We usually consider getting hit by a meteor to be a very low probability event. But meteors do strike. If a meteor hit a wind turbine, the turbine would likely be destroyed, and the power in the grid would be easily replaced by other sources. It is a low probability low impact event. But hitting a nuclear plant is just the sort of unexpected event that we don’t plan for. The world has already had one such low probability high impact event at the nuclear plant in Japan. Low probability doesn’t mean no probability.

And high impact is just that.

President Obama said that action on climate change is necessary. He said this in his inauguration speech. He said it again in the State of the Union address. His administration is currently reviewing the permits for the Keystone pipeline, which will ship Alberta bitumen to the US Gulf coast, allowing the oil to obtain world prices, instead of today’s steep discount to world markets.

This isn’t the first time other countries have suggested that trade may be linked to progress on climate change. The President of France mused about this, by pushing a carbon tariff.

There can be little doubt about it. As the evidence of climate change continues to roll in, nations around the world will seek to force other nations to take action. And the biggest lever they have is trade.

Canada’s current record on climate change is appalling. The Federal government has gutted climate research funding, ceased renewable energy programs, closed the National Roundtable on the Economy and Environment for daring to suggest a carbon tax, and mocked anybody who proposes a carbon tax or cap and trade program. They have eliminated environmental review processes for many projects, and took the action specifically so they could build pipelines to move bitumen. They have attacked environmental groups who dare to act as a watchdog on government policy by getting the CCRA to audit their funding. They have sabotaged international climate talks. In short, the Federal government is a climate pariah.

As the world starts implementing trade actions to force others to take action on climate, Canada will be at the top of the list of target countries.

It is in Canada’s (and Alberta’s) interest to implement policies to combat climate change.

The US installed 10,689 MW of wind last year, more new capacity than any other new source. Second place was natural gas at 8,746 MW, with 4,510 MW of new coal plants, 1,476 MW of new solar capacity, and 543 MW of biomass. There was only 125 MW of new nuclear capacity.

In total, wind additions represented 40.5% of all new capacity added, solar was 5.6%, and biomass was 2.1%. Renewable energy was 48.2% of new capacity added.

On the surface, the new coal additions seemed surprisingly high. But Sourcewatch.org reports that 9,800 MW of coal plants were scheduled to shut down in 2012. Assuming all the scheduled retirements occurred, the installed capacity of coal decreased by over 5,000 MW. The median age of US coal plants is 46 years. Ancient. And that is the median, so half are older than that! No wonder a bunch of them closed. The binder twine and duct tape is wearing out.

New wind additions were 56% higher than in 2011, and new solar additions were 31% higher. The reported solar included only 240 different installations, which suggests that the solar number includes only utility scale solar. Residential and smaller commercial rooftops are clearly not counted, so the actual solar numbers are higher than reported.

Natural gas has about half the carbon emissions of coal, and of course wind and solar have no emissions once they are built. It will take time – coal generated a little over 40% of American electricity in 2011. But as capital stock turns over, lower emission technologies are overwhelmingly dominant.

The US, home of the Tea Party, powerful coal and nuclear lobbies, and a nation that has refused to sign onto international climate treaties
is making a stunningly rapid shift to lower emission technologies in its electricity system.

Iowa and Colorado both have significant installed wind capacity, and have thousands of jobs producing wind turbines and components. Iowa gets a larger share of its electricity from wind than any other state, and ranks third in US in installed wind capacity.

I was in Iowa over the labour day weekend, and I was blown away (pun intended) when I heard a radio advertisement for Obama, that talked about how Romney wanted to kill incentives for wind, but Obama supported renewable energy. Obama won both Iowa and Colorado.

