Energy policy of Canada
Encyclopedia
Canada
is the 5th largest producer of energy in the world, producing about 6% of global energy supplies. It is the world's largest producer of natural uranium
, producing one-third of global supply, and is also the world's leading producer of hydro-electricity, accounting for 13% of global production. It is also a significant producer of petroleum
, natural gas
, and coal
. Only Russia
, the People's Republic of China
, the United States
and Saudi Arabia
produce more total energy than Canada.
The United States
is Canada's major trade market for energy products and services. Canada sends around 98% of its total energy exports to the United States, and in return Canada is the largest supplier of energy exports to the world's biggest economy. Canada also exports significant amounts of uranium and coal to Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Despite being a net energy exporter, Canada also imports large amounts of energy products. It is both an importer and exporter of coal and petroleum because its major coal and oil fields are located in Western Canada, particularly in Alberta
, far removed from its main population and industrial centers in Ontario
and Quebec
, and many of its oil refineries cannot handle the types of oil produced in Canada.
and provincial and territorial governments
. Provincial governments have jurisdiction over the exploration, development, conservation, and management of non-renewable resources
, as well as the generation and production of electricity
. Federal jurisdiction in energy is primarily concerned with regulation of inter-provincial and international trade
and commerce, and the management of non-renewable resources on federal lands
.
(NEB) is an independent federal regulatory agency that regulates the Canadian energy industry. The NEB was created in 1959 and reports through the Minister of Natural Resources to the Parliament of Canada
. Its primary responsibilities include:
In 1985, the federal government and the provincial governments in Alberta
, British Columbia
and Saskatchewan
agreed to deregulate the prices of crude oil and natural gas. Offshore oil Atlantic Canada
is administered under joint federal and provincial responsibility in Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland and Labrador
.
. The producing provinces impose royalties
and taxes on oil and natural gas production; provide drilling incentives; and grant permits and licenses to construct and operate facilities. The consuming provinces regulate distribution systems and oversee the retail
price
of natural gas to consumers
. The key regulations with respect to the wholesale
and retail electricity competition are at the provincial level. To date, two provinces (Alberta and Ontario) have initiated retail competition
. In Alberta, the electricity sector is largely privatized, in Ontario the process is ongoing. In other provinces electricity is mostly generated and distributed by provincially-owned
utilities.
places natural resources under the jurisdiction of the provinces
. The provincial governments own most of the petroleum, natural gas and coal reserves, and control most of the electricity production. This means that the national government must coordinate its energy policies with those of the provincial governments, and intergovernmental conflicts sometimes arise. The problem is particularly acute since, while the energy consuming provinces have the bulk of the population and are able to elect federal governments which introduce policies favouring energy consumers, the energy producing provinces have the ability to defeat such policies by exercising their constitutional authority over natural resources.
Section 92A of the Constitution Act, 1867
assigned to the provincial governments the exclusive authority to make laws in relation to non-renewable resources and electrical energy, while Section 125 prevented the federal government from taxing any provincial government lands or property (although the three prairie provinces were exempted from these provisions as a condition of their entry into Confederation until the Natural Resources Transfer Acts
of 1930). On the other hand, the federal government has the power to make treaties with foreign countries. This has important implications for treaties involving energy production, like the Kyoto Protocol
, which the Canadian government signed in 2002. Although the federal government had the authority to sign the treaty, it may require the cooperation of the provincial governments to enforce it.
When the four original provinces of Nova Scotia
, New Brunswick
, Quebec
and Ontario
joined together to form the Dominion of Canada in 1867, the fathers of Confederation
wrote a constitution that (in theory) created a country with a strong central government and relatively weak provincial governments. They did so in reaction to the recent Civil war
in the United States, where (in theory at least) the states are very powerful and the federal government is weak. In doing so, they assigned control over and ownership of natural resources to the provinces. In 1870 the British government transferred the territory controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company
to the new Canadian government control, a vast area of 4 million square kilometres which included most of the modern provinces of Alberta
, Saskatchewan
and Manitoba
. At the time, the largest industry in it was the fur trade, which was under federal control, and the Canadian government was unaware of the enormous mineral wealth it held, particularly the massive quantities of fossil fuels toward the western margins and the hydroelectric potential of the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay
. As a result of future developments, this gave the governments of the provinces, particularly that of Alberta, far more wealth and power than the founders originally envisioned.
to supply the fortress of Louisbourg. Cape Breton later supplied coal to Boston
and other American ports. Commercial mining in New Brunswick began in 1825 although most of the province's coal production has been used locally. In western Canada
, coal was first mined on Vancouver Island
from 1853. Starting in the 1880s, the building of the transcontinental railways through Alberta
and British Columbia
caused coal mines to be developed in various locations near railway lines in the prairies and mountains. By 1911 western mines produced most of the coal in Canada and, despite downturns, gradually expanded to produce over 95% of Canadian coal.
