'MAYBE' TECH

‘Too risky’ to not use both battery electric and hydrogen tech, Daimler Truck CEO says

KEY POINTS

Daimler Truck is preparing for a planned listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in December.

The electrification of long-haul, heavy-duty trucks poses a set of unique challenges.

An eActros is unveiled at the Mercedes-Benz truck plant of Daimler Truck AG on October 7, 2021.
Uli Deck | picture alliance | Getty Images

PUBLISHED FRI, NOV 12 2021
Anmar Frangoul

The Daimler Truck CEO has spoken of the challenges and opportunities his industry faces in the years ahead, as competition heats up and efforts to develop zero-emission offerings face hurdles relating to cost.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” Friday, Martin Daum spoke about the current situation when it came to the cost of electrified trucks, emphasizing that a number of factors were in play.

“The first truth is, in heavy duty commercial vehicles you need such a huge amount of energy, meaning you need such large batteries, that such a truck always will cost significantly more than a combustion engine powered truck,” he said.

“The savings come if the price for green, renewable energy drops and the cost for emitting CO2 rises and then out of that equation you might get a cost parity, or in other … cases road transportation will become more expensive.”

Despite the above, Daum said the manufacturer had to go “straight forward to zero-emission transportation.” It’s previously laid out plans for zero-emission vehicles to account for “up to 60% of sales” by the year 2030.

The electrification of long-haul, heavy-duty trucks poses its own set of unique challenges. The International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook for 2021 has described long-haul trucking as needing “advanced technologies for high power charging and/or large batteries.”

Daimler Truck’s focus on zero-emission technology will put it in competition with companies like Tesla and Geely, which are also developing electric trucks. Daum was bullish about the future, however, telling CNBC Daimler Truck was “the pioneer in electric trucks.”

“We deliver, we don’t announce … we just launched our all-electric heavy duty truck in Europe, the eActros, a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “But that was a launch, not an announcement.”

“So how does our technology stack up to the others? We first need to see the trucks of the others to then evaluate the technology.”

Alongside battery electric vehicles, Daimler Truck is also focusing on what it describes as “hydrogen-based fuel cell electric vehicles.” To this end, it is targeting a network of 150 refueling stations and 5,000 “heavy-duty hydrogen trucks” by the year 2030.


In his interview with CNBC, Daum was asked about the debate between battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell. “We go for both because both … make sense,” he replied, going on to explain how different technologies would be appropriate in different scenarios.

“In general, you can say: If you go to city delivery where you need lower amounts of energy in there, you can charge overnight in a depot, then it’s certainly battery electric,” he said.

“But the moment you’re on the road, the moment you go from Stockholm to Barcelona … in my opinion, you need something which you can transport better and where you can refuel better and that is ultimately H2.”

“The ruling is not out, but I think it’s too risky for a company our size to go with just one technology.”

Daum’s comments come as Daimler Truck prepares for a planned listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in December.

'MAYBE' TECH

Canadian SMR to offer 'once in a generation' economic windfall - study

11 November 2021

Construction of a small modular reactor (SMR) at Darlington in Ontario will open up global export markets worth many hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several decades for whichever technology is chosen by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), a new study prepared for SMR developer Terrestrial Energy has found.

The report, prepared by management, engineering and project delivery company Hatch Ltd, was commissioned by Terrestrial Energy, which is developing the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR). The IMSR400 is one of three SMR power plant technologies selected by OPG for further consideration for the Darlington New Nuclear Project, the others being GE Hitachi's BWRX-300 water-cooled SMR, and X-energy's Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled reactor.

The report identifies economic and so-called catalytic impacts if an IMSR400 were to be built at Darlington. In the report, Hatch estimates that the design and construction of a single IMSR400 at Darlington would create over CAD3 billion (USD2.4 billion) in total GDP over the nine-year design and construction phase, and generate nearly CAD6.6 billion of GDP for Ontario and CAD7.9 billion for the Canadian economy over the plant's entire 80-year life cycle from design through to decommissioning. It would support an average of 2,100 total jobs per year during the design and construction phase and 850 jobs per year in operation.

It also identifies what it refers to as the “catalytic impacts” - the broader benefits to the Canadian economy, including increased exports, first mover advantages, and "spillover" impacts, as knowledge gained may boost the productivity achieved by other sectors of the Canadian economy.

"The extent to which Canada and Ontario are able to capture the catalytic benefits will depend on the SMR technology chosen for the Darlington New Nuclear Project - the catalytic benefits are unlikely for a SMR technology developed outside of Canada as they will accrue instead to the country-of-origin of the SMR technology selected," the report notes. "When developing a new nuclear power plant technology, the technology developer is likely to work with its local supply chain to develop the proprietary technology and to continue to work with those same suppliers as the technology is rolled out," it adds.

Hatch's Global Managing Director Robert Francki said the study "reinforces" a strong Canadian supply chain. "The IMSR supply chain will create a strong strategic position for Ontario and Canada as nations pursue the enormous opportunities from Generation IV SMR technology and compete in a global market for zero-emission power generation," he said.

