Please explain again why your insistence that we need to build more pipelines is valid, given these facts:
A new world record price for electricity set earlier this month signals a radical disruption in global energy markets — and Canada, whose economy was once powered by some of the world's cheapest electricity, will not escape the effects.Given that 65% of the world's electrical power is currently generated by fossil fuels but is destined to fall with this new reality, I guess I just don't understand your pipeline passion, Justin and Rachel, especially given your seemingly contradictory position that we must move away from fossil fuels to mitigate climate change.
The new price, described by the news site Electrek as the cheapest electricity on the planet, was less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour, "part of a pattern marching to 1 cent per kWh bids that are coming in 2019 (or sooner)," the site declared.
The record was not set in a place where energy is traditionally cheap. Nor is it from a traditional electricity source.
But the fact the power will come from solar is only one part of a series of profound changes, including mass battery storage, that is in the process of shaking up the world energy market.
[The University of Calgary's Blake] Shaffer says that in order to be effective in an integrated power network with backup systems like gas and hydro, intermittent power sources like wind only have to fall below the price of the of the cheapest alternative. Carbon pricing gives wind an even greater advantage over gas.
"It seems like at these prices, and that's what's really amazing about how low we're getting in solar, is that, yeah, it can compete, even though battery technology is expensive these days," says Shaffer. "You can out-compete coal and natural gas at these levels."
I await being enlightened on this issue.
