There is no shortage of short-term issues for the media to cover. But none of the short-term issues will matter very much if we don’t get a handle on the longer-term issues of energy and climate change. And there is some news on that front that will be good for Canada.
Canada’s emissions are only 1.6 per cent of global emissions. So why does it matter what Canada does?
It matters because on a per capita basis, our emissions are currently among the world’s highest, and two times China. And it matters because we can indeed achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. By doing so we can gain the economic benefits and satisfaction of being a global leader.
Getting to net-zero will require many small changes by all of us and a few big changes by cooperation between industry and federal and provincial governments.
Let’s look at our four big-ticket opportunities. And let’s look at consumers first because producers can’t change what they make until we consumers change what we buy.
1. Twenty-five per cent of Canada’s emissions come from using oil to power our vehicles and mobile equipment
Battery-electric vehicles and equipment use 73 per cent less energy simply because most of the energy used by internal combustion engines is lost as heat. We already have the electricity needed to charge these devices. In most cases they will be charged at home base every night when electricity demand and rates are lower.
But batteries are too big and too heavy for heavy-duty trucks, mobile equipment, rail locomotives, and aircraft, so most of those devices will be powered by hydrogen. Zero-emission (green) hydrogen is made by splitting water (H2O) into hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O2) and storing the hydrogen in tanks for subsequent use. That is done by electrolysis of water. Since wind and solar are counter-seasonal (wind produces best in winter and solar produces best in summer), a well-designed “hybrid” wind-solar plant can be a consistent year-round source of electricity for hydrogen plants, without costly storage. The hydrogen itself provides the energy storage needed to level the short-term intermittency of wind and solar power. A national network of these hydrogen plants at strategic locations along main truck, rail, and air corridors will also minimize the need to increase electricity transmission capacity.
2. Thirteen per cent of Canada’s emissions come from burning natural gas and propane to heat residential and commercial buildings
European research has shown that energy-efficient building designs resulting from better provincial building codes can reduce heat losses from buildings by up to 90 per cent. Let’s use a more modest 70 per cent and rely on modern cold-climate heat pumps to further reduce energy requirements by an additional 33 per cent as compared to a combustion furnace. Those heat pumps are now being installed right here in Huntsville with good success.
3. Eleven per cent of Canada’s emissions come from heavy industry
Co-generation of electricity and heat can cut energy consumption in half for heavy industry and eliminate their emissions. Currently, industrial plants making steel, chemicals, fertilizers, and cement use large amounts of heat from burning coal or gas, but they waste the potential to produce electricity from that heat. Conversely, our thermal plants use energy from coal, gas, or uranium to make steam to drive a turbine that turns a generator. But there is still a large amount of heat left in the steam as it leaves the turbine. In today’s electricity plants, that heat is wasted.
The good news is that the emerging fleet of SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) and EFW (energy from waste) plants can co-generate clean electricity and clean heat at the same time. The world’s first commercial SMRs will be operational in China and at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site in 2028. SMRs will be even safer than our current very-safe big nuclear plants. SMRs produce much smaller amounts of nuclear waste than current reactors and can reduce existing waste by using it as new fuel. Small reactors can be factory produced at much lower cost. Small reactors are more-easily deployed to industrial sites where the surplus heat can be used. EFW technology is widely used in Europe and is finally emerging here.
4. Twenty-six per cent and the largest amount of Canada’s emissions come from producing oil and gas
How can we eliminate emissions from the remaining oil production for our own use and for export? Most of that 26 per cent comes from burning large amounts of natural gas to make steam that is injected into the ground to melt the bitumen (thick oil) so it can be pumped to the surface. Small nuclear reactors can make clean electricity to replace Alberta’s coal-burning electricity plants, and at the same time replace the gas burners that currently make heat for oil extraction. That would eliminate the stigma of high emissions that has plagued Canada’s oil industry since the 1970s. Alberta’s oil industry is already working with SMR developers to do just that. Cleaning up our oil production will make Canada’s oil more acceptable to the 185 countries that have no oil reserves, for as long as they need oil.
