temporary foreign worker program sparks labour war in green energy sector

‘This is the wage we’re going to pay and we’re going to scan the globe to find people who are willing to work for that wage,...It’s globalization run amok."

temporary foreign worker program sparks labour war in green energy sector | macleans:

When it opened for business at the site of a shuttered assembly plant in Windsor, Ont.,CS Wind was hailed as an early success story for the Ontario government’s flagship green energy program, which aimed to spark a renewable resource industry in the province and create jobs for thousands of unemployed manufacturing workers.
The Korean company, which manufactures the towers used in wind turbines, is a partner in a consortium led by Samsung that promised to open factories to employ Canadians building wind turbines and solar panels. In exchange, the province agreed to buy nearly $10 billion worth of renewable energy from producers at above market-rates (later reduced to $6 billion after complaints it would drive up energy bills). CS Wind said it planned to hire as many as 500 local workers, many of them out-of-work welders, and build towers out of steel from Sault Ste. Marie.
Yet years after then-premier Dalton McGuinty toured the plant for its December 2011 opening—sitting at the controls of a specialized hoist truck and declaring that his green energy strategy was “creating good jobs for our families”— the company’s use of two dozen temporary workers from Vietnam has become a key issue in an ongoing labour dispute at the factory.
An Ontario Labour Relations Board ruling released last month to determine which of CS Wind’s employees could form a prospective bargaining unit—as part of a union drive by the Iron Workers—noted the company had employed more than 30 workers from Vietnam

continue reading at macleans

Nuclear Power Policy Refinement at the Green Party of Canada

A policy proposal posted on the Green Party of Canada's website today

Nuclear Power Policy Refinement | Green Party of Canada:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that G08-136:  Energy  Transition  Plan be revised to state the following:
The  Green  Party  of  Canada,  as  part  of  its  Plan  for  Canada's Green  Century,  will  establish  a  Federal  Ministry  of  Energy  Transition  to  ensure  that  there  is  a coordinated  Federal  Energy  Transition  Plan  to  effect  the  transition  from  a  fossil  fuel  based economy  to  one  based  on  the  sustainable  use  of  renewable  energy  and inherently safe nuclear power with  a  target  reduction  of  85%  reduction  of  fossil  fuel  consumption  by  2040"

Read the background argurment and full proposal at the Green Party of Canada

Data Goes Best With a Good Story/stories are memorable in a way that statistics aren’t

"I wanted to start with this idea of “In One Chart Journalism” ..."

So begins the interview section of this article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) that I found interesting:

Data Goes Best With a Good Story (and Vice Versa) - Walter Frick - Harvard Business Review:

Storytelling with data is having its moment in the journalism world. After leaving The New York Times last year, Nate Silver has launched his new data journalism venture with ESPN , former Washington Post blogger and columnist Ezra Klein is expanding his chart-filled approach beyond public policy at Vox.com, and both the Times and the Post are starting their own data-driven sites to replace their departed stars.

While none of these ventures rely solely on charts and data to serve readers, The Post’s is explicitly betting that data on its own isn’t enough. Its forthcoming policy-focused website is premised on the notion that data and narrative go best together. The lesson for anyone looking to communicate or persuade using data is that the addition of human drama goes a long way.

Read the entire article at the Harvard Business Review

U.S. electricity prices may be going up for good - latimes.com

"There is a growing fragility in the U.S. electricity system, experts warn, the result of the shutdown of coal-fired plants, reductions in nuclear power, a shift to more expensive renewable energy and natural gas pipeline constraints. The result is likely to be future price shocks. And they may not be temporary."

U.S. electricity prices may be going up for good - latimes.com:

As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts.
A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough natural gas to keep power plants running. The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate. The price hikes cascaded quickly down to consumers. Robert Thompson, who lives in the suburbs of Allentown, Pa., got a $1,250 bill for January.
"I thought, how am I going to pay this?"

Continue reading at the LA Times

What you "believe" about climate change doesn't reflect what you know...

