Here’s an editorial from a Postmedia outlet (the Vancouver Sun) that positions the Province of BC as leading the way as a sustainable producer (and presumably shipper) of oil and natural gas.
It is well and good that Vancouver aspires to be the world’s greenest city and that city council wants to make Vancouver petroleum free by 2050. But in the global context, this province continues to have a positive role to play in developing resources sustainably and exporting them to markets with growing energy needs.
Let’s have a discussion over this — what say?
There is a disconnect here about BC/Vancouver Words, and Actions … there is a desire to be the greenest city, but certainly aren’t now. And the rules currently in place actively fight any ‘greening’ that might take place.
Case in point, currently designing a house, and there was a desire to add solar, but unlike many cities in the province, Vancouver doesn’t explicitly provide the envelope flexibility to add solar panels outside the envelope, so anything added would take away from usable floorspace. DNV explicitly allows extra space, so it becomes a much easier proposition. As a related point, the average RS1 zoned lot in Vancouver has a north-south axis, and a barn shaped envelope also north-south, so making a south facing roof pitch, while still maximizing FSR and building height (to ensure solar axis) is fighting against the system. There would be an immediate benefit if the envelope were turned 90 degrees, but all the legacy baggage makes this unlikely, so even more flexibility will be required to even start to catch up to cities with extensive solar infrastructure (germany or australia, using pv and solar-thermal respectively). Vancouver requires piping for solar thermal, but without the ability to install it in an efficient manner, roughly zero uptake will ensue.
The city obviously needs to consult more widely, or at least with the right people, before enacting policies on energy without understanding how they are affected by current restrictions. With solar, surely they can be more flexible, unless of course if you’re proposing to alter a Heritage Class A Samuel Maclure house. When one property has approval for solar, will height and anti-shadowing covenants then be required on the neighbouring property to the south to prevent shading in winter when the sun is at 18 degrees (when it does shine, that is)? On the other hand, large otherwise flat roofs over low rises may be ideal for solar, and the iconic12:12 sawtooth roof pitches of Edwardian streetscapes could be puncuated by 16:8 sawtooth solar roofs of 21st Century townhouses.
You have instances where shade from street trees in older neighbourhoods greatly affect a site’s insolation graph. Nobody is suggesting cutting down public trees only to eliminate shadowing (deciduous trees already allow sunlight through in winter), but this example illuminates, so to speak, that solar PV is only one component that addresses energy on the production side, whereas things like geothermal, triple glazing and superinsulation taps into reducing consumption of fossil fuels with equipment buried in the building mass.
It seems the issue a little more complicated than at first glance.
The fact that editors within the dying Postmedia empire call the export of fossil fuels in their raw form “sustainable” indicates they are not attuned to the modern world. The industry-backed IEA has been wrong and just plain inaccurate so many times before, and it beggars belief that it is still so widely used as a key source in economic and policy projections. Shame on this coterie of editors for putting all their stock in a questionable sole source.
The editors have overlooked several indicators that BC LNG is not economically feasible over the long run due to the fact that Asian markets have cheaper and closer sources of gas. The biggie is China’s 2014 $400 billion deal with Russia to move Siberian gas directly to northern Chinese provinces for 30 years via a southbound pipeline, no expensive liquification required. The editorial said that gas could supplant coal, but ironically it would be Russian gas feeding converted Chinese coal plants.
Staying on the theme of irony, BC gas could feed Alberta power plants once they shut down their coal-fired facilities. However, seeing that as only a transitional step to renewables, why not just send our abundant hydro power eastward in a national effort to eliminate the fuel in ‘fossil fuels’? But even that may not be sustainable in the end because the glaciers that feed the reservoirs are losing mass at a critical rate due to global warming. It is very telling that Postmedia editors are couching oil and gas as “sustainable” without addressing its lack of value-added processing (and jobs) at home while ignoring truly sustainable energy resources like base-load geothermal, wind, solar and tidal, and the deeply sustainable principles behind conservation.
