Dear Ottawa: Mandating electric-vehicle sales is a bad idea

Canadians got a jolt Tuesday when Ottawa released new electric-vehicle regulations. The move, called the “Electric Vehicle Availability Standard,” aims to dramatically accelerate EV sales. Meeting the standard will require EVs to constitute 20 per cent of new vehicles sold by 2026, 60 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. For reference, EV market share has been less than 10 per cent in recent years. But not complying with the proposed rule risks drawing the ire of regulators – along with potentially hefty fines.

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Cory Morgan: Ottawa’s 2035 EV Target Will Be a Costly Policy Failure

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s plan to illegalize the sale of new conventional vehicles in Canada by 2035 is unreasonable, extreme, and will wreak havoc on the Canadian economy.

Despite nearly 10 years of cajoling, promoting, and subsidizing electric vehicles (EVs), over 95 percent of vehicle sales in Canada are still combustion engine models. EVs remain too expensive and impractical for Canadians to embrace. Rather than trying to understand why citizens won’t switch to EVs, the Canadian government is taking the ham-handed approach of forcing the transition, and the consequences of the move will be dire.

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Why North American electric vehicle mandates are destined to fail

According to reports, the Trudeau government will soon unveil regulations meant to phaseout the sale of new internal combustion vehicles and compel Canadians to buy zero-emission vehicles. The Biden administration is also mandating a similar shift. T

These initiatives, however, overlook two realities — consumer preferences are not easily swayed by top-down government directives and the unrealistic timeline for minerals crucial for electric vehicles (EV) raises serious doubts about the likelihood of success.


Surprising article from the Star.

It makes the case that Trudeau’s EV nuttery is doomed to failure without even touching on the unrealistic development expectations of the electrical power infrastructure needed to charge his childish wishdream.

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Global Warming and ‘Big Bad Oil’

Fanatics will always show their true colours

Even before it started, it was evident that the COP28 jamboree to “save the planet” would not satisfy the high expectations, some of them contradictory, of the 198 nations and dozens of non-governmental organizations attending the event with different agendas, including some hidden ones.

It is, therefore no surprise that some participants pronounced the event “a big failure” even before the conference president, the UAE’s Sheikh Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, struck the final gavel.

The next move was to blame “the Arabs” and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as a whole.

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Germany: Industry Moving Abroad Amid Rising Energy Prices

Europe’s largest economy, which is already in choppy waters, appears to be headed for worse times as it rapidly loses its attractiveness as an industrial location. Germany’s sky-high energy prices, precipitated by a lack of cheap natural gas and improvident anti-nuclear and ‘green’ energy policies enacted by the left-liberal government, have had a devastating impact on the country’s industry, according to a new study.

The study, carried out by the consulting firm Deloitte with the support of the Federal Association of German Industry revealed on Tuesday, November 14th, that two-thirds of German companies surveyed had already relocated parts of their value-added chain abroad, the Berlin-based daily Die Welt reported.

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Germany pays a high price for reducing its energy

The country’s industry is struggling to reach previous levels

Based on its current storage, Germany looks set to make it through another winter without Russian pipeline gas, demonstrating that the fears of the past two years were unmerited. According to a new poll, Germans are no longer worried about potential gas shortages. Policy experts have come to hold the same view, provided the country isn’t subject to a combination of very unlikely factors, such as a complete halting of LNG imports or an enduring cold snap this winter. Alas, it would be premature to claim that the energy question has been finally resolved to Germany’s benefit.

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Meet Meredith Angwin, the grandmother changing the energy industry

The self-published grandmother saw what almost no one else did: the coming downfall of the American electrical system

Along a twist in the Connecticut River within an old-style colonial Vermont home lives Meredith Angwin, the Jewish grandmother who saw what almost no one else did: the coming downfall of the American electrical system.

