Power!
The latest in a long list of interesting position papers from our dear leader was released today. Interesting in the sense that it is a head scratcher for certain. Also interesting in that so many of the fawning class of Carney devotees will swoon at the wonder of it. Elbows up as we double our electricity supply.
Currently Canada’s generation of electricity breaks down somewhat like this, 57.4% comes from hydro generation, 15.4% comes from natural gas, 13.5% from nuclear, coal is now down to 3.5% and the balance from non-baseload sources such as wind and solar. Ponder that for a moment. It has been 130 or so years since the first hydro plant started sending electricity to Toronto. Since then we have tapped our vast water resources to produce almost 60% of our electricity.
Huge swaths of Quebec, Labrador and British Columbia have been sent underwater to produce this amount of electricity. New tunnels have been dug in the Niagara Escarpment to better supply two very old generating station. The two latest projects, BC Hydro Dam C and the Muskrat Falls project in Labrador are hugely over cost and behind time.
Between the two stations 1,800MW will be produced. Ontario currently produces 7,500 or so MW of Hydro electricity. OPG produces 5,500 MW of nuclear and 5,000 MW with natural gas, Bruce Power 6,500 MW of nuclear. Hydro Quebec generates 37,500 MW from 61 hydro and 24 thermal plants and are planning another 11,500 MW of hydro by 2035. BC produces 13,400 MWs, Alberta is 16,500 MWs, Saskatchewan produces 5,400 MWs, Manitoba 6,500 MWs, Newfoundland 8,500 MWs, New Brunswick produces 4,500 MWs, Nova Scotia 2,700 MWs and PEI has 441 MWs of production.
That is about 122,000 MWs of generating power. Hydro Quebec says they have 11,500 MWs of capacity to build so fearless leader will have to build out 110,500 MW of new generating capacity by 2050! Wow, if that sounds like a lot, well it is.
Our government is heralding the new SMR nuclear reaction in Darlington. that produces 300 MW of power and costs $5 billion to build. Using these to get to 110,000 would require 367 reactors which would cost $1.85 trillion dollars. Bruce Nuclear is planning a third plant adding 5,500 MWs. which would mean adding 20 of these. There is as yet no cost projections, but safe to say given the 413 billion to simply refurbish the four reactors at Darlington a new build of $50-75 billion would not be an unreasonable guess. Therefore that would be $1-1.5 trillion.
Hydro Quebec’s new generation projects of 11,500 MWs are being estimated at $185 billion which would mean if we could find 10 more projects that size costs would be close to $2 trillion.
Costs per MW to build a gas plant run upwards of $3,000/kw so if we were to build out all in gas costs for 110,000 MW would cost $330 billion. Far more reasonable cost wise but this would never pass the smell test for the environmentalists griping about global warming. Besides, Brookfield may own a coal plant but their big investments are in nuclear new builds through Westinghouse.
What raises a spoken eyebrow for me though is the reasoning for this doubling of electricity. And of course the grid that delivers it. What need does Canada have that is going to double its electricity usage. Even if we go all in on AI datacenter building, why would a public grid be required to feed it? The US is moving in the direction of state-alone generation for data centres. Both for electricity and the water cooling resources they will need. I think folks don’t realize the amounts of water that will be required to cool all the computers running on all that electricity.
Cars? I can not imaging that we will move ourselves to electric cars in such numbers that we will require so much more electricity. Home heating? Using electricity to heat your home is folly. We tried to switch over in the 70’s to disastrous results when electricity costs were minuscule compared to today. Also electricity tends to go out during the big storms in the winter which is when you need heating the most. Good luck staying warm then.
Then again maybe its all the new manufacturing that is coming into the province. Remember when we had the cheapest electricity in North America and manufacturers were clambering to build plants here. Then we shut down all the cheap coal plants and replaced them with the eyesore windmills that cost 10Xs as much to produce electricity that can’t be used as caseload. Manufacturers left so as to ensure that Ontario now has surplus electricity even with the elimination of the coal plants.
There is no possible way we can meet the goal of building this much new generation in less than 30 years. Let alone afford the costs in that time. But what our government can do is transfer many billions of dollars to Brookfield and associated companies. With his shares and options in blind trusts, fearless leader does not have access to this business anymore. Wow and if you believe that I have some Florida property in Goldengate for you.
Options, carried interest and his actual shares all contribute to Carney being able to deliver to his own bank accounts billions of dollars while all this is in ‘trust’. And if you are curious what all Brookfield invests in just google their site adieu will be absolutely amazed. All the things that Canada now says it is going to invest in are the areas that Brookfield invests in. Very coincidental I would think.
And yet, the boomers of Canada still refuse to look at this. Our leader is taking on Trump and the rest of the world wants him as their leader. Not much different then when JT became Prime Minister to the great fanfare of being the first post-national PM. And feminist PM to boot. A little Toronto Star, CBC and CTV propaganda and our feckless leaders are world stars.