"This month, national leaders have been gathering in Glasgow for COP26 to discuss our planet’s transition to a net-zero economy and lay out credible pathways to achieve net zero," Simon Irish, CEO of Terrestrial Energy, said. "The IMSR, a Canadian Generation IV nuclear technology, developed in Canada with its many Canadian supplier partners, can make [a consequential] contribution to net zero for Canada and for Canada's trade partners, and the Darlington SMR project is the springboard. This is the once-in-a-generation environmental moment and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Canada to build an industry of great export potential."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

CONSERVATIVE PRO STATE CAPITALISM FOR NUKES

Liberals leaving nuclear's future 'to the market' while other countries bet big

'We have very ambitious targets and goals from a greenhouse gas perspective, but no concrete plans, in terms of how we're going to use clean electricity to meet those objectives'

Author of the article: Ryan Tumilty
Publishing date: Nov 13, 2021 • 

Its advocates say that nuclear power is the key to meeting the growing need for electricity while cutting global carbon emissions.

OTTAWA – While other major economies are making big bets on nuclear energy to get to a carbon neutral future, Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says the market will decide which carbon-free technologies replace fossil fuels.

At the Glasgow climate summit, which ended Friday, major economies agreed on the need to cut global carbon emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. To do that, means more power to charge electric cars, heat homes and even run heavy industries like steel plants.

The U.K. government gave famed engine manufacturer Rolls Royce $350 million this week to help the company build a new generation of small modular nuclear reactors. China also announced plans to build up to 150 new reactors. And France, which was set to reduce its reliance on nuclear power, announced this week it would instead build more plants.

“We are going, for the first time in decades, to relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country and continue to develop renewable energies,” the country’s president Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address to the nation.

This was meant “to guarantee France’s energy independence, to guarantee our country’s electricity supply and achieve our objectives, in particular carbon neutrality in 2050,” he said.

For Canada, Guilbeault said nuclear will have to compete alongside technologies like wind and solar, which are becoming the least expensive types of power available.

“It’s not up to the government to decide which of these technologies will thrive. It’s going to be up to the market,” he said to reporters in Glasgow.

Why provinces are uniting to build small modular nuclear reactors

The Liberals have helped fund some companies pursuing small modular reactors or SMRs, an industry term for reactors that generate smaller, though still considerable amounts of power.

The reactors are still in the planning and development stage, but they’re promised to be safer and cheaper than current large reactors and could be built in factories and then delivered onsite. They could also be used in remote communities and they generate significantly less waste than traditional reactors.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the government is supporting early projects, but they will have to prove themselves.

“We have supported the development work. And certainly I look forward to seeing what that looks like when they are demonstrated at scale and when we actually have a sense of what the commercial economics of those systems will be.”

Conservative MP Dan Albas said the Liberals are missing an opportunity to take a bolder stance and Guilbeault should be a much more ardent backer of the technology.

“Conservatives believe that nuclear energy is essential to lowering GHG emissions in Canada and taking action on climate change. By failing to clarify his position, Minister Guilbeault calls into question the safety and relevancy of nuclear energy and the countless Canadians that it employs.”

John Gorman, president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association, said the Liberal government has done a lot to help the industry, but the country will need a lot more electricity to achieve net zero.

“We have very ambitious targets and goals from a greenhouse gas perspective, but we have no concrete plans, in terms of how we’re going to use clean electricity to meet those objectives,” he said.

Gorman says solar, wind are great technologies, improving all the time, but nuclear has to be part of the equation to meet the coming increased demands for electricity.

The Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Kincardine, Ont., produces enough power for 30 per cent of the province’s needs.

 PHOTO BY BRUCE POWER/FILE

He said the expertise and talent is available in Canada, but the government needs to send a sign to get companies building the next generation of plants.

“The part that’s missing right now is the actual signal from the federal government and from the provinces and their systems operators that we actually are going to have that demand for electricity and signal that we got to start building,” he said.

One company that is close to building is Global First Power, a partnership between the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG). The company is planning on setting up a small reactor at the Chalk River facility north of Ottawa.

Ken Darlington, a vice-president with USNC, said their reactor is a test of the technology, but it’s smaller scale, something that could be used in remote communities or in mines.

The reactor is the first to enter the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s formal licensing process and it would be able to generate five megawatts of power, enough to power a small community of about 5,000 people.

Darlington said there are a lot of northern communities especially that rely on large diesel generators and reactors like this could get them off those permanently.

He said Canada has a top regulatory system, but it will need some changes to adapt to the smaller projects that are coming. He said it’s not about looser regulations, but about ones that don’t treat massive power plants the same as the newer, smaller reactors companies are planning.

“The nuclear regulations, they’re all predicated around very large-scale projects.”

Darlington said there is a lot of hope in the industry right now, but the government does need to do more.

“There has been financial support to nuclear projects in Canada over the last couple of years. But do they need to step up? I would say yes.”

In addition to the Chalk River project, Ontario Power Generation has a second modular reactor proposal at the Darlington Nuclear plant just east of Toronto. It’s expected to pick one of three companies soon to build a 300-megawatt reactor beside the existing plant.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says nuclear will have to compete alongside technologies like wind and solar.

 PHOTO BY PHIL NOBLE/REUTERS/FILE

Four provinces, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, have signed onto an agreement to work together on small modular reactors and its possible the reactor OPG picks will be used in other provinces eventually.

