Alberta s premier has put a pause on green energy projects and the left and the mainstream media, but I repeat myself, are losing their minds. What does that mean for Alberta? What does it mean for the grid? And why is this happening?
00:00:00.000Alberta's premier has put a pause on green energy projects and the left and the mainstream media,
00:00:06.040but I repeat myself, are losing their minds. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:11.340Earlier today, the federal government released the draft clean electricity regulations.
00:00:33.900We will be doing detailed analysis in the months ahead. However, one thing is clear.
00:00:38.580The draft regulations are unconstitutional, irresponsible, unrealistic, and would make life less affordable for Albertans and Canadians.
00:00:50.220They will not be implemented in our province, period. They can't.
00:00:54.140We are beginning our talks with the federal government, and if we can't get alignment, Alberta will chart its own path to ensure we have reliable and affordable electricity for the people we serve.
00:01:03.640This means making sure we have adequate natural gas baseload and incentivizing CCUS-abated natural gas generation, small modular reactors, hydrogen, and a sustainable amount of wind, solar, and other renewables to drive down electricity costs.
00:01:20.560Albertans and our government care about responsible environmental stewardship.
00:01:24.460We are confident Alberta's plan will get us to a reliable and affordable carbon-neutral power grid by 2050.
00:01:30.300This is the direction Alberta is going. We invite the federal government to support us.
00:01:36.280Alberta's Premier Daniel Smith continues to impress me with her boldness and her ability to ignore the screaming and the crying and the gnashing of the teeth that continues to come from the left and the mainstream media when she does something that they don't like,
00:01:53.420which are things that are generally in the interest of everyday Albertans.
00:01:58.960In this case, she has put a pause on green energy projects until a thorough examination is done of the Alberta electrical grid and the end of life of these green energy projects.
00:02:13.500Because in oil and gas, you need to have a plan and a budget for the end of life of your project, but not so in green energy.
00:02:23.140They can just let these things run their course and then move on to the next thing.
00:02:29.420And it leaves Alberta taxpayers and Alberta landowners holding the bag and then, you know, the impact on the grid.
00:02:36.220If you have a strong reliance on green energy and then the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine and there's no fossil fuel backup, what does that mean for Alberta?
00:05:39.900In fact, December 20th was one of them.
00:05:42.760So just imagine just before Christmas, you go to blackout and all the food in your fridge gets, you know, unfrozen and everything else.
00:05:49.760And again, you know, people always think of a blackout as being, oh, you know, maybe one or two hours till they get things back up.
00:05:56.500Well, you know, it can be worse than that.
00:05:58.240Also, people should recognize when the system has to shed some load and go to one of the big industrial users and ask them to please be disconnected from the grid, they're paid for that curtailment.
00:06:15.640They're paid many thousands of dollars for that.
00:06:18.720So on the upside, it does save us from going to blackout, but we still have to pay for it.
00:06:23.340Now, in the interim, I note that about a thousand megawatts of, we were short about a thousand megawatts of dispatchable power last year.
00:06:35.040So dispatchable power is like natural gas.
00:06:38.340It's the kind of power that you can turn up or down at will, whereas wind and solar are entirely dependent on whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
00:06:50.960Anyway, we were short about a thousand megawatts last year, and that's probably another factor in the near blackouts.
00:07:01.060Now, I've seen online that we've since added almost a thousand megawatts.
00:07:06.160So that will bring us back into shape.
00:07:08.860But if we're planning to add more renewables, then once again, the system will be unstable.
00:07:14.720So I think the premier did a good thing.
00:07:16.520Now, there's something I learned from that in that I had no idea that there these green energy projects are going ahead without a plan for the end of life of the project.
00:07:28.400For me, I was sort of blindsided by this because in oil and gas, particularly in the oil sands, there has to be a plan in place for the end of life of the project with regard to reclamation and then managing the site going forward.
00:07:43.000And that's all in the approvals process of the project, as in a shovel cannot go into the ground unless there's a plan for this thing when construction is done and when the useful life of the project is over.
