That is the ultimate instalment in a three-part sequence on Ontario’s power system. Learn Half 1 right here, and learn Half 2 right here.
On this, our third and ultimate a part of the sequence on power, it’s essential to notice a couple of issues that I disregarded of the primary two. I’ve particularly averted the various environmental and political controversies which can be inevitable elements of any dialogue of power. To be trustworthy, any cheap dialogue of them would mainly have slowed down all the sequence. You want hundreds of phrases to even scratch the floor of any one in every of these debates, not to mention a number of of them. They exist, and they’re essential, however what I’ve been attempting to do right here is simply set out the numbers, the probabilities, and the challenges. The politics of all of it, how we attempt to make the numbers work, obtain the probabilities and meet the challenges, is the place issues get dicey.
However, yeah. Any dialogue of power coverage essentially touches on controversial debates over local weather change and the best way to tackle it, the function of the federal government within the economic system, national-unity divisions, NIMBYism and progress planning, and far, far more. And typically these debates get a little bit bit foolish.
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The thought for the sequence really got here from simply a kind of foolish moments. Throughout the combating in Ukraine, battles have been fought within the neighborhood of nuclear-power vegetation, together with the notorious Chernobyl web site. There have been horrifying movies of a few of these amenities really being fired upon by Russian forces, although thus far, there has not been any main launch of radioactivity. (I’m submitting this a couple of days earlier than it’s set to be revealed, although. Fingers crossed.) It was in opposition to this backdrop of combating and concern about nuclear catastrophe that I noticed a Toronto-based activist try to make an argument in opposition to the event of a new, experimental nuclear reactor within the Better Toronto Space. The try to hyperlink the invasion of Ukraine with an experimental new reactor in Canada didn’t maybe engender the response on social media that the marketing campaign managers may need been hoping for. There could be nice arguments in opposition to the proposal. Linking it to the Ukraine battle appeared a bit crass, is the factor.
However we don’t have to dwell on social-media flops to agree that this really is a extremely fascinating situation proper now. Our pals in Europe are abruptly realizing that many years of rising reliance on Russia for imports of power was maybe a foul concept. Regardless of the widespread dedication in Europe to lowering carbon emissions, the Germans have been pressured to concede that they might have to rely extra on coal energy, and its main carbon emissions, no less than as a short-term stopgap whereas they work to maneuver away from Russian natural-gas imports. This coverage shift is clearly being pushed by army and political issues, however different jurisdictions all around the world are contemplating comparable strikes, in hopes of lowering their carbon emissions. North America doesn’t face the army threats that Europe so abruptly does, however there’s nonetheless an actual need amongst many (however not all) politicians on our continent to inexperienced up our power combine. And as I famous in concluding the second piece, that’s completely doable. It’s simply difficult and costly.
Let’s say you wish to drive down our society’s use of fossil fuels to the utmost extent doable. Let’s settle for that we’d nonetheless want petroleum merchandise as inputs for sure industrial and agricultural processes — stuff we’re utilizing to truly construct stuff or make fertilizer, for example. (There are alternate options, however I’m specializing in the simpler stuff first.) In Ontario, roughly a 3rd (35 per cent) of our carbon emissions are from the transportation sector: the gasoline and diesel we burn to energy our automobiles. One other 22 per cent comes from gas (largely pure gasoline, but in addition some propane) used to warmth buildings and run hot-water heaters. We may completely scale back the quantity of power we’re getting from burning fossil fuels (with all of the ensuing carbon emissions) by swapping out fossil-fuel power with electrical energy generated from non-carbon-emitting sources. What would that appear to be?
First, earlier than we get into the numbers, let’s acknowledge that it wouldn’t all must occur without delay. The method may and positively could be gradual. To regularly scale back our reliance on fossil-fuel power in transportation, we have to rely extra on electrical energy and on automobiles that rely in entire or partially on batteries as an alternative of gasoline or diesel. That is, clearly, very doable. Such automobiles exist already and are more and more inexpensive and obtainable (present supply-chain-disruption shortages however, and people are hitting typical internal-combustion-engine automobiles, too).
