Weekly Energy Charts
November 04, 2022
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Featured Stories
Record Sturgeon (Margins)!
Andrew Leach
No, not the fish. Thanks to reader Lance Freeman, I took a look at margins for the Sturgeon refinery for the first time in a while.
Well, they’re high. Really high. Record high.
I’ve spent lots of time
criticizing this investment, and there is still no reason to have nearly
doubled the tolls on this refinery, but for the past while, it should
have been pushing some big returns onto the Government’s (and the
proponent’s) books.
Peak Fossil Fuels
Yousaff Habib
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a number of global ripples, with most being negative. However, some of these ripples might not all be bad for humanity’s future according to the latest edition of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (WEO).
Markets for natural gas, coal and electricity have been severely disrupted by the current geopolitical situation, with effects particularly pronounced in Europe. Oil markets, which have been tumultuous over the past few years, have been thrown into even more turmoil recently. As such, more and more investments are being made in renewable energy.
While not directly linked to the war in Ukraine, the WEO indicates that for the first time ever, global demand for fossil fuels will reach either a peak or plateau by mid 2030’s. This is astonishing news as fossil fuel usage has increased alongside GDP since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This paradigm shift may very well mark a turning point for humanity.
The IEA report also explains how the increase in solar PV, wind energy, electric vehicles, and battery storage has contributed to the declining use of fossil fuels, and how the development of policy that supports these endeavors could result in an even quicker decline in humanity’s use of fossil fuels.
Russia has historically been one of the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels, but sanctions resulting from the invasion of Ukraine are pushing countries that once relied on these exports to shift to cleaner, greener energy. We’ve covered some of the bigger projects, especially the ones occurring in Germany in previous editions of the Weekly Charts, but it seems as though a growing number of countries are beginning to see energy independence as a benefit, and investing in renewable technologies to achieve that.
For more information, read the full WEO here.
We’re not off coal (yet)!
Andrew Leach
Earlier this week, there was a noticeable zero on the AESO’s supply and demand page: a zero beside the word coal. That’s right, at one point on November 2nd, it looked like the day we’d all been waiting for had finally come: a coal-free hour. Sadly, I think we’ll have to wait a bit longer.
When I saw a few people tweeting about it, I rushed to the computer thinking that a special issue of our mailer might be in order, but this is what I found:
That looks more
like a data outage than anything that could happen without a blackout in
the province, so I went and took a more detailed look, thanks to our
partners at NRGStream.
AB Generation Mix
I think it’s safe to say that was a data blip, not a short-term plant shutdown. Regardless, we still haven’t had a coal-free hour in Alberta, and I don’t think we’ve had a coal-free minute either. But, let’s look on the bright side: for most of the day on November 2, 2022, there was only 1 coal plant operating in the province, with fewer than 400MW of supply onto the grid coming from coal. What a change from only a few years ago!
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