Canada is flush with oil and natural gas, uranium and coal, not to mention renewable energy forms such as hydro and biomass from wood waste and crops.
CLEAN ENERGY SUPERPOWER
by Randall Anthony Mang
Let’s face it, when it comes to energy, supply is not one of Canada’s big worries. If anything, energy is an opportunity for Canada. Within our nation’s vast energy mix resides not only enormous economic potential but also the means to satisfy our energy needs in ways that are less harmful to the environment and our health.
Eddy Isaacs, executive director of the Alberta Energy Research Institute says, “We’re reaching a world where we’re going to need all the energy we can get. Ultimately, we need to balance economic opportunity with environmental reality and focus on technologies that move us to a cleaner energy future.”
Canada’s top energy-policy-maker, Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, says Canada is on the right track with technologies such as carbon dioxide capture and storage, hydrogen and fuel cells, and clean coal. “These technological advances will be key considerations in developing a made-in-Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring clean air, water, land and energy for Canadians.”
Isaacs sees Canada moving towards an integrated energy economy. “When we talk about transitioning from fossil fuel to hydrogen, we don’t see a transition from one to another. We’re talking about the integration of various forms of energy – the waste stock of one feeding another.
“For example,” he says, “using enewable energy to enable the fossil fuel industry – geothermal to produce steam for oil sands upgrading to help displace natural gas now used for this purpose. Or using wind power to supplement base load, be it hydro in Quebec or coal in Alberta.”
Marlo Raynolds, executive director of Alberta-based environmental policy research and education organization the Pembina Institute, says it’s urgent that Canada expand its renewable energy capacity and take energy efficiency and conservation seriously.
“Residential, commercial and industrial consumers of energy all have practical and cost-effective opportunities to reduce energy consumption,” he says, noting Pembina research in Ontario, for example, concluded that projected electricity demand could be cut by 40 per cent through energy efficiency, fuel switching and cogeneration.
To boost green energy capacity, Raynolds advocates Canada develop a national energy strategy supported by policies at the provincial and federal levels “to ensure the renewable energy industry has at least a level playing field compared to support that the fossil fuel industry has benefited from.
“Shifting the current federal support of $1.4 billion per year from the oil and gas sector to investment in lowimpact renewable energy is the most important policy to implement,” says Raynolds, referring to support for biomass, flowing water and tidal energy as well as solar and wind.
Initiatives that encourage renewable energy aren’t necessarily bad news for the oil and gas sector. “When it becomes competitive, guess who will put up the wind, the biomass?” poses Eddy Isaacs. “What we thought of as oil and gas companies are becoming energy companies – with all forms of energy in their portfolios. In doing so, they’re also greening their operations.”
Shell, for example, has investments in wind, biomass and hydrogen. Royal Dutch Shell is investing in fuel cell technology. “Husky Energy will soon become one of the world’s largest consumers of wheat,” notes Isaacs. “Suncor has an ethanol plant in Ontario. And Epcor and TransAlta are investing heavily in wind.”
Across Canada, clean energy is expanding, albeit not as fast as some might wish. In Manitoba, hydro is the focus. In Saskatchewan, SaskPower is planning a clean coal plant that would incorporate technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas (GHG).
Wind farms have become a part of Saskatchewan’s energy landscape as they have in Alberta, parts of the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario, which is also expanding its use of nuclear, a zero-GHG-producing technology. Ontario is also home to Canada’s biggest renewable energy initiative: the Niagara Tunnel Expansion hydro project.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) spokesperson Dave Abbott says OPG’s hydro division is focused on maximizing resources “by developing as much hydro potential as economically feasible where we have river systems already in play.” The Niagara tunnel is a significant part of that effort. “Once built,” says Abbott, “it will provide renewable energy for the province of Ontario for 100 years.”
The project involves boring a 10.4-km tunnel to carry water from above Niagara Falls to OPG’s Sir Adam Beck Generating Complex. The tunnel will increase average annual energy output from the complex by 14 per cent. No matter how green the outcome, the development of any energy facility invariably meets some degree of public concern.
Abbott says the key “is to work through the environmental approval process with your stakeholders. You have to figure out things together to mitigate impact.” He says co-operation on the Niagara project included working with the communities to identify issues “and have them agree on how to deal with those issues.” As a result, says Abbott, “the new tunnel is a really good project for the people of Ontario.”
Will Canada build its future on clean energy? Minister Lunn says, “The Government of Canada is committed to the development of clean energy technologies that will help us realize our huge energy potential for the benefit of all Canadians.”
Given grassroots support and the right public policy mechanisms, it appears industry is set to ise to the occasion.
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