Gorman said there are a lot of companies working to make the reactors a reality.

“We’ve got 12 different technologies that are going through the review and licensing process right now. And they range from technologies that produce one megawatt of electricity up to technologies that produce 300 megawatts of electricity.”

On Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario, Bruce Power’s nuclear plant is the largest in the world producing enough power for 30 per cent of the province’s needs.

It and the province’s other large nuclear stations Pickering and Darlington account for the majority of Ontario’s power and have allowed the province to phase out coal generation, the biggest carbon reduction achieved anywhere in North America so far.

Chris Keefer, President Canadians for Nuclear Energy, said small modular reactors are worth exploring, but Canada should also be building new large plants again, because the country will need the clean power.

He said the Liberals and Guilbeault should have been trumpeting how helpful nuclear has been and the country’s technology.

“In my mind, he should have been saying, you know, we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished,” he said.

The CANDU reactor that powers Pickering and Darlington has been exported to countries all over the world and Keefer said it is a tremendous economic opportunity for the country as well.

The Pickering Nuclear plant is set to be shut down in 2025 and when it does Ontario will begin burning more natural gas to make up the difference.

“We are a world class decarbonized grid, and we’re going to be going up to the middle of the pack again, which is just shocking in the middle of this climate crisis,” Keefer said.

Britain’s investment in nuclear also came with regulatory changes that allow the plants to be financed even while under construction, reducing their overall interest costs and reducing the cost of power. He said Canada could take some of the same steps.

“They need to include nuclear and be proud of nuclear as a green technology, which will encourage investors to do that and de-risk capital.”

Before Gorman worked for the nuclear industry he worked for solar firms. He said more solar and wind projects will be needed, but they haven’t shifted any country off of fossil fuels on their own.

“When I started in that field, we had 36 per cent non-emitting electricity on the world’s grids. And 20 years later, you know, today after trillions of dollars of investment and those incentives and all of the market reform and the huge rollout of wind and solar, we’re still at 36 per cent.”

Gorman acknowledges the industry has a stigma of being high cost. Pickering, Darlington and Bruce generating stations all dramatically overshot their initial construction budgets when they were first constructed, but he argues SMR technology will bring down costs.

Nuclear is also considered dangerous due to disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Japan and Germany both shut down most of their nuclear energy after Fukushima and both countries are now burning more coal.

Gorman said the industry definitely has work to do, but he is confident when Canadians get all the facts they will support its carbon-free power.

“The more that people understand the real facts behind nuclear and can get beyond all that stigma and misinformation, the more supportive they are.”

He said the world needs more power and needs it quickly.

“We don’t have 20 years to stay even keeled. We have to clean up the last two thirds of the world’s grids and then we got to double or triple the amount of electricity we have.”

– With additional reporting by Reuters

'MAYBE' TECH

Australia’s only working carbon capture and storage project fails to meet target


Chevron says it failed to meet Western Australia’s target of capturing at least 80% of the CO2 that would otherwise be released at its Gorgon LNG project

Environmental campaigners said the shortfall in emissions reductions at the Gorgon LNG project, pictured, showed carbon capture and storage should not be relied on as justification for allowing fossil fuel production to increase. Photograph: Ray Strange/AAP


Graham Readfearn
Fri 12 Nov 2021 

Australia’s only working carbon capture and storage project in Western Australia has failed to meet its target to lock away greenhouse gases from a major gas processing plant.

Chevron, an America-based multinational oil and gas company, was given a target by the WA government to capture at least 80% of the CO2 that would otherwise be released at its Gorgon LNG project.

But the company has said it fell short of the target by 5.23Mt and will buy the equivalent amount in carbon credits while also investing $40m in unspecified “low carbon energy projects” in the state.

Based on today’s prices for carbon offsets – which analysts say are rising – Chevron would have to pay between $78m and $194m.

Chevron announced last month it made more than $8bn profit in the most recent financial quarter.

The Morrison government is prioritising CCS technology as a way to lower emissions, even though its impact after decades of promises and about $4bn in Australian taxpayer cash has been marginal.

Environmental campaigners said the shortfall in emissions reductions at Gorgon showed CCS should not be relied on as justification for allowing fossil fuel production to increase.

Do Angus Taylor’s carbon capture and storage claims stack up?

Chevron has not said what kind of accredited carbon offsets it will buy, but analysts told the Guardian the cost to Chevron could range from $15 per tonne for some overseas credits to as high as $37 per tonne for Australian credits.

Calculated over a five-year average with the clock starting in July 2016, Chevron said it had missed the 80% target because of technical problems that delayed the CO2 injection into geological formations under Barrow Island.

Since injection started in August 2019, the company says it had captured and stored 5.5Mt of CO2.

In the 2020/21 financial year, the report says there was 3.17Mt of CO2 available for capture and storage from its gas treatment plant under its agreement with the WA government, but only 2.17Mt – or 68% – had been injected.

Chevron owns 47% of the Gorgon LNG project together with other joint venture partners ExxonMobil (25%) and Shell (25%).

Chevron said the joint venture partners had collectively invested more than $3bn in the carbon dioxide injection scheme. As well as buying offsets, Chevron said it would invest $40m in “low carbon energy” projects in the state.

