- Gasoline/diesel vehicles will have to go electric
- Railways will have to be electrified
- Heating will have to go electric
If this were to happen, Canada’s demand for electricity will increase. In this blog, the increase in electricity generation capacity is estimated.
The results show that Canada will require 31 new nuclear plants or 202 new hydro plants or 1413 new wind farms or 15167 solar plants or a combination of the above
First look at current consumption of energy from fossil fuels in Canada:
- Coal 33.2 106 tonnes/yr
- Petroleum products 1.9 mmbbl/d
- Natural gas 8.9 Bcf/d
A more detailed table is available here. All can be replaced by electricity using current technology except perhaps aviation fuel.
The annual consumption data need to be converted to consistent energy units (calculations shown in table here). The total is 7891 PJ/year, for average power consumption of 250.2 GW (unit definitions shown here). Note that much of the data are “typical” or “average” values – for example, gasoline of different octane ratings has different energy content.
The next step is to calculate how much of the energy is actually used i.e. the efficiency of each use. Applying the efficiencies to the total consumption provides the total energy which must be replaced by non-fossil fuel sources which comes to 2855 PJ/year or 91 GW (detailed calculations here).
This amount of electrical energy must be supplied by non-fossil fuel sources, plus 6% for electrical transmission line losses. The total is therefore 3027 PJ/year or 96 GW. Allowance should be made for variations in demand over a day and from season to season, but these will be ignored for simplicity.
How many non-fossil fuel electrical plants are needed for this additional energy can be estimated by looking at the current production from such sources. Current (2018) electricity from non-fossil fuel sources of electricity in Canada are:
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- Hydro 581 plants 78 GW
- Nuclear 5 plants (22 reactors) 13.5 GW
- Wind 133 plants (3409 units) 12.8 GW
- Solar 16 plants 3.0 GW
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Some of these projects are small. If we take only the larger plants the average power from each is:
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- Hydro > 100 MW ? plants 500 MW/plant(?)
- Nuclear 4 reactor 5 plants 3310 MW/plant
- Wind > 100 MW 35 plants 161 MW/plant
- Solar > 20 MW 16 plants 100 MW/plant
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Applying these numbers to the total energy required we get the total number of plants required.
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- Hydro 182 plants
- Nuclear 27 plants
- Wind 565 plants
- Solar 910 plants
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This is still an oversimplification – Hydro and Nuclear can provide continuous power, with maybe a loss of up to 10% for downtime and maintenance. In Canada, wind can only provide power for about 40% of the time. Solar is even worse, with only a 6% availability (15% in the U.S., where the lower latitude and greater sunlight is more favourable). For wind and solar, some form of storage will be required, and the number of plants will have to be increased by the availability. With these issues incorporated, the actual total number of plants required is:
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- Hydro 202 plants
- Nuclear 31 plants
- Wind 1413 plants
- Solar 15167 plants
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Note that hydrogen has been proposed as a non-fossil fuel, but there are no examples in Canada (in the U.K. three hydrogen fueling stations have recently been set up on an experimental basis).
In a future blog I shall look at the implications of each type of development and its practicality.
The data for this blog have been obtained from:
- Natural Resources Canada gc.ca
- Wikipedia wikipedia.org
- Electricity_sector_in_Canada#Utilities_generation_by_fuel
- Solar power in Canada
- List of wind farms in Canada
- Energy Density
- Aviation fuel – BP Jet A-1
- World Nuclear Association
- https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fuels-densities-specific-volumes-d_166.html
- https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/gasoline