Forbes has asked a good question with this article.
Les Routledge
Bulk Water Exports
Are bulk water exports evil if it is one developing nation sharing water resources with a neighbor?
Greenpeace Would not Approve
Gitxsan First Nation takes ownership stake in Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project
Fast Frank on Energy Policy
We have to arrest this current situation where Canada is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to prices on exports.
Featured News
‘Side Issues’ Result in Much Higher Costs to Our Health and Social Systems
As we enter the year 2022, most Canadians will have lived their entire lives under the shibboleth that says we have the best health-care system in the world. Our beloved medicare is universal in scope, free of charge and offers equal access to all. What country could...
Touted Climate Emergency for Calgary is Deceitful and Undemocratic
Calgary has sworn in its first female mayor. A week earlier, less than 24 hours after winning the mayoral race, she gave her first post-election talk-radio interview to Ryan Jespersen, mostly involving a series of softball questions. He asked her the obligatory woke...
Smart Grids – Distributed Energy
Over at the progressive Grist site in November, there was an article posted on the comparative advantage of North America and China in energy systems. It makes for an interesting read.
These days the American Dream seems a touch haggard. We’ve become an anxious, ill-tempered nation of grievance-peddlers, drunk on fairy tales, waiting for someone else to solve our problems. Among other infantalizing features of modern American life is the fact that we are passive, thoughtless consumers of energy, forever suckling at a far-away teat, whether it’s foreign oil producers or politically connected corporate behemoths. We send money out of our communities; someone sends power in. We are as dependent as sheep.
Smart Grids – Regulatory Reform Needed
A commentary on how Smart Grids require regulatory reform is posted at Reason.com, which is a monthly print magazine of “free minds and free markets.”
The obsolete electro-mechanical electric power network, built by and for a monopoly industry, cannot support the kind of growth experienced during the last 20 years in so many other industries. All that stands in the way of vibrant, customerfriendly electricity products and services is an outdated infrastructure run by hesitant monopolies and regulated by bureaucrats with little incentive to improve things. We can do smarter.
Smart Grids – A Manitoba Perspective
The following article was originally released in June 2009 http://fcpp.org/publication.php/2804
Moving Manitoba Towards Smart Energy
Over the last few years, the provincial government and Manitoba Hydro have tied themselves in knots trying to figure out how to get electricity from massive northern dams to southern markets.
Smart Grids – Protecting Privacy
Smart Grids could be used to support the introduction of dynamic competition and customer choice into electrical markets. Embracing open standards and streamlining burdensome regulations are a route to that outcome.
Smart Grids – Adam Smith or Orwell?
A quick scan of blogs and media coverage of Smart Grids for electricity quickly reveals a fear of a system that could have been envisaged by Orwell. Fears of big brother type of systems are given voice by many, including Lawrence Solomon at the National Post.
Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.
Smart Grids – Creating Transparent Markets
Lawrence Solomon continues to vocalize on his views that smart grids are an uneconomic, politically motived fantasy. Instead of seeing the potential for Smart Grids to usher in competitive, market-based pricing for electricity, he appears to believe that we are best served with the current rigid system where it is quite difficult to balance supply and demand.
Perhaps clarifying some of the assertions from his most recent post can help people understand the situation more clearly.
Data Hogs Are Early Adopters
From the Financial Post, a report that suggests that heavy data users are not data hogs but rather an early indicator of what the typical customer will consume in the future.
The research suggests that the demand of heavy users today will be characteristic of typical users by 2015. If this situation emerges, we need to ask how UBB will solve traffic congestion on telco Internet services.
I Blame IPCC and NGO’s
NASA’s attempt today to launch a satellite to study global warming processes resulted in failure
Good Customer Service
Government service delivery processes could really benefit by reviewing the Manitoba Hydro customer service system and processes as a good example of providing responsive and reliable service to the public.