Energy
GOP governors announce plan to ‘unleash American energy’
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/tvrd-cs-louisiana-gov-jeff-landry-image-2024-06-04.jpg)
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry
From The Center Square
“The reason that inflation is out of control is because of the federal government. If the federal government took its foot off of the neck of American energy, we could absolutely lower the cost of everyday goods.”
Republican governors on Monday announced a plan to “unleash American energy.” They also called on President Joe Biden to protect U.S. energy security after they say his administration has taken more than 200 actions against the oil and natural gas industry.
The governors unveiled their plan in front of a the PBF Energy Chalmette Refinery on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, led by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
“American energy has done more than any other industry to lift more people out of poverty globally than any other industry that I’ve known of,” Landry said.
He said governors know the needs of Americans more than anyone else.
“What we hear from our constituents is that inflation is eating into the pockets of Americans. One of the greatest drivers of that inflation is energy,” Landry said. “The reason that inflation is out of control is because of the federal government. If the federal government took its foot off of the neck of American energy, we could absolutely lower the cost of everyday goods.”
The Louisiana governor listed actions the president took “attacking the industry” from his first day in office, including pausing new oil and gas leases, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, prioritizing foreign energy over domestic energy, and releasing agency “rules and regulations at a neck-breaking speed,” that hurt Americans’ pocket books and prioritize “government regulations over free market solutions.”
Joining Landry were governors Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.
“Americans are paying 40% more every time they fill up their gas tanks and Republican governors believe one of the best ways to help Americans with all these rising costs is to support an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to American energy production,” Stitt said, similar to those being implemented in Republican-led states.
“Oklahoma has some of the most affordable reliable energy in the entire country,” he said, because of its “all-of-the-above approach.” Oklahoma is the 6th-largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, the third-largest producer of wind-generated electricity, has among the lowest electricity prices for commercial and industrial consumers, and reduced its electricity generation carbon intensity by 61% over the last two decades, he said.
Stitt cited examples of the president’s “regulatory war on American energy,” including another new EPA emission rule over which 25 attorneys general sued.
“When you’re a governor, you’re working for everybody,” Burgum said, including Republicans, independents and Democrats. “Right now, we’ve got so many Americans that are struggling to put gas in their tank and food on the table.” The governors are “fighting for every American who’s having to pay more than they should,” he said, because of Biden administration policies under the guise of “a big lie that says, ‘if we do all this it’s going to be good for the environment.’”
The U.S. is producing roughly 13 million barrels of oil a day but could be producing “15, 16, 18, 20 million barrels a day,” he said. “That would be not just energy independence, that would be energy dominance. We’d be selling that to our allies instead of our allies having to buy from our enemies,” which is what happened, he said.
The governors are part of a 21-governor coalition who called on the president to pursue “an all-of-the-above energy approach that will promote homegrown energy” instead of pursuing policies that benefit China.
Their solutions include ending regulatory overreach that restricts domestic energy production, including reversing policies on the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines; increasing onshore and offshore lease sales for all forms of energy production, including in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska; expediting approval of federal drilling permits; removing the pause on LNG exports; reversing EPA rules; working with Congress to enact comprehensive permitting reform, among others.
Energy
BC should revisit nuclear energy to address BC Hydro shortages
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/tvrd-rw-nuclear-power-station-image-2024-09-03.jpg)
From Resource Works
The short-term costs of nuclear SMRs are preferable to paying hundreds of millions to import foreign energy in the long-term.
British Columbia takes great pride in its tremendous hydroelectric resources, which result from the province’s many long, powerful rivers. For decades, BC has found it easy to rely on hydroelectricity as a clean, renewable source of power for homes, industry, and businesses.
However, the ongoing viability of hydropower in BC should be called into question due to worsening summer droughts and declining snowfalls, which have negatively impacted the annual supply of hydropower. BC has not seriously entertained the possibility of alternatives, even though other provinces have begun to embrace one particular source of energy that has been illegal here for over a decade: nuclear power.
By refusing to strike down the law passed in 2010 that prohibits the mining of uranium or the building of nuclear reactors, BC has made itself an outlier among its peers. Since last year, Ontario has announced plans to expand its existing nuclear capacity, which already provides the majority of the province’s electricity.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia have also begun to explore the possibility of expanding nuclear power to help power their growing provinces. BC has prohibited nuclear energy since passing the Clean Energy Act of 2010, which bans the building of reactors or mining uranium.
This prohibition is a barrier to diversifying BC’s energy supply, which has become more reliant on foreign energy. Due to energy shortages, BC Hydro had to import 15 to 20 percent of the energy required to meet the province’s needs.
