This is despite all the community issues. It’s the same exponential curve in pretty much every country.
This is mature tech, getting cheaper every month.
Okay. But other than heuristics, what makes you think CCS will work?
What is the current cost vs projected future costs? What does it need to get to in order to be something that can at least be subsidised to viability?
What are the inherent energy demands of CCS and what does this mean in the context of declining renewables costs?
The answer to these questions are not great for CCS doing anything useful.
cool,
why doesn’t solar which Ontario has invested billions in ever make up more than 5% of its energy at any given point in time?
Lol. I mean that’s kind of an odd question.
“Oh yeah. If EVs are so good, why did my cousin’s Tesla break down twice last month?” You know I’m Australian right?
Fortunately this stuffs all online, so I can basically look under the Tesla’s hood and give you a high level answer
Firstly. It’s because much of Ontario looks like this
Which means that solar is going to do relatively worse in Ontario than globally.
Secondly. Looks like Ontario had a big push on solar since 2009 that was poorly designed.
Third. Ontario has a huge fleet of aging but expensive nuclear. Which changes economics of solar, especially in cold climates (peak demand is heating not cooling)
Solar’s costs have dropped by about 10 times in that period, and will keep dropping.
So we need to look at current state. And what’s the best strategy for Ontario going forward.
Your regulator published this, which shows relative costs of energy types, as based on Ontario costs and conditions.
The LCOE (right hand column) is a good (if incomplete) way of measuring relative costs.
You can see wind is the cheapest, then solar, with gas, nuclear, etc much more expensive.
Unfortunately they don’t have “firmed” cost on there. Which is the cost of adding batteries to the renewables.
From what I know in other places, your firmed wind and solar are probably a little more expensive than gas and nuclear, but will keep coming down.
So the strategy for Ontario is probably
- build out as much wind as possible, as fast as possible.
- build some solar, where it makes sense without requiring significant network upgrades. Plan to build more as costs keep going down
- extend nuclear
- if there’s social license to build new nuclear and it can be done at a reasonable cost do that.
- add a fuck ton of batteries, but probably wait until costs come down further (I’m talking 2 years, not 20)
- use gas for peaking and balancing over the next decade of so and then shut it down.
This requires a lot of building, and a fair bit of government investment or a real price on carbon, but these are all established tech and solved problems
There is absolutely no need for CCS in this mix. And non of this is particularly difficult with some political will.
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Weirdly. This came up on my LinkedIn.
Skip the Aussie stuff, go to the summary of Ontarios energy history.
Our energy was the 2nd lowest in North America I believe. Then the Wynne/ Liberal government spent a fortune on solar and wind power and our energy prices skyrocketed. Nuclear was always there from the 60s. Our power is not expensive because of nuclear, it is expensive because of renewables.
Also every time a reactor has been built in the past some guy suggests there’s a new way to build it slightly more efficiently and because it hasn’t been done before that way it ends up going over budget.
You could be like South Korea and steal Canada’s reactor designs without paying for it and build the same reactor type again and again really cheaply.
I mean. That’s a weird thing to assert when I’ve provided two sets of data
Energy is complicated, so everyone is entitled to their opinion.
It completely ignores that the offshoot called Bruce Power which is private and supplies 30-45% of Ontario’s power much more cheaply than OPG (state owned) and their energy mix is almost all nuclear. It also turns very large profits.
Bruce is also looking to expand and build several more reactors because they know how much cheaper nuclear is if done correctly.
Yeah. They took on a bunch of nuclear power that the state built at a 30 billion dollar loss, the state didn’t pass on those costs to the Private company.
Genius level private enterprise.
Nuclear is great when it’s built. It’s the parts at the start and end that make it expensive.
“Bruce wants to build more nuclear” (you heard) is not a more persuasive argument than Ontario’s system operator’s own deep price analysis, which I provided.
Private enterprise is usually more efficient than public, province wants more nuclear. Most anti- nuclear articles are written by those with financial interest in renewables. Ontario’s biggest misstep wasn’t nuclear, it was solar and wind.
Lol. Okay buddy. Have a good day.
This is silly and simply not based on the facts. Solar and wind will for sure be a huge part of a decarb future.
There are no serious people arguing the advancement of these renewables was a mistake.
Nuclear will play a role for sure. But everything in energy isn’t always one tech is awesome and all others are terrible.
As I’ve said before, a decarb world will for sure be combination of technologies.
I’m saying Ontario’s biggest misstep was solar and wind.
Don’t know what you mean by misstep. Of course thier efforts to advance solar and wind were not a misstep economically or from a carbon balance perspective.
I believe investment in solar and wind are necessary and will benefit humanity greatly. Ontario’s investment was too large and too soon and thus a huge economic burden to the province.
The province spent billions on it and it still makes up a very small amount of the energy produced.
I think investments in nuclear are better from a carbon balance perspective and significantly better from an economic perspective.
That is the whole role of government. They have to step in early for these things and spend lots to get it to a commercial place.
Those dollars cannot be measured in traditional capitalist market ways.
Understood, but there’s levels to investment made. If you go too big too soon you end up with financial issues and little to show for it which is exactly what happened to Ontario.
You also burn political capital because it gives conservatives a lot of GUBMENT WASTE! red meat to run on.
Australian article on Ontario’s massive debt from nuclear. Rugby, did you write this?
I think at minimum, it came up on his Linkedin.
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