00:07:58.020There's none of that, apparently, happening in the green energy industry.
00:08:03.100So when you see the outrage from the environmentalists left, all we're asking them to do is do what we're expecting the oil industry to do and that the oil industry has already done for decades.
00:08:17.140That's right. And when you look at the reclamation in the oil industry, if you look at the oil sands, really, we're cleaning up Mother Nature's spill.
00:08:26.040And you look at the wetlands that have been recreated, you know, they're beautiful, thriving wetlands.
00:08:32.020And the reason why there's like a 40-year certification process is so that people can't just drive up with some sod, you know, lay some sod and plug in a few trees and say, we're done.
00:08:43.160You know, it's got to be a thriving ecosystem that will survive on its own and be very similar to what was there at the beginning.
00:08:50.380With wind and solar, the problem is that, you know, many of the aspects of these constructions are quite toxic, solar panels, leach, cadmium and lead.
00:09:03.280So you do not want them to be on prime agricultural land, maybe out in the special areas, you know, where there's very limited opportunity for agriculture there.
00:09:15.000That might be a good area. It's also a very sunny area, but you don't want it on prime agricultural land.
00:09:21.500And, you know, maybe it won't leach today, but as it gets damaged over time, that's when the layers start to disintegrate.
00:09:30.780And cadmium, there's an interesting story about Japan where they had some cadmium leach into agricultural soil, and it caused people to have itai, itai, which translates to ouch, ouch, but it's actually an internal disastrous poisoning of the body that cannot really be remediated.
00:09:57.560So you don't want it. So you don't want that on agricultural land.
00:10:00.920The other thing with wind turbines, there's a tremendous amount of concrete used in them.
00:10:07.820And we have one example from Transalta. It's from quite a few years ago, the Taylor Wind Farm.
00:10:13.820It was only up for seven years. Then when they took it down, they reclaimed the concrete, 60 tons of concrete from one wind farm.
00:10:23.380And the way that they reclaimed it is they sort of scattered it alongside one of their hydro facilities as soil erosion control.
00:10:35.080So it didn't go in the landfill. So that's good. But, you know, how many places can we scatter 60 tons of concrete and call it reclamation?
00:10:43.660Now, I understand there are ways to reclaim concrete, like you can grind it up and use it for aggregate or something.
00:10:49.940Some people have noted that on our Twitter feed. Great. But then let's have that written up in the approvals.
00:10:56.520Now, the other thing people should be aware of, you know, I mentioned that we now have another thousand megawatts on the grid.
00:11:03.320There are 23,000 megawatts of projects in the pipeline.
00:11:09.100So, you know, to keep the grid balanced, you have to have equivalent conventional power to go with the renewable power.
00:11:17.460That would mean we would have to build an additional 23,000 megawatts of conventional power.
00:11:24.920And a further issue is that, you know, a couple of the upcoming gas coal to gas conversions and small gas plants, you know, because of the way that the clean electricity standard is structured and stated, it's not clear if they would be approved.
00:11:42.680So, you know, you have people who are already spending a lot of time and money to switch over to gas, only to now be told, well, hey, maybe not, or maybe you'll be penalized, or maybe now you have to add CCUS to this project, which will up the cost many billions of dollars.
00:12:00.460And another thing that people are not aware of at all is that in the background, there's a group of senators called the Climate Senators, Senators for Climate.
00:12:15.720So there are about 40, 50 senators, and they have a bill, I think it's S243.
00:12:21.960We have a short video about it on our website, but they plan to cut off all financing for any project that has any relationship to fossil fuels.
00:12:33.960So, you know, you may, the governments may say, oh, yes, we're going to grandfather in these gas plants, or oh, yes, we would never shut you down entirely, don't worry about it, you know, no problem.
00:12:45.080In the background, the senators are actively trying to cut off financing for any fossil fuel operation.
00:12:52.580And these senators have, of course, all the ENGOs on board, a whole bunch of big investors on board, you know, they've got lots and lots of very powerful supporters.