Then they overlooked the stunning decline rates of oil and gas from shale and tight rock formations, some as high as 90% after the first year of production. NE BC gas produced through expensive and polluting fracking processes is not any kind of panacea. Most oil company reports containing glowing hyperbole on NE BC gas are overblown statistically in order to attract investors. With today’s low prices there have been no bombastic reports. Analyses of past production from shale by individual professionals like David Hughes and Arthur Berman have shown time and again that it is a very temporary “gold rush” that can indeed provide a short glut and lower prices (like today), but then production could fall off a cliff as demand rises. This paints a picture of companies abandoning thousands of damaged wilderness drilling sites and ground water resources polluted with highly toxic chemicals, all for taxpayers to clean up.
How can any of this be called “sustainable?” These editors don’t know the meaning of the word, or if they do they are being told by the owner’s CEO to can it and not piss off the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and their advertising revenue so crucial to making the company’s massive debt payments.
What alternatives, at what price points do you suggest to produce & distribute food for BILLIONS of people ? The ENTIRE food chain today is based on “fossil” fuels, or as I prefer to call it from now on, natural oil. Trains, cars, trucks, ships, planes, tractors, combines .. ALL use natural oil based products to move about. Are you thus suggesting a mass culling of 50% of society or its starvation as they will be unable to afford this food ? More hydro is OK for BC or more LNG, but the transportation will rely on natural oil for decades, likely a few centuries due to sheer physics. A kg of battery power carries far less energy than a kg of gasoline. It is sheer physics (see here, for example: http://www.science20.com/science_20/energy_density_why_gasoline_here_stay-91403)
A world without natural oil does not exist, nor will it exist unless you advocate extreme poverty for perhaps 66% of today’s planet’s population, resulting in wars.
So let’s understand that again:
Extreme green policies = war !
Horses are better ? e-bikes ? row boats ? Even with a sensible carbon tax to reduce its use oil & gas consumption will INCREASE to at least 2050, while it falls slightly as a % of overall energy use. Yes, we will see a lot less coal, diesel or even gas power plants that heat water to drive an electric turbine, but even those are required in colder climates where the sun doesn’t always shine ! Solar will overtake as the #1 electricity producer by about 2040, but again that excludes transportation, especially LONG DISTANCE transportation.
The only sensible cheap electricity option – utterly undiscussed here anywhere – is nuclear, and that is why Japan, for example, is bringing it back, despite Fukushima, and it is the reason why France is still a modern democracy despite their desasterous fiscal and socialist policies as they have roughly 70%+ of their power production based on nuclear energy.
Will we see Vancouver car free by 2050, maybe, but even then it might be hybrids running on battery while in Vancouver, then switching to gas when leaving the Fraser Valley.
As stated earlier, keep the THIRD column of sustainability in mind (fiscal) besides the social and environmental emphasis. Not everyone can afford “green” energy, and in many cases “green” isn’t as green as advertised either.
Totally agreed! Even the average decay rate for natural gas production by fracking means that most wells will begin to decline in 20 months. Given average CO4 leakage from the capped wells, BC natural gas is barely more “sustainable” than Asian coal beyond three years. There’s really nothing sustainable about LNG at all except that given the choice in a single geography, natural gas from a standard well produces less CO2 than coal.
The idea that BC will pay down its debt, as well as provide thousands of jobs for its future, is fiction. The new offices built in downtown Vancouver over the past three years of a “boom” provide more employment than the entire LNG industry ever would even in the most optimistic scenario. They’re in other industries – digital and movies primarily, not LNG. The export licences issued by the NEB to date could supply the whole world demand. That’s not happening. Moreover, most of the natural gas estimated to lie in NE BC has yet to be proven.
A rethink is urgently needed. We’ve been had!
“Mass culling of 50% of society……” “Horses, buggies, e-bikes …”
Where do you get this stuff from, Thomas? Certainly not from credible research.
Regarding liquid fuels, 96% is used for transportation, the majority in private vehicles (i.e. cars) within the boundaries of cities. Commercial and agricultural vehicles use a much smaller amount. Public transit can displace a large proportion of private vehicle use IF land use / zoning was married to it, and IF private cars paid for the public assets they use (i.e. roads) and were not subsidized.
Investing in electric passenger and freight rail will also be very beneficial and will ultimately deliver goods at cheaper rates than by truck dependent on the price volatility of liquid petroleum fuel. Ontario’s nuclear power allowed then to shut down their coal power plants. Wind, solar, tidal and several kinds of base-load geothermal have not been explored in any great way here, only hydro.
