🍁 Energy Transition

brainstorm

To understand how massive the electrification transition is, consider this:

USA annual electricity consumption: 4 trillion kWh.
USA annual oil consumption: 12.4 trillion kWh equivalent. (7.3 billion bbl @ 1700kwh/bbl.)

And 2/3 of all petroleum consumption is for transportation.

So 8 trillion kwh equivalents, or double the current grid capacity could electrify. Electrification is massive. It's literally oil 2.0 in every essence.

brainstorm

It takes 10 HOURS to build an EV.
It takes 1-3yrs to build a wind farm.
It takes 10yrs to build a hydro dam.
It took USA ~ 13yrs on avg to build their last 30 Nuclear plants.

Power demand is going to skyrocket faster than people imagine over the next 5-10yrs. If you need fast power expansion, you need wind or solar. But you need pumped hydro storage to balance that wind, because it's intermittent.

(Solar capacity factors are too low in Canada due to only 2,000 sunshine hours per year. So solar is out, here anyway. It'll be huge in desert locales though).

brainstorm

Geothermal is one of the most overlooked clean energy sources.

It's cheap too, at roughly $0.04/kwh LCOE. Alberta has 388gw of untapped geothermal potential. So geothermal is Alberta's best transition option, especially with their wealth drilling expertise and equipment.

Here's a 2013 temperature gradient map for potential wells at 6.5km deep Canada-wide.

https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2013/rncan-nrcan/M183-2-6914-eng.pdf

brainstorm

Coal still provides 35% of the world's electricity.

The fastest way to reduce global coal emissions is to convert thermal coal plants to Natural Gas (50% less emissions), or Biomass (75% less emissions). While truly renewable and carbon-free electric expansion occurs.

brainstorm

Solar will win the energy transition.

It's true that 80% of global power will be solar.

brainstorm

The problem is, Canada is in the 20%.

We don't get the sunlight to benefit from solar. In winter, sunlight supply is low due to short days, and demand is high due to heating load.

So Canada can't fully rely on solar.

People south of about the 40th parallel will basically eliminate their grids. Fully self-generated solar roofing will power their house and car. Everything. This is transformational.

Canada's will become the outlier to this paradigm.

brainstorm

Hmmm, haven't audited mechanism but this is a real problem. Thoughts? @lio45

(Cold capable wind turbine.)

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/wind-turbine-canada-extreme-cold