Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power it for an entire day

For the first time on record, wind turbines have generated more electricity than was used in the whole of Scotland on a single day.

An analysis by conservation group WWF Scotland found unseasonably stormy weather saw turbines create about 106 per cent of the total amount of electricity used by every home and business in the country on 7 August.

Gale-force winds lashed much of the country with a speed of 115mph recorded at the top of Cairngorm mountain.

quote:

In May this year, renewable energy in Germany supplied almost all of the demand at a specific time of day, prompting power prices to turn negative during several 15-minute periods, meaning that consumers were being paid up to 50 euros (£43) per MWh to use electricity. Last year, wind energy supplied 140 per cent of demand in Denmark.

According to a new study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) last year, wind power generates the cheapest electricity in both the UK and Germany.

Talking about the UK-wide situation James Court, head of policy at the Renewable Energy Association, accused the Westminster Government of standing in the way of green energy.

“The UK already has 25 per cent of generation from renewables, and that was from a standing start 10 years ago,” he said.

“We are now at a point where renewables such as solar and wind are already cheaper than new gas plants; biomass and energy-from-waste are comparable to new nuclear; and grid-scale energy storage is being deployed commercially in the UK without subsidy.

Crude oil to carrots: Geothermal makeover eyed for Alberta’s old wells

Disused oil and gas wells dotting Canada’s energy heartland may bear fruit for Alberta’s farmers under a proposal to use waste heat from the idle facilities to allow crops to grow, even in the country’s harsh winter conditions.

Provincial legislator Shaye Anderson wants the Alberta government to allow an old well to be converted to geothermal energy to heat an 8,000-square-foot greenhouse. Currently the wells can only be used for extracting hydrocarbons.

The Living Energy Project pilot could help tackle the issue of Alberta’s 78,000 disused wells and provide jobs for thousands of unemployed oil field services workers, laid off as a result of the two-year slump in global crude prices.

quote:

Provided the government gives the green light, renewable company Sundial Energy Ltd will insert polyethylene pipe, used in high-pressure plumbing, down the wellbore’s steel casing to a depth of more than 1 kilometre, where temperatures are 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit (21-27 degrees Celsius).

A fluid containing water blended with methanol and a pump conditioner, to prevent freezing and rusting, is pumped on a continuous closed loop between the bottom of the well and the surface, where the heat is extracted.

The closed loop means the fluid does not come into contact with hydrocarbons underground or produce on the surface.

The Leap Manifesto: Could This Be Canada's Progressive Answer?

quote:

LEWIS: But we don't have the same situation that we have in the United States and the UK, where we have a dominant neoliberal party like the Democratic Party or like the Blair Labour Party, where there needs to be a revolt against that party. That's the Liberal Party in Canada. And there's no sign of a revolt from its left flank. We've just elected with a massive majority this, you know, hot young prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who's enjoying an unprecedented long honeymoon of popularity with the Canadian people and is saying all these beautifully progressive things. But they can't do anything, because they're a committedly neoliberal party.

We're in a time where we come out of ten years of the most viciously right-wing government we've ever had in this country, the Harper government. Activists got a lot of new people to our causes because they were doing so many horrible things. So we've grown in strength. But we were also fighting like mad for that ten years, and people are a little tired. So we don't have this surge of new energy in the Canadian social movement landscape that you have in the Bernie moment in the United States, or that you had in the early days of the Corbyn moment in the UK.

HEDGES: The other challenge for progressives in Canada is that the country's last-standing center-left government is in Alberta, home to the largest energy project in the world, the tar sands. The Leap Manifesto has faced criticism for calling an end to all fossil fuel infrastructure, which many worry would mean a heavy loss of jobs.

LEWIS: We're in an accident of history right now where the only NDP government, the only center-left government left in Canada, is in Alberta, which means that the center of oil production in Canada and the heart of the fossil fuel economy now is in the hands of a center-left government.

It's totally understandable that people who are in freefall as the oil industry is collapsing would find that to be a threat. That said, the threat is not coming from the Leap Manifesto. It's the oil industry, the most powerful industry and the richest industry in the history of humanity, which has abandoned tens of thousands of families in Alberta, they're the ones who were squeezed, over-rewarded with crazy salaries but squeezed for every drop of effort that went into producing that oil when the boom was high, and then they just get tossed on the trash heap by the industry as soon as the price crashes.