Mark Hatfield, managing director of Chevron Australia, said: “The package we have announced will see us make good on our commitment to offset the injection shortfall, and ensures we meet the expectations of the regulator, the community and those we place on ourselves as a leading energy producer in Australia.”

Piers Verstegen, policy director at Conservation Council of WA, said when the greenhouse gas emissions generated from extracting, processing and then the use of the gas from Chevron’s customers was added together “the CCS technology would have reduced overall pollution from Gorgon by less than 2%” in the past five years.

He said: “This shows very clearly that CCS cannot be relied upon as a technology to allow fossil fuel production to continue and increase.”

Chevron said in an environmental performance report released yesterday that it would buy the 5.23Mt of carbon offsets and then surrender them before 17 July 2020.

The report lists several different types of offsets it could purchase, including from the Australian government’s accredited market, or from other offset schemes around the world.

The cheapest offsets – known as Certified Emissions Reductions or CERs – can cost as little as $2.20 per tonne on today’s market but a Chevron spokesman confirmed the company would not be purchasing those offsets to meet the shortfall.

Hugh Grossman, Reputex executive director, said other options open to Chevron would be international credits starting at about $15 per tonne or Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) that were currently trading at $37 per tonne.

John Connor, the chief executive of the Carbon Market Institute, said Chevron would have to buy the offsets on the spot market. The price of ACCUs have boomed from $16.50 at the start of this year.

“This won’t be cheap for Chevron,” he said. “There’s a really tight market in Australia for those ACCUs with the spot price going up faster than house prices. It is important that [Chevron] gets high-quality offsets and work to deal with issues with the CCS technology.”

The volume of credits Chevron would need to buy is unlikely to be met entirely by ACCUs, Grossman said, because of a lack of supply.

“There would be question marks over the capacity of the Australian market to support that size of transaction,” he said.

A spokesperson for Sanderson said she would “have regard to relevant international agreements for carbon offsets and integrity principles which ensure that carbon offsets represent genuine and credible emissions”.

'MAYBE' TECH

Rolls-Royce’s Future Hydrogen Fuel Cell Module Could Power Ten Houses

9 Nov 2021, 07:11 UTC

by Otilia Drăgan 

One of the most interesting products on display at the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow was a hydrogen fuel cell module presented by Rolls-Royce. The brand’s Power Systems business unit has joined forces with cellcentric to create highly-efficient fuel cell solutions for emergency power generation.

 

With a minimalistic design and H-shaped front panel, Rolls-Royce’s mtu fuel cell element is a good example of future technology. This modern-looking module will be able to generate a net power output of 150 kW, enough to power ten homes. But its clean power is meant to be used as a backup for large data centers. Multiple modules can also be connected into fuel cell power plants for impressive megawatts outputs.

This fuel cell module is the result of a collaboration between Rolls-Royce and cellcentric, the joint venture set up by Daimler Truck and Volvo earlier this year. The mtu hydrogen fuel cell solution will be developed based on cellcentric’s fuel cell modules. Hydrogen is promoted as a viable alternative for fossil fuels, but it’s also considered a key element for climate-neutral telecommunications and internet traffic. These domains are linked to huge data centers that require large amounts of energy. So, why not make this clean energy?

Andreas Schell, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems, said that the company is ready to invest heavily in fuel cell research and development over the next years, because it sees it as the answer for carbon neutrality. By using green hydrogen, which is obtained through renewable energy sources, fuel cells become a climate-friendly alternative. The goal is to reduce the CO2 footprint of large data centers that use a lot of energy.

The Daimler-Volvo joint venture intends to accelerate series production and install its fuel cell modules on heavy-duty utility vehicles in the second half of this decade. At the same time, Rolls-Royce will introduce pilot fuel cell power plants with customers in 2023.

Standard production of fuel cell systems is set to kick off in 2025, with an ambitious goal – more than half of the data centers should switch to power from fuel cells in the near future.

Now Climate Change Is Threatening Renewable Energy, Too

BY MATTHEW N. EISLER

NOV 12, 2021

A wind farm in the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland Adrian Dennis/Getty Images

It was a strange summer in Glasgow. The city, like much of Scotland, is notorious for cloudy, blustery, and generally capricious weather, even in summer. But in parts of Scotland and northwestern Europe, the summer of 2021 was uncharacteristically warm, dry, and sunny, a boon for lockdown-weary citizens unable or unwilling to travel to favorite southern vacation spots. It was also eerily calm. Day after day, there was little or no wind, something very noticeable in a country with a reputation as the windiest place in Europe.

Scotland was experiencing a “wind drought”—something that may be more common than we think. And that sounds like bad news for the project to build a carbon-neutral future, an enterprise that hinges on renewable energy. Most renewables are intermittent, and while some forms like tide and sun are more or less predictable, others are not. The energy potential of wind, dammed water, and biomass depends heavily on climatic conditions. And if the climate is changing, as the science community unanimously agrees it is, this will have implications for the green energy revolution. Will climate change cancel renewable energy?