Do not expect the situation to improve. Snowpacks are shrinking in the winter months, and summer droughts have become more frequent, which means BC’s dams will see a reduction in their power capacity. Power shortages may be on the horizon, leading to vastly more expensive purchases of foreign energy to meet BC’s growing electricity demand, driven by the construction of new homes and projects like LNG facilities on the coast.
Energy diversification is the solution, and nuclear power should be included, especially Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Low-carbon and reliable, SMRs can provide steady nuclear power in any season. They are flexible and much more cost-effective than traditional, large-scale nuclear reactors.
For a vast province like BC, filled with small communities separated by mountainous terrain, SMRs can be deployed with great ease to ensure energy stability in remote and Indigenous communities that still struggle with energy access. The Haida Nation, for example, is still reliant on diesel to supply its energy, which goes against the BC government’s clean energy goals and relies on fuel being shipped to the Haida Gwaii archipelago.
While SMRs are cheaper than massive nuclear reactors, they are still expensive and require strict safety regulations due to the ever-present risks associated with nuclear energy. However, is the cost of building nuclear facilities in the short term more expensive than importing energy for years to come?
In 2023, BC Hydro spent upwards of $300 million USD on imported energy, while the cost of the smallest SMR is $50 million, with the more expensive units costing up to $3 billion. Building SMRs now is the right decision from a cost-benefit perspective and in terms of BC’s clean energy goals because SMRs guarantee low-emitting energy, unlike imported energy.
The Clean Energy Act stands in the way of nuclear power’s emergence in BC. Amending it will be necessary for that to change.
BC is not going to need any less energy going forward.
It is high time to get over old fears and stereotypes of nuclear energy. Hydroelectricity need not be displaced as the cornerstone of BC’s energy supply, but it alone cannot face the challenges of the future.
Alberta
AI-driven data centre energy boom ‘open for business’ in Alberta
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tvrd-cec-alberta-data-centres-image-2024-08-29.jpg)
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Deborah Jaremko and Will Gibson“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas”
Data centres – the industrial-scale technology complexes powering the world’s growing boom in artificial intelligence – require reliable, continuous energy. And a lot of it.
“Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing in energy, dominating discussions at all levels in companies, banks, investment funds and governments,” says Simon Flowers, chief analyst with energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the power required globally by data centres could double in the next 18 months. It’s not surprising given a search query using AI consumes up to 10 times the energy as a regular search engine.
The IEA estimates more than 8,000 data centres now operate around the world, with about one-third located in the United States. About 300 centres operate in Canada.
It’s a growing opportunity in Alberta, where unlike anywhere else in the country, data centre operators can move more swiftly by “bringing their own power.”
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market, large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers instead of relying solely on the power of the existing grid.
Between 2018 and 2023, data centres in Alberta generated approximately $1.3 billion in revenue, growing on average by about eight percent per year, lawyers with Calgary-based McMillan LLP wrote in July.
“Alberta has a long history of building complex, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects with success and AI data centres could be the next area of focus for this core competency,” McMillan’s Business Law Bulletin reported.
In recent years, companies such as Amazon and RBC have negotiated power purchase agreements for renewable energy to power local operations and data centres, while supporting the construction of some of the country’s largest renewable energy projects, McMillan noted.
While the majority of established data centres generally have clustered near telecommunications infrastructure, the next wave of projects is increasingly seeking sites with electricity infrastructure and availability of reliable power to keep their servers running.
The intermittent nature of wind and solar is challenging for growth in these projects, Rusty Braziel, executive chairman of Houston, Texas-based consultancy RBN Energy wrote in July
“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas,” Braziel said.
TC Energy chief operating officer Stan Chapman sees an opportunity for his company’s natural gas delivery in Canada and the United States.
“In Canada, there’s around 300 data centre operations today. We could see that load increasing by one to two gigawatts before the end of the decade,” Chapman said in a conference call with analysts on August 1.
“Never have I seen such strong prospects for North American natural gas demand growth,” CEO François Poirier added.
Alberta is Canada’s largest natural gas producer, and natural gas is the base of the province’s power grid, supplying about 60 percent of energy needs, followed by wind and solar at 27 percent.
“Given the heavy power requirements for AI data centres, developers will likely need to bring their own power to the table and some creative solutions will need to be considered in securing sufficient and reliable energy to fuel these projects,” McMillan’s law bulletin reported.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which operates the province’s power grid, is working with at least six proposed data centre proposals, according to the latest public data.
“The companies that build and operate these centres have a long list of requirements, including reliable and affordable power, access to skilled labour and internet connectivity,” said Ryan Scholefield, the AESO’s manager of load forecasting and market analytics.
“The AESO is open for business and will work with any project that expresses an interest in coming to Alberta.”
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