Signing off on CCS

Capturing the carbon dioxide produced from Alberta’s oil and gas industry has long been a priority for the Alberta government, to the tune of $2 billion in funding for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Most recently, $285 million of that funding has been allocated to the Swan Hills Synfuels project, which is using in-situ technologies to convert previously unreachable coal into syngas.

The project represents the deepest underground coal gasification ever attempted and is expected to produce 300 megawatts of power generation capacity.

And the estimated 1.3 tonnes of recovered CO2 won’t be wasted. Instead, it will be injected into wells in the Swan Hills area to reduce the viscosity of the oil and make it easier to extract. Such enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects represent one of the most practical industry uses for CCS technologies.

Via the Government of Alberta

Could Canada warm to geothermal energy?

Geothermal energy is literally everywhere around the world, trapped beneath the Earth’s crust at varying depths. Caused by two sources — primordial heat (the heat still trapped from the Earth’s original formation) and ongoing radioactive decay — this heat energy could (and already does) provide an emission-free source of energy for to the production of electricity and other uses. But in Canada, most of Canada’s geothermal energy gets absorbed by the patrons at the country’s hot springs resorts. And while that’s great for keeping warm in a cold country, it’s not necessarily the best use of one of the most abundant forms of renewable power.

But according to the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA), all that could change. Citing a report prepared by the Geological Survey of Canada, a part of Natural Resources Canada, CanGEA notes that there is viable geothermal potential on 40 per cent of Canada’s landmass (101 KB PDF) and suggests that even 100 geothermal installations could provide a significant source of Canada’s electricity production.

At the moment, though, Canada’s geothermal resources are mostly unused, except for the occasional toasty dip in a pool. As shown by CanGEA’s year-old list of current geothermal projects shows (some of the listed projects have since been shuttered), Canada’s geothermal potential is still just that: potential. But, even though geothermal energy hasn’t yet been used to produce electricity, geothermal energy does exist in Canada as heating systems, sometimes referred to as “geo exchange.” Canada currently has more that 35,000 such systems in use already. Though if you’re really keen to warm up with geothermal, you just can’t beat the Banff Springs.

Via CanGEA

Milking it

Here at Flow, we’re no strangers to the world of smelly energy. After all, when decomposition and anaerobic digestion start doing their odorous work, it’s more important that they produce energy than nice smells. That’s why it’s always exciting to see a Canadian first wafting into Abbotsford, British Columbia: the first dairy farm to be powered by its own manure.

Generating 60,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity every year,the Bakerview EcoDairy is a sustainability demonstration project created by its parent agribusiness company, the Nutriva Group. The farm employs a variety of sustainability practices, including a natural ventilation system and a water conservation system designed to retain and redistribute rainwater, but it’s its on-site digester that really makes Bakerview come out smelling like roses.

By feeding manure into an on-site digester, the farm is able to produce biogas (also known as landfill gas) that, in turn, powers a generator. But the process of digestion doesn’t just create a ready source of fuel, it also produces heat, which is returned to the farm. And since a dairy farm’s compliment of cows isn’t ever going to stop producing manure, the farm is never short of a ready source of biomass. It’s win-win, provided you don’t mind the smell.

Like many renewable energy projects, this one wouldn’t have been possible without government support. Bakerview was funded in part through a $240,000 grant from the BC Bioenergy Network, a $70,000 grant from the Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) Program and an $80,000 grant from BC Hydro’s Power Smart Technology Demonstration Funds.

Energy isn’t always glamorous, but so long as we’re able to harness renewable energy sources, we’ll be keeping warm and electrified until the cows come home.

Via BC Hydro

Moon power!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a sense, tidal power is really just a way of harnessing the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. Which basically makes all tidal power “moon power,” in the end. So let’s talk about moon power.

In Canada, all of our moon power occurs in the Bay of Fundy, where The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) coordinates the province’s research on the subject. But the project does more than just research moon power: along with Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCan) CanmetENERGY organization, which is devoted to clean energy development, FORCE intends to demonstrate that moon power can have commercial applications. In fact, their newest project will have the potential to generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes.

And moon power’s no pie in the sky project.

Built in the bay’s Minas Passage, the new facility will be implemented in three parts: first, a subsea cable in the summer of 2011; second, a Research and Visitors Centre in June 2011; and finally: the two turbines that power the facility in the summer of 2012. Then, it will use four submarine cables to deliver electricity to Nova Scotia’s power system. The project has already received $20 million in funding from Canada’s Clean Energy Fund.