I suspect that a reason for this is that the economic crisis of sub-prime mortgages in 2007/2008 didn't hit as hard here, so people here did not suffer to the same extent that people in Britain and the US did.  There was no collapse in the housing market here as there was in the States.  So people in the US and Britain turned to parties or politicians who were expressing disatisfaction with the status quo more than they were here.  Instead, here, it was people expressing disatisfaction with the unpleasantness of Harper, but not necessarily with the system.  That's still the case now, which is why the calls for a Canadian Sanders won't be the panacea that some people feel it would be.  What will be the exact panacea I don't know, but continued activism with both social movements and with the NDP seems a good thing to continue here.

..i believe work became much harder to get and this continues today. especially better paying work. employeers have a larger pool of unemployed to draw from which made them more demanding of working folk. job clubs began to change how they counselled their clients and instruction became much more intense. at the same time governments services were reduced.

Full agreement regarding the precarious work situation in Canada.  Things are very competitive now.

Canadian Medical Association completes divestment from fossil fuels

The Canadian Medical Association’s General Council, held last week in Vancouver, may well be remembered as the moment that Canadian MDs made climate change — dubbed “the biggest health threat of the 21st century” by the World Health Organization — a priority.

First, the diagnosis of climate change as a health emergency was laid out in detail by one of Canada’s most well-respected doctors, Dr. James Orbinski, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in 1999. The Canadian Medical Association then confirmed it had in fact completed the divestment of its organizational funds from fossil fuels.

 The meeting kicked off with a keynote address by Dr. Orbinski, one of Canada’s most noted humanitarians. “There is no question that climate change is the biggest health threat of our time,” he said, adding that "we cannot possibly live, we cannot possibly survive, we cannot possibly thrive” without a functioning biosphere. He spoke of the disproportionate impacts on Canada’s North, where temperature increases are already in the range of three degrees Celsius, and about the risks of extreme weather, wildfires, flooding and changing patterns of infectious disease.

One of the most passionate moments of Dr. Orbinski’s speech came when he was discussing the malnutrition and food-security risks of climate change.

“In 2011, climate-change driven drought affected 13 million people and 500,000 people died, in the Horn of Africa. This is utterly unacceptable," he said. "That we simply know this and we allow it to continue. It requires that we see ourselves differently in relation to others in the world. This is the consequence of climate change. It is profound and it is utterly unacceptable.“

Leap Manifesto: A Climate Change Debate

Thu, 15 Sep at 6:00 PM, Ottawa, ON

Program Outline:
6:30 pm - 6:45 pm: Reception 
6:45 pm - 7:00 pm: Traditional Algonquin Greeting by Verna McGregor
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm: Leap Manifesto a Climate Change Debate

*****

Debaters: 

1) Avi Lewis  

 Is one of the leading proponents of the Leap Manifesto as well as a Canadian documentary filmmaker, author, and activist. Avi Lewis offers insightful and valuable points of views in regards to the complex current issues faced in Canada. Some of his important and informative talks include topics ranging from climate change and crisis, Canadian political parties, to the role of governments.

2) Thomas Homer-Dixon

Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Associate Director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and Professor at the Faculty of Environment, with a cross-appointment to the Political Science in Waterloo, Thomas is focused on using innovation to solve complex issues. Some of his primary research interest includes complex threats to global security, causes, and resolution of violent conflict, the structure, and change of ideologies, climate change, energy security, and public policy. He also writes books, reviews, and articles on various global issues. His take on the leap manifesto, Start the Leap Revolution Without Me, was published in the Toronto Globe and Mail, April 22, 2016

This New Electric Bus Can Drive 350 Miles on One Charge

In the world of electric vehicles, Tesla gets most of the love. Over 100,000 of Elon Musk’s big, bad autos are zooming around the world, gasoline-free. But how many of those can claim to take an additional 40-odd cars off the road—each?

That’s the promise of the Catalyst E2 Series, a new electric bus debuting today that’s aimed squarely at city public transit.

The bus from Proterra, a leading North American manufacturer, is set to hit the streets next year. Musk’s top of the line Model S gets 315 miles per charge. Proterra’s newest? Up to 350 miles on city streets—enough, in many places, for a full day’s worth of routes. Last month, this Goliath logged 600 miles on a Michelin track on one juice....