Move in that direction and there will be an overabundance of fuel for farmers, firetrucks and ferries.
Why do we sell so few e-cars then if they are so great ? Why doesn’t Kathrine Wynn and her green Liberals order all car plants in Ontario to produce e-cars or tax them dirty fuel cars with $20,000 a piece ? Even in Europe, where I hail from and where gasoline is 2x as much as here they are not exactly flying off the shelves. The market share is less than 1% of newly sold cars according to recent stats. Why is that ? Even with heavy incentives BC couldn’t sell a few hundred last year.
Electric trains work only on lines with frequent repeater stations, like in small densely populated Europe, as electricity power deteriorates along the wire. In wider terrain areas, like vast North America, Russia, Africa they need natural oil based products like diesel or kerosene like stuff. Again, sheer physics. Even in Europe trucks are everywhere although train based options are plentiful. Why ?
Trucks, or even buses in cities, with their heavy loads, aren’t practical with electric batteries. That is why we see so few. Why is “green” Vancouver not switching to an all electric bus system ? Because it is SO EXPENSIVE.
Yes, we may see more hybrids (I drive one, btw, as my fuel consumption in mainly Vancouver traffic is 50% of my previous BMW .. yes 50% .. man I am so green !!)
The utopia you outline works well in theory, like socialism where everyone gets the same wage and still works hard for “societal benefit”. It just doesn’t work in practice, or is very very expensive. As such, it will be slow in coming. I’d love to see the day when only e-cars (or hybrids in e-mode) are allowed in Vancouver. All that space I’d have to drive there while everyone crowds into the bus.
Public transit works in dense cities or along clusters. Even Europeans drive a lot of cars, with their tiny cars, from their tiny houses, with their tiny salaries because the state takes so much of it. That is what we want here ? A poorer life .. everything tiny tiny tiny and super expensive ?
Here is an energy about the German wunderbar model of super expensive electricty, much based on solar, QUINTUPLE roughly per kwh (about 45 cents) to what we pay in Vancouver today: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288-2.html
I am OK with the Alberta approach to global “warming”: no PST & carbon tax on everything, especially consumer goods. That is a model worth emulating worldwide (and lower income taxes, of course)! Will the world follow ? Will we tax all these cheap imports from coal spewing Chinese factories @ Walmart though ? Will we stop importing oil from human rights kings Saudi-Arabia & Co into Quebec and Ontario refineries ? If not, why not ?
Off to have an organic strawberry, shipped by e-truck from Abbotsford, heated in an e-hydro green house .. joining David Suzuki and Co .. at $10/berry !! Cheers !
They’re not more common mostly because the capacity to build batteries is still pretty limited. You have to keep in mind that a Tesla has as much as 90,000x as much power storage as a cell phone.
There’s not more capacity to build them because previously it wasn’t economical, and the energy density wasn’t high enough to make a car.
Now that it is getting economical, you see plants like Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory under construction. That plant alone will double the amount of Li-Ion batteries available worldwide, enough for 500,000 electric cars per year. Tesla is also currently planning similar factories in China, and Europe.
GE, LG and Samsung are also making pretty huge investments in battery production and research, although not as big as Tesla’s.
All batteries currently produced worldwide wouldn’t power more than 500,000 cars; but much of that supply is currently used for laptops, cell phones, etc…
Simply put, if you don’t have batteries an electric car isn’t that useful.
There is huge potential for grid-based power distribution. Electric freight and passenger rail is common throughout Europe and is energized through a wire connected to a pantograph. These trains do not have to carry the weight penalty of fuel, huge diesel engines and generators on top of their payload. High voltage direct current loses only 3% of its load every 1,000 km through resistance, makling the profitable distribution of power possible from BC to Ontario or California at the speed of light. Step up transformers and bringing local renewable electricity on-stream is entirely possible in hundreds of places along a national smart grid. The electric motor is a simple device with much greater efficiency than the internal combustion engine. The oil companies and big car manufacturers in North America actively worked against electric trams (public transit) and the electric car for decades. The Achilles heel of e-cars used to be energy storage. However, battery research has recently made great strides.
Your sarcastic talk of utopia, socialism and $10 berries is just so much unfounded ideological Pabulum. It tends to blind you to to the economic foolishness of shipping berries from drought-plagued fields thousands of km away while carving up the highly productive ALR for the short-term gains of tacky development and continuing dependency on very tenuous supply chains.
