Fossil fuels not where the puck is going

Opinion

“Go where the puck is going, not where it’s been.”

Sage words from hockey great and erstwhile philosopher Wayne Gretzky. What works on the ice also works with energy.

In recent weeks, fossil-fuel boosters argued that more pipelines for expanded oil and gas production by Canada are needed, pooh-poohing renewables such as wind and solar as impractical, even calling for new methane (natural gas) plants to meet rising demands.

These arguments reflect a deliberate ignorance of a rapidly changing world. Renewables, either this year or next, will eclipse coal as the globe’s biggest energy source. The meteoric rise of renewables this century has surpassed all projections, a big reason being that wind and (especially) solar are now the cheapest energy on the planet.

Given the clear science on the unfolding climate disaster, expanding fossil fuel production is immoral besides being economically preposterous. Yes, we’ll use some fossil fuels well into the future, but that’s a very different matter than ever increasing production by pumping/digging more oil, gas and coal when cheaper, cleaner alternatives already exist. Our current supply of fossil fuels will meet future, falling demands, OPEC’s rose-coloured projections notwithstanding.

The economic disruption that lies in the near future is staggering. Canada’s foremost renewable energy economist, Mark Jaccard of Simon Fraser University, argues that the most likely fate of fossil-fuel-dependent jurisdictions is sudden economic decline.

Alberta, for example, now requires $75 a barrel oil (WTI) to balance its budget: the price currently hovers in the low to mid $60s. The global glut of oil by the end of this decade will collapse oil prices, taking with it the Alberta and Saskatchewan economies.

A familiar lament about wind and solar is “what happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? We must have fossil fuels because renewables are unreliable.”

Nonsense.

First, the obvious answer is energy storage, which takes many forms, but I’ll focus here on industrial-scale batteries. Their day has arrived. Grid-scale batteries are being rolled out rapidly across the globe, from Australia to California, Chile, China, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Nova Scotia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Texas, and the Yukon. Renewables with storage now hold the economic edge over fossil fuels and that advantage will only grow as battery technology improves and prices plummet even further.

Second, that familiar whine assumes we must continue to operate exactly as we do now. With cheap, renewable energy, the big winners will be industries that scale production to match energy availability and price, ramping up on long summer days, and back down during winter. January vacations, anyone?

But backward-looking critics will argue that no industry could possibly run under that model. Really? Maybe you should ask Prairie farmers.

On the Winnipeg Free Press editorial pages, solar energy was recently denounced as unsuitable for Manitoba’s future energy needs. Again, this argument fails to go where the puck is going.

Solar is well matched for rising summer demands. More EVs will draw more power from our electric grid.

When do people drive most? Summer.

And with rising global temperatures, the need for cooling during our longer, hotter summers will also rise. Again, solar is well matched to this and can be built out cheaply and quickly, unlike hydro or nuclear. And yes, I know peak electricity demand occurs during winter, but that doesn’t negate an obvious role for solar.

Nuclear has become a stalking horse for the fossil fuel industry, with the long-held promise of small modular nuclear reactors to provide bountiful energy. And while we wait for their arrival, which is just around the corner they say, we’ll use fossil fuels.

Again, nonsense.

The build-out times for nuclear are measured in decades, and it’s prohibitively expensive alongside wind or solar.

One less controversial suggestion from a fossil fuel booster was a call for a national electricity grid. Moving power across provincial lines helps with the peaks and valleys of local supply and demand. It’s indeed an excellent candidate for a nation-building project. And for the record, it was also an excellent idea when I suggested it in an op-ed … in 2016.

It was an obvious project then for Mr. Trudeau’s proposed infrastructure bank, as it was easy to look ahead and see that extending our power grid across provincial lines would be needed soon.

Our energy solutions require the ability to anticipate where the puck is going, not dwell upon where it has been. Those who cannot or choose not to look ahead will trap us in the past, leaving us many billions in stranded assets and saddled with obsolete energy technology.

» Scott Forbes is an ecologist at the University of Winnipeg. The opinions expressed here are his own. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.