Notley Wastes No Time In Jumping Off The Deep End Toward Higher Consumer Utility Prices  

Calgary Herald by Chris Varcoe.  Earlier this year, the provincial government announced it would double the carbon levy now imposed on Alberta’s largest industrial emitters to $30 per tonne in 2017.

“We are going to reduce carbon emissions by pricing them,” Notley said in her address.    More….

Commentary.  Notley, who yesterday made an effort to appease oil sands energy supporters, today obeys the enviro siren calls to raise consumer energy prices with what beneficial effect, exactly?

As China and India continue opening a new coal-fired power plant every week or two, increasing consumer costs for unaware Canadian and US consumers is the strategy used by North American global warming worshipers, including Notley.

Notley is preparing to meet with hundreds of socialist-leaning leaders and environmental activists at the upcoming Paris Climate Change Revival.  

To prepare, she is establishing her credentials as a true, global warming evangelist.  Her action will no doubt please the 20 oil companies coming to Paris to worship at the alter of climate change, soliciting the blessings of liberal governments where they operate.

With oil company help, Notley and her ilk will try to tax coal out of business when clean coal powered electricity is the best friend consumers have in Canada or the U.S.

The oil companies will benefit from greater reliance on natural gas demand, at the expense of cheap coal See: POWER PLANT GAS DEMAND GROWS AS COAL DEPARTS.

We hate to see one fossil industry attack another.  It's not the high road I  for always respected within the industry.  But with coal out of the way, natural gas will take its place as a bigger player in power generation, but also the activists' prime fossil target. 

Standing united together for consumers' best interests, gas and coal might have had a chance.  -dh

Premier Rachel Notley served notice Thursday the province will move ahead with a tougher climate change strategy, saying the NDP government has coal emissions squarely in its sights and suggesting more carbon taxes may be coming.

Speaking Thursday night at the Broadbent Institute Progress Gala in Toronto, the premier said Canada needs to become a world leader on tackling climate change and her government will soon unveil key elements of Alberta’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are going to address the issue of coal,” Notley told the crowd.

“Coal is a high-carbon fuel that we currently depend on for more than half of our electricity in Alberta. In its place, we must encourage lower-carbon….

Calgary Herald by Stephen Ewart  

For all the eager anticipation surrounding the new eco-friendly governments in Canada ahead of the UN’s Paris climate summit it is worth cautioning it’ll still be a lengthy transition to a fossil-fuel-free future. 

 

POWER PLANT GAS DEMAND GROWS AS COAL DEPARTS

Within and near the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, power plant developers are building more than a dozen new natural gas-fired generating units, mostly combined-cycle plants that can operate essentially around-the-clock.

This construction boom, spurred by a combination of abundant, low-cost gas and the regulation-driven retirement of scores of older coal plants, is boosting gas consumption close to gas production areas and reducing-at least a bit-the surplus gas volumes that Marcellus and Utica producers and marketers need to move to markets outside the region.

In today's blog, "Stay With Me-Boosting The Power Burn Within Or Near The Marcellus And Utica Plays," Housley Carr examines the race to build new power plants near production areas in the Northeast, and considers what the resulting local gas consumption might mean for the region's gas prices and pipeline needs.