HANNAFORD： Go nuclear or freeze
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Summary
This week's guest is Catherine Porter, a well-known independent energy consultant on the British electrical grid. She is from my old home country, and she is an expert on that of the power sources, built-to-service grids. In fact, she will call in as an expert witness when things are in dispute. She has been doing this for more than 25 years, and has just produced a document on electrification, Can the Grid Cope? I'll hold this up where everybody can see it.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
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of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, February the 5th. My guest this week is Catherine Porter,
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a well-known independent energy consultant on the British electrical grid. Yes, she is from my old
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home country, and she is an expert on that of the power sources built-to-service grids. Welcome,
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Catherine. Thank you. Catherine, you have a very specific expertise in oil and gas and how power
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is financed. In fact, you'll call in as an expert witness when things are in dispute. You've been
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doing this for more than 25 years, and you've just produced this document here on electrification,
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can the grid cope? I'll hold this up where everybody can see it. How would a person get a copy of this?
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If you visit my website, which is what-logic.com, in the blog section, there's a link to it.
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I'm going to give you an opportunity to say that again a little later in the program, but
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you're also known, probably reviled, I would guess, as a standing critic of renewable energy generation,
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and you've had a lot to say about Great Britain's famously unreliable grid and the soaring costs across
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the country because of the great green delusion of successive UK governments. Well, a lot of us in
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Western Canada think our own government's priority for renewable energy generation is a bit delusional
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too. So let's start with this. What's wrong with renewable energy? Green is good, right?
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Okay, so not all renewable energy is equal. Some renewable energy, like hydro and geothermal,
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is more like conventional energy you can control when it's running or when you use it. But wind and
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solar, and this is what people tend to mean when they use the term renewable energy,
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is intermittent and it's also low energy density. And they create two problems. One,
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the intermittency means that they don't run all the time and you have no control over when they run.
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There is no solar at night. People often forget that. Wind typically only works 30% of the time.
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Solar, it depends where you are in the world, how much it will work.
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So you have this whole additional cost then that has to be incurred to provide generation when wind
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and solar are not available. And then the low energy density means that it covers more land and
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requires a lot more grid to connect it. You need many more wires. If I wanted to build a typical gas
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fired power station, that would be 800 megawatts. And the units here don't matter. The equivalent wind
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farm would require 60 turbines each with a wire connecting it. But because your gas power station will
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work around more than 90% of the time, the wind is only about 30% of the time, you then need three
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times that number to give you the same amount of electricity over the course of a year. So that's, you
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know, 150 to 180 times more wires than you would need for conventional generation. And the cost of that
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Of course. Well, we understand that. I think what you have just said is a sufficient explanation for
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any ordinary citizen who's mildly interested in the subject. And yet, we have governments, we have
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one in Ottawa, that seems to defy the science on this. Now, I know that they're going to put out a paper
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on reorganizing the Canadian grid, we're expecting it in about three, three weeks time. And yet, from what we
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have seen in the past couple of years, all that comes down is this arbitrary instructions that you have
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to be carbon net neutral by an arbitrarily selected year, which is 2035. It takes 10 years to get the
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permits to build a pipeline or a generating station or an electrical transmission line. I mean, by the time
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you've got all the stakeholder buy-in, it takes that time. So, you know, we're going to end up at 2035,
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and we're going to be expected to be carbon neutral, but we're not going to be. So why do you think
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governments are, first of all, so obsessed with the green ideology? The British government is
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every bit as obsessed as the Canadian government. And then, why do they not understand the simple
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thing? Like, if you have too much solar and too much wind, and you have a still night when the wind
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doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, there's too much. It's going to be a problem for you.
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They don't want to believe it. I think it's that simple. They've bought into this very
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naive, very childlike idea that you can have this green fantasy and that a few batteries will sort
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out all of your intermittency problems. And it's just not real. Britain was one of the first countries
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to bring in these net zero rules, and there was almost no debate in parliament. And part of that was
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because it was all so remote. You know, the target then was 2050. It felt like a long time away.
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And really, what sort of a psychopath doesn't want to save the planet? And they don't understand that,
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first of all, this stuff doesn't actually save the planet. The supply chains are highly polluting.
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But also, the high costs that this has imposed on consumers in Europe has led to massive
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deindustrialisation. And so what's happened to that industry is that it's moved into Asia,
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where the carbon content of energy is higher, and you incur additional emissions from
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transportation. Now, why Western governments cannot rationalise this and understand these basic facts
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is completely beyond me. I do not understand why they persist in this false narrative. And you see
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Ed Miliband, the energy minister in the UK, he will say with huge amounts of passion and conviction that
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we have to do these things for the climate emergency. And yet, his policies are causing global emissions to
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rise. So, it's not only that this is bad for consumers, it doesn't do any benefit to the environment either.
