Posts

Showing posts from September, 2015

What would it take to run ALL of BC's cars and trucks on electricity?

Image
By: Resource Works  Originally posted on Resource Works website, and can be found here:  http://www.resourceworks.com/energy-transition   In 2015, almost everyone agrees that the world needs to change the mix of fuels it uses. But exactly what the result needs to look like, and how quickly that can happen, is one of today's most pressing questions The future of global energy is more natural gas, more nuclear, and more renewables like hydro. The energy sources that make the cut are the ones that meet these criteria: affordable available reliable clean Globally, it will be decades before these energies overtake oil and coal. In the meantime, policy makers are facing a lot of decisions. Supposing that British Columbia chose to move its entire car and truck fleet to electricity, what would be required of new power sources to equal the existing input derived mostly from gasoline and diesel? This is the question posed by the author of   this blog   that speci

Why oil and gas will continue to power the world for decades

By: Canadian Fuels Association Originally posted on the Canadian Fuels Association blog on August 20, 2015, and can be found here:   http://blog.canadianfuels.ca/why-oil-and-gas-will-continue-to-power-the-world-for-decades/   “Energy transitions – be they from coal to oil, from oil to natural gas, or from coal-fired electricity generation to a system relying primarily on renewables – are inherently prolonged affairs. New energy sources and conversion techniques become commercially viable only after decades spent establishing often expensive infrastructure.” -   Vaclav Smil, author of Energy Myths and Realities, 2010.   Fossil fuels and their effects on climate change are in the news more than ever. United States President Barack Obama, for example, recently announced that his   clean power plan   will reduce CO 2  emissions by 32 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030. However, transitions to new forms of energy are expensive, lengthy and often difficult, which means petroleum fuel

NDP Government - Who Are Your Stakeholders?

By: Lisa Sygutek, Publisher - The Pass Herald Originally published by the Crowsnest Pass Herald on September 9th, 2015, and can be found here:  http://passherald.ca/archives/150909/index3.htm  I am asking a question of the people of the Crowsnest Pass.  Did you know before Friday, September 4, that the NDP government is enacting a plan to create an extra 1040 square kilometer park called the ‘Castle Provincial Park’ made up of a provincial and wildland park? Well I didn’t until someone called me Thursday night to ask if I knew that the announcement was going to happen. I felt bad as a media source because I didn’t know what was happening. I quickly went to work, late Thursday night, to find the press release, the invite, to find something. Only to find that we never received a thing. So ... I called Ezra, my reporter, and said we have a meeting at Stone’s Throw on Friday morning at 11 a.m. I was late because I couldn’t find parking so I walked down the street from our office to s

Universities Must Reject Environmentalist Calls To Divest From The Fossil Fuel Industry

Image
By: Alex Epstein Alex is the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and President and Founder of the Center For Industrial Progress .  Originally published on August 28, 2015 by Forbes:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2013/08/28/universities-must-reject-environmentalist-calls-to-divest-from-the-fossil-fuel-industry/  As the academic year begins, I hope you will take a moment to read this letter to American universities, cosigned by  80 distinguished scholars , about the increasingly popular  “divestment”  movement–led by  radical environmentalist groups  and now publicly supported by President Obama. I wrote this letter because I believe that “divestment” poses a grave threat to both the American economy and to open debate on campus. Dear American Universities, You have no doubt heard the calls by certain environmentalist groups for you to publicly divest your endowments of any investments in the fossil fuel industry. We ask that you reject these calls as an

The Hidden Environmental Cost of Renewable Energy

Image
By: Blair King Blair King is a resident of the Township of Langley, B.C. and a practicing environmental scientist. He has an academic background in chemistry, biology and environmental studies and an interest in the use of scientific data in environmental decision-making.  Blair blogs about topics that cross the interface between science and decision-making at  A Chemist in Langley .   Article originally posted by the Huffington Post on July 22, 2015:  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/blair-king/renewable-energy-canada-rare-metals_b_7837710.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-british-columbia    There is something very important that most people don't know about renewable energy technologies. While many of these technologies have existed since humanity started to harness the power of the wind and the sun to help us do work, they all owe their current capabilities to the existence of rare earth elements. Neodymium, dysprosium, lanthanum, cerium sound like the names of some magical charact