It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
ON KENNEY'S UCP WATCH DON'T BLAME THE NDP BUT HE WILL
Alberta to lose $1.3-billion in sale of oil-by-rail contracts
Rail cars wait for pickup in Winnipeg on March 23, 2014. The Canada Energy Regulator says exports of crude oil by rail from Canada fell by 15 per cent in October to 270,000 barrels per day from 319,600 bpd in September.The October number is the lowest in six months and well below the record high of 354,000 bpd set in December of 2018.The regulator blamed the decrease on narrower differences in prices between Western Canadian Select bitumen-blend oil in Alberta and U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate prices in New York. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods
Alberta energy ‘war room’ chief apologizes for tweets attacking New York Times THE CANADIAN PRESS PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2020 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney meets with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in Calgary, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020. Alberta's $30-million-a-year energy war room is again under the microscope after it responded to an article in the New York Times by questioning the news organization's credibility.
The head of Alberta’s $30-million-a-year energy war room is apologizing after the organization posted a lengthy social media response to an article in The New York Times that questioned the news organization’s credibility.
The Canadian Energy Centre’s Twitter account said The Times has been “called out for anti-Semitism countless times,” has a “dodgy” track record, is “routinely accused of bias” and is “not the most dependable source.” Four of the tweets were then deleted from a 20-tweet thread posted in response to a Times article on international lenders that have stopped financing oil sands projects in Alberta.
The remaining tweets take issue with the news agency’s interpretation of the data, and defend the environmental record of Canada and the oil and gas sector, but don’t directly attack the newspaper’s credibility.
The centre was promised by Premier Jason Kenney in the provincial election last year with a mandate to promote the energy industry and fire back in real time against what the United Conservative government deems to be misinformation.
Tom Olsen, who heads the energy centre, apologized via his personal Twitter account for the offending tweets and said the issue has been dealt with internally.
“I apologize for some of the tweets in (The Canadian Energy Centre) Twitter thread this a.m.,” he wrote. “The tone did not meet CEC’s standard for public discourse.
Olsen added that “there will be a substantive response” to the article within the centre’s “mandate of challenging inaccuracies.”
The centre did not immediately respond Wednesday afternoon to e-mail and phone requests for comment. The Times did not immediately respond to a comment request.
The centre has been criticized previously for using another organization’s trademarked logo and for having its staff members refer to themselves as reporters instead of government employees
Olsen has been mocked by critics for a slip of the tongue in a TV interview in which he said the purpose of the centre is about “disproving true facts.”
The Calgary-based centre has been set up as a provincial government corporation, but is overseen by three cabinet ministers on its board of directors.
Journalist association says employees of Alberta’s energy-industry ‘war room’ are not reporters DECEMBER 24, 2019
Federal numbers dispute Kenney’s oil sands emissions projections
The office of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, seen here on Feb. 4, 2020, said his numbers on Friday reflect what emissions the government considers would count towards the cap.
RYAN REMIORZ/THE CANADIAN PRESS
There is a 20-megatonne gap between what Alberta and Ottawa say are the emissions from the oil sands, meaning the energy sector is either swiftly approaching a provincially legislated emissions limit or there is ample room to grow before companies need to seriously curtail greenhouse gasses.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was looking to burnish the environmental credentials of the oil sands during a trip to Washington on Friday and said its emissions are either 67 or 68 megatonnes this year, far below the province’s 100-megatonne cap. However, data from the federal government shows emissions from the oil sands that fall under Alberta’s legislated cap will total 87 megatonnes this year. That’s up from 68 megatonnes in 2015.
The two numbers tell different stories about how close the oil sands are to reaching the emissions limit created by Mr. Kenney’s predecessor in 2016. The federal findings suggest the province is rapidly nearing the cut-off, while the Premier has used his low number as a justification for why Ottawa should approve a proposed mine from Teck Resources Ltd.
Ottawa’s looming decision on whether to approve the massive new oil sands development depends partly on whether the province’s emission cap is credible, as the Liberal government nervously eyes the country’s growing carbon emissions. Canada has committed to reaching net zero emissions nationally by 2050.
“Right now, we’re at about 67 or 68 megatonnes per annum of CO2 emissions from the Canadian oil sands. Teck Frontier would add about four megatonnes, taking us to the low 70s,” Mr. Kenney said while speaking at the Wilson Centre on Friday.
