Canadian CEOs want governments to invest in clean-tech innovation

[chuckChuck]

Canadian CEOs want governments to invest in clean-tech innovation

RICHARD BLACKWELL

The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, Mar. 27, 2016 4:44PM EDT

Last updated Sunday, Mar. 27, 2016 7:03PM EDT

A majority of Canada’s business leaders believe governments need to invest in clean-technology research to spur breakthroughs that could result in the elimination of fossil-fuel use over the coming decades.

The latest quarterly C-Suite survey of corporate executives shows that almost three-quarters of respondents support government backing for research and development that leads to a reduced reliance on fossil fuels. The support for public involvement is weakest in Alberta, but, even there, 55 per cent agreed this is an important role for government.

How fast Canada can move away from fossil fuels, though, is a question that divides executives. Only 14 per cent said the country could completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2050, while 38 per cent said that point will come in the 2051-2100 time frame. Thirty-one per cent said Canada will never completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

The survey was conducted before last week’s federal budget, which contained a wide range of measures for environmental protection and clean-tech innovation.

Not surprisingly, it is the executives in the clean-tech sector who see the feasibility of a complete shift to renewables by 2050.

“I firmly believe it is possible, and I don’t think I am a lunatic-fringe kind of person,” said John Simmons, chief executive officer of Victoria, B.C.-based solar lighting firm Carmanah Technologies Corp. “I can’t imagine why other clear-thinkers can’t see it as being possible.”

Mr. Simmons noted that the cost of solar panels is dropping just as the efficiency of sunlight-to-electricity conversion technology is improving. “The technology works, it is getting better, and all the cost curves are heading in the right direction,” he said.

At the same time, he noted, executives are being pushed by the millennial generation to take into account environmental and social issues while striving to be profitable – thus increasing the momentum toward a clean-tech revolution.

The view from the oil patch, on the other hand, is more cautious. “The world demand for energy is growing at an incredible pace.” said Kevin Stashin, CEO of Calgary-based NAL Resources Ltd., a private oil-and-gas company with production in Alberta and Saskatchewan. “What you are going to need in the future is a myriad of different energy sources, from fossil fuels to renewables. It is not a question of either-or; it is a question of needing it all.”

Many renewable sources of power are still intermittent, so in the foreseeable future they will not be able to replace all the energy needed in Canada, even in the electrical sector, said Mr. Stashin, who added that the Canadian economy continues to be driven by fossil fuels.

But the government does need to support research into renewables, he said, even if the transition to them takes a long time. “Fossil fuel is a finite resource, and as it becomes more scarce in the future, the costs to explore for it and develop it will go up. You are going to need an alternative source of energy … so why not be on the forefront of it?”

A significant number of executives – 43 per cent – said it would be worthwhile to at least set a goal of eliminating fossil fuel use by 2050. However, only 22 per cent think this target is realistic.

Harry Taylor, chief financial officer at Westjet Airlines Ltd., said he thinks fossil fuels can be completely eliminated – even for aircraft – some time before 2100, but “2050 feels a little tight, given the amount of research that needs to be done and proven.”

“But if we haven’t figured this out by 2100, then we just haven’t invested enough intellectual capital and financial capital,” he said. “There has got to be something that we can develop. It is going to be hard work, and I’m sure [there will be] a lot of false starts, but I have faith that we will find something.”

In the airline industry, it is really up to engine-makers and airframe manufacturers to solve the problem, Mr. Taylor said, but research is already under way. In the meantime, airlines such as Westjet “are always looking for opportunities to reduce our fuel consumption and our carbon footprint.” This is “enlightened self-interest,” he said, because cutting fuel use saves money at the same time that it trims carbon dioxide emissions.

Mr. Taylor said he believes governments do have roles in supporting clean-technology research, even though they “have a propensity to be wasteful, and chase after things.” They should help create the conditions for the success of new industries “rather than propping up old-technology industries,” he said. Partnerships are a good means of doing this, he added: “Co-investing rather than just giving money away seems to make sense to me.”