Like a wind turbine, tidal turbines move as fluid passes through them, turning a generator that produces electricity. And, like wind turbines, tidal turbines come in a variety of shapes: even generators that look like snakes and kite-like creations. But it’s hardly the stuff of science fiction: NRCan has identified 190 moon power sites across the Canadian coasts, all of which have an estimated estimated capacity of 42,000 MW — more than 63 percent of the country’s annual total consumption!

For now, though, projects like CanmetENERGY and FORCE’s are mostly for research and demonstration. But if we can put a man on the moon, surely it won’t be long before we’ve got a little moon power too.

Via NRCan

A Good Year for Oil, Not So Good for Gas

Oil and gas producers in Western Canada are more confident than in 2009, according to PwC’s Canadian Energy Annual Survey, released May 17, 2011.

The growing optimism is the result of a 26 per cent increase in revenue, a 15 per cent increase in cash flow, and a 113 per cent increase in profits. And most of this is due to increasing oil prices, up 27.9 percent to $79.98 US from $62.55 US in 2009. The rebound in oil prices allowed industry to increase capital spending almost 44 per cent to $56 billion US.

The upturn also attracted foreign companies who invested more than $17 billion in Canadian oil and gas assets during 2010.

Technologies such as horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing also played a role in helping oil producers access resources that a few years ago would have been uneconomical to produce. The same technologies were too successful on the natural gas side, leading to a supply glut and depressed prices for the second consecutive year. Some natural gas producers have reduced gas-directed drilling; some are shutting in gas until the market recovers.

Development of unconventional resources has raised environmental concerns, resulting again in a call for a national energy strategy.

Where Does Your Gasoline Dollar Go?

There are three major components to gasoline pricing: crude costs, marketing and refining margins and taxes. And they vary according to world demand for, and supply, of oil; North American demand for, and supply of, gasoline; and where you live in Canada.

In 2009, when Canadian Par crude oil averaged $65.19 per barrel, crude costs accounted for 43.7 per cent of the cost of gasoline, taxes accounted for 33.2 per cent and refining and marketing accounted for 23 per cent. As oil prices rose in 2010, crude costs accounted for 47.3 per cent of the cost of gasoline, taxes for 33 per cent and refining and marketing 19.7 per cent. Thus far in 2011, Canadian Par prices have averaged $95.40 per barrel, and crude costs have risen to 49 per cent of the cost of gasoline, taxes for 30.8 per cent and marketing and refining 20.2 per cent.

The reason taxes have fallen as a percentage is that most of the tax is a fixed amount per litre. For example, the federal excise tax in gasoline is a flat 10 cents per litre, no matter the total pump price. The same is true for some provincial taxes.

Most of the regional differences in price are due to taxes varying from province to province and at time from city to city. In Edmonton, as in all of Alberta, there is no provincial sales tax. In cities such as Montreal, Vancouver and Victoria, there are municipal taxes and in Vancouver, there is a carbon tax.

More Speculation on Gasoline Prices

You know gasoline prices must be getting out of hand when the federal government promises to “look into it”. But don’t hold your breath. The government has investigated collusion in gasoline pricing six times since 1990 and has found no evidence to support it.

But it’s not only that gasoline prices are high, it’s that over the past week prices have fluctuated as much as 4.5 cents over night. And to many people, that just doesn’t make sense.

We all understand that gasoline prices are heavily influenced by crude oil prices, as shown in the graph below. And we’ve all been told that oil prices are at near record levels because of political instability in the Middle East and North Africa.

 

We’ve also been told that recent flooding on the Mississippi River in Tennessee has caused refineries in that area to shut down, causing gasoline shortages.

But a closer examination of the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa reveals that the countries where the protests are occurring export about 1.9 million barrels of oil per day, or about 11 per cent of the region’s total, an amount that Saudi Arabia can more than accommodate merely by opening the taps a quarter of a turn.

And according to Reuters, there are concerns that refineries may have to shut down, but as of Thursday, May 12, none have done so.

One has to wonder what is really behind the price increases. And one has to really wonder hard about paying $1.32 per litre Monday and $1.36 per litre Tuesday when Tuesday’s gas was in the service station’s storage tank on Monday with Monday’s gas.

The government’s investigation will probably take several months. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of time for speculation.