This is an important question, one you’d expect would have been near the top of the agenda at COP26, the climate confab in Glasgow. To be clear, there is no evidence that the wind drought was symptomatic of anthropogenic climate change. Climate science tells us that in northwestern Europe, westerly winds are generated by the North Atlantic Oscillation, a weather motor with two contra-rotating gears. One is a zone of low pressure (the Icelandic Low) spinning counterclockwise and the other is a zone of high pressure (the Azores High) spinning clockwise. When there is a large pressure difference between these systems, strong westerlies and cool wet summers result. When there is less difference in pressure, westerlies are weaker and wet windy weather shifts south. This was what happened this summer. An anomalous zone of high pressure appeared between Iceland and Scotland from April to September, a period some observers characterized as the least windy in the U.K. and parts of Ireland in 60 years.

But even if wind droughts are not connected to climate change, they are an illustrative example of how renewable energy is based on assumptions about how the world works, and the world is currently being thrown out of balance.

Take hydropower, which plays a crucial role in electricity systems. The people who manage electrical load essentially have one purpose: to maintain as perfect a balance of supply and demand as possible because imbalances can collapse the system. But nature doesn’t care about human demand, so intermittent renewables pose particular problems for load managers. When there is more intermittent energy than necessary or when it disappears when it is in demand (like when there’s a wind drought), grids can get stressed. In the former case, load managers shut off or store excess electricity. In latter cases, they call on other forms of generation to fill the gap.

Engineers favor hydropower for storing excess electricity and for filling the intermittent energy generation gap. And hydropower’s important enabling function in balancing electrical load illustrates the intimate relationship between changing climate and the ability of human beings to exploit renewable energy. Surplus electricity, including electricity produced in times of intermittent energy plenty, can be used to recover water that has flowed through a hydroelectric facility and pump it to a reservoir at higher elevation, where it can be stored and release to drive turbines when needed. This is known as pumped storage, an infrastructure often analogized as a giant watery battery. In the U.S., pumped storage accounts for 95 percent of utility-scale energy storage.

The problem is that not all countries have suitable hydropower resources and many that do have already fully developed them. In the West, moreover, big hydro, though it is a form of renewable energy, has long been out of favor on grounds it costs too much and causes too much environmental damage.

Also, worryingly, climate change is threatening existing hydro resources in some parts of the world, undermining the ability of load managers to cope with intermittent energy problems like wind droughts. The two decade-long water megadrought in the U.S. southwest is drying up the Colorado River and sapping the potential of the reservoirs and dams built astride it to store surplus intermittent renewable energy and bridge the generation gap.

The megadrought is also harming crops used for biofuels, another important renewable energy enterprise. Parched conditions stunt the yield of corn used for ethanol and also alter the biochemistry of switchgrass, a hardy crop that requires less water and energy, as well as cellulosic agricultural waste, in ways that make these substances less suitable as fuel.

The imbalances humans cause in natural systems trace directly to the imbalances humans have built into their energy policies. For all the hope invested in the green energy revolution, U.S. energy planners have only ever perceived renewables as a supplement to existing fossil and nuclear energy resources, not as a replacement for them. The Obama administration termed this policy “all of the above,” an expression that connotes big-tent political imperatives.

But the massive expansion both of oil and gas production and renewable capacity under the Obama administration had network effects that served to deepen the conundrums of renewable energy. In the late 2010s, the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil thanks largely to the massive application of hydraulic fracturing, a water-intensive technology that damaged water tables and made arid areas even drier. All that fracked oil and gas generated massive quantities of greenhouse gases that exacerbated climate change, and the resulting weather effects like megadroughts in turn undermined the ability of load mangers to use hydro to integrate intermittent renewables into the energy conversion mix.

As dams become degraded by climate change and are decommissioned by planners, solar panels and especially wind turbines have come to be seen as metonymic of the sustainable energy future. And public policy has subsidized the installation of much more intermittent renewable capacity than can currently be used. In the U.S., excess solar and wind capacity is routinely shut off. In the U.K., the government pays owners of windfarms to switch off the surplus. Oddly, these subsidized constraint payments constitute a perverse incentive to invest in still more wind generation, provoking criticism that the push to renewables is yielding limited returns.

In the U.K., wind generation capacity is so overbuilt that even in this calmest of summers the government still paid out tens of millions of pounds to keep the turbines from turning. Some observers hope to store intermittent renewable energy in rechargeable batteries at scale, including the batteries in electric cars, but these approaches bring their own costs and complications.

Questions of counterproductive energy policies and the relationship between anthropogenic climate change and renewable energy were not discussed in any depth at elite forums at COP26. Yet the popular mood overwhelmingly favored such a conversation, as indicated by widespread protests and street theater that culminated in a massive demonstration during the global day of climate action in Glasgow. Activists like Greta Thunberg criticized government and industry for passivity and hypocrisy in the fight against climate change. Barack Obama’s admonitions for the world to do more and for youth to “stay angry” drew skeptical pushback that referenced the former president’s checkered energy record. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may also have misread the room in his COP26 keynote address, where he compared climate change to a doomsday timebomb that James Bond is scrambling to defuse.

