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.

The Politics of Energy and the Energy of Politics

It has been said, quite accurately, that whoever controls the energy of a country controls that country.

Everything in a modern society depends on an adequate and reliable energy supply. From electricity to electronics; from petroleum to transportation; from heating to cooling; from smog control to water purification; every facet of everyday life as it is known in western civilization is reliant on the supply of energy in its many forms.

It isn’t difficult to see then what might happen if that energy supply was curtailed or worse – cut off.

In 1973 some of the OPEC oil people actually used an oil embargo to cause inflated prices around the world. One the results of that move was to accelerate the search for oil in other locations – finding some in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico helped. Since then OPEC has lost some of its power but certainly not all.

It’s interesting to note that with the exception of Venezuela, the country that started OPEC, and Ecuador, all the other members of OPEC are in the Middle East and Africa, a majority of the production located in what is now commonly known as a “War Zone.”

There are many reasons for the United States to become less dependent on foreign oil. Economics is certainly one. And the complicated Mid East presents the most troublesome scenarios. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the race in the region to obtain nuclear weapons and the terrorism aimed against the US all add to the terrible mix.

There is probably more truth than humor in the statement a comedian made recently that “We don’t need any more presidents from Texas.” And perhaps it is more than a coincidence that the Bush families (former presidents) are such close friends with the royal family of Saudi Arabia. And who else from Texas lived in the White House?

Oh yes, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Warriors all.

Next to Canada, Saudi Arabia is the largest importer of oil to the United States.

What can be done? What should we do? Who can do it? Let’s see…….…

The Learning Curve and the Hubbert Peak

The development of the sources and uses of energy since 1908 has been filled with contradictions and even anachronisms. However the one unchangeable influence has been that of the Law of Supply and Demand.

What seems commonplace today was, only 100 years ago, rare: electricity wired to buildings and homes; natural gas delivered by pipelines to consumers; petroleum distilled into heating oil and gasoline to run vehicles.

And the true harm came with the belief that these incredible energy supplies were endless.
The American public came up short in the 1970’s when the supply of oil and gasoline was shortened and it was common to see lines of cars waiting at service stations to buy gas – at greatly increased prices. Some of us raised the warning flags.

But the lesson was not learned. As soon as the supply was restored and the prices dropped to “normal,” all thoughts of developing alternate fuel sources faded.

Back in the 1950’s we found that while electricity was generated by utilities at an efficiency level of 35-40% - total efficiency could be increased to 80% or more by making use of the waste heat developed during generation and there was plenty of that. (We’ll discuss the Total Energy Concept later.)

Con Edison of NY started to use this principle and generated steam from its waste heat and sold the steam to consumers in Manhattan. But soon it had to develop more steam in boilers to meet increasing demand and had to set up a new corporation – New York Steam.

A few of us saw other problems coming. In 1956 an American geophysicist M. King Hubbert posited the theory that the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell shaped curve. It suggested that production of the finite supply would peak and then decline as discoveries declined. This was independent of demand.

It happened that Hubbert’s Peak was reached in the continental US in the early ‘70’s. – A coincidence? We think not. And this same theory will apply to sources in the mid-East and elsewhere.

SO –instead of reducing its dependence on oil, the US began importing ever-increasing amounts of oil from abroad, at ever increasing costs. Do you know who our largest supplier is?
And what about natural gas? And coal? Same theory applies as well as other areas of concern. So how do we use what we have learned? Wait there’s more learning to some.

Oh, and that largest supplier of petroleum imports to the US is……….…………Canada