As stated trains in Europe have charging stations every 20-40 km or so, NOT doable in Canada or the US. Hence we use fuel (or coal in the past).
Electric cars do not work well in cold weather. Do not confuse what works in sunny California or BC’s warm Lower Mainland even with Northern BC’s or rest of Canada’s weather in the winter.
The e-utopia is affordable for the very rich today, and the merely rich tomorrow. What about the bottom 90% ?
We want QUINTUPLE electric energy costs, like in Germany ? Why ? Didyou read about the consequences here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288-2.html
Range is reduced, but they work fine otherwise. Less potential for battery damage as well.
The crappy part is that heaters are a battery hog.
I get 40km in the winter, 70km in the summer. Then the generator comes on and my car works as a hybrid.
Thomas: “trains in Europe have charging stations every 20-40 km or so, not doable in Canada or the US”
I don’t know where you get these ideas. Trains generally don’t rely on batteries, except for some prototype work going on. Electric trains usually use overhead lines. There are no charging stations.
You seem to think electric trains can’t run long distances. You should take a trip on the Trans Siberian, the longest railway line in the world at over 9000 km, and all electric. India is a pretty big place. 85% of all passenger and freight traffic is reported to be hauled by electric locomotives. The TGV is another good example of a long distance electric train.
I wish they would electrify the port trains around the gastown waterfront. They travel very short distances, loading and unloading containers onto freighters, but with very noisy diesel engines. The engines just power electric motors anyway. Electrify!
Indeed, the noise and pollution is unbearable and needs far more focus in cities in urban areas. I wish we’d focus primarily on THAT.
NOISE
POLLUTION
Global emissions of far away coal or LNG plants in the middle of nowhere, oilsands emmissions in frigid N-AB or N-SK, and alleged man-made global warming and possible 2 degrees warmer in 100 years: a sideshow to me and a vast number of sceptics. Really just an excuse to milk more taxes with zero benefits for today’s and tomorrow’s generation ! Zero. Instead we will get far FAR higher energy costs that deprive mankinf of many other benefits, such as healthier foods, enhanced medicine, less noise, safer cars, cleaner water. That is why I find Bjorn Lomborg’s compromise approach far more practical rather than this climate dogma at all costs.
Re trains: Many interesting articles on electrc trains .. so I stand correct re long distance elecic trains. One is here about Russia, but there are many others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_in_the_Soviet_Union
I guess CP Rail could run an electric train over the Rockes after all .. why isn’t Notley demanding that in Alberta, where CP Rail’s HQ is ?
But the overall hypocricy is astounding. Diesel buses in “green” Vancouver, no road tolls for cars, fuel still at $1/liter or worse $2 a gallon in the US .. that could all be EASILY solved without having 10,000+ bureaucrats sip on tax payer funded champagne in Paris. More hot air is all we will get, while the diesel buses and the noisy diesel trains shuttle cars and people around in Vancouver for quite a few more years, likely decades ..
2 degrees warmer climate: AWESOME. Some “catastrophy”. In 100 years .. maybe .. yawn .. Where is the debate and analysis of the benefits of global warming ? Certainly not by the biased UN, or by public sectir unions gorging themselves on more tax revenue or the universities where group-think now prevails and entire careers are ruined if one even mentions a critcial argument against this unproven climate-cult.
The ONLY benefit of this I see is that electric cars, trains and trucks are quiter and pollute less whcih is relevant in dense urban areas.
Will Canada, BC and AB kill its economy though as other countries do not follow suit, specifically the US and China ? AB’s and BC’s approach is sensible in terms of carbon taxes, but where is the tax relief elsewhere as we ratched up taxes and energy prices to uncompetitve levels ? A very poor populace is better than 2 degree warmer climate in 100 years ? Hardly ! http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn+palmer+climate+leadership+team+says+raise/11549976/story.html
Transforming the carbon economy will take time. We should not expect that this transformation will take place in one great leap forward because it requires the re-tooling of the entire industrial sector. Transformation is a demand driven process that requires creativity, new ideas, and better ways of doing things.
Last chance for a Lamborghini, all the cyclists want one.
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/whats-the-point-of-vancouver/