Coal was subsidised in Canada from 1887. The mines of Cape Breton were involved in this tariff protection to help it compete against American coal entering Ontario via the Great Lakes. Cape Breton coal was dug underground then shipped to Toronto and Montreal. The vast industries of the east, including steel mills, were fuelled with this coal. While there were difficulties and strikes, coal powered Canada into the Second World War. There were several Royal Commission
s into coal: one in 1947 and other in 1965.
Federal involvement in Cape Breton, continued with the Cape Breton Development Corporation
, or Devco which was in reality a large subsidy. The completion of the trans-Canada pipeline, nuclear reactors and the Hibernia oil fields have finished coal in Nova Scotia
. On the other side of the country, Vancouver Island is covered in coal: there are coal fields in Cassidy, Nanaimo, Campbell River
and Fort Rupert. Coal was mined at Nanaimo for one hundred years from 1853-1955. Coal was fed in ship's furnaces, railroad engines, and industry. In BC's interior coal was mined at Merritt
, Coalmont
, Fernie
and Hudson's Hope
. The development of coal mines in the west is integrally mixed with the building of railways—the Canadian Pacific Railway was directly involved with the Fermie mines. A separate railway—the Crow's Nest Line—was built to move coal from the Rockies to the smelter at Trail. Alberta's bedrock is literally a layer of coal—coal underlays much of the Rocky Mountains. Historically, there were underground pits in Lethbridge
, Pincher Creek
, Canmore and Nordegg
.
Currently, there are large coal electric plants in Canada—one in Genesee, AB, is large, and there are several others in the Toronto area.
The discovery of huge oil fields in western Canada starting with the Leduc, Alberta
field in 1947, and growing imports of cheap foreign oil into eastern Canada drastically affected the demand for Canadian coal. Beginning about 1950, almost all the coal used for heating, industry, and transportation was replaced by petroleum products and natural gas. This had a devastating effect on the coal mining communities of Atlantic Canada, although in western Canada the loss of jobs in the coal industry was more than compensated for by gains in the oil industry.
Coal mining began an expansion phase in the late 1960s with the signing of long-term contracts to supply metallurgical coal to the booming Japanese steel industry. This was of little benefit to Atlantic Canada, but led to the re-opening of closed mines and the development of new mines in Alberta and BC. Around the same time, Alberta and Saskatchewan began to use their substantial coal resources to generate electricity. Crude oil price increases in the 1970s and early 1980s increased the demand for coal worldwide. New mines opened in Alberta and BC, and new port facilities were built in BC to supply the growing demand in Asia.
Over 90% of Canada's coal reserves, and 99% of its production, are located in the three Western provinces of Alberta
, British Columbia
, and Saskatchewan
. Of these, Alberta alone has 70% of Canada's coal reserves, and 48% of the Texas-sized province is underlaid by coal deposits. British Columbia has one of the thickest coal deposits in the world, the Hat Creek deposit, which is 550 metres (1800 ft) thick. There are also smaller, but substantial, coal deposits in the Yukon
and Northwest Territories
and the Arctic Islands
, which are even further from markets. The Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick
have coal deposits that were historically a very important source of energy, and Nova Scotia was once the largest coal producer in Canada, but these deposits are much smaller and much more expensive to produce than the Western coal, so coal production in the Atlantic provinces has virtually ceased. Nova Scotia now imports all the coal for its steel mills and power plants from other countries like Colombia. At the same time, the Western provinces export their coal to 20 different countries, particularly Japan
, Korea
, and China
, in addition to using it in their own thermal power plants. Elk Valley Coal
mine is the second biggest coal mine in the world.
The region between New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, a distance of thousands of kilometres which includes the major industrial centers of Ontario
and Quebec
, is largely devoid of coal. As a result, these provinces import almost all of the coal for their steel mills and thermal power plants from the United States. Unfortunately coal from the Eastern United States is high in sulfur content, and this has contributed to a serious air quality problem, particularly in heavily populated Southwestern Ontario.
In 1930, crude oil was discovered in the Turner Valley field, below and to the west of the gas cap. This came as a shock to geologists because the free gas cap, which could have provided the reservoir drive to produce the oil, had largely been produced and flared off by that time. As a result, less than 12% of the original oil in place at Turner Valley will ever be recovered.
The Alberta provincial government became upset by the conspicuous waste so in 1931 it passed the Oil and Gas Wells Act, followed in 1932 by the Turner Valley Conservation Act. However, the federal government declared both Acts unconstitutional, and the wasteful burning of natural gas continued. However, in 1938 the provincial government established the Alberta Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board (today known as the Energy Resources Conservation Board
) to initiate conservation measures, and this time was successful in implementing it.
This body was the regulator of oil and gas production in Alberta, and therefore of most production in Canada. As the provincial regulatory authority with the most experience in the industry, it became a model for the other oil and gas producing provinces - indeed, it has been used as a model by many national petroleum industries around the world.
decided to drill into a peculiar anomaly on its newly-developed seismic recordings near the then-village of Leduc
to see what it was. The Leduc No. 1
well identified a large oil field, and provided the geological key for other important discoveries within Alberta. Geologists soon began to identify and drill other Devonian
reef
s within the province - mostly in the north-central portion of the province. The Alberta oil rush began, and drillers quickly began to identify other important oil-bearing formations like the one hosting the giant Pembina oilfield.
