Is Atlantic Canada facing a short window to exploit its wind energy advantage?

There are several articles in the Economist magazine this week about the rise of solar energy. The articles basically imply that solar energy is going to kill every other source of energy and provide so much that whole new energy intensive opportunities will emerge that we didn’t even think of before.

Worried about energy when the sun isn’t shining? No problem. We are told that the cost of energy storage has dropped 99% and will fall dramatically in the future. What about places like New England and Atlantic Canada that have relatively less solar energy compared to Nevada? No problem. Trains with huge batteries will transport the solar energy from the desert to New England without the need for decades long transmission lines. You know those CNG trucks that transport natural gas to the manufacturing plants that are not on the gas transmission system in New Brunswick? Think that but only trains and batteries.

I have some level of skepticism. Not that long ago we were told in the same magazine that driverless vehicles would be pervasive by the mid to late 2020s. Robotics have been overhyped for years. And don’t forget the Economist’s love for genetic medicine. We were supposed to have customized medicine for our own genetic profile. Where did that end up?

However, the fundamentals of solar do look appealing. In some places it is coming on the grid at 1.5 cents/kwh and supposedly this price is going to drop. If future battery storage is as impressive as the Economist thinks and trains will ship solar energy wherever it needs to go, what does that do for the among the windiest place in the world, Atlantic Canada?

Take the offshore wind opportunity recently teased by the PPF. Massive. Not only for export markets it could be used to power new industries in the region such as hydrogen and AI data centres. But while the numbers are a bit fuzzy it looks like it will be at least the mid-2030s before any of that offshore wind will have turbines and start to feed the grid. That is more than a decade away. Further, the last numbers I looked at put the 2024$ cost of that offshore wind at something like 14 cents/kwh. Solar with those crazy energy trains - less than 14 cents?

The green hydrogen projects in NL and NS could benefit from first mover advantage. They could be deployed and tied to long term offtake agreements before solar starts eating wind’s lunch.

This is just another reason why we need to move quickly if there is a real opportunity here. No matter what anyone tells you, this region is not particularly great for solar energy (see map). It might be fine to deploy higher cost solar for local uses but forget using energy to drive low cost opportunities or for export markets.