not those companies are doing it, I don't know. The devil is really in the details."

Both companies see a strong future for carbon capture and EOR technologies, especially as demand for oil remains robust around the globe.

"The world should be looking for the cheapest, lowest-carbon source of energy, and we believe we compete very well with that," said Jabusch, with Enhance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyle Bakx  is a Calgary-based journalist with CBC's network business unit. He's covered stories across the country and internationally.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Ottawa should focus on Trans Mountain with Keystone XL cancelled: Former TC exec

Arturo Chang, BNN Bloomberg Jan 21, 2021

The Canadian government should turn its attention toward completing the Trans Mountain pipeline now that Joe Biden has decided to scrap Keystone XL, a former TransCanada executive said.

Dennis McConaghy, a former executive vice-president of the company now named TC Energy Corp. which played a major role in Keystone’s development, said in an interview Thursday that Trans Mountain is the only “practical alternative” Canada has to the project.

“There's two things Canada should do,” he said. “One is to focus on the completion of TMX; that's really the only practical option left for increasing pipeline takeaway capacity and there should be a clear statement from the federal government that they're committed to its completion.

“Number two, if and when Biden wants to talk about collaboration on climate and energy policy, some kind of regime where we all operate under a common carbon pricing regime … [restoring Keystone XL’s permit] should be a condition to those kinds of discussions.”

Biden revoked Keystone XL’s approval on Wednesday in one of his first moves as U.S. president. The project was originally approved by Donald Trump in 2017.

TC Energy has halted advancement on the project and said on Thursday that it’s looking to cut over 1,000 construction jobs.

McConaghy said Canada’s attempts to convince Biden to restore Keystone XL’s construction permit should be “as constructive and temperate as possible” despite the frustration and anger caused by the decision, particularly in Alberta.

Nevertheless, he said the decision to cancel the project was unwarranted.

“Canada is entirely entitled to have this permit restored,” McConaghy said “It was an audacious revocation, really unjustified in the basis of how one country is supposed to treat another in terms of relying on their permitting processes to invest billions of dollars.”

IT’S TIME FOR PLAYERS TO TACKLE THE GREAT CANADIAN FOOTBALL RIP-OFF


BYDAN DARRAH ABDUL MALIK

01.23.2021

Team owners in Canadian football made record profits while many of their players had to work second jobs to make ends meet. Now they’re using the pandemic as an excuse to claw back wages even further — a player fightback is the only way to change the game.

Brandon Alexander of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers runs with his team's flag after winning the 107th Grey Cup championship game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on November 24, 2019 in Calgary, Alberta. (Derek Leung / Getty Images)


In mid-2020, the Canadian Football League (CFL) asked for $30 million in government aid. Citing football’s impact on Canadian culture, the CFL argued that these funds would be necessary to keep the season afloat — and canceled it when they weren’t forthcoming. That left many athletes in the lurch.

CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie then told all teams to cut operational costs by 20 percent, leading to contract restructuring and extraordinary pay cuts for athletes. CFL bosses presented this as a way to salvage the 2021 season. But their professed concern for the jobs of players concealed a bid to claw back as much of their wage bill as they could, using the pandemic as an excuse.
Ripping Off Players

The nine-team CFL is older than the NFL, and it’s a major cultural institution for Canadian sports. There have been several episodes of federal government intervention to prevent the league from “Americanizing” and to make sure that its teams stay in Canadian hands.

After the experience of failed would-be expansions into US territory, the league’s identity is firmly rooted on Canadian soil. The CFL is enormously popular. It is, historically, the third-most-attended sporting league in North America. And it has become immensely profitable in recent years, buoyed by TV revenue.

However, these rising revenues have not filtered down to CFL players. Brian Ramsay, the Canadian Football League Players’ Association (CFLPA) executive director, has recently suggested that “player salaries amount to just 30 percent of team expenses” across the whole league.

A starting salary in the CFL for a Canadian or American player is $65,000. Because training and conditioning for professional athletes is so expensive, a significant number of CFL athletes have had to take on second jobs, moonlighting at pipeline work or truck driving.

Commissioner Ambrosie has even justified this trend, claiming that it helps prepare athletes for life after football. Ambrosie — whose reported salary is $750,000 a year, excluding bonuses — has promised better pay for workers once the league’s “CFL 2.0” expansion plans are complete.