The Leduc discovery and the string of even bigger ones that followed rapidly backed imported oil out of the Canadian prairies and produced a huge surplus of oil which had no immediate market. In 1949, Imperial Oil applied to the federal government to build the Interprovincial Pipeline
(IPL) to Lake Superior
, and in 1950 it was completed to the port of Superior, Wisconsin
. Many people questioned why it was built to an American port rather than a Canadian one, but the federal government was more interested in the fact that oil exports made a huge difference to Canada's trade balance and completely erased the country's balance of trade deficit.
By 1956 the pipeline was extended via Sarnia, Ontario
to Toronto
and became, at 3,100 km, the longest oil pipeline in the world. In the interest of increasing oil exports, extensions were built to Chicago
and other refinery locations in the Midwestern United States
during the 1960s. In the other direction, in 1950 the federal government gave approval to build a pipeline west, and in 1953 the 1,200 km Transmountain Pipeline was built from Edmonton to the port of Vancouver
, British Columbia
with an extension to Seattle, Washington. These pipelines did more to improve the energy security of the United States than that of Canada, since the Canadian government was more interested in the country's trade balance than in military or energy security.
After the big discoveries of the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. noticed that Alberta was protected from invasion by the wall of the Rocky Mountains
to the west, the vast boreal forest to the north, and the bottomless swamps of the Canadian shield
to the east, but was highly accessible from the vast industrial areas of the U.S. Midwest to the south. Its landlocked location was easier to defend from foreign attack than the United State's own oil fields in Texas, Alaska and California. As a result, the U.S. gave preference to oil imports from Canada, and for the purposes of energy policy treated Alberta as if it were a U.S. state. Since this resulted in producers in Alberta receiving better treatment from the United States government than the Canadian government, producers asked the federal government for access to the Eastern Canadian oil market. Oil producers in Alberta calculated they could deliver Alberta oil to the refineries at Montreal for a cost equal to or only slightly higher than the price of imported oil. However, the Montreal area refineries and the Quebec government balked at the restriction, so the result was the National Oil Policy of 1961. This drew a dividing line at the Ottawa River and gave Canadian producers exclusive rights to the areas to sell oil to the west of the line. Refineries to the east of the line could continue to process imported oil.
There is a common misapprehension in eastern Canada that the National Oil Policy resulted in higher gasoline prices for those areas west of the Ottawa Valley than those receiving imported oil. In fact the differences in gasoline price depended on market conditions and usually amounted to a fraction of a cent per litre. In reality, Alberta producers were capable of meeting the price of international oil at Montreal. The misunderstanding results from the fact that the refineries at Montreal were operated by the subsidiaries of multi-national corporations, and while their parent companies had much lower operating costs in Venezuela and the Middle East, they forced their subsidiaries to pay full world price for the oil they delivered to Montreal. Thus, while Imperial Oil, for instance, charged approximately the same price for gasoline in Montreal as in Toronto, regardless of whether it was made from domestic or imported oil, its parent company (Standard Oil of New Jersey, now known as Exxon
), was a partner in Aramco in Saudi Arabia
, where production costs were much lower. As a result, the lower costs increased the profits of Exxon rather than lowering prices for customers of Imperial Esso. In addition, because they were realized in third-world countries, these profits were taxed neither by the government of Canada nor (because of some special features of U.S. tax law) the United States. However, Montreal refineries would always point out that foreign oil was "cheaper" than domestic oil, while avoiding mentioning that it was cheaper for their owners, but not for their customers.
, to "buy back" Canadian industries and resource with deals that included a takeover of the Western operations of France's Aquitaine and their conversion into Canterra Energy. Also in 1971, the federal government blocked a proposed purchase of Canadian-controlled Home Oil by American-based Ashland Oil.
The wave of direct action spread to Alberta when Premier Peter Lougheed
and his Conservatives won power in 1971, ending 36 years of Social Credit
rule. Lougheed's elaborate election platform, titled New Directions, sounded themes common among OPEC countries by pledging to create provincial resources and oil growth companies, collect a greater share of energy revenues, and foster economic diversification to prepare for the day when petroleum reserves ran out. The idea of limited resources emerged from the realm of theory into hard facts of policy when the NEB rejected natural-gas export applications in 1970 and 1971, on grounds that there was no surplus and Canada needed the supplies. The strength of the new conservationist sentiment was underlined when the NEB stuck to its guns despite a 1971 declaration by the federal Department of Energy that it thought Canada had a 392-year supply of natural gas
and enough oil for 923 years.