00:13:04.380So, you know, we might be fooled into saying, oh, well, I guess it's going to be okay, then only to have this end run by the Senate, which is supposed to be the chamber of sober second thought.
00:13:17.580You know, as you say that, that's exactly what Mark Carney does for the United Nations, former head of the Bank of Canada.
00:13:27.920He works to debank fossil fuel projects.
00:13:31.080And it looks like he has been in the ear of these senators who are, I guess, applying a social credit environmental score to these energy projects that are in the national interest.
00:13:43.000And if we think this can't happen, ask a convoyer what happens when you have the wrong social credit score, according to the government.
00:13:49.940Right. And one more thing, we have to remember that Catherine McKenna, who is working with the high level expert group at the UN and her report in Teherty Matters, their objective is to have no fossil fuels whatsoever.
00:14:06.560Not just that you can buy and trade, you know, cap and trade, that you could buy carbon credits to offset your emissions, not just that you reduce it or that you reduce the intensity, nada, nothing.
00:14:18.920So, you know, this is like hyper craziness at the UN level, but she's also a very influential person.
00:14:34.240And why? Because she enacted French national carbon policy internationally, especially in Canada.
00:14:41.980Right. That was the France-Canada climate culture agreement of 2015, I think.
00:14:47.760Wow. Now, just shifting gears, but also on the very same topic, as we talk about end of life of green energy projects and what to do with these toxic sites when we're done.
00:15:01.020One thing on the list of things we wanted to talk about was as they move away from fossil fuels or try to get us to move away from fossil fuels and shift to green energy, you end up with these massive battery farms.
00:15:11.680And these massive battery farms can be highly toxic and highly dangerous, particularly if a fire breaks out there, because you do need specialized firefighting to happen there.
00:15:25.300And again, this is, I just want to apply the same standards we give to the oil industry on green energy.
00:15:31.420So many, I think all oil and gas installations, they have to have industrially trained firefighters on site.
00:15:40.760Some of them are private, some of them work directly for the company, but that's, again, not a standard set for green energy.
00:15:46.560Yeah, well, there's a fellow, I don't remember his name, actually, but he's a scientist in the States, and he's been involved in opposing various wind projects and battery projects down there.
00:16:01.360And he calls them battery electric storage system bombs, because when these things start to light on fire, they go without stopping.
00:16:13.220And the worst thing is the emissions from them are extremely toxic.
00:16:17.860Hydrogen fluoride is something that basically can just rot you in a moment.
00:16:23.280And he calls it using firemen as guinea pigs.
00:16:26.480So most of these battery electric storage facilities would be outside of major communities, but that means that rural firefighters, most of whom are volunteers and not that well-equipped, would be the first responders, and they would definitely be putting their lives seriously at risk.
00:16:45.960And there's a peer-reviewed paper, I think I sent you, where they did an experiment in Europe, testing out the emissions from these lithium-ion battery fires.
00:17:02.240And again, you know, that's not going to happen all the time, but it just has to happen once, and bad things happen.
00:17:09.540And, you know, and these facilities are very large, like the Transalta one at Pincher Creek.
00:17:18.260I think it's about the size of a soccer pitch.
00:17:22.300So, you know, when we were talking about the media outrage, I remember that Jason Markossoff had a story in CBC,
00:17:31.380and he'd interviewed Bino from Pembina Institute, who kind of blithely said, well, they can just add battery storage, and, you know, no problem.
00:17:41.340Well, first of all, it's phenomenally expensive.
00:17:44.600Secondly, it has to be replaced every 10 years, or millions of dollars, because the battery life is short, you know, when you're charging and discharging.
00:17:53.160And battery storage like that really doesn't cover anything more than a few minutes to a couple of hours.
00:18:01.460So you say, oh, well, let's, and we'll buy a whole bunch of batteries, and then we'll cover all the hours.
00:18:07.220Well, you know, people don't realize that power use varies on like an hourly basis.
00:18:14.960And Ken Gregory did an analysis for us, for the U.S., actually, and found that it would cost something like $200 trillion U.S.