Johnson’s analogy both expressed the urgency of the crisis and mispresented it. Climate change is not a single cataclysmic event that can be solved by a single heroic act. Wind droughts and other weather anomalies remind us that nature and society are dynamically intertwined in ways that are not always obvious. Environments and infrastructures together comprise hybrid entities that are neither purely social nor purely natural and that operate according to their own sets of rules. The historian Richard White dubbed such entities “organic machines,” a frame of reference surely more appropriate than the Bond bomb in conceptualizing a world humans have badly unbalanced. It will be years before COP26’s practical legacy can be known but in the short term the gathering can mark a moment to begin reflecting on the sometimes paradoxical organic machines we are constructing in the name of planetary salvation. Humanity has accepted that harmony and balance are fundamental to healthy ecosystems and energy systems. Now it faces the challenge of grasping the implications of applying ecological principles across the spectrum of human activity.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Farmers say they're ready to cut the carbon in Canada's diet — but they need government help

Social Sharing

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Pinterest

• Reddit

• LinkedIn

• Email

Agrifood groups say they need Ottawa and the provinces

onboard with efforts to reduce their carbon footprint

Chris Hall · CBC News · Posted: Nov 13, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 1 hour ago

A farm tractor and baler sit in a hay field on a misty morning near Cremona, Alta. (Canadian Press)

The role of agriculture in climate change didn't get much attention at the COP26 summit — much to the chagrin of activists.

"The cow in the room is being ignored," one told the Guardian during the two-week gathering in Glasgow.

But the leaders of three Canadian agrifood groups told CBC's The House in a panel discussion airing this weekend that there's a growing appetite among Canadian farmers for working with Canadian governments to cut emissions and find ways to take carbon out of the environment.

"So there are a lot of farmers who for a long time have been experimenting with ways they can reduce emissions on their farm, thinking about ways that we can increase soil carbon — drawing carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in our agricultural soils," said Brent Preston, an Ontario vegetable farmer and director of a national organization called Farmers for Climate Solutions.

"But we've been largely unsupported in this work and we realize that we need public support, federal and provincial support, to scale these practices to make them widespread and to really have a significant impact on the emissions of our sector and also our ability to withstand the inevitable changes that we know are going to come in the climate."

LISTEN | Climate change on Canada's farms:

13:04Climate change on Canada’s farms

Three Canadian farmers from different regions of the country discuss their role in addressing the climate crisis and the support they need from the government in implementing solutions. 13:04

The high climate cost of food production

The agricultural and food processing industries employ more than two million people in Canada and generate nearly $140 billion dollars in revenue each year. That represents just over 7 per cent of the Canadian economy.

But as important as farming and food are to Canadians, the sector is also a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions — generating nearly 73 megatonnes in 2019.

• World leaders shy away from tackling food, farming emissions at COP26

• How climate change is causing grief, anxiety and depression

• Canada has a quarter of world's soil carbon. Keeping it in the ground could curb climate change, experts say

It's no surprise, then, that the country's agriculture ministers cited addressing climate change as one of the goals of a new five-year plan for the industry at their meeting this week in Guelph, Ontario.

Mary Robinson, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, was at that meeting. She told The House that the emphasis on reducing emissions can't come at the expense of farmers themselves.

"I think the message needs to be that we can't do this at the expense of producing food," she said. "We can't destabilize our food supply systems here, or our economy."

Not enough rain here, too much there

Farmers are on the front lines of climate change — coping with prolonged droughts in some parts of the country and flooding in others.

And then there are the economic factors. Production costs are rising — in some cases higher and faster than the prices paid to farmers.

Many farmers are doing what they can already to reduce emissions from their operations — leaving fields untilled to store carbon, or protecting stands of trees and wetlands.

A dugout is shown at Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan President Todd Lewis’s farm near Gray, Sask., on Thursday, July 29, 2021. (Kayle Neis/The Canadian Press)

Robinson, who operates a 2,000-acre farm on Prince Edward Island, said the ministers meeting in Guelph understood the importance of working with them to draft climate goals for the sector.

"I think probably one of the most important things we heard was a sense of commitment to have a collaborative approach to solving these challenges and opportunities that exist in front of us," she said. "We can't stress enough just how important it is that farmers be at the table for these conversations because we have to make sure that any of the solutions that are proposed … that they're practical and that they are based on science."

The federal budget included $270 million over two years to support farmers in reducing emissions, protecting wetlands and converting their operations to clean energy.

The competitive pressure to cut carbon

All three panellists said it's a great start. But Preston said Canada still lags far behind the United States and European Union in helping farmers adopt more sustainable methods.

An analysis conducted by his organization found the U.S. under former president Donald Trump spent 13 times more than Canada on a per-acre basis, while the European Union invested 73 times more.

Canadian producers could soon face heavy market pressure to cut their carbon footprints, says Brent Preston of Farmers for Climate Solutions. (Shane Magee/CBC)

"What it means is that farmers in other jurisdictions are getting more support to transition to the sort of low-GHG production system that we need to adopt here," he told The House.

"And increasingly, we're seeing international buyers, food companies and brokers demanding lower GHG products from their supply chains. So if they can't get those low-GHG products from Canada, they're going to find them from other places that are getting more support to adopt these practices."

Still, the carrot may not be enough to convince reluctant farmers to make the shift, said Cedric MacLeod, executive director of the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association.