When then-premier Rachel Notley’s New Democrats introduced the emission cap in 2016, the Alberta government estimated emissions at about 70 megatonnes. Oil sands production and its related emissions have only climbed since, as existing mines have added more capacity and a number of smaller projects have been built.
According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, oil sands production is supposed to increase to 3.2 million barrels a day this year from 2.91 million barrels a day in 2018.
A federal report submitted to the United Nations in January estimated emissions from the oil sands will hit 94 megatonnes by the end of 2020. The report found that emissions hit 71 megatonnes in 2015 and 81 megatonnes in 2017.
Alberta’s emissions cap legislation defines emissions from the oil sands as total emissions, less new upgrading after 2015 and emissions from the production of electricity sold to the provincial grid. Subtracting those exempted emissions brings Ottawa to the 87-megatonne oil sands emissions assessment for 2020.
Mr. Kenney’s office said his numbers on Friday reflect what emissions the government considers would count towards the cap. They did not explain the difference between the Premier’s numbers and those put forward by Ottawa.
The province has never introduced regulations, so the emissions cap cannot be legally enforced and the province has never explained how it will work. The cap was announced in conjunction with Ottawa’s decision to purchase and build the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. While the Alberta government has indicated some emissions won’t count towards the limit, experts say there is uncertainty about which emissions will be included.
Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon insisted on Friday that oil sands emissions are “nowhere near” the 100-megatonne cap, even with the addition of the Frontier mine. He said the government has no immediate plans to pen regulations for the cap.
“If that is the lens the federal government is looking at this project through, then approve it, because we’ve already met those requirements,” Mr. Nixon said.
The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental think tank, has calculated emissions of 82 megatonnes by the end of the year.
Alberta needs to provide data justifying Mr. Kenney’s figures, according to Chris Severson-Baker, the group’s Alberta director. “The burden of proof is on Alberta to show its data and accounting are credible in the eyes of the international community," he said.
Andrew Leach, an environmental economist at the University of Alberta, warned that it’s difficult to look at annual emissions projections without clear definitions from the province on what emissions will be included in the cap.
“It’s easy to say we’re far away when no one knows what the measure is,” he said. “But if we have a 100-megatonne cap and we’re trumpeting it as a reason we shouldn’t worry about oil emissions, at some point we’re going to have to decide which projects can’t play."
Researchers at the University of Sydney have created a new material that has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions released during the refinement process of crude oil by up to 28 percent.
Silica-alumina materials are among the most common solid acids that have been widely commercialised as efficient and environmentally-friendly catalysts in the petrochemical and bio-refinery industries.
In a world first, a team of researchers at the University of Sydney led by Associate Professor Jun Huang, have produced a new amorphous silica-alumina catalyst with stronger acidity than any other silica-alumina material created before.
"This new catalyst can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by oil refineries, which has the potential to make the fossil fuel industry much greener and cleaner," Associate Professor Huang from the Faculty of Engineering and Sydney Nano Institute said.
A significant amount of carbon is emitted during the refinement of crude oil to produce products like petroleum, gasoline and diesel. Estimates suggest 20 to 30 percent of crude oil is transferred to waste and further burnt in the chemical process, making oil refineries the second largest source of greenhouse gases behind power plants.
Credit: University of Sydney
Silica-aluminas with strong Brønsted acidity—a substance that gives up or donates hydrogen ions (protons) in a chemical reaction—are becoming increasingly important to various sustainability processes, including the fields of biomass conversion, CO2 capture and conversion, air-pollution remediation, and water purification.
"Renewable energy is important to achieving a more sustainable energy supply, but the reality is that we will still be reliant on fossil fuels in the foreseeable future. Therefore, we should do all we can to make this industry more efficient and reduce its carbon footprint while we transition to renewable energy sources
"This new catalyst offers some exciting prospects, if it were to be adopted by the entire oil refinery industry, we could potentially see a reduction of over 20 percent in CO2 emissions during the oil refinement process. That's the equivalent of double Australia's crude oil consumption, over 2 million barrels of oil per day."
"The new catalyst also has the potential to develop the biomass industry. We can now look to biomass material like algae to be part of sustainable energy solutions."
The next steps for the researchers are to work on manufacturing the new catalyst at a large, industrial scale.