The Canadian government had already begun to change its energy policy. Inflation had become a national problem and oil prices were rising, and on September 4, 1973 Pierre Trudeau asked the western provinces to agree to a voluntary freeze on oil prices. Nine days later, his government imposed a 40-cent tax on every barrel of exported Canadian oil. The tax equalled the difference between domestic and international oil prices, and the revenues were used to subsidize imports for eastern refiners. At a stroke, Ottawa began subsidizing eastern consumers while reducing the revenues available to producing provinces and the petroleum industry. Alberta premier Peter Lougheed soon announced that his government would revise its royalty policy in favour of a system linked to international oil prices.
Two days later, on October 6, the Yom Kippur War broke out – a nail-biting affair between Israel and the Arab states. OPEC used the conflict to double the posted price for a barrel of Saudi Arabian light oil, to US$5.14. Saudi and the other Arab states then imposed embargoes on countries supporting Israel, and oil prices rose quickly to $12.
These events aggravated tensions among provincial, federal and industry leaders. The rest of the 1970s were marked by rapid-fire, escalating moves and counter-moves by Ottawa, Western provinces and even Newfoundland. The atmosphere was one of urgency, alarm and crisis, with global conflicts adding gravity to the federal-provincial quarrelling.
In 1979-1980, further crises in the Middle East led to panic-driven pricing. The Iranian Revolution
came first. War between that country and Iraq soon followed. Oil prices more than doubled, to US$36 per barrel.
on October 28, 1980, the controversial National Energy Program
(NEP) gave the Federal government control over petroleum prices, imposing a price ceiling and export duties, in an effort to control costs and ensure supply for consumers.
The federal government had two major challenges in creating a truly national energy program. The first problem was that Canada is both an importer and an exporter of oil. It imports oil from offshore sources such as Venezuela and the Middle East into its Eastern provinces, while simultaneously exporting oil from its Western provinces into the United States. While it was popular in Eastern and Central Canada, the program incurred strong resentment in Western Canada where oil and gas production are concentrated. The second problem was that the provincial governments, rather than the federal government, have constitutional jurisdiction over natural resources, and in fact, the Government of Alberta actually owned most of the oil in Canada. This provoked a head-on confrontation with the government of Alberta, since any reduction in oil prices came directly out of Alberta government revenues. The conflict was made worse by the fact that the Alberta government had constitutional mechanisms available to it by which it could remove oil from federal taxation and shift the costs of oil subsidies onto the federal government. This drastically increased the federal government deficit.
The National Energy Program had a number of other serious flaws. The most serious was that it was based on a world price steadily increasing to $100 per barrel. In fact, world oil price declined to as little as $10 per barrel in the years following. Since the federal government based its spending on the larger figure, the result was that it spend a great deal of money on subsidies that could not be recovered in taxes on production. Furthermore, due to proximity to the U.S. market companies had opportunities to make money by playing differentials in prices. For instance, refiners in Eastern Canada would import oil subsidized down to half the world price, refine it into products, and export the products to the U.S. at full world price. Airlines flying between Europe and the U.S. via the polar route would take off with as little fuel as possible, and stop briefly in Canada to fill up before continuing on to their destination. Trucking companies operating between locations in the Northern U.S. would detour their trucks through Canada to refuel. None of these transactions was illegal, or even unusual considering the integrated nature of the economies, but all had the effect of transferring billions of Canadian tax dollars to the balance sheets of (mostly foreign owned) companies. A third flaw was that the NEP assumed that future oil discoveries would be made in areas under federal jurisdiction, such as the Arctic and offshore. In fact, as it turned out, most of the major oil discoveries in Canada had already been made, and the expensive subsidies given by the federal government to companies exploring in federal jurisdiction were a waste of money. All of these flaws resulted in large, and unexpected, increases in the federal budget deficit.
The final result of the NEP was that the federal government failed to keep fuel prices low, while incurring very large financial losses, and alienating the voters in its fastest-growing provinces. In the subsequent election in 1984, the governing Liberal party was soundly defeated. The winning Progressive Conservative party delayed dismantling the policy for another two and a half years. This delay contributed to the creation of the Reform Party of Canada
. Subsequent federal governments have avoided introducing similar policies.
. The Crown corporation was originally developed to be an "eye on the petroleum industry" during a period of perceived energy crisis. Initially, its assets consisted only of the federal government's share of the oil sands company Syncrude
and the Arctic oil explorer Panarctic Oils.
However, the government quickly expanded it by buying the Canadian assets of foreign-owned oil companies, such as Atlantic Richfield in 1976, Pacific Petroleums in 1979, Petrofina
in 1981, the refining and marketing assets of BP
in 1983 and of Gulf Oil
in 1985.
Federal ownership brought Petro-Canada into conflict with the provincial governments which had control over the largest and lowest cost oil production in the country. They objected to federal intrusion into their constitutional jurisdiction, and tried to block federal incursions. For instance, when Petro-Canada attempted to buy Husky Oil
in 1978, the Alberta government surreptitiously got control of Husky stock through Alberta Gas Trunk Line
, and successfully blocked the takeover. In 1979 Petro-Canada acquired Westcoast Transmission Co. Ltd. and Pacific Petroleums Ltd., its parent company, as a fully integrated oil company for the then-record purchase price of $1.5 billion.