What people “believe” about global warming doesn’t reflect what they know; it expresses who they are.

www.culturalcognition.net - Cultural Cognition Blog - What you "believe" about climate change doesn't reflect what you know; it expresses *who you are*:

Accordingly, if you want to promote constructive public engagement with the best available evidence, you have to change the meaning of the climate change.
You have to disentangle positions on it from opposing cultural identities, so that people aren't put to a choice between freely appraising the evidence and being loyal to their defining commitments.
...
if you think the proportion of survey respondents who say they “believe in evolution” is an indicator of the quality of the science education that people are receiving in the U.S., you are misinformed.
Do you know what the correlation is between saying “I believe in evolution” and possessing even a basic understanding of “natural selection,” “random mutation,” and “genetic variance”—the core elements of the modern synthesis in evolutionary science?
Zero.
Those who say they “do believe” are no more likely to be able to give a high-school biology-exam-quality account of how evolution works than those who say they “don’t.”

Read the full article at the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School

Regarding EIA Levelized Costs - and Levelized value

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released an updated Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) paper which is fascinating in that it, unlike previous efforts, includes a complimentary Levelized Avoided Cost of Electricity (LACE).

While there will no doubt be a string of shallow references to figures calculated by the EIA, the EIA's work is valuable primarily in the context of a decision being made about supply for a particular region within the context of the remainder of the existing supply mix.
The evolution of the EIA's methodology is refreshing as it continues to improve towards a model I suggested last year in The Real High Price of Low-Value Electricity - which discussed changes in the history of the EIA's methodology.

Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2014 | U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA):

It is important to note that, while LCOE is a convenient summary measure of the overall competiveness of different generating technologies, actual plant investment decisions are affected by the specific technological and regional characteristics of a project, which involve numerous other factors. The projected utilization rate, which depends on the load shape and the existing resource mix in an area where additional capacity is needed, is one such factor. The existing resource mix in a region can directly impact the economic viability of a new investment through its effect on the economics surrounding the displacement of existing resources. For example, a wind resource that would primarily displace existing natural gas generation will usually have a different economic value than one that would displace existing coal generation.
A related factor is the capacity value, which depends on both the existing capacity mix and load characteristics in a region.Since load must be balanced on a continuous basis, units whose output can be varied to follow demand (dispatchable technologies) generally have more value to a system than less flexible units (non-dispatchable technologies), or those whose operation is tied to the availability of an intermittent resource. The LCOE values for dispatchable and nondispatchable technologies are listed separately in the tables, because caution should be used when comparing them to one another.

Difficult winter for Hydro Quebec

This is important for Ontario's electricity planning: Quebec cannot provide firm capacity supply to Ontario to meet winter peaks in demand.

Hiver difficile pour Hydro-Québec | Pierre Couture | Actualité économique:

(Québec) Le dernier hiver n'a pas été de tout repos pour Hydro-Québec. Malgré ses gigantesques surplus, le réseau d'Hydro-Québec n'a pas été en mesure de suffire à la demande cet hiver. La société d'État a été contrainte d'acheter des quantités significatives d'électricité sur les réseaux voisins ainsi que de ses gros clients industriels.
Les écarts importants de température observés ont notamment poussé la société d'État à acquérir tout près de 500 000 mégawattheures (MWh) en provenance de producteurs d'électricité hors Québec lors des mois de décembre et de janvier.
La société d'État a même fracassé un record de consommation le 22 janvier avec une pointe historique de 39 240 mégawatts (MW).
Des données de l'Office national de l'énergie (ONE) indiquent qu'Hydro-Québec a notamment importé 278 000 mégawattheures à un coût unitaire de 27,3 ¢ le kilowattheure (kWh) en janvier dernier.

I've posted the quote in French because I figure most can use the same translation I do (Google), and the nuance of the original in the final two paragraphs of the full article might be even better without the clunky translation.

Electricity Market Prices Fall In Europe - retail prices likely don't

I cite this articles because I've seen it referenced as if it states something positive about Germany's renewables escapade, and that demands clarification.

