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Zero Carbon

With Chris Hatch
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January 19th 2024
Feature story

Prairie premiers weaponizing winter

It can’t be a coincidence that the most gung-ho boosters of fossil energy can’t keep the juice flowing when it really matters.

A couple of years ago, it was Texas. Frigid Arctic air flooded all the way to the Lone Star State, throwing the grid into chaos just as demand spiked for electricity. Politicians and fossil fuel promoters didn’t waste a moment, amping up their attacks on renewables, pinning the blame on wind turbines, flooding the internet with absurdities, faked images and outright lies.

We can say that now with full confidence because the post-mortem unequivocally revealed the breakdown was caused by problems in the natural gas system.

Last week, the Arctic descended on Western Canada and it was Alberta Premier Danielle Smith amping up the assault on wind power, at first broadcasting some very bad math along with her attack on the feds’ climate plans. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe joined the fray, taking a bow for sending his neighbours electricity “coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t).”

As in Texas, the truth appears to have been a mite more complicated. Alberta’s troubles were mostly caused by big natural gas plants being out of service. Saskatchewan’s generosity was actually regifted from the next province over — Manitoba sent along 292 megawatts of its hydropower (139 megawatts more than Saskatchewan exported to Alberta). And Alberta’s grid alert was ultimately lifted because wind and solar power increased, creating some “relief on the system.”

It’s very much in line with the “new climate denial,” a pronounced shift in strategy from casting doubt on the science of climate change. The rhetoric of “new denial” seeks to “undermine confidence in solutions to climate change” and the credibility of experts, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. It just published the results of a deep dive on YouTube, finding that “new denial” now makes up 70 per cent of all climate denial claims, up from 35 per cent six years ago.

The organization reviewed 12,000 climate-related videos from channels including some of the rising stars in the denialsphere (Jordan Peterson) along with new media outfits (PragerU) and veterans like the Heartland Institute. Although YouTube has policies against monetizing climate denial, these are poorly enforced, even for “old denial” and the platform is making up to $13.4 million a year from channels posting “new denial.”

The Center for Countering Digital Hate isn’t the first to identify a shift in denial discourse. But the size of change is striking. The biggest change by far has been a massive shift over the past five years from “global warming isn’t happening” to “climate solutions won’t work.”

Not only won’t they work, say the likes of Peterson, but in a video interview with Premier Danielle Smith, he describes policies to stem climate change as “tantamount to genocidal.”

“It creates grave danger,” Smith concurred.

There’s worrying evidence that “new denial” is having a significant impact. In a poll taken last year, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 56 per cent of teenagers who consume high levels of social media agree with the statement, “Humans are not the main cause of global temperature increases.”

Note the insidiousness: they are not denying climate change is happening, but latching on to reasons that nothing can be done.

Others have been warning about various forms of “new denial.” The geophysicist Michael E. Mann has a lot of first-hand experience. Mann has been the target of vicious attacks over two decades for the heinous crime of plotting the past 1,000 years’ temperatures on a chart — the famous “hockey stick” curve. He describes a dramatic shift in the nature of incoming salvos, away from classic denial and towards “inactivism” — an attempt to foster disengagement because there’s nothing we can do. Mann calls it the strategy of D-words: deflect, downplay, delay, divide, despair and doomism.

Given the firehose of falsehoods, slander and general nastiness, some turnabout seems fair play, as in this spoof of Alberta’s ad campaign against the feds’ draft clean electricity regulations.

“It’s the political equivalent of that old Simpsons meme: (Smith’s) government has tried nothing and it’s all out of ideas,” wrote Max Fawcett last summer.

But it’s worth being as fair-minded as possible because it really is an enormous challenge to decarbonize the Prairies. There’s still debate in the scientific community about whether climate change is causing more of these Arctic outflows. The mechanism is clear — heating up the Arctic messes with the polar vortex and the jet stream morphs into continent-sized waves that can reach as far south as Texas. But scientists are still debating whether Arctic outflows are already more frequent and what to anticipate going forward.