There are very sensible challenges to widespread adoption of purely electrical automobiles. They will work extraordinarily properly for some drivers; most of us in all probability know somebody by now who loves their Tesla greater than life itself (and can let you know all about it). However excessive prices, restricted availability, range-related points, and the uneven availability of charging stations are nonetheless obstacles, though the scenario is bettering on most of these fronts. For the needs of this sequence, I used to be extra involved in what it will take to energy the automobiles. How a lot electrical energy would it not take, and do we’ve got it?
Once more, the next situation isn’t supposed to be fully reasonable; it’s simply big-picture numbers. Let’s deal with gasoline. StatsCan measures the gas offered in every province to be used in highway automobiles. Let’s throw out the 2020 quantity, because the pandemic scrambled a whole lot of routine journey, and use the 2019 determine. Rounding the quantity off a bit for simplicity, 17.1 billion litres of gasoline have been offered in Ontario that yr. Pure Sources Canada says that changing one litre of gasoline requires, on common, 8.9 kilowatt hours of electrical energy. Utterly zeroing out all gasoline gross sales in Ontario in favour of electrical alternate options would require 152 billion kWh of electrical energy (rounded to the closest billion for simplicity).
That’s a whole lot of electrical energy. We now have to transform some items right here for simplicity: 152 billion kWh is simpler to precise as terawatt hours (TWh), and it’s 152 of these. And that’s a humorous quantity on this context. In 2018, Ontario generated, in whole, 151 TWh of electrical energy — mainly, the very same quantity (what’s a TWh between pals?).
So may we exchange all gasoline in Ontario with electrical energy? Positive. We’d simply have to actually double the quantity of electrical energy Ontario produces. Doable, in concept, however fantastically costly, and even that may understate the associated fee and the problem: we’d have to then distribute all that energy by doubling the capability of the transmission grid or getting very aggressive with off-peak charging — squeezing each watt of capability doable out of the grid we have already got.
My assumptions are admittedly unrealistic — we may make a giant distinction simply by changing gasoline automobiles regularly. We may construct out extra electrical energy provide and transmission capability regularly. And there’s nonetheless slack in Ontario’s technology capability right now. We’re not working our electrical-generation capability at 100 per cent always. As talked about above, there’s a lot of obtainable capability throughout off-peak hours: if we charged all automobiles solely at evening, we may get a whole lot of automobiles charged up without having to massively overhaul or broaden our system (and off-peak charging is already a function of many home-charging programs).
So, yeah, the challenges are considerably overstated by the easy math. However the simple arithmetic does lay out the size of the problem and explains why electrification will essentially be a gradual course of (although, I believe, an inevitable one). Nonetheless, the time scale issues for climate-change causes, and keep in mind the plight of our allies in Europe. Local weather change is, in fact, an pressing situation, however a capturing battle tends to sharpen the thoughts. How “gradual” can the Europeans be? We’re removed from the combating. They aren’t.
Earlier than we transfer on to a different main problem, let’s shut the loop on electrical energy swapping out gasoline and assume we’d wish to keep away from doing so by rising our use of something that’s both carbon-emitting or import-reliant. In Half 1 of this sequence, I broke out Ontario’s most doable distribution capability by supply: how a lot uncooked electrical energy we are able to make and transmit throughout the grid. This can be a helpful manner of understanding how a lot we’d must scale up every supply if we wished to actually double the general electrical energy provide (we wouldn’t have so as to add fairly that a lot, however think about this a thought train). Wind is 13 per cent of the full transmissible whole, when working at full capability. So we’d want to extend our potential wind-power belongings by 800 per cent. Hydro energy is 1 / 4 of Ontario’s most doable technology. So we’d have to quadruple that — they usually’re not constructing many rivers. Nuclear is the best choice for this particular downside: Ontario has three nuclear-power stations working 18 nuclear reactors (some are presently offline for refurbishment). Nonetheless, simply to maintain issues easy, let’s assume we use nuclear energy to double our electrical energy provide. That might imply triple the output offered by the three vegetation we have already got, with the 18 reactors, and it additionally assumes we preserve all three of these vegetation on-line and working indefinitely.