More information: Zichun Wang et al. Acidity enhancement through synergy of penta- and tetra-coordinated aluminum species in amorphous silica networks, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13907-7
Time for Big Oil to put its money where its mouth is over energy transition
IEA pie-chart showing oil & gas industry capital investment in 2019
Photo: IEA
With a share of total investment in renewables that's still woefully low, the fossil fuel sector needs to lead the world's clean energy shift from the front, writes Darius Snieckus
There could hardly have been a starker illustration of how far the oil industry has to go to start meaningfully contributing to combatting the unfolding global climate crisis: among the myriad bar and pie-charts in the Oil & Gas Industry in Energy Transitions report published last week by the International Energy Agency, a funereal black circle broken by the slimmest sliver of red, depicting the percentage of the sector’s capital investment in 2019 that was funneled into fossil fuels (99.2%), versus renewables and carbon capture and storage (0.8%).
IEA executive director Fatih Birol was politic when launching the study at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying international oil companies (IOCs) had a “crucial role” to play in accelerating the shift to the renewables-based worldwide energy system needed to slow global heating – both by rapidly cutting emissions levels from their operations and ratcheting up investment in a range of key clean-energy technologies. 'Renewables growth must increase fourfold by 2030 to meet climate targets'
Birol, who has been overseeing the IEA’s own ongoing shape-shifting from an oil market watchdog – its raison d'être atits formation in response to the 1973 oil crisis – to a global all-energy advisory body, underscored that “no energy company [would] be unaffected” by the energy transition, a transformation to which “every part of the industry needs to consider how to respond”, as failure to answer the growing public demand for greenhouse gas emissions reduction “could threaten their long-term social acceptability and profitability”.
“Doing nothing is simply not an option,” he said, though of course, the IOCs – and indeed national oil companies – have been doing as close to ‘nothing’ as possible despite knowing for decades of the coming environmental impact of exploration, production, transport, refining and consumption of fossil fuels.
Recent calculations from analyst group Rystad Energy shows that Europe’s five largest oil companies – Shell, BP, Total, Eni and Equinor – have to date together spent the grand sum of $5.5bn on renewables, compared to a combined total energy project budget of almost $90bn in 2019 alone. Widening that calculation to include American petro-giants ExxonMobil and Chevron adds only pennies to the clean-energy pot. Oil supermajor BP backs offshore wind for lift-offRead more
IOC delaying tactics and pro-oil government lobbying efforts look to be finally running of steam, with HSBC in a recent research note calling management of the energy transition “the defining issue” for oil & gas majors in the coming years, one predicated on a “core dilemma: [how] to adapt quickly enough to thrive in the transition, without compromising returns or shareholder value”.
On one level, it is not a question of money: outgoing Shell New Energies chief Mark Gainsborough told a session at last year's BNEF Summit in London that his company will “have an even stronger role to play in a subsidy-free world” given the “bigger balance sheets” evolving energy companies like his could bring to bear on the energy transition.
Nor is the Anglo-Dutch oil giant alone. By HSBC’s calculus, IOCs are set to generate $600bn of investible capital over the next 30 years that could be “redeployed as significant energy landscape uncertainties loom”.
But to channel some pie-chart-changing percentage of this expenditure into clean-energy would require that another equation is reconfigured: an internal rate of return deemed acceptable to IOCs and their shareholders, who have grown accustomed to roughly 20% coming back from oil & gas assets and could only count on 5-9% from renewables projects, as their economics are now. 'Rise of the renewable majors': Goldman Sachs tips six winners of €7trn green bonanzaRead more
Of the wider international oil sector views on the transition coming down the pipeline, a new survey by consultancy DNV GL is revealing of the deeper contradictions in expectation. Some 44% of those polled by the consultancy for its New Directions, Complex Choices: The outlook for the oil and gas industry in 2020 report said they would be boosting their clean-energy spend, up from 34% last year, and 60% saw capital spending on large oil & gas projects foreseen being reined-in in 2020, up from 44% two years ago, as their organisations “actively adapted to a less carbon-intensive energy mix”.
Yet in the same breath, two thirds (66%) of the 1,000 senior oil & gas professionals contacted by DNV GL for its report were confident of oil industry’s growth this year, down a mere 10 percentage points on 2019.
And here’s the rub. Though the IEA made clear that low-carbon electricity would “undoubtedly move to centre-stage in the future energy mix”, it cautioned that investment in oil & gas production could not stop completely as this would result in a decline in supply of around 8% a year, which would be “larger than any plausible fall in global demand”, meaning expenditure on “existing fields and some new ones remains part of the picture”. Offshore oil industry 'social licence to operate under threat' in UK
The DNV GL 2019 Energy Transition Outlook’s numbers make for even plainer reading on this: as it stands, oil and gas will be at the heart of the global energy system in the coming decades, accounting for 46% of the energy mix in 2050 compared with 54% today – a contribution that will result in emissions creating global heating that will far overshoot the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris Agreement.
