Alberta is panicking right now, fearing the worst when the U.S. makes its next decision on the Keystone Pipeline. If the new American secretary of state’s recent legislative past is an indicator, Keystone, which will carry Alberta bitumen to the U.S. gulf coast, will receive extra attention on the question of whether the proposed pipeline…
Why, in this time of fiscal constraint, tight budgets, iffy economic prospects, and persistent unemployment is Ontario throwing away two perfectly good billion-dollar electricity generating plants that have already been paid for and that are capable of generating huge amounts of cheap, reliable electricity? Like probably every computer owner on the planet, I sometimes fantasize…
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.…
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