I understand the desire for “fallback” methods of creating power when renewables aren’t generating, but I just hope the main goal of all this is building out PRIMARILY renewables with methane gas as backup ONLY. As battery tech improves and becomes cheaper, I hope we can shutter the gas plants permanently.
Batteries are already more cost effective than a new peaker plant. Its already happening.
Edit: i guess i should say, can be. It depends on the market and cost accessing peaker plant power, which can be very expensive.
Remember there is nothing “natural” about natural gas. It’s definitely not “greener” in any way.
The term natural gas should ideally be replaced with “fossil gas”, and a man in B.C. is fighting to change this in official documents. Article below.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what-on-earth-natural-gas-fossil-1.7001520
Natural gas is primarily composed of methane, and has major climate implications. It’s a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with greater ability to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.
You kind of gloss over the issue there, and maybe its in the link or not, but it should be in your post.
Methane being a worse green house gas isnt an issue around the peaker plant. The output of the peaker plant is still CO2.
The problem with Methane is all the leaks that happen at the wells, and then the actual Methane gets into the atmosphere instead of the combustion byproduct CO2. And there are a lot of leaks.
It does burn cleaner though in terms of what else is put into the environment than other combusted sources, like coal.
Tim Hodgson was speaking down in Texas in February and specifically talked about wanting the US to achieve energy dominance, wanting Canada to be part of Fortress North America, and Canada’s key role in America winning the AI race against China by providing the natural gas for a massive increase in electrical power production for data centres. He was talking about the need for the US to burn Canadian natural gas to make up a deficit of hundreds of megawatts.
Solar, wind, and batteries could, would, and should do this. But the oil guys want to make more money, I suppose.
This news coming right off the back of AI data centres being announced for BC just makes me feel like we’re going down the same path as the US. Gassing ourselves to death for planet-destroying data centres to please shareholders. and fascists.
We badly need laws that say these data centers need to build their own renewable energy infrastructure to have the data centre.
Edit: i guess clean, not necessarily renewable. Id be fine if they paid for a nuclear plant to feed them, but not with then running the nuke plant.
We need to get people like Doug Ford and Danielle Smith out of positions of power if we want to avoid the same fate as the US
You missed a name. This is a federal plan, after all.
FFS. We really deserve to live in a world on fire.
Other countries looked at what the mess in Iran did to fossil fuel prices and decided to accelerate their move away from them. But not Canada, where fossil fuel extraction is a higher priority than clean air and a livable environment. Ugh.
It’s not like major portions of the country burn every summer. Or that each year it gets worse and worse or anything! Long live fossil fuels!
Canada is the 5th largest producer of natural gas, it produces roughly the same volume as Saudi Arabia, the sixth largest.
Iran, which is number 4, produces almost double the volume.
Canada natural gas production is a fraction of those in the top-3 producers, which are the United States, Russia, and China. The top-3 count for around 59% of the world’s natural gas production (Source).
Gas consumption grew in the three largest markets: in 2024, it rose by 1% in the USA – the largest gas consumer in the world (22%); in Russia (12% of global gas consumption), gas demand grew by over 6%; gas consumption also increased in China (+7%) supported by a higher demand from the power sector and by cheaper LNG prices. China now accounts for 11% of the global gas consumption, on par with Europe, whose gas consumption remained stable after two years of sharp decline (Source).
A forecast by the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre (opens pdf) says, among others, that,
- natural gas production in the United States and China will keep increasing throughout this decade. After the 2030s, the future of natural gas production in the United States and Russia will depend on how decarbonization efforts affect demand for their natural gas exports, both through pipelines and as LNG.
- In China, natural gas production growth will continue to be driven by energy security goals [and] China and Southeast Asia will see continued natural gas demand growth beyond the 2030s and into 2050.
A friendly reminder that Canada joined a group of 60 states that committed themselves to phase-out fossil fuels. The U.S., Russia, and China refused to join this group.
At this rate will we even be alive in 2050?
Our strategy is guided by four pillars:
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There is no credible path to net zero
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Burning fossil fuels is strength
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Strength is power
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We have the power so fuck you
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