Bill Murphy, national leader for sustainable services at KPMG Canada, said Canadian executives have shifted their thinking about clean technology. This is partly driven by a change in the political environment – both internationally and in Canada – and by technological advances, which show a low-carbon economy is now “in the realm of the possible.”

Still, he said he doesn’t see the end of fossil fuels in the medium term: “Some of the cleaner-burning fossil fuels are still going to be with us for some time.”

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[bucket]

Instead if asking the government...actually taxpayers... to cover the costs of R&D why don't the guys that profit the most pay for it.

I am really getting sick of someone telling me to become more efficient or this will be better for me and yet it's my taxes that pay for their eventual profits.

Examples....

1. Let's get rid of branchlines and the system will be more efficient. It's not and it created a trucking industry. Maybe the trucking industry is part of our environmental problems. Super Bs lined up terminal look the same as 3 tons at wooden elevators.

2. The triffid flax adventure where farmers picked up the tab. Not the R&D guys.

3. Let's have the grain commission introduce another class of grain that the elevators don't have the infrastructure to segregate.

I could go on but it's all ****ing bullshit. The reduction in hours on an average farm compared to 25 years ago has been an unpaid contribution to the green ****heads.

Except for the extra diesel burned to get to the elevator.

If people want a society without fossil fuels they can pay for the nonsense instead of taxing the shit out of fossil fuels to pay for it.

86 cents for gas and 37 oil of which cdn oil producers might start with 20 bucks a barrel.

No tin foil but can't these guys just **** off.

[wakopa]

i live in my own little world,making a good living and surrounding myself with good poeple, i dont have the problems most of u agri have .

[wilagro]

I agree with you "bucket"...let these clean-tech nitwits pay for the research. Why tax the users OR the producers of conventional energy for the NEW technology MOST OF WHICH IS TOO EXPENSIVE TO USE AT PRESENT and in reality will NEVER work on any large scale.
====

[oneoff]

I hate to piss on the parade...just kidding; BUT


Has absolutely anyone got the first clue about active power (metered by utility); reactive power (necessary for producing magnetic fields in motors and transformers...but actually detrimental to power transmission and the electrical grid as it is correlated to power factor); and causes transmission losses in electrical grid and increased current flow...but does no usable work.


Now when the electrical system was made up of handfuls of power plants and union trained staff running them; its a whole different game than when you have thousands or tens of thousands of little independent power producers who know nothing about what "dirty power" and harmonics and their cumulative effects on an electrical grids.

And those nasty switching power supplies (even your computer power supplies and probably solar panel inverters just might need to have capacitative or reactive elements to get the minimum power factor of 0.9 that Sask Power would tell you must be met before even being allowed to connect to a grid.

Oh how easy it is when you just copy some promoter/who doesn't consider themselves an environmental lunatic. Don't let laws of physics get in the way of repeating only that which confirms what you already know.

[chuckChuck]

Most of you must hate green technology and don't believe it works. But the evidence is right before your eyes. You really must have a very negative attitude not to even believe that smaller scale renewables can exist with lager scale production when it is already happening in many parts of the world including Canada.

Germany's renewable energy sector is among the most innovative and successful worldwide. Net-generation from renewable energy sources in the German electricity sector has increased from 6.3% in 2000 to about 30% in 2014.[1][2] For the first time ever, wind, biogas, and solar combined accounted for a larger portion of net electricity production than brown coal.[3] While peak-generation from combined wind and solar reached a new all-time high of 74% in April 2014,[4] wind power saw its best day ever on December 12, 2014, generating 562 GWh.[5] Germany has been called "the world's first major renewable energy economy".[6][7]

More than 23,000 wind turbines and 1.4 million solar PV systems are distributed all over the country's area of 357,000 square kilometers.[8][9] As of 2011, Germany's federal government is working on a new plan for increasing renewable energy commercialization,[10] with a particular focus on offshore wind farms.[11] A major challenge is the development of sufficient network capacities for transmitting the power generated in the North Sea to the large industrial consumers in southern parts of the country.[12]

According to official figures, some 370,000 people were employed in the renewable energy sector in 2010, especially in small and medium-sized companies. This is an increase of around 8% compared to 2009 (around 339,500 jobs), and well over twice the number of jobs in 2004 (160,500). About two-thirds of these jobs are attributed to the Renewable Energy Sources Act[13][14]

Germany's energy transition, the Energiewende, designates a significant change in energy policy from 2011. The term encompasses a reorientation of policy from demand to supply and a shift from centralized to distributed generation (for example, producing heat and power in very small cogeneration units), which should replace overproduction and avoidable energy consumption with energy-saving measures and increased efficiency.