Conclusions
Alberta’s oil industry has all the expertise and resources needed to lead the transition into the rapidly emerging global hydrogen industry. By shifting a portion of their annual $28 billion investment (a cumulative $784 billion by 2050 if that investment continues) from the oil and gas business to the emerging hydrogen network described in point one above, they can gain all the benefits of being an early adopter. Savings from buying natural gas, and revenue from the sale of electricity and hydrogen, will easily offset the investment in SMRs and hydrogen plants. It’s the best opportunity they will ever have.
The transition to clean energy must be gradual in order to avoid an energy crisis on top of a climate crisis, so we will need to deploy CCUS (carbon capture and use or storage) technologies to offset the small remaining uses of oil and gas. There are many CCUS developments already underway in Canada.
Can we afford to make all these big changes? We can’t afford not to. Every vehicle on the planet will normally be replaced twice between now and 2050. Building heating systems wear out and are normally replaced every 25 to 30 years. Industries routinely budget to replace or modernize their equipment every 25 to 30 years. The incremental cost of replacing old tech with new tech is significant but affordable. And it is much cheaper than the growing cost of climate change.
Hugh Holland is a retired engineering and manufacturing executive now living in Huntsville, Ontario.
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Mr. Holland,
Thank you for your clarity, insight and evidence-based outline of possible solutions to successfully and practically address the global climate catastrophe in the Canadian context.
Always a pleasure to have your informed perspective.
Your article today, as with so many previous, is both a “keeper” for me and an inspiring yet sensible guide to action for so many others.
Thanks for the clarification. Now my actual costs and NRC/EPA estimates are similar. Good confirmation.
Dave Wilkin, please read my article again. It is about Canada, not the world. Canada’s share of McKinsey’s $275 trillion would be $1.1 trillion or $36 billion per year over 30 years. That is bang on with my estimate. Our oil and gas industry invests an average of $28 billion per year. They could give themselves and Canada a great future if they just started to shift a portion of that $28 billion toward the rapidly emerging global hydrogen business. Other industry, ten provincial governments, and the federal government could help the people do the rest. But people just give up when you keep telling them it is so impossible. It is entirely possible to meet out emission goals if people would just stop arguing and start doing. Lets not make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Oliver, please read again. What I said was the annual cost of electricity for a BEV is $2,000 less than the annual cost of gasoline for an ICE. That is according to the fuel economy guide from Natural Resources Canada and also the US EPA.
Well said, Hugh!
I have a question. You state that the annual cost of electricity for a BEV is typically $2,000 per year. This figure seems much too high. I have a BEV and my actual cost of electricity is $100 for every 10,000 km. Can you explain how you arrived at your estimate?
Hugh, your calculations are not accurate. Saying the reports referenced are not right or flawed is wrong. The 2 I referenced were written by experts in energy. If you don’t believe what they are saying, you can find others from the International Energy Agency (IEA) or even better, ones from the big consulting firms like McKinesy & Company, BCG, or Wood Mackenzie (the big energy-centric consulting firm). I have read most of them. They all point to similar ranges and costs that I have previously pointed out.
The most recent and most complete I have seen comes from McKinesy & Company, the largest consulting company in the world (revenue over $10 billion annually). It’s called ‘The net-zero transition: what it could cost, what it would bring’ The report includes a base scenario that replaces about 73% of fossil fuels with grid-supplied energy, requiring about a 2.5X system expansion. The physical asset costs for the entire transition is sized at $275 trillion globally, or 9.2 trillion annually. The report is over 200 pages long, and it is free to download (you just need to sign up to get it).
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/the-net-zero-transition-what-it-would-cost-what-it-could-bring#
You are very interested in this important topic, so I suggest you read these reports. The modeling and calculations needed to come up with accurate costs and energy mix changes are extremely complex, and deep expertise is needed.
Dave Wikin, you are correct that there is work to be done on replacing older equipment, but most of the articles predicting a need to double or tripple energy capacity are either unaware or ignoring the enormous potential of using co-generation and more-efficient vehicles, buildings and industrial processes to reduce total energy consumption.