Petro-Canada overestimated the future price of oil, and consequently paid high prices for the oil assets it acquired, which subsequently fell considerably in value. Its assumption that big new oil discoveries would be made in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast turned out to be incorrect. Petro-Canada has since abandoned all the wells Panarctic drilled, and the discoveries it did make off the Atlantic coast were fewer, more expensive, and took longer to develop than expected. Hibernia
did not produce oil until 1997 and Terra Nova
until 2002. The government also expected Petro-Canada to force down what it considered the high price of gasoline to consumers, but Petro-Canada's oil production was more expensive and its oil refineries less efficient than those of the competing multi-national companies, and it found itself losing money on all aspects of the oil industry.
When the Conservatives
replaced the Liberals
in power in 1984, they began to reverse the nationalization process. In 1991, they passed legislation allowing privatization and began selling shares to the public. The Liberals returned to power in 1993, but had lost interest in having a national oil company
, and continued the privatization process. In 1995 the federal government reduced its interest to 20 percent, and in 2004 sold the remaining shares. Petro-Canada has done better since privatization. The oil price increases since 2003 made its high-cost production profitable, and consolidation of its refining operations to fewer but larger refineries reduced its downstream costs even as prices increased.
On March 23, 2009, Petro-Canada and Suncor Energy
announced they would merge to create Canada's largest oil company. At the time of the announcement, combined market capitalization
of the two corporations was $43 billion. The merged organization would operate under the Suncor name, but would use the Petro-Canada brand in its retail operations. The companies estimated that the merger would save $1.3 billion per year in capital and operating costs, and said that the larger company will have the financial resources to move ahead with the most promising oilsands projects.
, but this is offset by the fact that the geological and political risks are much lower than in most major oil-producing areas. Almost all of the Canadian oil sands are located in Alberta. The Athabasca oil sands
are the only major oil sands deposits in the world which are shallow enough for surface mining.
Commercial production began in 1967 when Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) launched the world's first major oil sands mine. Syncrude
opened the second major facility in 1978. The third, by Shell Canada
, started in 2003. The oil price increases of 2004-2007 made the oil sands much more profitable, and by 2007 over $100 billion worth of new mines and thermal projects were under construction or on the drawing boards. Royal Dutch Shell
announced that in 2006 its Canadian oil sands operations were almost twice as profitable on a per-barrel basis as its international conventional oil operations and in July 2007, it announced it would start a massive $27 billion dollar expansion of its oil sands plants in Alberta.
Cost of production in the oil sands, from raw tar sand to fractionate in the pipe feed, was $18 dollars per barrel; now with improvements it is in the 12-15 dollar range. Rapid price increases in recent years have greatly contributed to the profitability of an industry which has traditionally focused on reducing operating costs, and continues to do so. Critics argue that the focus on operating costs does not sufficiently address environmental issues - for example, "ravaged landscapes, despoiled rivers, diseased denizens, and altered atmospheric chemistry."
Oil sands operations differ from conventional oil in that the initial profitability is somewhat lower, but the geological and political risks are low, the reserves are vast, and the expected lifetime of production extends for generations rather than just a few years. Governments have an incentive to subsidize the start-up costs since they will recover their initial subsidies from tax revenues over a long period of time. From the standpoint of federal-provincial revenues, they also differ in that the federal government will receive larger higher share and higher return on its incentives than it would from conventional oil, while the provincial share, although substantial, will be proportionally smaller. Consequently, there has tended to be much less intergovernmental conflict and more agreement on how these projects should be handled.
If global oil prices remain high, it is likely that Canada will become one of the largest oil producers in the world in the next few decades. If so, there will be environmental issues, resulting more from the vast scale of the operations rather than the toxicity of the products. The oil sands deposits are roughly the size of Florida and the operations would drastically alter the landscape, which until recently was largely wilderness. In addition, concerns have been raised about water supplies, since the mines and steam projects would use a large portion of the flow of several major rivers. The most serious problem in the short term is an acute labor and housing shortage which has driven vacancy rates in the oil sands area to zero and wages to extremely high levels. However, given the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue expected to be generated by the oil sands in the next few decades, it is likely that future projects will be approved regardless of the problems.
Also 19 deposits of oil shale
s have been identified in Canada. The most explored deposits are in Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick
. These are not as large as those in the Western United States, and will probably remain undeveloped in the foreseeable future since they are much more expensive and much smaller than the oil sands.
. This trend goes back as far as an incident at the end of the nineteenth century, when Ontario
revoked export licenses for natural gas to the United States.
By the late 1940s Alberta, through its Conservation Board, eliminated most of the wasteful production practices associated with the Turner Valley oil and gas field. As new natural gas discoveries greeted drillers in the Leduc-fuelled search for oil, the industry agitated for licenses to export natural gas. In response, the provincial government appointed the Dinning Natural Gas Commission to inquire into Alberta's likely reserves and future demand.
