Canada's energy superpower status threatened as world shifts off fossil fuel, federal think-tank warns

here we have Albertans whinging about the new carbon tax, and whoops, the govt better not count on significant income from carbon taxes in the near future. I guess we're nearing the "hump" where renewables become cheaper and cheaper. No doubt today's dinosaurs will bemoan this for some time. Ironic considering it's their ancestors that they want to keep spewing.

Not good for BC, where we're about dams and nat gas. Wonder what Krispie Clark will promise us for 2017. Certainly not wiping out the debt and having a 100 million prosperity fund like last time.

Alternative energy sources could be 1/10th the price of oil...and oil extraction (globally) isn't going to change a great deal. Same with NG.

We can't extract the byproducts only.

Out of every barrel of oil extracted, about 47% is turned into fuel/energy. The rest is used for manufacturing.

Say a 20% reduction in demand won't have an effect on prices? And hydro, our other big energy source also seems to be going the way of the dodo.

It is going to have a significant effect on pricing. Everybody that uses the by products is going to have to pay for the increased waste.

20% less fuel/energy usage, doesn't mean a 20% reduction in oil extraction. It just means that some of the product that is made form that extraction is now waste...unless they can find another use for it.

So extraction stays the same. Amount of viable product to sell from each barrel produced drops (waste increase). Costs rise.

We need to find alternatives for more than just our energy to end our dependency on oil. We have to find alternatives for all of the byproducts as well. Preferably in equal measure, so we can actually reduce the amount of oil extraction required.

You seem to know a lot about the oil industry. Here is what the smarty pants say in the report:


And for the howlers at was it Linda McQuaig? We've heard this before, that it won't be government regulation that keeps oil in the ground, but the market place. It's actually a component of the peak oil idea too.

Canada's an "energy superpower" the way Bangladesh is a sweatshop superpower. We're price-takers, not price-makers.

the world revolves around oil, not just for 'burning' but for goods manufactured. They can say whatever they want, but as long as you need, plastics, rubber, etc etc you will need oil. So I see very little affect on the price in the long run.

cut out a huge chunk of the use for oil, no effect on price? Strange. Unless the long run refers to centuries.

We're a long way off from 'renewables' dominating the energy market.

Renewables are not going to power trains, ships, airliners, steel mills, or many other aspects of civilization.

And sooner or later people have to come to grips with the fact that windmills as they are currently designed are slaughtering birds in the millions. Eventually the damned things have to be banned or else we'll have huge parts of the world where there won't be very many birds.

http://www.economist.com/node/10202790


http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intellig ... teel-mill/

Renewables power the trains in Europe? Since when?

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics ... generation



Carbon and uranium provide over 3/4 of the electricity in Europe and they're not going away. Europe can't and won't build anymore hydro capacity and in fact they're acting to remove much or most of Europe's hydro capacity.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=hy ... val+europe

That amps up dependence on carbon and uranium because solar and wind are not dependable in Europe.

You also don't know much about how to make steel. An arc furnace is still going to require coal.

Andyt,

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner.

The reason we always see reports claiming that if can we reduce the energy portion, it will also reduce the extraction portion, is because analysts use the information they have at the time.

Which usually includes up and coming products, while good on paper, have not yet been real world tested. Take plastics for example. When bioplastics were first released, analysts made a lot of claims about how much it was going to reduce oil extraction/consumption. And, based on the lab and test results...they were right. What they didn't account for was wildlife. When animals started eating bioplastics a lot of bioplastic consumers made a very quick change back to oil based plastics. Consumption increased.

When we start to see more products, using alternatives to oil, surviving the real world, I will adjust my opinion on it.

Yeah but that varies a lot by country. In Germany, Renewable energy provides almost a third of all power consumed, at times provide up to 90% of the entire grid.