My calcuations done many times over, based on Ontario IESO data, indicate that since battery-electric vehicles use 73% less energy than ICE vehicles, Ontario already has enough capacity to give them a typical 10% top up charge every night when other demand factors and rates are down. That is why the annual cost of electricity for a BEV is typically $2,000 per year ($20,000 for the life of the vehicle) less than the cost of gasoline for a comparable ICE vehicle. And that BEV advantage will grow every year.
Couple that with the facts that almost 80% of the population resides in cities where ride sharing and convenient public transit will grow because young people are less interested in owning a personal vehicle, the auto industry is not expecting a straight-line replacement of ICEs with BEVs. We experienced that when we spent 2 months in the small but beatiful city of Victoria, BC. Their public transit is so good and convenient that we only used a car on 2 occasions in 2 months. So there is a good bet that we already have all the capacity we need to charge BEVS at least until well into the 2030s. The CEO of Hydro One confirmed that in a recent Podcast on the subject. BC, Quebec, and Manitoba are even better prepared due to their high percentage of hydro electricity. Global BEV sales have grown from 120,000 per year in 2014 to 120,000 per week in 2021.
Dale, Hugh is correct, China’s emissions per capita is about half of Canada’s. He is also right saying Canada needs more nuclear and SMR’s. It’s really too bad that the first SMR planned in Canada (Darlington) for later this decade is US made. We had a world-class nuclear power industry, but let it slip away.
Hugh is not correct though in his belief that we have enough electric power today for a 100% EV’s future. We will need to increase generation and grid capacity significantly to do that. How much is very complicated to determine, varying significantly by province/region and highly dependent on energy source mix and the distribution and age of existing infrastructure. Maximizing generation capacity will require sophisticated peak load management technology to avoid system crashes, none of which is here today. My rough estimate puts the overall Ontario system expansion in the 50% range to replace all cars & light trucks on the road by 2040. Even Elon Musk recently said that electrifying personal transportation globally will require electricity generating capacity to double. He should know. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-electric-germany-idUSKBN28B5Q8
In the US, estimates to meet net-zero targets require electric power system expansion in the 3X range. Canada’s will be lower, more like 2X because we get more of our primary energy from clean electric power today. Others who do this for a living have confirmed these ranges.
Below is a very good report from the Ontario Energy Association published last June and specifically page 41 and 42 discuss the need for “significant new generation in Ontario’s future” and ” Princeton’s Net Zero America study found that high voltage capacity will need to expand by about 60% by 2030 and triple by 2050 to connect new resources with demand.” https://energyontario.ca/Files/PDF%20files%20to%20share/OEA_Net_Zero_2050.pdf
This matters because electrical system infrastructure is very costly and takes decades to build out. Worse, our current system infrastructure is aging, in need of significant new investment just to continue meeting current demands with the high availability expected. Increasing extreme weather and cyber threats only increase the urgency. Canada is not investing nearly enough in electrical infrastructure. Without big change, there is zero chance of hitting any of our extremely aggressive climate targets. Sorry for the long response.
Thanks Hugh !. A very concise approach, well written.
The challenge, as always, is getting people and government to move on legislation and incentives that encourage change.
We are very stuck on our lifestyle paradigms of owing a vehicle that sits idle a high percentage of the time and shifting to efficient ( fuel and scheduling ) public transportation or maybe shared forms.
The other challenge is political, in where party funding comes from which influences policy, rules and laws.
I am very hopeful the upcoming generations will not be stuck in “we’ve always done it that way” to embracing the necessary change.
Maybe we should stop using that factoid that Canada’s emissions represent ‘only’ 1.6 % of global emmisions in favour of focussing on the more important issue, which is that on a per capita basis, our emissions are currently among the world’s highest, and two times China.
In something I read – although I’m sure your sources are better than mine! – it said our emissions per 1000 are 6 times that of China.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/China/Environment
Whatever it is…it does matter…. as you point out so clearly.