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So, you mentioned that consumers, as you may suppose from my accent, I still have contacts back in Great Britain.
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And some of my friends who are retired and on a pension are ready to blow their brains out. You know, it's the classic dilemma.
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Do we pay for the electricity or do we buy the food to cook on the electric stove? You know, it's a tough one. How bad is it?
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Britain has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world and the fourth highest domestic prices.
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It's really bad. Households have been struggling significantly. Obviously, high energy prices are very
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inflationary, and we're seeing significant job losses as a result of deindustrialisation. We're losing
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something like a thousand jobs a week in the North Sea. It's horrific. Even the unions are starting
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to oppose this labour policy. And so, this is hurting everyone. And the fact that the current governments,
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and what we've seen actually, interestingly, is that the Conservative Party, which was in office until
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the middle of 2024 and had been in office for many years, left office and really had a sort of
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Damascene conversion where they realised that this was not the right way to go. And so, they've now
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rejected the net zero 2050 target. Reform, which is a new political party in Britain, it tends to be
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labelled as more on the right of the political spectrum. That's not entirely accurate. Some of their
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policies are quite socialist, but nevertheless, this is how they're characterised. They're very strongly
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against net zero. In fact, they call it net stupid zero. And so, Labour is starting to be isolated in
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this position. And we're seeing across Europe as well, voters are starting to see the light. Arguably,
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the last German election was triggered when Volkswagen announced its factory closure. So, it's quite
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interesting. Germany had experienced very high electricity prices for many years and had lost quite
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a lot of industry. BASF, the big chemicals company, had closed its factories and moved its production to
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China. And people didn't really notice. But when Volkswagen said it was going to do the same,
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that really cut through to the public and was a big factor in that early election that they had,
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bringing down the Schultz government. So, we're starting to see this pushback from voters. It was
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one of the narratives in the US presidential election the previous year as well. So, voters are
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starting to rebel. They're starting to see that these high prices are not in their interests. They're
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starting to see grid instability. We had, obviously, the blackout in Spain. 11 people died. And that
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was very benign weather conditions. And there's been subsequent research looking at mortality data
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that says there were probably 165 excess deaths over the two days. So, 11 directly attributable deaths,
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and then 165 excess deaths that were likely, statistically, as a result of the blackout. So,
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these are not trivial matters that we should be complacent about.
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traced the progress or the decline of power production in Europe and in Great Britain closely.
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Where do you see Canada on that scale of horror? How far behind Europe are we?
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Steve McLaughlin So, I think Canada's coming to this party pretty late. And that's quite a big problem.
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If you look at the energy strategies that different countries have, we have much of Europe following
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this strongly wind and solar-led approach, which requires huge amounts of additional grid infrastructure.
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We see that also in Australia. We see it in Japan. In the United States, there was a similar strategy.
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They've dropped the wind aspect, but they still have huge, multi-billion-dollar grid expansion projects.
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I mean, even just in ERCOT in Texas, it's several billion dollars worth. And that expands across the
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whole country. And China also. And China's quite critical here. They're building out grid infrastructure.
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They're building out every type of generation. And this is creating huge pressure on supply chains.
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If you want to buy important grid equipment, transformers, you're waiting two or three years.
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A super transformer is more like four years. And there's going to be an enormous constraint in the
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copper market. Because on top of all of these plans for renewable generation, and it takes 15 tons
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of copper per megawatt for offshore rent, it's a hugely intensive, copper intensive thing to do.
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And grids are very copper hungry. We now have the advent of AI data centers. This also requires
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a huge amount of copper. And people are going to have to choose, do we want to use this scarce copper
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for AI data centers that add significant value, or for wind farms that only work a third of the time?
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And why China matters here is that they dominate the copper supply chain. The midstream section,
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where all the processing is, is primarily in China. And they have a lot of trade agreements with the
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producing countries. So China has built this very strong strategic position in copper. And other
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countries are going to really struggle to get the raw materials they need to develop these strategies.
