A friend of mine, always with a keen eye on interesting things, passed on an interesting quote from the CERA Week energy conference the other week. The head of the International Energy Forum mentioned a surprising statistic, as quoted by Javier Blas on Twitter:...
Terry Etam
Etam: Energy Wise, How Do You Even Describe 2024
Huh. Look at that. It’s been ten years since I started writing about energy. Not that that particular trivia interests anyone, why would it, however it is interesting to look back at the impetus for writing and how that has changed. Ten years ago, as I worked in a...
MB/SK/AB NeeStaNan Utilities Corridor: First Nations-Led Utility Corridor is a 21st-Century Nation-Building Initiative
“The trading of goods has been in our DNA as Indigenous People for centuries, but somewhere along the way this was lost. It’s time to regain our prosperity, for the betterment of our communities and for our country.” – NeeStaNan website
Etam: Achtung: Learning From Germany’s Energy Shambles
In 1880, a great author, Mark Twain, whom you may never hear spoken of again because he had the audacity to write in the vernacular of the day, wrote an extremely funny essay called The Awful German Language. “Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod...
Featured News
Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Etam: Automobiles, Human Nature, and the Challenge of Building Cars that People Actually Want
Some people out there have an inner itch to do things different. Maybe it’s art, or music, or some other glorious pastime that we as the rest of humanity benefit from, far, far more than we pay. What sort of car these types drive is fascinating; usually something...
No Calling in Sick or Waiting for a Nice Day – The Grid has to Perform on the Worst of Them
Saturday night, the middle of the cold snap, was something to be endured
Etam: On Low Natural Gas Prices…
Is there any critical industrial material as bizarre as natural gas? The stuff holds almost zero interest for the general public, for the same reason no one is interested in the sound of a washing machine. Both boring. Both ubiquitous. Natural gas isn’t even sold on...
Etam: Awkward – Canada Creates a Brand New Fossil Fuel Subsidy
Upon hearing about the federal government’s decision to roll back the carbon tax on heating oil, I rolled up my sleeves. The point of writing about energy at all is to try to illuminate some aspect of an energy topic from a viewpoint inside the energy sector; to...
Etam: Panic at AI’s Looming Energy Appetite
There is an army of analysts out there, a quasi-industry, that attacks data streams like piranhas, ripping everything apart and, unlike piranhas, analyzing the living daylights out of them. There are people that spend days on end analyzing, for example, not just...
Etam: Solar Power’s Massive Potential
As we slide inexorably into the clutches of Soviet-style cultural narrative control and thought prevention courtesy of ‘fact-checking’ institutions and their oddly subjective ‘fact books’, I offer the following conundrum as a hurled wrench into the cogs of the greasy...
Etam: Power-Hungry AI Data Systems Will Follow Cheap, Reliable Energy
“Crypto mining has been described as running your car in neutral all day so it can solve crossword puzzles in exchange for an occasional coupon that’s mostly useful for buying heroin online.” – Vice
Etam: Voters Will Need to Decide If Our Energy System Remains Affordable and Reliable, or Descends Into Chaos
Nassim Taleb, if you’ve never read his stuff, is an odd and fascinating character; a writer with towering intellect, vast wealth, and an odd sort of humanistic humility, yet at the same time he provides a reliably volcanic reaction to pomposity or ineptitude....
Etam: Hey Look, Solutions To All The World’s Big Problems With Napkins To Prove It! Now Send Money
Sheesh, what’s with all the drama? The news is full of bad-news stories about doom and gloom; can’t everyone see we just need to roll up our sleeves and get to work? Most of this stuff isn’t even all that hard! We can solve the world’s obesity/health problem in...