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Tidbits

30 Oct 2024 | News Roundup
  • From the “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” file (the quotation is from Philip K. Dick) there’s yet more bad news for Hertz over its trendy bet on EVs: “Hertz Struggles with $1 Billion EV Losses and Delayed Recovery”. And yes, we told you so, CDN being a reality-based outfit.
  • As the man said, you cannot make this stuff up. A lithium fire battery burns down a (wait for it) fire station in Hesse, Germany that did not (wait for it) have a smoke alarm. They only announced that “an emergency vehicle belonging to the fire department which contained lithium ion batteries and an external power connection” was to blame, apparently leaving open the possibility that it was… um… an ambulance? A rescue scooter? No. Though arguably their credibility was also consumed in the blaze.
  • So you admit it: A British school schedules, then bravely cancels in the face of outrage, a “Blue Nose Day” in which children will shiver in unheated classrooms in the name of sustainability. And we get that pneumonia turns out not to be a big boost to a healthy lifestyle. But here’s the thing: the educational value of showing students what life would be like without reliable energy, and rubbing their chilly discoloured noses in the fact that the problem is not “global heating” but that it’s miserably cold much of the time, would be worth braving a bit of controversy, no?
  • Leaping into committee, Canada’s federal government gives $40 million from its Green Industrial Facilities and Manufacturing Program (GIFMP) to something called “Emissions Reduction Alberta” that will, allegedly, “help to develop and manage a province-wide program for industry to become more cost- and energy-efficient”. And who doesn’t know that governments are experts on efficiency unlike private firms? In shoveling the cash from one level of government to another, Natural Resources Canada blathered that “The Government of Canada is committed to maximizing energy performance and reducing greenhouse gas emissions while helping industry gain a competitive edge.” Wow. If you can walk that way, why is your own climate plan, along with your operations generally, such a counterproductive and unaffordable mess accompanied by baffling rhetoric?
  • But heck, it’s someone else’s money. Thus “Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced that Concordia University will establish a thematic campus in Shawinigan, Quebec, focused on energy transition. The campus will be dedicated to advancing clean energy research, which is critical to addressing climate change and promoting sustainability. This project is part of Concordia University’s “Volt-Age: Where Innovation Meets Purpose” initiative, which received a $123 million investment through the $1.4 billion Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) in 2022.” So companies get billions in subsidies to make EV batteries, and universities get hundreds of millions to find out eventually which ones they should have made.
  • You might sense a pattern. The government of Canada, apparently flush with borrowed cash, tells us “The communities of Shelburne and Barton will have 13 new, energy efficient, homes after an investment of more than $5.1 million from the federal and provincial governments and Co-operative Homes Ltd. (Compass Nova Scotia).” And while we hate to do math in the midst of a spending blitz, including on the size of our national debt and interest payments on same, if it really takes over $5 million in subsidies to procure 13 houses, we’re never going to get enough of them.
  • But wait, there’s more. “Today, Parliamentary Secretary Julie Dabrusin, on behalf of the honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced a federal investment totalling $4.3 million for five projects, funded under the Greener Neighbourhoods Pilot Program (GNPP) and the Energy Innovation Program (EIP), to support and inform deep energy retrofits.” Seriously? Five retrofits in eastern Ontario will change the weather worldwide? Surely you’re pulling our legs.

One comment on “Tidbits”

  1. I'm intrigued by the GLobal Temperature Report referenced in this weeks report. Can you explain exactly what the time-line graph is describing?
    Thanks
    Steve

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