In its March 1949 report, the Dinning Commission supported the principle that Albertans should have first call on provincial natural gas supplies, and that Canadians should have priority over foreign users if an exportable surplus developed. Alberta accepted the recommendations of the Dinning Commission, and later declared it would only authorize exports of gas in excess of a 30-year supply. Shortly thereafter, Alberta's Legislature passed the Gas Resources Conservation Act, which gave Alberta greater control over natural gas at the wellhead, and empowered the Oil and Gas Conservation Board to issue export permits.
The federal government's policy objectives at the time reflected concern for national integration and equity among Canadians. In 1949, Ottawa created a framework for regulating interprovincial and international pipelines with its Pipe Lines Act. Alberta once again agreed to authorize exports. The federal government, like Alberta, treated natural gas as a Canadian resource to protect for the foreseeable future before permitting international sales.
Although Americans were interested in Canadian exports, they only wanted very cheap natural gas. After all, their natural gas industry was a major player in the American economy, and American policy-makers were not eager to allow foreign competition unless there was clear economic benefit.
Because of these combined factors, proposals for major gas transportation projects carried political as well as economic risks. Not until the implementation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement
(signed in 1988) did natural gas become a freely traded commodity between the US and Canada.
and Toronto
in 1878 and 1879. A permanent arc lighting system was installed in Toronto in 1881 and used to illuminate a number of stores, including Eaton's
. In Ottawa
, arc lights were installed in several mills. By 1883 arc lights were installed in the streets of Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg
, and by 1890 numerous cities from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
to Victoria, British Columbia
had arc lighting.
The first successful installations of Thomas Edison
's incandescent lighting systems began in Ontario and Quebec starting in 1882. In 1886 a small plant supplying incandescent lights was installed in the Parliament Buildings
in Ottawa. These direct current
(DC) systems could serve only a radius of 800 metres (2,624.7 ft) from the power plant. However, in 1888 the first permanent installation of a Westinghouse
alternating current
(AC) system was installed in Cornwall, Ontario
.
The competition between AC and DC came to a head during the development of the potential of Niagara Falls
because AC systems could supply electricity over much longer distances than DC systems. This was enormously important to Canada, which had numerous potential hydroelectric sites in remote locations. In 1897 a transmission system was built from the Batiscan River
16 miles (25.7 km) to Trois-Rivières
, Quebec
. In 1901 Shawinigan Falls was harnessed, and by 1903 a 50,000 volt power line carried electricity from it to Montreal.
, the Ontario
Legislature created the Hydro-Electric Power Commission
(HEPC) to build transmissions lines to supply municipal utilities with power generated at Niagara Falls by private companies. In 1910 the HEPC began building 110,000 volt electric power lines to supply electricity to numerous municipalities in southwestern Ontario. In 1922 it started building its own generating stations, and gradually it took over most power generation in Ontario. In 1926 it signed long-term contracts to buy electricity from power companies in Quebec, but these proved controversial when jurisdictional disputes impeded development of the St. Lawrence
and Ottawa River
s and the Great Depression
reduced demand. However, during World War II
they proved an extremely important source of power for war production.
After WWII, the development of the Saint Lawrence Seaway
in conjunction with American power authorities allowed the development of the potential of the St. Lawrence River, and agreements with Quebec allowed Ontario to develop sites on the upper Ottawa River. However, hydroelectric capacity in Ontario was inadequate to meet growing demand, so coal burning power stations were built near Toronto
and Windsor
in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, Ontario turned to nuclear power
. In 1962 the HEPC and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
started operating a 25-megawatt Nuclear Power Demonstrator, and in 1968 they brought the 200-megawatt Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station into service. This was followed by the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
in 1971, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
in 1977, and the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
in 1989. In 1974, toward the beginning of this expansion, the HEPC was renamed Ontario Hydro
, which had long been its informal name. Eventually, Pickering grew to eight 540 MW nuclear reactors, Bruce to eight 900+ MW reactors, and Darlington to four 935 MW units.
In the 1990s, the enormous debt from building nuclear power stations, combined with lower than expected reliability and life span, became a political issue. The Ontario government decided to open the market to competition. In the meantime, the closure of many of Ontario's nuclear reactors for rehabilitation, combined with increasing demand resulted in a substantial increase in coal-fired power generation, with resulting increases in air pollution levels. In 2003 a new government came into power in Ontario and pledged to phase out coal as a generation source, leaving open the question of how Ontario was to meet future demand.
