Oh, Canada!

Good Borders Make Good Neighbors

That isn’t what he meant and you know it. Robert Frost I mean. But in the case of our good neighbors to the north there is some diminished irony in the phrase.

No two other neighboring countries in the world have a better friendship and working relationship than the U.S. and Canada. As Yoda would say, “Far from perfect it is.”
But in general it does work.

From the energy viewpoint Canada is our best international supplier of many things:
22% of our oil imports come from Canada.

Canada supplies 82% of all US gas imports (16% of total US consumption)
One-third of all the uranium used in US nuclear plants comes from Canada.

For over a hundred years Canada and the US have conducted across-the-border trade of electricity – in both directions. Over time, and particularly recently, Canadian exports grew to 50 billion kilowatt-hours while American exports to Canada fell to under 20 billion.

Clearly the lower cost of Canadian Hydropower should be of serious appeal to US suppliers. One would think that the flow would be much greater than it is. But the powerful interests in Texas and Oklahoma for years downplayed the hydro power concept for obvious reasons.

The good news is that more gates now are opening and hydro power is coming from Alberta to Montana; New Brunswick to Maine; and Northeast Utilities and NStar Electric have applied to Hydro-Quebec for 1,200 Megawatts of power to New England.

Further, a study recently completed by EEM, Inc., a Canadian Consulting firm showed that the current Canadian Hydropower Potential is as large as 163,100 MW.

So it seems that Energy Independence can mean a lot as long as we are not independent of our neighbor Canada.

If we can purchase a considerable amount of that developing hydro, we should be able to:
Reduce coal as fuel for power generation – certainly a “green” step.

Replace a portion of oil used for electric generation with hydro and natural gas.
There are many other uses that will be discussed as we go along.

And one additional thought – Our neighbors to the South provide 12% of our imported oil.
The Mexican contribution is about the same as Saudi Arabia. We don’t want to hurt the Mexican economy and we won’t have to if we can replace the OPEC supply.

The program to achieve all this is partly in place and we will discuss both what is and what has to be.