What’s not debatable is that a grid operator has to be prepared for periods of very extreme weather. All while we decarbonize the grid and electrify everything we can — which is estimated to require a doubling or even tripling of the electricity system. It’s not for nothing that the Public Policy Forum calls it the “Project of the Century,” while the feds’ Electricity Advisory Council describes it as “one of the thorniest aspects of the transition to a net-zero economy.”

One step would be to arrange the electricity system with capacity to handle extremes. Alberta is the one jurisdiction in Canada with a hyper-free-market system that doesn’t pay for unused capacity. The result has been very expensive electricity that’s shown itself to be unreliable in extreme weather. Rachel Notley’s NDP government began shifting to a capacity market but those changes were quashed by the United Conservatives.

Even with a more sensible approach, enormous challenges remain. The Pembina Institute and the University of Alberta have mapped six potential pathways to a net-zero grid by 2035. All of the scenarios require a concerted effort across many fronts and many involve co-operation with other provinces and the feds.

No additional wind and solar would have helped during last weekend’s dark and windless demand spikes. But grid-scale batteries would have helped since those are good for addressing precisely the problem of short-duration storage and blunting peaks in demand (the small number deployed on Alberta’s grid did exactly that).

You’ll find a useful summary of various options for climate action in cold climates in Rob Miller’s op-ed, The deceptive politics of winter in Alberta. Miller is a retired systems engineer, formerly with General Dynamics Canada, who now volunteers with the Calgary Climate Hub.

There are certainly a lot of options to deploy and they can get us a long way towards a clean grid but some modesty is in order as well. We simply haven’t yet cracked the problem of long-duration storage of clean energy, let alone seasonal storage, and that’s a particular problem in cold, high latitudes.

The Germans have a wonderful word for this puzzle (of course, they do). They call it a dunkelflaute: dark doldrums that last days or even weeks.

But you’ll find a world of difference in the way that term is deployed by grid operators in Northern Europe as opposed to the peddlers of new denial — accepting the overarching need to end climate pollution from fossil fuels, a dunkelflaute is seen as a problem to be solved, not an excuse for impotence.

The roundup

For more on cold climate action, check out Rob Miller’s The deceptive politics of winter in Alberta and Max Fawcett’s Danielle Smith’s attacks on wind and solar cold comfort for Albertans.

On the fossil front, Alberta’s oil production has risen to new heights — over four million barrels a day for the first time. “The upshot of this boost in production is that a single province in Canada … is now the fifth-largest oil producer in the world, after the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq. Add in additional production from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, and Canada moves into fourth place,” according to The Calgary Herald.

Busting the logjam

British Columbia is busting the logjam that’s kept utilities from preparing climate-aligned energy plans for mass electrification. Premier David Eby announced a $36-billion capital spending plan for BC Hydro. It includes $10 billion for electrification and reducing climate pollution and a streamlined process to speed up the electrification of industry. All very promising, but critics are keeping an eye on how much gets spent expediting electricity to the LNG industry as opposed to decarbonizing the existing economy.

The great melting

The mighty ice cap atop Greenland is losing 20 per cent more ice than previously thought — a mind-boggling average of 30 million tonnes of ice per hour. That’s “sufficient to affect ocean circulation and the distribution of heat energy around the globe,” according to new research published in Nature.

At the other end of the Earth, scientists are sounding a Red Alert in Antarctica.

New pod: The Road

You’ll have heard the term “critical minerals” more and more frequently. The push for new mines runs straight into the territories of Indigenous Peoples and we’ve got a new podcast called The Road exploring the so-called “Ring of Fire” and the fate of northern Ontario.

Ontario youth in province’s highest court

The seven young people fighting Ontario’s lack of a climate plan were back in court Monday, this time in front of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

The case was dismissed by Ontario Superior Court last year but even in the dismissal, the judge agreed Doug Ford’s government is risking people’s lives and health. The seven youth are backed by lawyers from Ecojustice and Stockwoods LLP.

Fastest man, fastest car

Usain Bolt declared, “This is the only time I’ll say something is faster than me,” after driving the newest Formula E race car. Bolt raced through the 100-metre mark 5.22 seconds faster than his own world record.

Indigenous-led conservation

Northern Manitoba’s Seal River watershed is about the size of Nova Scotia. “Used by Dene, Cree and Inuit, the remote region is now set to become one of Canada’s first Indigenous-protected and conserved areas,” reports Matteo Cimellaro.

The watershed is home to polar bears and 22 species at risk, 200,000 caribou, and a third of the world’s belugas. It is home to thick boreal forest, wetlands and tundra, and stores around 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon. On Thursday, an agreement was signed between the Seal River Watershed Alliance, the feds and Manitoba’s new NDP government, led by Wab Kinew.

Shady group blocking climate solutions

“A shadowy new organization attacking the climate efforts of Canadian cities is infiltrating Google searches and ads in the New York Times and other publications,” reports Marc Fawcett-Atkinson.

The group — Voice for Energy — lists no phone numbers or staff on its website and did not respond to requests for more details from Canada's National Observer. Google's ad database shows payments from CGA Enterprises, a venture of the Canadian Gas Association, Canada's largest natural gas lobby group (which also did not respond to questions).

Voice for Energy has been targeting the city of Burnaby, B.C., over its rules prohibiting gas in new buildings. On its website, the group claims to advocate for “energy choice.” Sunil Singal, a director of Force of Nature and campaigner at Stand.earth, calls it "disinformation."

"You wouldn't argue that people should have the choice to insulate with asbestos or decorate with lead paint or build highrises without fire escapes."

RCMP tactics against Wet'suwet'en land defenders

The RCMP’s notorious C-IRG officers laughed at Wet’suwet’en pipeline opponents calling them “orcs” and “ogre,” reports CBC News. Audio played in court this past week reveals unconscionable tactics. One officer is heard saying:

"Then the f--king guys just beat the shit out of him and then he started crying. I felt bad for him, apparently the sergeant grabbed his balls and twisted, I guess. He was on the ground and everyone was just grabbing limbs. He didn't have a limb to grab so he just like grabs his balls like, 'You done now? You done resisting?'"

Some of the audio was recorded by photojournalist Amber Bracken, on assignment for The Narwhal, which published the recordings.

Another $2 billion for Trans Mountain

Canada’s biggest banks are behind the latest $2-billion loan to Trans Mountain, reports John Woodside. The feds have promised not to spend any more public money on the pipeline directly and instead are guaranteeing loans, promising to pick up the tab if anything goes wrong.

“It’s a great example of two irresponsible parties involved here,” said Stand.earth climate finance director Richard Brooks. “[Finance Canada] said, ‘No, we're not going to put more public money into this, but we’re certainly going to use our power to ensure this pipeline gets finished by backstopping private sector loans to TMX.’

“Now at $18 billion from private banks being sent to this project, the cost of the project has now surpassed $35 billion.”

Huge battery replaces Hawaii’s last coal plant

Hawaii shut down its last coal plant. “But the move posed a question that’s becoming increasingly urgent as clean energy surges across the United States,” reports Canary Media: “How do you maintain a reliable grid while switching from familiar fossil plants to a portfolio of small and large renewables that run off the vagaries of the weather?

“Now Hawaii has an answer: It’s a gigantic battery.”

The Kapolei battery charges 158 Tesla Megapacks when renewable energy is available and has 185 megawatts of instantaneous discharge capacity.

Lucrative decline

I’ll leave you with a thought-provoking piece by an incisive thinker. Kate Mackenzie dissects the conventional wisdom that oil majors are aiming for decades of lucrative increased production. Mackenzie has serious financial chops: she worked for a decade at the Financial Times and writes a column called “Stranded Assets” for Bloomberg.

All the share buybacks and shareholder dividends are often presented as proof of dastardly intent to keep growing even in the face of climate breakdown. In fact, Mackenzie argues in HeatMap, Oil Companies Are Preparing for a Lucrative Decline.

“The oil industry is not telling a credible story about its own future. Far from doubling down on the future of oil — as they’d have us believe — and as climate action advocates fear — the most powerful oil producers are planning for obsolescence, but they’re hoping to do it on their own, lucrative, terms.

“The oil majors are settling in for a long, comfortable decline.”