Mention the phrase “hydrogen economy” these days, and most people will laugh at you. That’s because the phrase reminds most people of the endlessly unfulfilled promises of fuel cell–powered cars and hydrogen refueling stations. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his famous hydrogen powered Hummers, has dropped talk of the Hydrogen Highway in favour of something a bit more practical: […]

Gasoline, diesel, and heating oil are all hydrocarbon fuels. Almost every drop of them available on the planet today comes from petroleum. But that isn’t written in stone. Each of these fuels is, at bottom, a different combination of hydrogen and carbon. You can make all of these fuels without using any petroleum. You just […]

After weeks of speculation about how Canada and the U.S. will respond to the converging pressures on the economy and environment, last week’s Ottawa meeting between the president and prime minister produced a few hints. Stephen Harper and Barack Obama emerged from their meeting saying they would begin a “clean energy dialog.” Though they dodged […]

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Section 526 of the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act prohibits U.S. federal agencies from buying fuels whose lifecycle emissions are higher than those of conventional petroleum. This means U.S. agencies cannot buy Alberta oilsands petroleum the way it is produced today. Which is […]

Imagine an oilsands operation in Alberta where the heat to make the steam that separates oil from sand is delivered from a small nuclear reactor, which arrives on a flatbed truck. At the site, the reactor is entombed in a below-ground bunker, where it could withstand a hit from a Russian AT-14 antitank missile (which […]

Fighting the climate change war in Alberta is a two-front proposition. There’s power generation and there’s the oilsands. Both are the biggest emitters of their kind in Canada (see article). And unless there is progress in both, or at least a credible plan for progress, customers for the province’s major export, petroleum, will become increasingly […]

Alberta is Canada’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Most emissions come from two activities: power generation, and oilsands mining and processing. Combined they emitted over 102 million tonnes of GHGs in 2004—43 percent of the provincial total, and over 13 percent of the Canadian total. This is because Alberta power generation is largely coal-fired, […]

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has been touted as a way to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants. In North America, coal plants emit around 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. Storing 2 billion tonnes of CO2 every year will be a bit tricky, to put it mildly. But what if there were a way to […]

Twenty-four hours after president-elect Obama touted nuclear power as part of his incoming administration’s climate change action plan (see article), Canada’s federal government did the same in its Speech from the Throne. In case anyone accuses it of following rather than leading the U.S., Canada signaled its rather stunning ambition to supply, by 2020, “90 […]

Three major state-level emission control initiatives have popped up in the U.S. Several Canadian provinces are involved. British Columbia and Manitoba are part of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). Manitoba is also part of the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. And Ontario and New Brunswick are official observers of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
Meanwhile, […]