Here’s the scale of the problem:
So, why is the Saskatchewan Party lying about where the bulk of the cleanup money is coming from?
Why are they lying about the cost? Oh, right, the corporate donations that would be illegal in other parts of Canada.
I guess Moe is going to be cutting @JustinTrudeau‘s government a big fat refund cheque with their claim here contradicting how much they wanted for well cleanup.
SaskPower told me last decade that their Y2K test of solar panel technology at the time convinced them there was no utility future for solar. Never mind that the tech was already more than a decade old at that point, and costs had dropped while efficiency of the panels had risen significantly.
Over 4 years ago they promised to build a 10MW array of solar panels. They’ve yet to deliver. Instead, they dealt a body blow to the solar installer industry in the province by cancelling Net Metering and replacing it later with Net Billing. This is in large part to the governing party of Saskatchewan taking corporate donations that would be illegal in the rest of Canada.
The Crown utility has lied about solar technology on Twitter even. They can’t be trusted, and that’s a damn shame, because we could be at a near 100% solar grid by now if we started building 6 years ago like I and others proposed.
Back in 2012, there was a problem:
Provincial water too polluted, says research
Back then, the SaskParty was promising to address climate change with a plan that included a 20% emissions cut below 2006 pollution levels, by last year, 2020. They soon deleted that target.
Then this happened, and continues to happen:
Sask. leads country in per capita greenhouse gas emissions
“Provincial environment minister says climate plan needs time to work”
No! It doesn’t. When we give the SaskParty time for their plans to work, they make emissions worse, not better. And they promote their failed Environment Ministers to party leader too.
Other jurisdictions are too Canadian/polite to give us the F grade our Petrostate deserves.
That’s from back in 2015, and my understanding is that it’s been addressed to some degree. For the latest be sure to follow an expert like Prof. Eaton.
Saskatchewan Government will start charging EV owners $150 a year. The Minister who removed the EV incentive almost a decade ago took his next job as Canada’s top oil and gas lobbyist. If that doesn’t scream Conflict of Interest, what does?
This is an “anti-#carbontax“, as it encourages people to stay away from a zero emission technology without directly regulating against them, and without collecting sufficient money to make a solid impact on most consumers. It’s still worth getting an EV, and gas burners will be mostly gone by the end of the decade, but the Sask Petrostate Party will still implement this unpopular tax to give a figurative middle finger to the hundreds of families who’ve decided to move on to better technology and leave oil in the dust.
SGI is sending back money, but the government is collecting over half of it back from anyone smart enough to choose a zero emission vehicle (that the federal government offers $5000 off to buy). It’s a cash grab by the desperate Sask Party. It sucks to live in a Petrostate some (most) days.
Sucks to be a country where the Official Opposition party rejects longstanding science that a grade school kid can understand. For ideological and economic reasons, the Conservative Party of Canada won’t accept that air pollution is bad. They won’t even accept that it’s air pollution, instead, the veg-heads erroneously call excess carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion “plant food”. And this is the party that was in charge of Canada between 2006 and 2015. Horrible.
Conservative Party members reject policy to recognize that ‘climate change is real’
On Saturday, Conservative Party delegates voted by a margin of 54% to 46% to reject a policy that would add the statement “climate change is real” to the party’s policy book, and recognize that “Canadian businesses classified as highly polluting need to take more responsibility.” The vote came just hours after Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole told delegates that the party “cannot ignore the reality of climate change.””
With how terrible the Conservatives are, the Liberals’ lacklustre, and even bad, management of the climate crisis has been getting a pass. Should Trudeau’s minority government fall during the pandemic, there’s a chance that the anti-science, racist CPC could come to power again, so I get why partisan Liberals are nervous. It’s not like there’s anything concrete for them to point to 5 years into their mandate to do far more, when their hero bought a pipeline, and has yet to build a solar or other renewable power grid where Canada still pollutes with coal burning. Emissions are up, not down.
And the carbon tax fight the ridiculously Conservative SK Government is leading the charge in, goes to the Supreme Court next week. Will the top court side with the stupid people who don’t care if the world burns?
Former PM lays out more truth than Newscorp toadies can handle:
The news around the world has been more awful than usual, with the President of the USA purportedly getting over his COVID-19 infection, while on dexamethasone (a powerful, potentially mind altering steroid) threatening to kiss guys in the crowd of his maskless rally.
The UK is announcing plans, and at the same time saying they won’t work.
And here in Saskatchewan there’s an election underway, both for the provincial and municipal governments. I have some hope that Regina might elect a few new Councillors, but there’s a religious homophobe running who shamed the Public School Board recently, and no clear, strong alternative to the present right wing mayor. Jim Elliott is running, and would make a good mayor for the years ahead, but Regina’s voters are largely too out of touch with our planetary ecological breakdown to realize that.
But the provincial election is a corrupt dumpster fire. The media continues their effort to shut out the Greens and any other party. And no wonder. Look who pays them:
Big media outside of Saskatchewan is required to get great coverage of what’s going wrong here.
“There’s no perfectly ‘safe’ level of ventilation because we don’t actually know what ‘safe’ is, since we don’t know how much exposure leads to transmission,” Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist,”
That is from an article recommended by a virologist studying airborne diseases. The result is predictable: Stay Home to remove the risk. If you want to get into the nuts and bolts and use HEPA filters, cleaning theater, and HVAC wizardry, read all of the interesting details. Then even if you can master the air in your indoor spaces, will you have the money, equipment, and expertise to do it? And there will be an environmental cost if you don’t recapture the energy with a heat recovery ventilator (HRV). I know many are willing to put our environment second to health, but that payment is coming due soon anyway too.
The reckless and callous Sask Party prepares on Monday to start the calculated risk AKA killing process. Because golf is literally more important than some guy’s grandma, amirite?
Slow Moe isn’t alone. The Quebec Premier, and Alberta’s are both itching to get things back to “normal” as quickly as possible, even though the normal we were living with has a shelf life of less than #EightYears anyway before it has to change more dramatically than we’ve experienced over the last 6 weeks.
When I saw Google/Pocket recommending this article on batteries for the grid, I was a bit concerned. It was contrary to what I understood to be the truth, so I read a bit to get a sense if it was new information. It turned out to be 4-2 year old information, and seems to favour fossil fuels and nuclear. It’s safe to discount as FUD, at this point.
“This article was originally published on July 27, 2018, by MIT Technology Review, and is republished here with permission.”
Fluctuating solar and wind power require lots of energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries seem like the obvious choice—but they are far too expensive to play a major role.
It’s simply old information. Obsolete.
A coworker last night sent me this story about batteries as a huge success on the grid.
Yes, a peaker battery isn’t the same as 100% battery, but no one is saying that the entire supply should rely on only batteries.
Battery prices are falling at a pace of 22% per year for the last decade. Imagine what they’ll cost in 2022, in only 2 more years?