The Quebec
government followed the example of Ontario in nationalizing its electrical sector, and in 1944 expropriated the assets of the monopoly Montreal Light, Heat and Power Company to create a new crown corporation called Hydro-Québec
. In the post-war era, Hydro-Québec set about expanding and improving the reliability of the electric power grid, and demonstrated it could transmit electricity over long distances at extremely high voltages. Under Maurice Duplessis
the Quebec government preferred to leave electrification of rural areas to the Rural Electrification Agency., however after Jean Lesage
took power in 1960, Hydro-Québec gained exclusive rights to develop new hydroelectric projects, and in 1963 it began the gradual takeover of all private distributors in the province. Driven by rapidly growing demand, Hydro-Québec built three major hydroelectric complexes in rapid succession: Manicouagan-Outardes
on the North Shore
of the Saint Lawrence River
, Churchill Falls
in Labrador
, and the James Bay Project
on La Grande River
. This, combined with lower than projected demand, created a surplus of electricity in Quebec, so in 1997, Hydro-Québec began wholesale marketing of electricity to the United States.
began with the installation of electric lights in Victoria
in 1883. Created in 1897, the BC Electric Company built BC's first hydroelectric plant near Victoria the following year, and created subsidiaries to supply electricity to Victoria and Vancouver
, the province's two largest cities. BC Electric was taken over by Montreal-based Power Corporation in 1928. Before and during World War II, BC Electric primarily supplied power to the main cities of Vancouver and Victoria, leaving other regions with spotty and unreliable supply. In 1938, the BC government created the British Columbia Utilities Commission
, which limited BC Electric's profit margins. In 1945, the provincial government created a crown corporation, the BC Power Commission (BCPC), to acquire small utilities and extended electrification to rural and isolated areas. BCPC grew to supply more than 200 small communities throughout the province.
The American and Canadian governments signed the Columbia River Treaty
in 1961 and ratified it in 1964, agreeing to share power from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River
. To enable development of major hydroelectric sites on the Columbia
and Peace River
s, the BC government under Premier W. A. C. Bennett bought BC Electric in 1961, and the following year merged it with the BCPC to create the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, commonly known as BC Hydro
. During the 60s and 70s, BC Hydro built some of the largest hydroelectric projects in the world, notably the W. A. C. Bennett Dam
. More than 80% of BC Hydro's electricity is produced by 61 dams at 43 locations on the Columbia and Peace Rivers. Since that time the company's developments have been much smaller. During the 1980s BC Hydro changed its focus from building new hydroelectric plants to promoting energy conservation.
In 2010 the province enacted the Clean Energy Act which puts it on a path toward electricity self-sufficiency and energy conservation, while opening the door to energy exports, further investments in clean, renewable energy and a requirement that 93 percent of its electricity must come from clean or renewable sources.
Beginning as early as 1887, Alberta had numerous small, privately owned firms that supplied towns across the province with electricity. However, service was often inconsistent—limited to a select number of businesses and provided only for a few evening hours.
In 1947, two years after the war ended, Calgary Power moved its head office from Montreal—then the nation's largest city and prime business center—to Calgary, reorganized, and incorporated as Calgary Power Ltd. At that time, Calgary Power supplied the province of Alberta with 99 percent of its hydroelectric power. Also in 1947, Calgary Power built its Barrier Hydro Plant and used it to test the use of a newly developed remote-control operation system. The automation efforts worked well enough that Calgary Power soon converted all of its plants to the Barrier Plant system. A control center that could operate the company's entire system was built in Seebe in 1951.
Calgary Power continued to expand through the 1950s and 1960s, developing its first underground distribution lines and building dams on the Brazeau and North Saskatchewan rivers. The reservoir built on the North Saskatchewan project, Lake Abraham, became the largest man-made lake in the province. Also at this time, Calgary Power began exploring thermal energy generation, since few sites remained that were suitable for hydro power development. The company built its first thermal generating plant in 1956 near Wabamun Lake, west of Edmonton and near large coal reserves.
In 1954, International Utilities became the corporate owner of Canadian, Northwestern and Canadian Western Utilities. Canadian Utilities purchased the McMurray Light and Power Company Limited and Slave Lake Utilities. Northland Utilities Limited was added in 1961. In the early 1970s, Canadian Utilities became the corporate parent of Canadian Western, Northwestern, Northland, and Alberta Power Limited, which was the electrical operations of Canadian Utilities.
. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure.
Consumers range from residential buyers to huge industrial consumers mining the oil sands, operating pipelines and milling forest products. On the supply side, generators range from wind farms east of Crowsnest Pass
to oilsands plants and other petroleum processing facilities which generate marketable electricity surplus to their own needs, to coal-fired plants near Edmonton. Because of lower altitude, cooler temperatures, greater supplies of water for cooling and steam generation, and large near surface supplies of thermal coal, central Alberta is thermodynamically the best place in Alberta to generate hydrocarbon-fuelled electricity.
The diversity of Alberta’s electricity supply has increased substantially in recent years. To a large extent because of deregulation, the province has more technology, fuels, locations, ownership, and maintenance diversity than in the past and the rest of Canada. The system’s reliability, its cost structure and Alberta’s collective exposure to risk are now met by a complex system based on diverse power sources. However, overloaded power lines between northern Alberta and the south of the province are wasting enough electricity to power half the city of Red Deer, Alberta
.
Electric power generation in Canada draws on hydroelectric, nuclear, coal and natural gas, with a small but growing contribution from wind power
. The electrification of Canada, was spurred from the US. The Niagara electrical power plant spurred industrial development in Southern Ontario.
