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Doctor Renewable

Canada’s elec­tric­i­ty is main­ly from renew­ables: hydro­elec­tric­i­ty, bio­mass, wind and solar. How­ev­er, 17% of our elec­tric­i­ty is from fos­sil fuels. Ottawa wants elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion to not pro­duce emis­sions with­in a 12-year time. This requires replac­ing 12.5 GW of fos­sil fuel capac­i­ty start­ing now which is not hap­pen­ing yet. More­over, in the arti­cle, Min­is­ter Free­land is say­ing that elec­tric­i­ty capac­i­ty will need to dou­ble in Cana­da to not pro­duce emis­sions by 2050. Eric points out that to dou­ble the elec­tri­cal capac­i­ty sup­ply in Cana­da — from 150 to 300 GW — this would require more than the 6.3 bil­lion tax cred­it con­tained in the 2023 bud­get, as 150 GW will cost more than 1.5 tril­lion. Eric is skep­ti­cal of how much of this green incen­tive in the recent bud­get is tar­get­ed to what he calls any­thing but renew­ables” where in most gov­ern­ment pro­grams renew­ables typ­i­cal­ly quick­ly are moved to the bot­tom of the pile. Eric dis­cuss­es with Robert a few of his own num­bers he cal­cu­lat­ed on the Shel­l’s Quest project high­light­ing Canada’s com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue to sup­port the apartheid against renew­ables in the era of cli­mate change (arti­cle avail­able at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/green-electricity-budget-2023-freeland‑1.6793933).