It occurs to me that the same thing has happened in Ontario. In the last election, the province’s Green Energy Act was a lightning rod for some. The Conservatives lambasted renewable energy as too expensive, and they pandered to the small but vocal anti wind evangelicals. The governing Liberals lost quite a few seats, but it was a party that had governed for two terms, and that always builds enemies. One of the biggest swings in votes that occurred was the collapse of the Green Party vote, which fell from 8% to 3%. The vast majority of these voters would have gone Liberal, and almost none would have gone Conservative. The Liberals had only 2.2% more votes than the Conservatives. It is not going too far to suggest that the Green Energy Act, which brought renewable energy voters back to the Liberals, may well have been what saved the Liberals from defeat.

The odds of that happening are ½ to the 337th power. We don’t even have a verbal number for something that small – it is 3.571 e—102. That is .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000357% likely that this happens randomly. You try throwing heads with a coin 337 times in a row. Most of us would call this zero.

You are thousands of times more likely to survive a lightning strike, and win the lottery, but get hit by a meteor in your bed on the same day.

Climate change is a natural cycle? Yeah, right.

As the world moves into the Doha round of climate negotiations, it would be most helpful if our leaders would recognize that urgent change to the way we produce and use energy is needed. And then get on with it.

Of course the deadly nature of windows is already well known, and groups like FLAP do a good job working with high rise building owners to reduce the impact of window strikes.

Today, Canada has about 5500 MW of wind turbines, or about 3000 turbines. The average turbine kills 2 birds per year. So there are about 6000 bird deaths per year from wind turbines. So wind turbines kill .00027 times as many birds as windows do. The study I had conducted for the Ferndale turbines found zero bird strikes.

Lets suppose we increase the installation of wind 13 fold. What would this do? First, it would supply 40%% of the country’s electricity. When combined with the 60% from waterpower, 100% of supply would be from non-emitting sources. And wind would kill .0035 times as many birds as windows do. Put another way, windows would kill 300 birds for every bird killed by wind. And the emissions from fossil fuels used to generate electricity would drop to zero, as would the creation of nuclear waste. Fossil fuel use causes smog, acid rain, and climate change. Climate change will cause species loss, not just individuals. An article in Nature suggested 15-37% of the world’s species of all kinds – not just birds – could go extinct from climate change by 2050. Wind turbines kill a small number of individuals, but may well contribute to saving species.

It is important to remember that killing of birds is always species specific. Killing a whooping crane, an endangered species, is a very different thing than killing a seagull or starling. So this perspective does not mean that wind developers shouldn’t do scientific studies to determine the impact of a project before building it. And we need ongoing fundamental science on bird habits in general, including around wind turbines.

Of course this is a thought exercise. There would be many challenges in getting 40% of our power from wind, including enhancing electricity storage and shifting demand to match windy times. But it does put the birds issue in perspective.

That must be why the Audubon Society, a major birding organization, has taken a position in favour of properly sited wind turbines. The Audubon Society takes a holistic view of wind, balancing the small impact of wind turbines on individual birds, with its positive impact on climate change, which will endanger whole species.

The cost to decommission 20 reactors, if the cost is the same as Quebec, would be $32 billion. And that is using the nuclear industry estimates, which have never before been accurate. Perhaps we are talking about $60 billion? And we haven’t even talked about the cost of storing the nuclear waste for thousands of years.

$32 billion is a huge number, rivaling the debt incurred to build the nuclear plants in the first place.

It looks like the hated Debt Recovery Charge on our bills will be with us for a long time to come. Our liabilities with nuclear go on long after the financial liability has been paid.

Supply and demand of electricity must be in balance at all times. Demand goes up and down, varying from about 11,000 MW to 25,000 MW. Demand rises when it is hot (air conditioning), and when it is cold (heating and furnace fans). It goes up on weekdays, and down on weekends and holidays. It is highest during the day, and lower at night. So supply has to go up and down to meet demand. Fossil generators and waterpower routinely provide the increase when needed, and cut back when not needed, reducing fuel consumption and emissions, or saving the water for future use. But sometimes we have too much power that we can’t shut down easily. This is the SBG.