Convinced by the carbon tax

MacLeod raises 100 to 120 head of grass-fed cattle on his New Brunswick farm. He said the federal price on carbon is the stick needed to convince a large group of farmers who are unwilling to adopt more sustainable methods of raising livestock.

"You know, I worked for a decade and a half in the space and trying to encourage some of these conservation practices and you know, we always see some success. But there's still a bloc that hangs in the back that just really resists that change," he said.

"And I think what we're finding is that the carbon tax is really the bump that's going to move those growers forward. So if you don't want to innovate, then you're going to get taxed."

So while some climate activists complain that the COP26 summit didn't do enough to deal with agriculture's role in the climate crisis, some farmers here are working to ensure that their efforts to bring in more sustainable practices don't come a cropper.

Oilpatch drilling activity to rise in 2022: PSAC

The Canadian Press

CALGARY - Drilling activity in the Canadian oilpatch will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, according to a new industry forecast.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) says it expects a total of 5,400 wells to be drilled in Canada next year, an increase of 16 per cent year-over-year and the most activity since 2019.

PSAC also revised its 2021 forecast to 4,650 wells, in light of increased activity in the last half of the year. At the start of 2021, PSAC was predicting 3,350 wells to be drilled for the year.

PSAC's forecast for 2022 is based on a projected WTI crude price at an average of $70 per barrel, and an AECO natural gas average of $4.10 per thousand cubic feet.

PSAC president and chief executive Gurpreet Lail says while the outlook for the oilpatch is brighter than it was a year ago, the industry has not yet rebounded to where it was before oil prices crashed in late 2014.

She says while higher commodity prices are driving an uptick in drilling, the industry is also facing a severe labour shortage that could impede growth.

 Nearly two-thirds of Canadians support oil and gas emissions cap, even if it puts jobs at risk: poll

MARIEKE WALSH
OTTAWA

A flare stack lights the sky from an oil refinery in Edmonton, on Dec. 28, 2018.

JASON FRANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Almost two-thirds of Canadians support immediately capping greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sands – even if it puts jobs at risk, according to a new poll.

Sixty-three per cent of respondents to a Nanos Research poll said they agree or somewhat agree that Canada should immediately limit emissions from the oil and gas sector and curtail them over time. Thirty-four per cent said they either disagree or somewhat disagree, and 3 per cent said they are unsure.

The poll, conducted for The Globe and Mail, also shows the country is “fundamentally divided” between the Prairie provinces and the rest of Canada, Nanos Research founder Nik Nanos said. As such, it reveals the political calculus for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as his government plans to implement a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector, Mr. Nanos added, because the regions with the most support for such a cap are also Liberal strongholds.

The regional breakdown reveals a gulf between the main producers of oil and gas and other regions. In the Prairies, 57 per cent of respondents said they disagree or somewhat disagree with limiting emissions, whereas Quebec had the lowest level of dissent, with just 16 per cent not in favour. In Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, 29 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, said they oppose a cap.

The oil and gas sector is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, but it is also critical to the economy. Mr. Nanos said the poll shows the country’s regions are “out of sync,” with “the Prairies at one end of the spectrum and then Quebec at the other.”

During the recent election campaign, the Liberals pledged to put a cap on the sector’s emissions, with the ceiling shrinking over time. The government has said it will set five-year targets, starting in 2025. Because the path to a majority government runs through Quebec, Mr. Nanos said there may not be much incentive for Mr. Trudeau to bridge the regional divide.

“Good policy for the federation may become victim to a good political strategy for the Liberals, that’s what we have to watch out for,” he said.

The Prairies, though, “aren’t immune to climate-fueled wildfires and droughts,” said Keith Stewart with Greenpeace Canada. “The best policy for the federation is to help each other through a rapid transition to green energy so we capture the jobs that come with it,” he said.

On Nov. 9, former prime minister Stephen Harper told a closed-door meeting that the federal government’s climate policy unfairly singled out “certain parts of the country.”

The week prior at international climate negotiations in Glasgow, Mr. Trudeau called his government’s planned emissions cap on oil and gas “a big step that’s absolutely necessary,” Mr. Trudeau acknowledged in his Nov. 1 speech that imposing limits will be “no small task for an oil-and-gas-producing country.”

The Prairie provinces were also the exception in a separate Nanos Research poll for The Globe on equalization payments. On that question, more people in the Prairies want equalization removed from the Constitution than respondents from other regions.

Overall, 61 per cent of respondents said they disagree or somewhat disagree with removing equalization payments from the Constitution, while 30 per cent agree or somewhat agree. Nine per cent said they are unsure.

In the regional breakdown, though, 50 per cent of respondents from the Prairies said they want the payments removed from the Constitution. Respondents from Quebec were the least likely to support the change, with just 20 per cent saying they would back it.

Last month, Albertans voted in favour of removing equalization from the Constitution in a referendum that Premier Jason Kenney said was designed to put pressure on Ottawa to address the province’s many grievances. Results posted by Elections Alberta showed 61.7 per cent voted “Yes.”

Mr. Nanos said the timing of the referendum means the issue was much more front and centre for respondents in the Prairies, adding that it’s not clear if people in the region are truly outliers or if the results there simply reflect what others would think if equalization got more attention.