Once more, doable. However costly. And picture the political opposition!
For photo voltaic? Properly, keep in mind the numbers from Half 1: setting apart the solar energy used and consumed domestically, photo voltaic accounts for only one per cent of the facility obtainable for transmission in Ontario. So we’d want actually 100 instances extra to displace gasoline.
And so forth. I repeat: Doable, completely. Straightforward? Low-cost? No.
I may go on — the above solely centered on gasoline. It didn’t deal with diesel for automobiles. Or displacing house heating derived from pure gasoline, propane, or heating oil (and even wooden) with electrical energy. Doing all this stuff could be doable. It will be costly, and it will take a very long time.
If you wish to perceive why these debates can get so consequential, this is the reason: the stakes are enormous, each for the atmosphere and for nationwide safety. However so are the prices and challenges. Numerous the anger this debate generates is little question pushed by the frustration that we’ve got no straightforward, low-cost, pain-free choices. Every thing we may do could be exhausting, sluggish, and costly.
And that’s for us, right here. Think about how passionate the debates should be in Europe right now.
Close to the beginning of this column, I discussed a brand new, experimental reactor deliberate for Toronto. It’s a so-called small modular reactor, or SMR. SMRs are designed to get round the primary downside of latest nuclear energy: its large price and the complexity of set up. In concept, an SMR is a contemporary nuclear reactor, designed with the most effective in trendy security programs, that’s sufficiently small to be primarily mass produced after which put in within the desired place. Bringing down prices by combining splitting atoms and Henry Ford, because it have been. The proposed reactor could be rated for 300 megawatts. Sixty of these would give Ontario sufficient new electrical energy to displace all gasoline.
I famous on the outset how controversial these items is. I’m not taking a facet within the renewables versus nuclear debate. (I believe we’ll use loads of each.) So the above isn’t a suggestion. It’s simply the fact of what could be wanted. Don’t need new nuclear? Okay, high quality. We’ll want sufficient photo voltaic and wind to exchange it. Skeptical about photo voltaic and wind, however dedicated to combating local weather change? Properly, uh, then you definately’re left with nuclear. You’re all welcome to your individual opinions on this, however the above is the maths.
And that is the maths staring Europe within the face proper now. Its plan for dramatically slicing Russian-energy imports is broad and various and contains every part from extra warmth pumps for house heating to extra burning of coal, as a result of all of it needs to be on the desk. There isn’t a single resolution. One of the best-case situation for Europe is a sequence of small steps that, added up, will permit a partial and gradual discount in dependency on Russian gas.
I requested on the outset what Ontario and Canada may do to assist Europe. Immediately? Actually, not a lot. In concept, we may ship oil to Europe, changing Russian provides. However, as you’ve in all probability observed should you’ve paid any consideration to Canadian information for the final decade or so, Canada has struggled to get new export pipelines constructed. We do export some oil, and Europeans can clearly purchase it on the worldwide markets, however we are able to’t presently do far more to export further oil. The Europeans are on the lookout for extra liquefied pure gasoline. Properly, we are able to’t export far more of that, both. Dozens of latest LNG amenities have been proposed, however they aren’t obtainable now, and even when they have been, the Europeans would want to construct new LNG amenities to take what we may (in concept, in the future) ship. Ontario’s function in that may be modest: pipelines that cross our territory may convey western Canadian pure gasoline to ports on the Atlantic Ocean in Quebec or the Atlantic provinces. Delivery immediately from Ontario would require terminals on the Nice Lakes. That is, as one business skilled informed me, “not going.” And he was laughing when he mentioned that.
These are, clearly, nicer issues to have than these going through Europe or particularly Ukraine. However they’re issues all the identical. They are often fastened. All it would take is large portions of time, cash, effort, and political will.