00:18:26.300I can't remember off the top of my head, but I can send it to you, to have a wind-solar battery configuration that would power the U.S., which is more than the U.S. GDP.
00:18:41.440I think one of our reports indicates it would be about $2 trillion to have sufficient battery backup, because you can't have it just for two or three days or even a week.
00:18:54.960You need enough to cover reliably a long period of time, which often can be 30, 40 days.
00:19:05.560It's dangerous, and, you know, it's not something that you can just blithely do overnight.
00:19:14.460Yeah, and it will be in rural communities in prime agricultural farmland.
00:19:19.080Like, that's the only place with that kind of room to create these sort of facilities.
00:19:25.160Also in the news, I wanted to ask you about this, because you did a really great video, again, telling people to calm down, but also taking the right tone amidst a tragedy.
00:19:36.640Right now we see, as is always the case with any sort of wildfire, that the left is using the graves of the people who have died and the people who have suffered loss and tragedy to push their climate change agenda.
00:19:52.940And again, fires in Hawaii, just like the fires in Alberta, like the fires in B.C., like the fires in Quebec, the left is telling us that these are caused by climate change.
00:20:03.160So tell us what you found when you looked into the issue.
00:20:07.240Well, it turns out that the Hawaiian islands, especially the Lahaina area, have been at serious risk of wildfire for a long time.
00:20:17.600And our forestry wildfire consultant said actually he's surprised it hadn't happened until now.
00:20:24.740And one thing that's happened is the islands used to have a lot of sugarcane and pineapple plantations.
00:20:30.620So these were all irrigated and tended.
00:20:34.880And over time, that industry has shut down.
00:20:37.920I think it's gone from about 80% to about 45% land use now or something like that.
00:20:44.040In its place has grown all of this invasive species of grass, which I've got a video I can send you of a fire in Oahu.
00:20:54.020With the grass is about three meters tall, and then it dries.
00:21:01.280So, you know, people always think that the islands are lush, tropical places.
00:21:05.240They are, but they also have a dry season, and it depends on what side of the island you're on.
00:21:10.740So if you're on the drier side, and you have all these lush grasses standing tall,
00:21:16.980when they dry, it's just like the best kindling ever.
00:22:42.880It's almost as though you can't get out of the way of it.
00:22:45.160And that seems to be sort of what happened in Hawaii.
00:22:48.300And it's just terrible, especially if you're unaccustomed to experiencing that.
00:22:53.280Grass fires are a thing that happens on the prairies all the time.
00:22:55.860A spark from a train can cause a grass fire that can burn for days and days.
00:23:00.840A cigarette butt out the window if you live in an area that has been a grass fire waiting to happen, but it hasn't happened yet.
00:23:08.720You really don't know what to do when it does.
00:23:11.520And you can look at our presentation, which is on YouTube.
00:23:15.660And I will also post the PowerPoint on our blog.
00:23:18.840But you can see that for a long time, the wildfire people in Hawaii have been assessing the potential risks and dealing with other wildfires.
00:23:30.200There have been many other wildfires, but not combined with this kind of wind.
00:23:35.460So just a tremendous tragedy all around.
00:23:42.720It is, but leave it to the environmentalist left to use a tragedy to their own ends.
00:23:48.100I wanted to ask you about something that is near and dear to my heart, and I think yours as well.
00:23:56.420And that is the ability to speak our minds on issues that we have carefully researched, to share our feelings, to share our findings.
00:24:04.520But it doesn't seem like that could be the case if the left gets their way with some policies that are being led out of the United Nations.
00:24:14.940So why don't you tell us about what the policies that are proposed could mean for Canada,
00:24:21.700but also what they could mean for skeptics of official narratives like yourself, and I guess myself too.
00:24:27.100Well, people may not be aware that in June, just shortly after the special interlocutor on missing children and unmarked graves,
00:24:40.680that's Kimberly Murray, just after her interim report came out, I think it was four days after,
00:24:46.240the Justice Department issued an action directive on the United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples,