Ivanhoe’s Kipushi zinc mine in the DRC officially reopens
The restart marked exactly a century since the mine first went into production.
Despite getting 55% of its energy from coal-fired power plants, the Alberta premier says the province will drop coal.
“We will be looking for a strategy to phase out the use of coal as quickly as we reasonably can—without imposing unnecessary price shocks on consumers; or risking security of supply; or unnecessarily stranding capital,” said Premier Rachel Notley speaking to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
Notley says the future lays in renewables and energy efficiency.
“We need a roadmap to renewable energy, and we need to get the economics of that conversion right.”
She said a number of companies have invested in renewable energy production.
Another inducement to drop coal may be carbon pricing. When the NDP took the government after a spring election, it introduced carbon pricing. It forewarns further hikes may be on the way.
“We made a first move on this question in the spring, when we tripled the net effect of our province’s existing regulatory system, governing the cost of carbon.”
“The net price of carbon in Alberta has increased but still remains relatively low. “
5 Comments
John Clark
She is taking the easy way out to make a big bang at the world conference. If she was serious about climate control she would be investing in the emerging technologies having to do with Carbon Capture. As it is she is still pouring billions into the pipeline the Conservatives started and does not have enough CO2 available to fully utilize it. They have all their thunder based on the Shell Peace River operation which firstly, doesn’t produce enough, it is small scale and its a long way away from line designed to get more oil out of mature fields. What a screw up!
patentbs
Carbon pricing too low — read new taxes.
Ontario has set the standard for power generation. and, except for nuclear, is the most screwed up so far! I fully expect Alberta to follow closely.
Apple
Alberta residents will have all power they want when the sun shines and the wind blows.
Gary Lewis
Wind is at best has a 35% (average is 25%)capacity factor. Solar is poor because we are too far north. What is needed is a cheap storage device. 1 Gw of base load continuous power from wind requires 4 Gw of installed capacity so wen the wind plows 3Gw is stored (in the form of pumped hydro) while the 1 Gw supplies the grid.
When the wind is not blowing energy is supplied from storage. This makes base load power extremely expensive. This makes the Natural gas supply diminish faster if no storage is used.
With oil sand using 1 billion cu ft. for Natural gas per day this puts oil sand in jeopardy if natural gas is used to supply power to the grid when the wind does not blow or when the sun is not shinning.
This is why I am pro Nuclear. Check out http://www.ecolo.org see the doc film “Pandora’s Promise”
Best regards
Gary Lewis
member Board of Directors
Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy
GregP507
I’m no engineer, but it seems fairly simple (to me) to convert a coal-fired power-generation plant over to natural gas, which has been cheap and abundant for years, not to mention it’s clean-burning properties.