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So Canada coming to this so late in the game is a huge disadvantage. And really, Canada will be much
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better served to pivot to a higher energy density solution, to minimize that use of copper. And
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Nuclear and natural gas. Okay. Now, I was surprised to, in our pre-conversation, I was surprised to see
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that you were aware of the brownout that Alberta suffered in 2024, in January. We were very aware of it,
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of course. But news of that has spread to England and your consultancy. And now,
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since then, we have had something like 400,000 people come to Alberta. It's a 10% increase in our
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population. So we were skating along the edge there at the beginning of 2024. And our premier,
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Danielle Smith said, well, you know, we're trying to get things built. We need to increase our base
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load. And she wanted natural gas. Our federal government had a different idea. More solar,
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more wind wasn't going to work for all the reasons we've just been talking about.
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But in cold weather, you have an even bigger problem with wind and solar. So solar panels get
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covered in snow. And then obviously then they don't generate and wind freezes up. And in the beginning of
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2024, this isn't something that was widely known in Europe. I try and follow things outside just
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what's happening in the UK. But it wasn't something that really hit the press in Britain. But a big
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part of that problem was lack of weatherproofing in the power system. It was not unlike the issue that
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Texas experienced in Sturmuri, which is actually quite astonishing when you consider that minus 40 degrees
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is not uncommon in Alberta. So to not be weatherproofed at minus 20 was, I think,
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quite a significant regulatory failure. And that, you know, you need to make sure that infrastructure
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in cold places can withstand the cold. So even before you're looking at system adequacy in terms
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of do we have enough generation, is will that generation work in the typical conditions that we have?
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And I think the real surprise is that it hadn't happened sooner rather than that it happened at all.
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Interesting picture that came out. You referred to Texas there. There was a picture of a helicopter
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steam cleaning or trying to blast all the frost off one of these massive wind generators.
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And the irony that Texas and all the places on cross-green Earth, energy laden as it is,
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should find itself unable to keep the lights on because of this, well, I'll call it a wrong direction,
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on the reliance upon wind energy. Well, yes, but to be fair in Texas, they also had significant issue
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with the gas infrastructure freezing up. I think Texas can be more easily forgiven for not having
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weatherproofing against very cold weather. I don't think Alberta can have the same grace. Cold weather is
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very much more common here. Yes, well, yes it is. So the advice to the Premier then would be what?
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Well, the first advice is make sure that the infrastructure you have already will operate
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in the temperature conditions that you have here. And then the second one is just don't rely on
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intermittent generation. If somebody wants to put solar panels on their roof and they do it without
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subsidies, then fine. And no issues with that. I would prefer they didn't buy them from places
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tainted with slave labor, but your roof, your choice. But no subsidies, don't subsidize stuff that
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hardly ever works. To put this in context, Britain started subsidizing wind in 1990.
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The premise was that this was an immature technology that required support to reach maturity. After 35
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years, if it's still not mature, and now they're signing 20-year contracts, I think we have to accept
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that this stuff is never going to be economically viable by itself. We will always have to subsidize it.
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And this is something that if you want to make that choice as an elected leader, you need to make sure
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that your voters understand it. Because I think most would not buy into that, would not be willing to
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spend, to indefinitely subsidize something that works at the time.
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Of course you have to deceive the voters and tell them that there's a perfect...
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Well, tell them the truth and do something different. It would be, I know, so naive of me.
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Yes, I can't believe you're saying it. That's why I'm not a politician.
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No, but in all seriousness, the instructions that came out from the previous government were
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quite inflexible. We had to do things a certain way. How are we going to do that? We're even talking
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about, at one stage, how we would build new natural gas baseload generators. And if we didn't meet the
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standards developed by the federal government, we're looking for some way to indemnify the
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corporate executives who would face criminal charges. This is how... I've heard much of that
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talk for the last year or so, and we now have a different prime minister who tends not to talk in
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those kinds of terms. But it is an astonishing thing that we, in Alberta, we have this huge
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population increase and we don't seem to have a plan to get the natural gas generators going. So,
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you are recommending, would you recommend that Alberta get nuclear fast?
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British expert says, Alberta government needs nuclear.
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Yes, everybody needs nuclear. Nuclear has no emissions in production and it has extremely high
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energy density and it lasts for a very long time. You're now looking at 60 to 80 year lifespans for new
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large scale reactors. And really large scale is where it's at. And I'll be more specific,
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I'll say you need to go and build the Korean technology because they have it nailed down.
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They've done eight of their APR 1400s, four in South Korea, four in UAE. Average build time,
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eight and a half years, average cost between four and five billion US dollars.
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So it's by far and away of the next generation nuclear technologies, the cheapest. It does require
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enriched uranium. I know that's a topic of discussion here in Canada, but this is a genuine solution
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that can be adopted and works. And I think right now the focus has to be on do what works.