[chuckChuck]

Germany recharged: EU powerhouse goes all in on alternative energy

JOANNA SLATER

POTSDAM, GERMANY — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Apr. 10, 2015 6:59PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Apr. 10, 2015 7:14PM EDT

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a couple of engineers working the weekend shift were monitoring the regional electricity grid in the heart of Potsdam, a city south of Berlin. The control room was largely quiet as the technicians bent over their workstations, scrutinizing the flow of power through the system.
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Ralf Doering, a network manager for E.dis AG, the grid operator, pointed to a screen, where an innocuous-looking red line on a chart had just dropped to zero. The line measured how much electricity the grid drew from conventional sources of energy.

As of a few minutes earlier, a swath of northeastern Germany from the Baltic Sea to the Polish border, an area roughly the size of Switzerland, was being powered entirely by energy from the wind and the sun. A group of visitors looked around the room – at the lights, the computers, the equipment – and mentally multiplied the scene across the entire region. “Solar and wind are now enough,” Mr. Doering said matter-of-factly.

If Germany continues on its current course, such moments will become commonplace. The country has embarked on the most ambitious energy revolution anywhere in the industrialized world. Last year, 26 per cent of Germany’s power supply came from renewable sources. By 2050, the figure is targeted to rise to 80 per cent. The shift, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said last month, is Germany’s “man on the moon” project.

As Germany has discovered, however, a project with sky-high aims can carry a huge price tag. The initiative, which began in 2000 and is a top priority for Chancellor Angela Merkel, has pushed electricity prices for German consumers to the second-highest level in the European Union, behind Denmark. German businesses also pay some of the highest prices for power in the region, with exceptions for certain energy-intensive industries.

German business groups complain that the country’s energy policy hurts their ability to compete and plan long-term investments. They’re especially galled by Ms. Merkel’s decision, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, to commit to closing of all of Germany’s nuclear power plants by 2022.

More recently, the energy policy – which is aimed squarely at reducing Germany’s contribution to climate change – witnessed a disturbing paradox. Between 2009 and 2013, carbon dioxide emissions from Germany’s power sector actually rose, despite the growing share of electricity produced by wind, solar, hydro and biomass. That’s because power companies were increasing their use of cheap but carbon-laden energy sources like lignite and hard coal compared to previous years. Those sources became more attractive for two reasons, experts say: the higher price of natural gas and the low cost of carbon-emissions permits in the European trading system.

Alarmed by that development and by the upward march of electricity prices, Ms. Merkel’s government introduced revised energy legislation last year that moved to rein in the surcharges for renewable energy. The government is also looking at placing new restrictions on coal producers to bring down emissions. Experts estimate that emissions in 2014 from Germany’s power sector fell to their lowest point since 2009.

Despite the hurdles, Germany is plunging full-speed ahead in what is known here as the “Energiewende,” or energy transition. But its leaders acknowledge that unless Germany can prove that the policy works for businesses too, it risks being deemed a failure.

“We need to show that in a country like Germany and a continent like Europe, it is possible to have a high level of industrialization” in combination with policies to mitigate climate change, Sigmar Gabriel, the Economy and Energy Minister, said last month. Only then, he said, “will we find that other countries follow us. Only then will we persuade people.”

Unintended consequences

In late March, policy makers from more than 50 countries gathered in Berlin for a conference to discuss the challenges of transforming a country’s energy supply. Some were from oil-rich nations such as Kuwait and Algeria; others were from smaller European nations that already generate much of their electricity from renewable sources. In Portugal, for instance, the figure is more than 60 per cent.

What Germany is attempting, however, is far more complicated. It is the world’s fourth-biggest economy, with a large industrial sector. Other major economies such as France and the United Kingdom have less lofty targets for renewable energy and aren’t phasing out nuclear power.

