A major contributing factor to what is being described is the development of superconducting technology. This is includes high temperature superconducting wind turbines, superconducting hydroelectric turbines, and superconducting transmission lines. From reading the outline, it looks like this project will capitalize on these new technologies.
toomuchtodo•29m ago
Even without these superconducting technologies, it’s shrewd capital investment policy. This decarbonizes the last 20% of Canada’s electrical generation, replaces any demand growth with clean energy instead of fossil fuel, and allows more domestically produced (Alberta) fossil gas to be exported if needed. Importantly, just like China, it enables self sufficiency and potentially eliminating any dependency on the US for energy needs (with optionality to export excess clean energy to northern US states in the future).
Per ElectricityMaps, Canada has less than 20GW of fossil generation capacity, as of this comment. China, on average, installs ~1.75x that much wind and solar in a month.
TLDR Capital is the bottleneck slowing global decarbonization.
nish__•2m ago
At the end of the day, nothing beats hydro electric power. It's hidden, consistent and the technology is very mature. Really the OG of renewable energy. If we could get our appliances running efficiently enough, I think we could run the whole grid on it.
NishanStepak•31m ago
toomuchtodo•29m ago
Per ElectricityMaps, Canada has less than 20GW of fossil generation capacity, as of this comment. China, on average, installs ~1.75x that much wind and solar in a month.
TLDR Capital is the bottleneck slowing global decarbonization.