The justification for modest player salaries used to be the league’s alleged unprofitability. Some journalists still dutifully repeat the argument that “restraint” in bargaining is essential if the CFL is going to survive. But the facts tell a different story.
Show Us the Books

The CFL rarely reports earnings, but observers have estimated that the league’s 2018 revenues were approximately $210 million. Unlike other major sports leagues, the CFL doesn’t issue transparent data on player salaries. Teams often roll compensation into the general category of “operations,” which includes salaries for coaches and management. The best way to get a realistic picture of what players are earning is to look at minimum and maximum salary caps, combined with the occasional leak.

Only three CFL teams — the Edmonton Football Team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders — issue financial reports, because they are either publicly or community owned, although even their numbers are unclear. These three teams “spend heavily on their front office,” which means that there are substantial gaps between the salaries of staff and those of players. At any rate, their public financial statements show these teams to be wildly profitable, sucking up nearly half of the CFL’s entire revenue among them.


The finances of the six privately owned teams are harder to decipher. They occasionally post earnings, but usually only as evidence of losses when they want to plead for government cash. The owners of these supposed “have-not” teams are nonetheless some of the league’s wealthiest, including Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Calgary Sports and Entertainment, and billionaire Bob Young.

The CFL has historically resisted revenue-sharing agreements, which would equalize the profits generated by the league, despite calls from the CFLPA for it to do so. Without revenue sharing, the most successful teams end up getting much wealthier, while the union can’t bargain effectively for higher wages and better benefits. The CFLPA bargained away revenue sharing in the past for guaranteed increases to the salary cap. But that hasn’t worked out.

The latest collective bargain agreement (CBA) is a bad deal that reflects the CFLPA’s capitulation to dubious management claims of near insolvency. Along with the pitiful base salary, it allows contract items like housing to be counted toward the salary cap. Teams can pay international players less ($54,000), and life insurance is inadequate.
Who Pays for the Pandemic?

During the COVID-19 crisis, the CFL secured the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) for businesses, but it only applied to players under contract, leaving the rest without league support. In November 2020, league owners collectively refused to cover their 25 percent CEWS obligation for players who switched teams, denying them access to the benefit. In the same month, the CFL directed its teams to limit salaries for the 2021 season.

Sports media rarely addresses these issues, preferring to wheel out the usual hand-wringing articles about the difficulty of convincing players to take pay cuts. Journalists have had little to say about the economic status of CFL players, aside from puff pieces about how excited they are to get back to the game — although one article did provide an overview of what football players are doing off the field, casually mentioning that some are driving for Uber Eats and starting podcasts, without properly exploring what this tells us.

Players are now in the firing line of Ambrosie’s austerity directive. If his reports of his salary are accurate, the symbolic 20 percent pay cut he recently took would only reduce it, excluding bonuses, to $600,000 a year. Ambrosie, anticipating a successful program of mass vaccination, remains optimistic about the prospects for a 2021 season.

The vast discrepancies in team revenue, combined with the lost earnings of the past year, have finally put revenue sharing on the table — for the time being, at least. There’s now an opportunity to transform the whole industry, not only by redistributing the CFL’s wealth horizontally, from successful teams to their poorer rivals, but also by redistributing it vertically, from management to players.

However, that will require mobilization by players to shift the burden of cutbacks off their shoulders, breathing new life into the CFLPA and steering it toward a more combative model of unionism. The CFL presents itself as a folksy, humble venture that simply cannot afford to pay its workers fairly, while team owners walk away flush with loot. Like many “culturally vital” Canadian private enterprises, it trades on a nationalist image and reserves of public goodwill to shield itself from criticism.

The CFL is extraordinarily popular in Canada, attracting enormous crowds and acres of media coverage. Its players could use this leverage to their advantage, enlisting fans and journalists to support their cause. They’ve got everything to play for.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Darrah is a writer living in Toronto.

Abdul Malik is a screenwriter and journalist based in Edmonton, Alberta. He is cohost of The Off Court Podcast.

What is Alexey Navalny’s endgame?

But can his political project succeed while the West continues to be openly hostile to Russia?


Leonid Ragozin
Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Riga.
23 Jan 2021

Law enforcement officers stand in front of participants during a rally in support of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Saint Petersburg on January 23, 2021 [Reuters/Anton Vaganov]

Thousands of people across Russia’s 11 time zones took to the streets on January 23 to protest against the arrest of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, braving the winter cold, the pandemic, and the very real threat of police brutality and incarceration. The event opens a long protest season in the run-up to parliamentary elections in September which are turning into a plebiscite on the legitimacy of President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade rule, whether he rigs them or not.

The protests took place just a week after Navalny’s daring return to Russia. In August, he was rushed to a hospital in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve agent and stayed there several months to recover. Before departing from Germany, Navalny took part in an investigation into his poisoning (mainly led by British-based investigative group Bellingcat) and even had a long telephone conversation with one of the alleged assassins.