The hybrid telephone and online random surveys ran from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3, with 1,026 respondents. They have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Canada would support international deadlines to eliminate coal and fossil fuel subsidies, Steven Guilbeault says

By Alex BallingallOttawa Bureau
Fri., Nov. 12, 2021

OTTAWA—Canada says it would support the addition of deadlines to eliminate coal power and government supports for the fossil fuel sector in the final deal at the United Nations climate summit in Scotland, as negotiations aimed at preventing the catastrophic extremes of climate change dragged past the scheduled conclusion of the conference on Friday.

Speaking on the last scheduled day of the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said the Canadian delegation is pushing for a “forceful” deal that will ensure actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are strong enough to restrain the increase of average global temperature increases to 1.5 C by the end of the century.

Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have said the world has already warmed 1.1 C, and that further increases will lead to more damaging consequences like rising sea levels and stronger floods, droughts, storms and wildfires.

The primary goal of the summit is to ensure it remains possible to limit warming to 1.5 C, though efforts to strike a deal hit stumbling blocks this week. More than 190 participating countries continued talks late into the night on Friday, with ongoing debate over several issues. These include: how much money rich countries will provide poorer nations to deal and account for the damages of climate change; rules for trading credits for emissions reductions between different countries; a call to further increase emissions targets by the end of next year; and a demand for countries to speed-up plans to phase out coal power and subsidies for fossil fuels.

That last point sparked objections from climate campaigners and some participating countries after the latest draft agreement — published Friday morning — had updated language that referred only to “unabated” coal power and “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies.


Tina Stege, the climate envoy from the Marshall Islands, said the final deal must include strong language on fossil fuels and a clear demand to eliminate “all” government supports for coal, oil and gas.

“Fossil fuel subsidies are paying for our own destruction,” she told the conference Friday afternoon.

Asked about the new language around coal power and fossil fuel subsidies, Guilbeault acknowledged concerns about the terminology but did not criticize it. Instead, he pointed to Canada’s own pledge to phase out coal power by 2030 and said Canada would be “very comfortable” with a final deal that included the same deadline for all countries.

He also said Canada would agree to a joint timeline to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, as it has promised to eliminate “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies by 2023. That pledge doesn’t include the billions of dollars that Crown corporations like Export Development Canada still provide to the domestic oil and gas sector every year, although Guilbeault said Friday that it would cover government subsidies that increase fossil fuel production in Canada.

The United States, meanwhile, urged participating countries not to weaken the current draft of the deal. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told the conference that the U.S. supports the language around eliminating coal power and fossil fuel subsidies.

“To avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis, we have to act now,” Kerry said.

“How could we possibly in 2021, knowing what the evidence is, be wishy-washy on that subject? Those subsidies have to go.”

He also defended a provision that calls for countries to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 emissions targets by the end of next year — something Canada says should only apply to countries that haven’t upgraded their targets since 2015.

The IPCC says annual emissions from the entire world need to fall to 45 per cent below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 C.

Canada’s current target — updated earlier this year — is to slash emissions by at least 40 per cent over the next nine years, a goal the federal government argues is consistent with a 1.5 C pathway.

“It is our north star. This is what we’re here for, and Canada has been very supportive of a text that is very strong on 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Guilbeault told reporters Friday.

Climate campaigners in Glasgow this week, however, have decried what they describe as a lack of ambition and urgency shown in the drafts of the final deal so far. A report published by the Climate Action Tracker consortium determined current targets are too weak to achieve what’s necessary by 2030 to maintain a pathway to 1.5 C. And on Friday, a group called Friends of the Earth urged countries to strengthen the deal so that countries commit to phasing out all fossil fuels — not just coal.

“We need to keep, not just the coal, but the oil and gas, safe in the ground,” Mary Church, head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth Scotland, told reporters in Glasgow.

Catherine Abreu, executive director of the Canadian organization Destination Zero, also denounced how the latest text, which she said was watered down with “weasel words” around the phasing out of coal power and fossil fuel subsidies.

Another point of contention in the latter hours of the conference involved the failure to rally promised amounts of money from richer countries to help the developing world deal with climate change. Canada was tapped, along with Germany, to try to raise $100 billion in “climate finance” for developing countries, a level that was promised in 2009 to be achieved in 2020.

However, that threshold is now expected to be met three years late, in 2023, a fact that was noted with “concern” and “deep regret” in the draft deal published Friday. The draft called on countries to “at least double” the collective financing to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

Canada has already promised to double its planned contributions to help developing countries deal with climate to $5.3 billion over the next five years. Guilbeault’s office has said 40 per cent of this money will be earmarked for adaptation, helping poorer countries upgrade their infrastructure to better withstand the realities of the warming world.

But countries such as Belize, Tuvalu and Ecuador say this money for adaptation is not enough, and that developing nations need funding for “loss and damage” they have already experienced from the impacts of climate change. The Friday draft deal included a section that acknowledged this need and urged developed countries to increase financing in this area.

Asked about “loss and damage” on Friday, Guilbeault said he doesn’t expect “new funding mechanisms” to be created but expressed confidence that an agreement can be reached.

Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star.