Last year, 2022, will be the year we look back on as when we globally started moving away from the outdated idea of transition to a future of energy transformation..Imagine if instead of banning fossil fuels, an idea from the end of the last century, we rather transformed our existing energy systems to provide low emissions energy. We would keep the miraculous benefits of fossil fuels and use technology to reduce or even eliminate many of the negative impacts. Emerging carbon technologies are making this possible and there are billions of dollars in new projects being proposed just in Alberta..Why is 2022 the year? The war in Ukraine is not causing the change, rather it's revealing for all to see the old ideas from the last century on energy policy have failed. We need 21st century solutions to our energy and environment challenges..There are some who are stubbornly holding on to a future without fossil fuels and even saying the solution to energy shortages is to double down on the very energy sources that are the root cause of a crisis in Europe that is spreading around the world. It is obvious cutting off gas from Russia to Europe is directly causing an energy shortage, but this energy shortage and vulnerability was festering for more than a decade..Our grid is an electric, not electronic, technology. It's a reasonably reliable and old technology from the 19th century. With modern control systems we can put 10% to 20% of interruptible power sources in to our existing grids. Beyond that every megawatt of solar or wind has to be matched with back up of on-demand power which is typically natural gas combined cycle power plants. That means the capital cost of each megawatt of wind and solar is close to double, when the back-up power requirements are included and operating costs of on-demand power is often higher as well..Ironically the baseload power to back up renewables could simply do the entire job. The wind and solar ends up being a duplication to reduce emissions without generating any additional electricity. In the case of Ontario emissions per megawatt actually went up as well. The emissions from wind and solar backed up by natural gas were higher than the current electricity supply which is largely nuclear and wind. .This problem for interruptible renewables led to an excellent article entitled 'The paradox of declining renewable costs and rising electricity prices.' It turns out pushing European grids beyond their capacity for interruptible power was creating energy poverty and making electricity supply more reliant on natural gas, well before the war in Ukraine. Some commentators suggested Putin took advantage of a pre-existing weakness more than he caused it..More evidence is the recent Trottier report that noted several Canadian provinces are facing electricity shortages in the very near term. Most notable is hydro superpower Quebec, which already cannot commit to long term electricity supply contracts for new industrial projects. Investment is going elsewhere where electricity supply is more reliable..Moreover, the Quebec government is now suggesting people keep homes at 19 degrees as it looks more and more likely there will have to be curtailments of electricity supply before the next election in 2026. This looming crisis in energy supply in resource-rich Canada clearly has nothing to do with the Ukraine war and is simply a failure of government energy policy..To avert or mitigate an energy crisis that will cause unacceptable human suffering, governments will have no choice but look to the private sector. Entrepreneurial talent and capital are required to make up for decades of bad policy. The private sector for a few years has been proposing a transformation of fossil fuels into much lower emissions energy using new carbon technologies. A solution that is more affordable, more technically feasible and faster to achieve, than the energy transition proposed by many central governments..Carbon-tech encompasses all aspects of the current energy systems. New artificial intelligence and modern SCADA control systems greatly reduce methane emissions and increase efficiencies which reduce CO2 emissions. Carbon capture and sequestration is quickly emerging as a mass market solution to reduce emissions for costs well below wind and solar when the full cost is considered..Most exciting is the emergence of carbon recycling technologies. The most advanced example, is capturing CO2 and processing it in to cement additives. Five percent of world emissions are from making cement, and it is low hanging fruit for CO2 recycling. But almost everything natural is made from CO2 and the products that can be made from it are endless with well-understood processes. There's even a company making the worlds purest vodka from CO2 today. Organic chemistry is cool — and we have known for a long time how it works. This is only an issue of commercialization and there are emerging carbon-tech companies sprouting up world wide to meet that challenge..As people realize the private sector has a solution for both the looming energy crisis and the planet — a transformation of our existing energy systems — they will balk at requirements to have 19 degree homes and unnecessarily high energy costs..The people in Europe are burning garbage, cutting old growth forests and re-starting coal plants. This is the direct consequence of a 20th century energy transition policy..And 2022 will be the year we look back on the time we started to embrace it.
