Energy abundance and economic development
There are a lot of skeptics around and not many optimists.
Such is the case when it comes to Nova Scotia’s new plan to build 40 gigawatts of electricity in the province’s offshore. Given that Tim Houston’s province has 2.8 GW of generation capacity (2023, CER), 40 GW would be roughly 14X growth. Or to put it another way, Ontario only has 39.5 GW of generation capacity.
This is somewhat my frustration with electricity utilities and future planning. They almost always forecast future demand based on some variant of their existing customer base - x percent population growth, x percent transition from ICE cars to EVs, more (or less) industrial load, etc.
Houston has something different in mind.
He wants to live in a province that has a vision like Quebec in the 1960s. To use energy as a driver of economic development and not just a response to tweaks in demand. Quebec purposely overbuilt its generation and then used that excess capacity to attract aluminum smelting and other large users of electricity and to sell electricity into New England and elsewhere.
Of course Newfoundland and Labrador are doing the same thing with hydro and now moving into offshore wind.
I do not see anyone in New Brunswick looking at energy as a driver of new economic development. That is actually a bit harsh. There are some folks talking about it but for the most part we hear about x increase in household demand, yadda, yadda, yadda.
How about 40 GW of nuclear energy by 2050? Or 40 GW of wind/solar/nuclear?
Heavens! What would be the use cases for so much energy? Who would pay for the pricey nuclear (or offshore wind or big hydro for that matter)? How could you get public support for all these new electricity generation assets?
Every trip of a 1,000 kms starts with the first step. If you rule out any chance of ever making the 1,000 kms you will never take the first step. What would be the downside from developing a 40 GW plan for New Brunswick? What would be the downside from mapping out the various sites that could be used for nuclear energy production around the province or for a couple of thousand wind turbines?
I am a bit worried about long term economic development in Atlantic Canada. There is so much intra-Canada and global competition for business investment these days. Countries and sub-national regions are aggressively pursuing many new industries from the blue bioeconomy to artificial intelligence to critical minerals.
Everyone talks about elbows up - well we had better get our elbows up when it comes to economic development. Yes it might require governments to take on some risk. Yes it might require cost-sharing between the public and private sectors and, yes, it might take a long term view that has been lacking in the past 2-3 decades. Tim Houston will be long gone from provincial politics before the first wind turbine off Sable Island starts to spin but you have to start now (although some chatter around has Houston eyeing a run at federal politics as indicated by his recent effort to build his national profile).
As with all things, with energy abundance there will be winners and there will be losers.
Which side do you want to be on?
Since wind and solar are intermittent and unreliable energy sources, and since energy consumption must, at any given point, always exactly equal energy produced, there must be at least a 50% backup for their anticipated average output. This can be supplied by natural gas turbines; however, natural gas produces 55 kg of carbon to create a million BTUs of energy, compared to 75 kg for oil and 95 kg for coal. It is cleaner, but not clean, and is only a short-term measure. The 4th generation sodium-cooled European reactor is fully load-following, as are the salt-cooled SMRs emerging all over the world. These new technologies are reducing the cost of building nuclear reactors by 30%, and the wholesale price of nuclear power is now 5.6 cents/kWh, allowing a penny for refurbishing and decommissioning. That remains relatively constant, whether the reactor is load-following or not. These numbers come from the World Nuclear Association.
France generates 70% of their power using nuclear, and 10% hydro, making it the cleanest power producer in the world. They are also the world's largest exporter of power. The average for the past decade is 15.1 TWh (15,100 GWh). Wind and solar are at about 15%, backed up by natural gas at 9%. The cost of using nuclear power for backup negates the value of wind or solar energy. It is far cheaper to operate a nuclear reactor at higher outputs than to build and maintain wind or solar power facilities.
There is a political tendency to skew the numbers against nuclear power. The electorate still has an irrational fear of anything nuclear, and the fossil fuel industry is bent on keeping it that way. America is destroying the will to get its people off fossil fuels, and the present administration is setting back efforts to wean us off those fuels all over the world. There are economically competitive alternatives that could make the world's fixed energy requirements carbon-free within a decade; however, we are moving in the opposite direction.
I agree David and Norman Purdue beat me to one of my points so I won’t repeat it other than to say that there has been a lot of technological improvements in fracking such that it is even safer than it was 20 years ago. One point I do want to make is about “vision”. PM Carney has repeatedly said that we have to think big and act big if we are to lead the G7 in growth. Houston did just that. Unfortunately NB has done little more than reiterate potential projects that have been talked about for years - not a lot of vision imo. There hasn’t been any daring vision here since Hatfield ( auto manufacturing (Bricklin) and nuclear power (Lepreau)) and McKenna (call centres, Service NB, Non-resource based manufacturing/ processing)). To me, having a clear vision of where you want to go is critical in leadership in todays competitive world. Without that NB is doomed to a future of more incrementalism in our economic development efforts which just won’t cut it. As often said (attributed to aboriginal leaders); “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will take you there!”