Canada: becoming an energy superpower

Canada’s economic success has depended on being a trading nation. Our vast, largely untapped energy endowment provides an opportunity to trade value-added energy products, shifting from our previous status of an energy superstore to a true energy superpower.  Here is the pathway proposed by the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Electrical Power Exports Electricity represents one of the highest value forms of energy. It has shed all of its formation history, and is ready to instantaneously power the modern industrial and social structure of civilization. Canada, however, has yet to take advantage of an outstanding nation-building opportunity. An East-West power corridor supplied from remote hydroelectric and nuclear sites could now be built with nodes for the sale of power North-South to the huge North American market. Canada has the potential to produce the lowest cost electrical power on the continent, based on the most advanced power generation and SMART grid technologies available, with no viable competition in this marketplace. A new national vision, based on a strategic alliance among provinces and existing and new power companies, could achieve this goal within two decades. This is not an objective for any single company or government working alone.  It is the next stage of nation building.

Bitumen Exports Value-added products in the form of fuels and chemicals from Alberta’s oil sands are uniquely Canadian opportunities. Shipping raw bitumen outside Canada for processing and upgrading is not the pathway for success. As Jim Stanford has stated, our cycles of staples extraction and export have defined much of our past economic history. There is a danger that the pejorative term of “hewers of wood and drawers of water” will be expanded to “hewers of wood, drawers of water and scrapers of tar.”  The oilsands bitumen is not a tar; it is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons with a range of boiling points with the heaviest fraction composed of complex chemical ring structures with high economic potential. Selling bitumen as a low value-fuel is value-destruction on a huge scale, as noted by Frank McKenna.  The recently-announced government/industry plan for a new West–East pipeline, and the expressed interest of various regions to upgrade bitumen, is an excellent start for a national strategic plan.

Low Carbon Exports We must also pave the way to a lower-carbon future by taking advantage of Canada’s huge land mass. A key element to such a future is to begin transitioning our needs for high-value-added carbon fuels and chemicals to renewable sources of carbon.  Transforming biomass from our vast forest and agricultural residues into high value-added products is an important national goal.

East Coast Exports The offshore oil industry in Newfoundland has registered impressive growth over the past decade, and recent exploration efforts have resulted in potentially significant new reserves. The offshore petroleum industry has driven high economic growth in Newfoundland and Labrador and the new findings are casting a new light on the future role of Atlantic Canada in exporting both crude oil and upgraded products to world markets.

Canada is fortunate to have a team of visionaries who are pressing forward with the above opportunities, part of the Canadian Academy of Engineering’s pursuit of ‘Canada: Becoming a Sustainable Energy Superpower’.

Richard J. Marceau is president of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Clement W. Bowman is chair of the CAE Energy Pathways Task Force.

Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author:  RICHARD J. MARCEAU, CLEMENT W. BOWMAN