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On do what works because everybody needs megawatts. Everybody in the world is chasing megawatts.
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Partly because of poor strategy historically, and partly because now AI is coming and that's going to
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require a huge amount of more energy. And here in Alberta, the preference, as it is in many places,
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is for the technology companies to bring their own power. And this means go off the grid. Be on
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the gas grid, don't be on the power grid. And this is the message time and again. But because of supply
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chain constraints, everyone's going for really small generating units. They have higher emissions,
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they're less efficient. So really think about...
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On the other hand, they can be placed closer to the point of need. I was going to come back to you
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on this. You recommended large-scale units. Well, if you're in the middle of a large city,
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then I guess that's the thing to do. But if you have dispersed population centers, as we tend to do
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It's less of a consideration than it used to be. With nuclear, it's less of a consideration because you get
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so much energy out of the plant to begin with, and it's so reliable. Now, the trouble with building
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smaller reactors is that... So the very small reactors, they don't functionally exist yet.
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Now, you've got G and Hitachi building their 300 megawatt units at Darlington, but they're all on the
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same site. So that's essentially a gigawatt project. That's basically a big reactor pretending to be
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small reactors. And so that's fine, you know, if you can get that going. But you do have some
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disbenefits from the smaller scale. You have to build a significant security perimeter around
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nuclear facilities. So if you're going to have small ones dotted around the place, you have to
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think about the cost of that security. And then when you line that up against something like line
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losses, at the transmission level, line losses are not that significant. The biggest losses are at the
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lower voltage level. So they're only looking to about two, two and a half percent at the high voltage
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level. But of course, you don't build your entire grid on just a single solution. Your data centers
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shouldn't go and build a big nuclear power station because it doesn't suit the load variation that
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they have. You get big variations in energy consumption from data centers over time, and that
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can change very quickly, faster than a gas power station can respond to, and definitely faster than
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a nuclear power station can respond to. So smaller units there make sense, but not for the whole load.
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You don't want to be doing three megawatts. I was in Texas a couple of weeks ago, and I was told,
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yes, football fields full of three megawatt units for a thousand megawatt load requirement.
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These are not efficient engines. They give you a lot of flexibility, but they're not efficient in
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terms of energy consumption. We're almost out of time, Catherine, but one last thing is that we have
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spent 20 minutes talking about how to generate power in a situation where there are artificial constraints.
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We are only constraining power producers because we think that the carbon dioxide pushed into the
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atmosphere by a coal plant, to some degree by a gas plant, is somehow going to bring the earth to
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a fiery end, and it's always 20 years further than where we are. They've been saying this for 50 years.
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So I typically try and avoid the debate about climate science. I'm interested in the policy
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implications of it. What I don't see a cost-benefit analysis comparing attempts at preventing climate
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change with attempts at mitigating the impact of climate change. Would it be cheaper to adapt to
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climate change than to try and prevent it? Because there's no evidence that prevention will work.
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I mean, that's the other crazy thing here is that we're doing all these things on the assumption that
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if we halt the increase in temperature, that will make some difference. But we don't know it's possible
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to halt. There are natural drivers here as well, or it might be too late. We just don't know.
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So we should be looking more at cost-benefit analyses. But also, we should keep in mind that
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these are not neutral choices, that expensive energy also kills people. A lot of the climate
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concern is that climate change harms lives and livelihoods, but expensive energy harms lives
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and livelihoods. Unreliable energy for sure harms lives and livelihoods. You look at the Spanish blackout,
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11 people died, but there was an enormous economic cost there as well. We had a half a day in London
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where I think it was 60,000 homes plus Heathrow Airport lost power. That probably cost 50,
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60 million pounds, just the impact on Heathrow Airport.
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Well, they get their power from different solicits. So probably just in that specific
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area, there was a difficulty, but across London as a whole, I don't think so.
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But so, so the very things that you're trying to prevent, harm to lives and livelihoods,
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can be caused by ill thought through energy policy. And that is, that is not something
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that we really see policymakers addressing, and they need to. I don't think voters will be forgiving
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if large numbers of people, and it's very much more serious here, given the extremes of temperature
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that you experience in Alberta. So if you start having blackouts in the middle of the winter,
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Well, I think we'll have to draw a line there on the discussion,
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much as I'd like to take it longer. What are you in town for?
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Just meetings, developing my business here in North America. I think it's well known that things are
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not going well in Europe, so trying to spread my wings a little bit.
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Don't blame him. Catherine, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for making 20 minutes for us.