As Ditlev Engel, CEO of DNV GL - Energy, said in a recent interview with Recharge: “Right now we are on a road to a place nobody wants to go.” Whether for profit or planet – or both – IOCs must now wait no longer to lead from the front in changing this. (Copyright)
The Gangarri solar facility near Wandoan will tap into the power infrastructure at Shell’s QGC gas project and is due to be up and running in 2021, with the fossil plant’s operator Shell Energy Australia as its launch customer.
Shell’s global solar activities so far have focused on its stakes in third-party players such as Silicon Ranch in the US, Cleantech Solar in Asia and India’s Orb Energy.
Shell said in January that it will have a new leader at its New Energies unit from April, as Elisabeth Brinton takes over from long-serving chief Mark Gainsborough
Shell had already deepened its Australian power sector footprint last year when it bought commercial & industrial electricity provider ERM.
Shell Australia chairman Tony Nunan said: “Gangarri solar farm will help power the operations of our QGC project and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 300,000 tonnes a year.”
French oil giant Total this week signed a deal worth around $500m (€454m) with the Adani group to acquire a 50% stake in the Indian conglomerate's vast solar portfolio.(Copyright)
Oil giant Suncor taps Siemens Gamesa for one of Canada's largest wind farms
Several large Suncor storage tanks are pictured at the company's Canadian refinery in Edmonton, Alberta.Photo: GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images/NTB scanpix
Oil & gas player orders 4.5MW turbines for first phase of Forty Mile project that would be among nation's largest
Oil & gas group Suncor will start building what could be one of Canada’s largest wind farms with Siemens Gamesa turbines.
Suncor tapped the wind OEM for 45 of its SG 4.5-145 machines for deployment at its Forty Mile wind project in Alberta.
That would put the Suncor project among the biggest wind farms in Canada – another similar-sized development adjacent to it, and also called Forty Mile, is planned by RES and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Both would outstrip the 300MW Henvey Inlet project completed last year.
Suncor is seeking to develop 800MW of renewable energy, mainly in western Canada, as it diversifies its core fossil operations that include a major presence in oil sands.
Siemens Gamesa said the latest deal takes its tally for the SG 4.5-145 in Canada to 574MW. The turbines, which are fitted with noise reduction technology, are due to enter service in 2021.(Copyright) RELATED NEWS
German former lignite mines hold 2.7GW potential for floating PV
Almost 5% of the surface of artificial lakes at former mines mostly in Eastern Germany could be used for floating PV, Fraunhofer ISE says BayWa r.e.'s Sekdoorn floating PV array in the Netherlands
Photo: BayWa re 4 February 2020 By Bernd Radowitz
Artificial lakes at former German open pit lignite mines hold a technical potential for 56GW of PV capacity, a study by the Fraunhofer ISE institute awarded by renewables developer BayWa r.e. concludes.
Once areas earmarked for leisure activities and tourism, as well as nature and landscape protection are subtracted, a real economic potential of 2.74GW for floating PV remains.
The publication of the study comes just after the German cabinet has approved a schedule to shutter 41GW in coal and lignite capacity by 2038 at the latest.
The institute calculates that for a success of the country’s Energiewende – its transition from nuclear and fossil to renewable energy – a PV expansion of up to 500GW is needed.
Floating PV achieves a high area use efficient of about 1.33 megawatts per hectare, Fraunhofer ISE said. Due to the installation on water, a higher yield can be reached thanks to lower temperatures during operation.
Germany has close to 500 artificial lakes on former lignite mines with a combined area of 47,251 hectares, most of it in Eastern German states. The study estimates that 4.9% of the lakes’ surface could be used for floating solar.
Other artificial lakes have not been included in the study.
BayWa r.e. has already built a 25MW floating PV array in the Netherlands, where the technology is economical given the support it receives there, and is building another array with a capacity of 27.4GW.
“Now the right framework conditions need to be created to simplify the permitting process and use this potential.”
As investment costs for floating PV are somewhat higher as for common ground-based PV, the technology so far hasn’t been successful in German tenders.