Three years ago, Angwin self-published Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid, the first-ever explanation for laymen of America’s labyrinthine, abstruse power markets. Her diagnosis was simple and troubling: when America moved away from the monopoly utility system in the Nineties toward restructured electricity markets, all players were divested from the responsibility of keeping the lights on. As heavily subsidized renewables outbid reliable nuclear and coal plants in the market, the grid would become overly reliant on just-in-time natural gas and imports from neighbors for reliability.

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GUNTER: Feds overstepping bounds on pipeline and energy projects

Back in March, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments in the federal government’s appeal of an Alberta court decision that struck down Ottawa’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), often called the “No More Pipelines” law.

The Alberta Court of Appeal, which is not a particularly anti-Ottawa court, had ruled that while climate change posed an “existential threat” to the planet, the no-more-pipelines law posed “another existential threat” – to the existence of “Canada itself.”

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Ottawa urges U.S. appeals court to reverse order threatening to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline

Ottawa is urging a U.S. appeals court to reverse a Wisconsin judge’s order that threatens to shut down the Line 5 cross-border pipeline by June 2026.

Forcing a shutdown would violate Canada’s treaty rights, government lawyers argue in an amicus brief filed today with the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

A Wisconsin court ruling in June gave Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. an ultimatum: reroute the pipeline around an Indigenous reserve within three years or shut it down.

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New hurdle signals more cost overruns for Trans Mountain’s controversial pipeline

There is a new and significant hurdle facing the massively over-budget and contentious Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project running through Alberta and British Columbia.

The Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc, a First Nation in the Interior of B.C., near Kamloops, is disputing a proposed change by Trans Mountain to the pipeline route through an area known as Pípsell.

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Why is the green movement targeting energy security?

Stopping domestic fossil fuel production won’t solve climate change

The energy crisis continues to hit Europe hard. In particular, the German economy is still reeling after losing its access to cheap Russian gas.

However, it’s not just Vladimir Putin’s war that’s to blame. A chart posted on X by Daniel Kral shows that a big part of Europe’s problem is self-inflicted. Just 10 years ago the EU (excluding the UK) was producing more than 30% of its demand for natural gas, but since then the figure has slumped to less than 15%. The timing could hardly be worse.

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Europe’s Climate Consensus Is Unraveling

The departure of EU ‘climate’ Commissioner Frans Timmermans—who will be taking his chances in the upcoming Dutch election—may well be a pivotal moment for the future of ‘green’ politics. Timmermans is the face of the European Union’s drive for ever more intrusive regulations that are meant to combat climate change—regulations that are being met with resistance from member states. Despite the Commission’s best efforts to push the Green Deal, exorbitant economic costs and voter discontent have sparked a renewed interest in nuclear energy throughout Europe.

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US scientists achieve net energy gain for second time in a fusion reaction

US scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time since December last year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said on Sunday.

Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on 30 July that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said.

Final results are still being analyzed, the spokesperson added.

Still the usual “Decades away from practical deployment.”

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Elon Musk’s Latest Mission: Rev Up the Electricity Industry

Elon Musk wants more power—literally.

The man behind the race to replace gasoline-fueled cars with electric ones is worried about having enough juice.

In recent days he has reiterated those concerns, predicting U.S. consumption of electricity, driven in part by battery-powered vehicles, will triple by around 2045. That followed his saying earlier this month that he anticipates an electricity shortage in two years that could stunt the energy-hungry development of artificial intelligence.

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Canada’s looming power problem is massive but not insurmountable: report

Canada must build more electricity generation in the next 25 years than it has over the last century in order to support a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, says a new report from the Public Policy Forum.

Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and shifting to emissions-free electricity to propel our cars, heat our homes and run our factories will require doubling — possibly tripling — the amount of power we make now, the federal government estimates.

“Imagine every dam, turbine, nuclear plant and solar panel across Canada and then picture a couple more next to them,” said the report, which will be published Wednesday.

Pie in the sky thinking on display.

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