My hunch: A lot more people support Notley's approach as opposed to the leap off the cliff manifesto.

By-the-way Notley is the only NDP leader of any government in Canada so perhaps, just perhaps, NDP supporters need to listen to her, that is unless they wish to continue committing political hari-kari.  

Notley confident in Alberta's pipeline plan despite continued opposition

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/notley-confident-in-albertas-pi...

World's first large-scale tidal energy farm launches in Scotland

The launch of the world’s first large-scale tidal energy farm in Scotland has been hailed as a significant moment for the renewable energy sector.

A turbine for the MeyGen tidal stream project in the Pentland Firth was unveiled outside Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

After the ceremony, attended by Nicola Sturgeon, the turbine, measuring about 15 metres tall (49ft), with blades 16 metres in diameter, and weighing in at almost 200 tonnes, will begin its journey to the project’s site in the waters off the north coast of Scotland between Caithness and Orkney.

The turbine will be the first of four to be installed underwater, each with a capacity of 1.5 megawatts (MW), in the initial phase of the project.

But the Edinburgh-based developer Atlantis Resources hopes the project which has received £23m in Scottish government funding will eventually have 269 turbines, bringing its capacity to 398MW, which is enough electricity to power 175,000 homes....

NDP publishes discussion guide on Leap Manifesto

Renewal Guidebook

Discussion Guide II:Policies and Principles

Given that the Leap Manifesto is a document encompassing many policy areas, it has been broken down into smaller sections and those sections have been organized into specific issue categories. The relevant sections of the NDP’s Policy Book and, in some cases, our 2015 Election Platform have also been included as a reference. These sections are followed by suggested questions and launching points for group discussions.

As always, the options for Electoral District Associations are to discuss the Leap document in its entirety, in part or not at all, with or without the help of the following set of workbooks. This is an EDA driven process. If your EDA wishes to follow another path for discussions, that is also encouraged. Our staff will consider all feedback collected by September 30th, 2016.

Given the complex nature of this document, our hope is that EDAs will provide our team with fulsome responses for consideration. In turn, these responses will be taken as recommendations to guide us forward....

A guide?  For how to discuss something?

Well.  It's about time.

You wouldn't let your teenager drive the family car without some Driver's Ed, would you?  So why would you feel like you could discuss something without similar instruction?

From the posted guide:

Oops.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

Just read Naomi K.'s article in Sat G&M.  What crap!  She hardly mentions global warming.   It's an anti-capitalist diatribe.  Global warming=too much fossil fuel, especially coal, then oil, is NUMBER ONE not inequality, First Nations, water or even pollution. Wake up and forget your green-socialist dreams to concentrate on green energy even capitalist green energy.

Some really interesting postings in this topic

None of the issues you list are separate from one another. Until we appreciate the interconnectedness of the problems we face, we have no chance of coming close to solving any of them. Okay, so Klein's article wasn't riddled with specific references to global warming. Is there anyone out there who isn't aware of her opinion?

Yes, she takes a position on capitalism that makes many liberals and social democrats squirm, but as long as we pretend that the problems are 'particular' and that there's there's nothing wrong with the system, in 'general', we have no hope of making progress. Excellent article, I thought. We're in it for the long haul, but we're in it, nevertheless.

..well said geoff.

The Preston Model

When Labour took control of Preston City Council from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance in May 2011, it appeared a bittersweet victory. The city had been battered by the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2007/8, and now faced massive central government funding cuts as the austerity budget of David Cameron’s Coalition government, formed a year earlier, got underway. The council would lose half of its government grant over the next three years, placing it among the top 10 worst-hit local authorities in Britain. Private investment plummeted too. In November 2011, plans for a £700 million shopping center development – 12 years in the making – collapsed following the withdrawal of its flagship retail store, John Lewis.

Traditional city growth models, based on attracting inward investment for big infrastructure projects, could no longer be relied upon. Nor, under conditions of recession and austerity, could conventional tax-and-spend redistribution. Instead Preston, a small city with a population of 140,000 in England’s northwest Lancashire region, embarked on a remarkable community wealth building program, which aimed to ensure that the large amounts of money leaking out of the local economy were instead invested in local businesses and, in particular, cooperatives. Although still at an early stage, the strategy is generating interest from other regions in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. National politicians are starting to take note too, with Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell recently hailing Preston’s creativity and vision.