“Therefore, innovation tenders specially for floating PV and other area-neutral PV plants would make sense,” said Harry Wirth, PV module and power plant area director at Fraunhofer ISE.(Copyright)
A group of Greek and US experts has sent the Energy Ministry an alternative proposal regarding the operation of Public Power Corporation’s efficient lignite-powered units, such as Ptolemaida 5, beyond the termination deadline of 2028 that the National Plan for Energy and the Climate provides for. This concerns a technology which could reduce their carbon footprint considerably, and secure them a competitive edge.
This group is called OASIS and the proposal submitted relies on carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology that could be implemented in the form of a public-private partnership (PPP) for PPC’s most efficient coal-fired plants in Western Macedonia.
OASIS officials have assisted in the evolution and development of this technology in various international projects such as the Petra Nova unit near Houston, Texas, that uses lignite and constitutes the biggest commercial example of carbon capture and utilization in the world.
The OASIS group’s Konstantine Drougos explained to Kathimerini that CCUS technology “is one of the most advanced innovative green technologies included in the technologies proposed by the Treaty of Paris as it immediately reduces the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere.”
He added that the CCUS pattern could be employed at Greece’s new, state-of-the-art lignite plants such as Ptolemaida 5, provided that the operation of coal-fired units is allowed to continue beyond 2028. This is because the application of carbon capture technologies combined with modern burning technologies will lead to a positive environmental footprint and a production cost that will be equal to or even lower than that of modern natural gas-fired plants.
Speaking about the general benefits of CCUS technology, Drougos stressed that “carbon dioxide can be transformed into new products for the chemical industry and synthetic fuel such as methanol. CO2 can also be stored in underground geological deposits while oil is being extracted.” Other uses, according to Drougos, are to be found in fertilizers, plastics and the refreshments industry.
Drougos’ view is that decarbonization has been taking place in Greece for some years if one takes into account the dramatic reduction of lignite output – from 63 percent in 2004 to 18 percent in 2019 – and the proportionate reduction in emissions from lignite burning.
“Greece does not lag in performance compared to other countries. On the contrary, it finds itself among the countries that have advanced their decarbonization having started years ago,” the OASIS group representative said. He went on to note that the application of CCUS technology would also give regional and local communities in Greece the opportunity to create jobs, strengthen the economy and energy safety while saving resources thanks to investment in domestic production energy with low CO2 emissions, dissociating economic development from these emissions.
11.02.2020 Whether we prepare for it, or we just wait for it to happen, the end of lignite’s use as a fuel for power generation is unavoidable. The government in Athens has drawn up a plan to make the transition to greener energy production smoother.
Of course one could constructively criticize the provisions of the government’s plan. But shortsighted populism, coming from sides which are supposed to prioritize environmental issues, is merely a way to profit from the concerns of the local communities who will have to adjust to the new reality.
This also undermines the future of the very people it is supposed to protect.
Trump looks to kill student loan forgiveness program
KEY POINTS The Education Department’s budget would be slashed under Trump’s 2021 budget. Cuts include the end of subsidized student loans and the popular public service loan forgiveness program. President Donald Trump is calling for cuts to the Education Department Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images
As student debt continues to climb, President Donald Trump on Monday released a budget for 2021 that would slash many of the programs aimed at helping borrowers.
Student loan spending would be cut by $170 billion in Trump’s plan, titled “A Budget for America’s Future.” The reductions include “sensible annual and lifetime loan limits” for graduate students and parents and the end to subsidized loans, in which the government covers the interest for borrowers who are still in school or experiencing economic hardship.
It would also reduce the number of repayment options for borrowers and nix the popular, if challenged, public service loan forgiveness program.
That program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that up to one-quarter of American workers are eligible.
“The Trump Administration already has a reputation of being anti-borrower,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a higher education policy expert. “This just takes it further.”
In all, Trump’s proposal would request $66.6 billion for the U.S. Department of Education, trimming the budget by $5.6 billion, or nearly 8%. The proposed cut is less steep than last year, when he called for a nearly 10% reduction in spending for the department. Still, any cuts to student loan relief programs are unlikely to sit well with many voters.
Eighty percent of Americans agree that the government should make it easier for people with student debt to repay their loans, a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found. Another poll found that nearly 60% of registered voters said they would support a plan to cancel all existing student loan debt.
Meanwhile, leading Democratic presidential candidates on the campaign trail are vowing to cancel the majority or all of the country’s outstanding student loan debt.
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