Electricity Prices Fall In Europe As German Renewable Energy Increases:

For the fifth consecutive month, electricity prices in countries neighboring Germany have decreased, recently released Platts data reveals, due in large part to increased solar and wind generation in Germany. The Platts Continental Power Index (CONT), described as a “demand-weighted base load average of day-ahead contracts assessed in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands,” dropped steadily in early 2014. The index decreased to €35.06 (or about $48.50) per megawatt hour in March, an 18 percent drop from February. Overall, the index is down by more than 39 percent since peaking at €50.50/MWh in November of last year.

Continue reading...

A simple review:
The market recovers cash to pay for supply
It does not cover the contracted cost of supply
A surcharge is applied to recover the full cost of supply.

The EEG-Umlage is the surcharge in Germany, and working with data from the German Transmission System Operators, and pulling some figures from that data it appears to me the EEG-Umlage recovered, from Germany's consumers, about ~$1.1 billion more Euros in the first quarter of 2014 than it did in the first quarter of 2013.

The Debt Retirement Charge: Premier Wynne's $6.2 billion “Revenue Tool”

The following article is posted to the new site for Wind Concerns Ontario (as a download).

I've taken the liberty of posting Parker Gallant's entire, important, piece here

Important because if gets to the heart of the Debt Retirement Charge scam now being run by the Wynne government:

"The action taken by the Finance Minister as a response to the AG's 2011 “audit” was to arbitrarily backdate and revise the “revenue streams”, reducing them by $4.4 billion for the year ended March 31, 2004 and $1.8 billion for the year ended March 31, 2011, increasing the “RSD” by $6.2 billion thus extending the period the DRC would remain on ratepayers bills. Those adjustments were made in Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's 2012 budget as he rewrote the Province's financial history!

___ 

The Debt Retirement Charge: Premier Wynne's $6.2 billion “Revenue Tool”

The Auditor General's (AG) report released December 10, 2013 highlighted some of the problems inherent with taxpayer owned Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG), particularly its above market human resource costs.

Unfortunately the report didn't ascribe specific costs to Ontario ratepayers. The report noted power generation levels had fallen considerably over the past decade but again failed to cite the reasons. Despite those human resource costs, OPG is still Ontario's low cost electricity generator as noted in their press release of March 6, 2014 wherein they state their average revenue per kilowatt (kWh) in 2013 was 5.7 cents versus 9.9 cents per kWh for private sector generators.

The $6.2 billion “Revenue Tool”
The AG's report had a follow-up to a 2011 audit report on Ontario Electricity Financial Corp. (OEFC) which noted Minister of Finance, Duncan, should update the “residual stranded debt” (RSD) and asked “when electricity ratepayers might expect to see the DRC [Debt Retirement Charge] fully eliminated.”

Industry Leaders, Experts Testify on How to Keep the Lights On

"Given that public policy aspirations cannot violate the laws of physics, we need to act carefully in transforming the power grid.” -FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller

Industry Leaders, Experts Testify on How to Keep the Lights On | POWER Magazine

FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller, who also testified today, took a different, stronger approach. “I have long-stated that I can be ‘fuel-neutral’ but I cannot be ‘reliability-neutral,’” he said. Moeller, who has often called for more analysis of reliability implications from environmental rules, said he remained concerns that “EPA’s analysis failed to analyze whether there was sufficient transfer capability to move power from areas of energy surplus to areas short of power. Given that public policy aspirations cannot violate the laws of physics, we need to act carefully in transforming the power grid.”

Within a year, Moeller noted, more coal plants are scheduled to be shuttered to comply with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, while nuclear plants are under increasing economic pressure to close as a result of record low capacity prices. “Yet the experience of this past winter indicates that the power grid is now already at the limit. Heading into the next several years, some regions of the nation will be more vulnerable to supply shortages than others,” he warned. “We can hope for mild winters and summers over the next several years, but hoping for mild weather is not a practical method of planning to meet economic growth and public safety.”
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