Getting started

In 2011, Preston’s incoming leadership asked Matthew Brown, a councillor since 2002 and now Cabinet Member for Social Justice, Inclusion, and Policy, to look at ways to boost the local economy. Brown had a longstanding passion for worker cooperatives, and was inspired by the success of cooperative economies in Mondragón, Spain and Bologna, Italy. He was particularly impressed by the work done by The Democracy Collaborative and its partners in Cleveland, Ohio, where the innovative Evergreen project involved setting up worker cooperatives to provide goods and services to the area’s major quasi-public, nonprofit (or “anchor”) institutions.

Both Cleveland and Preston had experienced unemployment and urban decay following waves of deindustrialisation. In the 18th and 19th centuries, technological innovation helped Preston become a powerhouse of cotton textile production, until the industry collapsed after the First World War. During the mid-20th century, Preston became a centre of electronics and engineering, but this declined in the 1970s. Although there have been sputtering signs of growth since, poverty and inequality remain high.

In 2012, Ted Howard, The Democracy Collaborative’s President, was invited to Preston to present his ideas on community wealth building. Howard’s visit had been coordinated by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), a Manchester-based think tank with considerable experience of working collaboratively with local authorities and other institutions to boost local economies. Preston and CLES formed a partnership, and the city’s community wealth building strategy got underway in 2013.

Anchors engaged

The project’s first phase comprised three aspects:

• to engage anchor institutions and understand their spending.
• to identify ways to change procurement practice at the anchor institutions.
• to discover the local economy’s capacity to supply good and services to anchor institutions.

Six institutions signed up: two councils (Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council), a police force (Lancashire Constabulary), Preston’s largest social housing association (Community Gateway), and two further education colleges (Preston’s College and Cardinal Newman College). The members of this community wealth team were careful to engage the top leadership of each anchor institution at an early stage. They found a willing audience. Derek Whyte, Preston City Council’s Assistant Chief Executive, says: “To be honest, I thought it was going to be a harder sell. I think we were helped by the fact that all our institutions have a very strong sense of place and community. I’m not sure it would be so easy to get that in a city like London.”....

Sounds like the 20th century and the 21st century are having a disagreement, and the former is getting frustrated.

The New Climate Denialism: Time for an intervention

For decades, the urgent need for climate action was stymied by what came to be known as “climate denialism” (or its more mild cousin, “climate skepticism”). In an effort to create public confusion and stall political progress, the fossil fuel industry poured tens of millions of dollars into the pockets of foundations, think tanks, lobby groups, politicians and academics who relentlessly questioned the overwhelming scientific evidence that human-caused climate change is real and requires urgent action.

quote:

The bad news is we face a new form of climate denialism – more nuanced and insidious, but just as dangerous.

In the new form of denialism, the fossil fuel industry and our political leaders assure us that they understand and accept the scientific warnings about climate change — but they are in denial about what this scientific reality means for policy and/or continue to block progress in less visible ways.

In the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, for example, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) issued calls not only for a global climate agreement, but also for a global carbon pricing system. The OGCI includes most of the world’s largest oil companies (Shell, BP and Total among them), so this was a big deal. But as research by the UK-based InfluenceMap uncovered, “behind the scenes, however, [these companies] are systematically obstructing the very laws that would enable a meaningful [carbon] price.”

Here at home, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)—the most influential oil lobby group in the country—proclaims on its website that “climate change is an important global issue, requiring action across industries and around the globe.” Sounds nice and green. Yet CAPP continues to push hard for expanded oil sands production and new pipelines on behalf of its members, which include the country’s largest oil companies.

Claiming that we can take effective action on climate change and ramp-up fossil fuel production at the same time is what CCPA senior economist Marc Lee refers to as “all the above” policy-making.

It’s what former Prime Minister Harper was doing when he claimed Canada could be a climate leader while at the same time increasing fossil fuel production, so long as industry reduced emissions per unit of oil, gas or coal produced (i.e. reducing so-called “emissions intensity”).

It’s what Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Notley are doing when they say we will have carbon pricing and various regulations, while at the same time supporting expanded oil sands production and new bitumen pipelines.

It’s what Premier Clark is doing when she proclaims BC will be a climate “leader” while at the same time pursing a ramp-up in natural gas fracking and the development of an LNG export industry.