At the conference, Jan Mladek, the Czech Minister of Trade and Iindustry, told a story that pointed to some of the difficulties Germany faces. On a visit last year to Berlin, Mr. Mladek said, he met with federal officials who urged him to speed up the Czech Republic’s adoption of renewable energy. Then, later that same day, he met with the Premier of the state of Saxony, which borders the Czech Republic. The Premier urged Mr. Mladek not to build wind farms near the border, fearing it would destroy Saxony’s tourism industry.

The story epitomizes how each step Germany has taken toward greater use of renewables has created new and sometimes unforeseen challenges – in electricity prices, in carbon emissions and in power distribution.

In Germany, consumers paid an average of nearly 30 euro cents (41 cents) per kilowatt-hour for electricity last year. In Ontario, by contrast, the peak price is currently 14 cents; the average price for consumers in the United States is similar.

Here’s what happened to prices. To hasten the adoption of renewable energy, Germany guaranteed long-term price contracts to such producers – a technique also common elsewhere in the world. The difference between those guaranteed prices and the price of power sold on the wholesale market gets passed on to consumers.

In Germany, that difference is known as the renewable energy surcharge. The surcharge has jumped from 1 euro cent per kilowatt-hour in 2009 to more than 6 euro cents currently. The increase is due to a rapid growth in the installation of green power, which has also helped to drive the market price down.

So consumers have paid more, even as the market price for German electricity has fallen considerably, because the surcharge must fill the gap. In its reforms last year, the government moved to curb further increases in the surcharge.

Despite the rising prices, support for the government’s energy policy remains strong, said Claudia Kempfert, an energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. Electricity accounts for just 3 per cent of the average household’s budget, she noted, compared to heating and transportation, which takes up 30 per cent. A poll conducted last year found that 92 per cent of Germans favoured expanding renewable energy.

Businesses are far less sanguine than consumers about shouldering the costs of the transition. Electricity prices for industrial customers have risen more than 40 per cent since 2008 and companies say the policy has begun to affect their investment decisions.

The “huge costs for promoting renewable forms of energy restrict the competitiveness of our companies,” a spokesman for the German Association of the Automotive Industry said in a statement. “In the long run, that will damage employment at home.”

BASF, a chemicals giant, has said it will focus its new investments outside Germany as a result of energy costs. Last year, SGL Carbon SE and BMW Group said they would invest an additional $200-million (U.S.) in a carbon-fibre manufacturing facility in Washington state. A driving force behind the decision: the availability of cheap power.

BASF and SGL Carbon are among the roughly 2,300 large, energy-intensive German companies that are exempted from paying the renewable energy surcharge through at least 2017. But even some of these firms assert that the energy policy isn’t working.

Heribert Hauck, director of energy affairs at Trimet Aluminium SE, a large consumer of electricity, said the shifting policy terrain is making long-term investments impossible for his firm.

What’s more, he added, the volatility of renewable energy – the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow – makes it unsuitable to meet the burden of constant industrial demand.

Germany, like other countries, has not yet solved the dilemma of how to store the electricity produced by solar power and wind energy. And it has only begun to tackle the transportation of such energy, which is primarily produced in the north of the country, to the industrial heartland in the south. One major planned transmission route from north to south – the “Stromautobahn,” or electricity highway – has faced intense protest from those living in its path.

“We can implement the Energiewende up to a certain degree,” said Mr. Hauck of Trimet. But the government must leave a “supply of conventional, reliable, competitive power plants in the system. That’s what industry needs.”

Smaller companies have complaints too. Horst Linn runs a maker of industrial furnaces in Bavaria, typical of the thousands of so-called “Mittlestand” firms that form the backbone of the German manufacturing sector.

The government’s focus on renewables is wrong-headed, Mr. Linn said. Instead, it should have focused on energy-saving technology, he asserted.

Mr. Linn estimates that his company’s electricity costs have jumped 30 per cent in the past five years and fears that more increases lie ahead as the country phases out nuclear power. Yet he’s never seriously considered operating anywhere else because of the skilled labour and quality control required in his business.