Some generation types are inflexible and can’t be shut down. The only way to reduce nuclear output is to shut down a reactor. But it takes up to 3 days to restart the reactor, so power may not be available when demand goes up the next day or hour. The exception to this is the Bruce unit, which can reduce output by 300 MW per unit X 8 units – that is a lot. The Bruce plant does not require a shutdown, but instead can resume the full output fairly quickly when demand increases. But when they reduce output, we essentially lose the energy – the units do not consume less fuel, they just vent some of the energy as heat.

Wind, by contrast with nuclear, can be shut down, or curtailed, relatively easily. In fact, wind can be used as spinning reserve – ready to come back up at a moments notice, when it has been curtailed. This has been done with offshore wind in Denmark at the Horns Rev project. When wind is curtailed, again, we lose the energy. When generation is curtailed, the system must still pay the generator, whether wind or nuclear, for energy they made available, even when it is not used. After all, they built the plant under contract to produce electricity for the system, and the plant costs continue whether the electricity is generated or not.

What happens when the system is producing more power than can be used, even after the fossil generators and waterpower has been turned down as much as we can? We can do several things. We can export power to New York, Michigan or Quebec. When we do this, they can turn down their fossil generators, or store water behind their dams for future use. We can shut down generation, such as 300 MW per unit at the Bruce plant, or wind turbines. But there are other options that we will explore below that could be a low cost elegant solution.

How did we get to this? The biggest reason is an unforseen drop in demand. Electricity demand in Ontario peaked in 2005 at about 152 TWh. Since then, conservation and a changing economy have reduce demand to about 142 TWh. This has reduced demand at any given time by about 1500 MW, half the size of the Pickering plant, and more than Niagara Falls. It takes time to build new generation capacity, so in 2005, we were contracting for power from wind, nuclear refurbishments, gas, several years in advance, based on the demand forecast (and the coal phase out) at that time. We did not forecast such a big decrease in demand.

Of course we wouldn’t have SBG if we under built our electricity system. This is common in third world countries, where the power is routinely cut in rotating blackouts. If you don’t have enough generation, this will happen. The IESO says that it could cost $225 million per year to reduce the output of wind or nuclear. This is less than 2% of the total electricity system costs. Would you rather save the 2%, and be faced with rotating blackouts? The answer to that one is clear. We need to build some excess capacity to ensure reliability. Is SBG bad? Not when you consider that it came about due to a desire to maintain system reliability.

The current SBG problem may be short term in nature, and reflect the fact that we have built the system for forecasted demand that did not materialize. The reality is that we need to replace or refurbish much or our system, that was mostly built over 30 years ago. The biggest upcoming refurbishment is the Darlington nuclear plant, scheduled to begin in 2016. The plant refurbishment will take 3600 MW off line, perhaps in 900 MW chunks, for a period of years. The 3000 MW Pickering plant will follow, with either refurbishment or decomissioning of all or part of it in 2020. SBG may go away on its own, and instead of complaints of surpluses, we will be grateful for the foresight our planners had in building the capacity a little early.

The major cause of SBG is our reliance on nuclear power. We have 10,000 MW of operating nuclear power (when all the reactors are running), and we have an additional 1500 MW of refurbishments due on line by the end of June. 11,500 MW, if it is all running, is enough on its own to exceed our minimum demand of 11,000 MW. There are several water power and gas co-gen facilities that must be left on line as well. That is the source of SBG. Wind sometimes contributes to the problem, but the highest wind output with the wind currently installed is about 1600 MW. 85% of the problem is caused by nuclear. But wind can be easily curtailed, so it can be part of the solution.