And it’s what Canada is doing when we sign the Paris agreement on climate, while failing to adopt the stringent policies that will help keep global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The “all of the above” approach is wishful thinking at best. A recent study by earth scientist David Hughes published by the CCPA and Parkland Institute found that if Alberta and BC go ahead with planned expansion of the tar sands and development of an LNG industry, it will blow our Paris climate commitments right out of the water.

On a related front, the new climate denialism operates hand-in-glove with Indigenous Rights and Title Denialism....

The New Climate Denialism: Time for an intervention

quote:

It may be difficult to imagine a world that isn’t dependent on fossil fuels, or a future where Indigenous Peoples exercise their full historic rights – and there’s no doubt it will take hard work to get there. But just as children today have never known smoking to be permitted in restaurants or driving without mandatory seatbelt laws (both changes that were fiercely resisted by industry but are now fairly universally accepted as the new normal), those born in the coming decades likely won’t know what a gas station is, except for what they see in old movies.

The reality of climate change means that one way or another, the next generation is going to live through an industrial revolution in high speed. That’s simply a fact. Our political leaders need to move past these current incarnations of denialism, and focus instead on making sure the transition can occur in a just manner.

The Leap Manifesto, by itself, says almost nothing. People should be examining the supporting documentation. It doesn't take much of a look at the documentation before you realize the premises the Leap Manifesto is based on is more or less fantasy.

One of the things it calls for is 270 new 1300 MW hydroelectric plants. That would be 270 new plants larger than the Site C project. Where will these plants be built. Well, I can tell you they will be built where there is water flow. That would include areas like the Peace River valley. But the greens are absolutely opposed to the Site C project, so where then?

But that is only a small part of what the document says is required. And that document, like the Leap Manifesto itself, has no indication of what all this might cost. However, I think we can take it as a given that those countries who cannot now afford to build electrical generation wouldn't be able to in the future, leaving the largest part of the world's population with no hope for increased standards of living.

What's kind of funny is that Naomi Klein goes on and on about capitalism, yet the proposals in the support document for the Leap Manifesto would be an enormous boost to capital around the world. Money taken from taxpayers to fund a huge private enterprise project.

..here's a bit of reality.

1. The leap must begin by respecting the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land, starting by fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

..everything follows from the above demand..first and foremost. which is what we are seeing happening across the country from indigenous folks coming together. resisting the pipelines. resisting the encroachment by governments and corporations onto their rights and territories. which is why there is a discussion about capitalism because at it's very center is colonization.

..another reality is that the leap is a very broad coalition which includes but not limited to faith, labour, environmental and indigenous folks. it continues to grow on a local, national and global scale.

edit

How do you reconcile the need for 270 huge hydroelecric projects with the need to respect aboriginal title?

..your treating a backgrouund document a if it were a demand which it is not.

I am treating the support document for what it is, that is, support for the contention that the world can be 'off oil' by 2050. I didn't suggest they put that document in there. They did that all on their own. Now, they either agree with the document, or disagree with it. I find it hard to resolve why they would put the document in there if they disagreed with it. To me that makes no sense.

If the premises of the support document are wrong, where does that leave the Leap Manifesto? Nowhere, is where.

Everywhere I look I see discussion around the Leap Manifesto concentrating on Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, and almost no discussion of the foundation of their argument.

This is the way I see it. Tney wanted to push the idea of 'off oil', but realized that just saying so won't cut it. So they went looking and found this study by a couple of engineers that said it could be done, and they chose to base their argument on that study. Otherwise what would be the point of including that study as a reference to statements made in the Leap Manifesto? The problem is, I don't think they really looked at their support document, and I don't think any other Leap supporter has either.

Again, if the study they based their argument on turns out to be a pile of hogwash, where does that leave the Leap Manifesto? It leaves it out on the end of a very shaky limb.

..i don't see this document or the leap itself the way you do. and i don't speak for the leap. but i believe that if you want answers to the issues you raise the leap folks will accommodate you. you can contact them from their web site or facebook page.

..my support for the leap lies in those 15 demands and the processes of implementation that begin at the community level. also support for all those folks behind the leap. and my greatest concern is not can we actual accomplish the stated goal by 2050 is but that through the use of police/military we will not be allowed to even try.

Ontario cancels plans for more wind power

Ontario has been paying inflated prices for wind and solar, then selling the surplus for a quarter of cost of production. The difference is made up by the taxpayers.