Navalny is now under arrest, charged with violating his suspended sentence by leaving for Germany and staying there a few months. The conviction for which he received the suspended sentence was pronounced unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights.

It increasingly seems that the Russian opposition leader has become Putin’s main rival, if not yet for the nation’s leadership, then at least for the status of the world’s best-known Russian. His newly acquired international fame made a joke out of the pro-Kremlin media’s policy to refer to him as just a “blogger” and Putin’s own refusal to call him by name.

Having indeed started as an anti-corruption blogger over a decade ago, Navalny was Russia’s first opposition figure who managed to create an extremely efficient nationwide network of supporters, many in their twenties or even teens.

In a country mired by political apathy and pervasive cynicism, he managed to inspire millions by conducting groundbreaking investigations into the astonishing corruption of Putin’s entourage and presenting them in easy-to-grasp YouTube videos filled with his trademark irony. By getting arrested upon arrival from Germany, Navalny made the Kremlin look both weak and vengeful.


One may interpret the decision to detain him as a sign of convulsive fear, but there is a pragmatic side to it, too. The most hardcore part of Putin’s constituency might be in fact enjoying scenes of Navalny’s mistreatment.

Talk shows on Kremlin-linked TV channels anchored by people like Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselev, who take an almost sadistic pleasure in observing Navalny’s ordeal, have a sizeable audience. Kiselev even went as far as spending a night in the hotel room in Tomsk where Navalny’s poisoning likely took place – just to mock those outraged by the attempted murder.

But Navalny has his hardcore supporters and a growing audience, too. His latest investigation focusing on a lavish palace Putin allegedly built for himself on the Black Sea coast had 25 million views on YouTube within 24 hours of its release on January 19 and by January 23, had reached a staggering 70 million.

Today, it seems the Russian society is divided into three unequal parts. Two minorities represent the staunch supporters of Navalny and Putin and a majority in the middle which is comprised of people whose support of the Russian president is tentative and pragmatic. These are people who stick with the crowd and who are always very attentive to the general mood in the country.

That means they may change their political preferences in a one-off event when opposition to the current leadership reaches a critical mass. This is what happened in 1991, when a democratic revolution in Moscow led to the collapse of the entire Soviet state. An attempt by communist hardliners to stage a military coup led to a massive backlash, which resulted in the downfall of the entire regime.

\More recently, in 2020 a very similar abrupt shift happened in Belarus, where people suddenly rose up against their dictatorial president, Alexander Lukashenko, with the majority joining opposition-led protests and resistance. Lukashenko is still holding tight, although he has clearly lost legitimacy.

It is this kind of shift Navalny is hoping to precipitate when he calls for people to stage protests. He is probably not expecting immediate success. Rather he is building momentum for the hot phase of the Duma election campaign in the spring and summer, when COVID-19 fears and the cold weather will abate, bringing even more people to the streets.

Although many are inspired by Navalny’s fearlessness, it is going to be an uphill battle. Millions of Putin’s conditional supporters have good reasons to believe that they might lose more than they would gain in the event of his fall. This is dictated by their experiences in the 1990s and their understanding of regional politics today.

Putin’s regime provides for modestly good standards of living – on par with poorer EU countries and much higher than in Ukraine or Georgia, the two supposed models of pro-West reforms in the post-Soviet space.

Ukraine, which lived through turbulent times after a revolution and a Russian military attack in 2014, remains a potent scarecrow for Russians. On the one hand, its Maidan revolution has failed to bring down the oligarchic system or, as many call, it – the mafia state. On the other, Putin’s intervention in Ukraine clearly showed to what lengths the regime is prepared to go when it comes to suppressing a freedom movement.

The prospect of political strife in Russia raises fears of the country’s disintegration accompanied by armed conflicts with neighbours or domestic insurgencies. Many Russians also suspected that the unsympathetic or outright hostile West would be cheering centrifugal forces that would rip the country apart, just like in Ukraine.

The West is completely oblivious to the enormity of the challenge the world will face, when Russia, with its arsenal of nuclear and other deadly weapons, its millions of security personnel trained to fight and kill, inevitably enters a period of unrest due to its broken system of democratic transfer of power. Worst of all, it has no positive agenda for the Russian population, as it had for people in other Eastern European countries, when they were welcomed into the European Union and NATO.

The hawkish rhetoric, emanating particularly out of Washington, makes it seem like the West would rather see Russia turn into an alienated Eurasian wasteland surrounded by a cordon sanitaire of hostile nationalist regimes than into a flourishing democracy. Such a prospect would discourage even the most liberal-minded Russians from challenging Putin’s rule.