Curtailing nuclear or wind, or for that matter, spilling water, doesn’t seem right, though. In all cases, we are discarding available energy. Surely there is something we can do with this surplus, to perhaps reduce consumption of natural gas, or fuel oil, or save it for the future? It turns out there are lots of things we can do, but we don’t. We haven’t designed our electricity system this way yet. But we can. Here are some options:

The City of Guelph Ontario had a system that could turn off all the electric water heaters in the city for a period of time, to reduce the peak consumption. A signal was sent to shut off the heating element for a short time. Consumers would not even know it had happened, as the heat energy that they wanted was stored in their hot water tanks already. Demand for electricity was shifted to a later time, presumably when electricity was more available, or cheaper, or the transmission capacity was less strained. What about sending a signal to hot water heaters to turn on during times of SBG, raising their temperature by a few degrees?

In downtown Chicago, some of the office towers make ice at night, when electricity demand is low. They use the ice during the day to provide air cooling. The ice has stored the cold, and the demand on the power lines and transformers in downtown Chicago is relieved on hot days, as the cool of the stored ice is used to supplement air conditioners. Make ice during times of SBG.

Toronto Hydro had a program in 2006 to install a wireless device on residential air conditioners, to shut them off for 15 minutes during times of peak demand. Again consumers barely felt it, as a home takes more than 15 minutes for a building’s temperature to rise to uncomfortable levels. Cool buildings by a degree or two during times of SBG, reducing their need for cooling later on.

In the United Kingdom, utilities offered cut rate electricity rates at night under the E7 program (white meters in Scotland), to try to encourage a shift of demand to the night when it cost the utility little to keep operating coal and nuclear plants. Consumers responded by installing a lot of heating closets containing thermal mass, such as rocks or ceramics, heated by an electric element at night. The heat energy was then released during the day when electricity rates are high. The program was so successful, that night time demand increased considerably. Demand was shifted forward by about 12 hours. Summerside PEI does this to deal with surplus wind energy from time to time. Dispatch heating of thermal mass to reduce consumption from other sources of heat.

Pumped storage is widely used in electricity systems. The New York Power Authority has a pumped storage system at Niagara Falls. Surplus night time electricity is used to pump water from the bottom of the gorge to a storage lake at the top of the Niagara escarpment. During the day, or periods of high demand, the water is released, to flow through generators. Pumped storage is a widely used storage method in electricity systems, and is well understood by utility planners. Pumped storage has round trip efficiency of around 85%. Ontario has some pumped storage, but it could be expanded, perhaps using existing dams, but putting in reversible turbines.

The hydrogen can be used as a form of storage. Surplus electricity from SBG can make hydrogen simply by running a current through water, a process called electrolysis. This hydrogen would then be stored, and used in existing hydrogen applications. It can also be injected into natural gas pipelines, reducing the need for natural gas.

Plug in vehicles are entering the market. There is the all electric Nissan Leaf, the Chevy Volt, and Toyota has a plug in version of their Prius coming. Charging vehicles during times of SBG just makes sense, and it is being done elsewhere.

Using surplus energy just makes sense. It replaces imported natural gas, or fuel oil, or gasoline, or reduces the future need for fuel to produce electricity. It is good for emissions. It replace imports with domestic production.

If we have to spend $200 million per year to deal with SBG, wouldn’t it make sense to spend a good chunk of this trying to use the energy, rather than wasting it? We should start working on this immediately. An important side benefit is that solving the SBG problem by creatively using the energy also positions us to utilize variable energy sources like wind, water, and sun more easily in the future.

When you think further about it, though, the difference between the bills becomes more significant. After all, my bill includes the 13% HST, and his bill includes only a 2.5% sales tax – a full 10% difference. But my taxes pay for my health care. My brother has to buy health care. So not only do I pay less for electricity, I also receive more benefit from the taxes that are levied on the bill.

But lets suppose you do believe that our electricity prices are too high. What are the sources of that cost? It turns out that nuclear is responsible for 45% of recent cost increases, and renewable energy has been responsible for 6%. This is found in a recently released report prepared for the Ontario Energy Board, and blogged about here.

Truth matters. And Ontario’s retail electricity prices are not highest or second highest in North America. And green energy is only a small part of the cost.