Ontario is set to mothball a hugely valuable asset, in the form of eight perfectly operational coal-fired generating units. With a combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts, the Nanticoke generating plant is one of the biggest of its type in the world. Run as a baseload electricity provider, with a capacity factor above 80 percent, Nanticoke…
The Alberta oil sands are an enormous resource, but that resource needs a lot of dressing up before ordinary people will buy it. Your car runs on thin, free-flowing liquid fuel, not stuff that is like thickened blackstrap molasses mixed with sand. “Dressing up” bitumen to the point where gasoline retailers can sell it takes…
Canada is the world leader in synthetic fuel production. I’m talking about the oil sands, of course. Though decried by environmentalists for their carbon intensity, Canada’s oil sands operations are actually a stunning example of payoff from industry- and government-supported research and development. These are impressive operations, from a technological and engineering point of view.…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the U.S. Supreme Court had told the Obama administration that the issue of climate change is the administration’s, not the court’s, responsibility. What would Obama do? Well, we just found out. On September 2, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave up trying to reduce the amount of…
I am always glad when I hear of research and development dollars going to deserving projects led by deserving researchers. Today (August 16) I read a news release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reporting that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $1.1 million to a UW-Madison researcher to develop ways to…
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