“You have no chance with the product we make to go to Bulgaria,” he said.

Fingers crossed

In the middle of March, Germany’s solar industry faced a critical test. A partial eclipse for several hours on the morning of March 20 threatened to wreak havoc on the system: Grid operators faced an unprecedented fluctuation in electricity supply as sunlight disappeared with unusual speed, only to reappear with the same unusual alacrity. (Prior to the eclipse, representatives of the solar industry had asserted everything would be fine. But “really, we were like this,” said a spokesman for the industry, holding up crossed fingers on both hands).

The industry passed the test and hailed it as proof that renewable energies were now a mature and successful part of Germany’s electricity system. As the shift to renewable energy deepens, some power producers see the writing on the wall. E.on SE, a major German utility, announced in December that it would split its businesses into two.

The first will be composed of its conventional energy assets and the second will consist of its ventures in alternative energy and distribution. Some commentators likened the move to the manoeuvre deployed by some financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 crisis: dividing healthy and troubled assets into a “good” bank and a “bad” bank.

Germany’s Greens, the political party that helped kick off the energy revolution, tend to dismiss business concerns as so much bellyaching. In recent years, Germany has notched the strongest economic performance of any major European country at the same time as it has implemented the energy transition, proponents of the policy say. Norsk Hydro ASA, a Swedish company, is increasing its aluminum production in Germany, Baerbel Hoehn, a Greens member of the Bundestag, said in a recent statement.

For the Greens, the future looks a little like Feldheim, a small village of neat brick-and-stucco houses south of Berlin. On a ridge near the village, 47 wind turbines generate enough electricity to power the community’s needs 100 times over; the rest is sold to the regional grid.

The village also generates its own heat from a heavily subsidized biogas plant. Next up: a test project to create a lithium-ion battery storage facility for the renewable energy the village produces, the largest such installation in Europe.

Of course, there’s no industry whatsoever in Feldheim. Back in the grid control room in Potsdam, the electrical engineers note that the region they oversee has very few industrial concerns, which makes it easier to incorporate alternative energies.

Meanwhile, they’re plowing ahead with the many different facets of the Energiewende. “For us as engineers, it’s really challenging and exciting,” said Bernd Westphal, a regional manager at E.dis. “We’re not getting bored here.”

[bucket]

What I get out of those articles is that it is an expensive option for canada as a low contributor on a percentage of total world emissions.

In other words we could go back to an unpopulated 1800 in canada and we still wouldn't make a difference in the world.

It makes it very expensive and those that want to explore it should pay and work to reducing the cost of this nonsense.

I have a tractor that is supposed to be environmentally friendly but never had so much trouble with a 4wd in my life.

Alarms and air filters cost would run past my lease cost if I replaced them as often as it said. It becomes a non productive piece of shit. And yeah its a deere.

[tweety]

[URL="http://news.mit.edu/2016/heat-loss-fusion-reactors-0121"]http://news.mit.edu/2016/heat-loss-fusion-reactors-0121[/URL]

[Hamloc]

My take is that average price of power is 30 cents a kwh in Germany and 14 cents a kwh in Ontario may have read that wrong. You can get 6 cents a kwh contracts in Alberta now but that might not last long. Also noted that big companies are investing outside Germany where power is cheaper. Chuck2 did you read this article not your usual bullshit propaganda lol!!!

[oneoff]

The article stated "In Germany, consumers paid an average of nearly 30 euro cents (41 cents) per kilowatt-hour for electricity last year"...not 30 cents.

And it talks glowingly of residential demand; which is differentiated quite differently from manufacturing usage of electrical energy.

Do people know what 41 cents per Kwh would mean for consumers in Western Canada. It would mean you couldn't afford to aerate grain. Electric heat for a house would be exhorbitent. Some people would freeze to death. Rinks couldn't afford the lighting bills and artificial ice would break the budget of local rinks. Anyone should be ashamed of themselves for actively promoting such economic hardships on their supposed communities.


This is absurd. And the intent is to make heating energy of any sort cost in the same realm as electrical energy.

[Hamloc]

Thanks for the correction Oneoff, when I am reading an article like this my blood pressure is so high it affect my eyesight lol.