High Temperature Geothermal – Not Just a Flash in the Pan

It’s not a flash in the pan for two reasons. Firstly, geothermally heated water has been used by humanoids since their emergence; hence it’s had a long history. Secondly, the flash isn’t in a pan, it’s in a low-pressure chamber.

It works like this: water reservoired deep in the earth’s crust is heated, and because it is often five to six kilometres deep, the pressure is so high that the water remains liquid well beyond its normal boiling point of 100˚C. When used to generate electricity, the water is brought to the surface where the pressure is suddenly released. The super heated water immediately “flashes” into steam with enough force to turn a turbine which turns a generator and electricity is born. The steam is condensed and returned to the reservoir.

What causes the water to heat up? The temperature at the inner core of the earth is greater than 6,000˚C. Most of this heat is primordial heat, generated from the energy of the accumulating matter that eventually formed the planet earth. As the outer surface of the planet cooled, primordial heat was trapped and remains to this day. Because the earth is cooling from the outside in, a geothermal gradient exists, which averages about 30˚C per kilometre of depth. The geothermal gradient is much steeper near tectonic plate boundaries where molten material is closer to the surface. The other heat source is radioactive decay of unstable elements.

If water isn’t naturally occurring at depth, injection wells are drilled to deliver water. Once heated, the water is brought to the surface through other wells to the generating station, then returned to depth.

Although Canada doesn’t have any commercial geothermal generation at present, about 53.15 terawatt-hours of geothermal electricity were generated world-wide in 2009. The United States led the way with 15.2 TW-h, or about 28.6% of the world total.

Geothermal Energy – What’s in a Name?

Recently, use of the term “geothermal energy” has become somewhat confusing. For the longest time, geothermal energy implied deep-seated, super hot (+180˚C) water, brought to the surface to provide heat for space heating or electricity generation. It is the energy behind geysers and hot springs. Think Old Faithful and Banff Hot Springs.

But with the advent of heat pumps, shallower, much cooler water could be used for space heating. Purists insisted on calling the new technology “earth energy”, or “geo exchange” or “ground-source energy”. The debate intensified to just short of rioting in the streets, but new subdivisions, advertised as economical and environmentally friendly due to “geothermal heating”, sprang up across the country. And people oblivious to the debate began to see geothermal only as a method of home heating that involved heat pumps and a bit of tubing.

So which side is right? Etymologically speaking, they both are. The term geothermal is derived from two Greek words: geo, meaning earth; and thermos, meaning heat. Earth heat. There is no reference to either temperature or depth.

Practically speaking, there is a big difference. In most parts of Canada, deep geothermal requires wells more than five kilometres deep, and that is prohibitively expensive for someone who just wants to heat their home. And shallow geothermal can’t deliver the heat required to create steam to drive turbines, so it won’t be used by utilities.

Regardless of what you consider is the real geothermal, both are among the cleanest sources of energy, and, over the long term, economical.

Energy BOT Squad’s Newest Member

Energy doesn’t get much more underground than geothermal power, which unlocks the heat trapped below the surface of the earth. But when it comes to Canada, geothermal energy is still “underground” in more than a few ways — just ask GeothermalBOT.

At the moment, GeothermalBOT mainly has to keep himself warm using the heat pumps that use the differences in temperature between the ground and the air to cool or heat homes. They’re small and localized, and the only game in town for a BOT that wants to keep nice and toasty. In fact, there aren’t currently any large geothermal power plants in Canada. But that doesn’t mean that GeothermalBOT will be stuck in Canada’s energy underground for the rest of his days.

In fact, Canada has considerable geothermal potential, with near-surface resources found across the country in areas as far apart as British Columbia and Saskatchewan. There has even been talk of developing these resources — just look to the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA) — though so far Canada still has no geothermal plants. Around the world, though, it’s a slightly different story.

To find areas where geothermal power has already heated up, GeothermalBOT would need to take a look at Iceland, where geothermal plants produce almost a quarter of the country’s total electricity. Because of the area’s high concentration of volcanoes and other heat sources near to the surface of the earth, the country has a natural wealth of geothermal energy that it’s used since 1908, when a farmer piped in water to heat his home. Other countries that use geothermal energy include the US, the Philippines and Indonesia.

But GeothermalBOT’s not likely to be heading to Reykjavik any time soon. For now, he’s fine being part of Canada’s energy underground, because a nice hot water tank is still a fine place to spend your time.

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