Soon major rivers across Canada had hydro schemes on them. The Canadian electrical grid was closely connected to and supplied large amounts of energy to the U.S. electrical grid. Many provinces have had a provincially-owned monopoly power generator, such as Ontario Hydro
, Manitoba Hydro
, Hydro-Québec
, Sask Power and BC Hydro
. Many major provincial hydoelectric schemes also included federal involvement and subsidies. These concerns embarked on vast building schemes in the postwar years raising some of the largest dams in the world.
Ontario, Canada's most populous province, generates some 9,600 MW annually, over half of that coming from one dozen nuclear reactors. Ontario also has coal, natural gas, and hydro facilities. However, Ontario is in a pickle as it must replace 80% of its generating capacity in the next twenty years—the old stations have time expired and the nuclear reactors are overstressed. A huge debate rages whether to go largely nuclear or go with renewables. Either way the bill is going to be in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars which will be reflected on the electric bills.
. Today Cameco
and Areva
are major produces of uranium for nuclear power. Cameco
mines the world's largest high-grade uranium deposit at the McArthur River mine in Northern Saskatchewan
.
ZEEP
was Canada's first nuclear reactor built in 1945. Canada set up its NRX
research reactor at Chalk River Laboratories
in 1947. In 1962 the NPD reactor in Rolphton, Ontario was the first prototype power reactor in Canada. From this the NRC
and the AECL
developed the CANDU reactor. Ontario Hydro's first production power reactor was constructed at the Douglas Point
in 1956. Eighteen reactors were then built in the following four decades in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. In 2008 Nuclear power re-emerged with approved plans to build new reactors at existing stations at Darlington and Pickering, Ontario; another new station is planned for Peace River, AB. All are subject to planning and environmental reviews.
Canada generates a significant part of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, but has otherwise limited renewable energy generation, although wind power
is growing quickly. The first commercial wind farm in Canada was built in Alberta in 1993. A 15 megawatt tidal plant sits at Annapolis, Nova Scotia
, and uses the daily tides of the Bay of Fundy
.
The first commercial solar project was built in Stone Mills, Ontario
in 2009.Skypower Ltd, used over 120,000 thin film photovoltaic solar panels, for a total of 9,1 megawatt, creating clean solar energy for 1000 homes annually.
Politicians have been willing to subsidize renewable methods using taxpayer funds to increase the amount and percentage of Canada's electricity generated.
Appliances were improved to use less energy. Also, out of this initiative came several debacles—these included
the Urea-formaldehyde
Insulation disaster and the ongoing Leaky Condo Scandal.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
is the 5th largest producer of energy in the world, producing about 6% of global energy supplies. It is the world's largest producer of natural uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
, producing one-third of global supply, and is also the world's leading producer of hydro-electricity, accounting for 13% of global production. It is also a significant producer of petroleum
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
, natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
, and coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
. Only Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
produce more total energy than Canada.
The United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
is Canada's major trade market for energy products and services. Canada sends around 98% of its total energy exports to the United States, and in return Canada is the largest supplier of energy exports to the world's biggest economy. Canada also exports significant amounts of uranium and coal to Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Despite being a net energy exporter, Canada also imports large amounts of energy products. It is both an importer and exporter of coal and petroleum because its major coal and oil fields are located in Western Canada, particularly in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, far removed from its main population and industrial centers in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, and many of its oil refineries cannot handle the types of oil produced in Canada.
Basic statistics
| Energy in Canada | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capita | Prim. energy | Production | Export | Electricity | CO2-emission | |
| Million | TWh | TWh | TWh | TWh | Mt | |
| 2004 | 31.95 | 3,129 | 4,623 | 1,558 | 549 | 551 |
| 2007 | 32.98 | 3,133 | 4,805 | 1,742 | 560 | 557 |
| 2008 | 33.33 | 3,103 | 4,738 | 1,683 | 568 | 551 |
| 2009 | 33.74 | 2,955 | 4,533 | 1,645 | 522 | 521 |
| Change 2004-2009 | 5.6 % | -5.5 % | -1.9 % | 5.6 % | -4.9 % | -5.5 % |
| Mtoe = 11.63 TWh, Prim. energy includes energy losses that are 2/3 for nuclear power |
||||||
Regulatory framework
In Canada's federal system of government, jurisdiction over energy is divided between the federalGovernment of Canada
The Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...
and provincial and territorial governments
Provinces and territories of Canada
The provinces and territories of Canada combine to make up the world's second-largest country by area. There are ten provinces and three territories...
. Provincial governments have jurisdiction over the exploration, development, conservation, and management of non-renewable resources
Non-renewable resources
A non-renewable resource is a natural resource which cannot be produced, grown, generated, or used on a scale which can sustain its consumption rate, once depleted there is no more available for future needs. Also considered non-renewable are resources that are consumed much faster than nature...
, as well as the generation and production of electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
. Federal jurisdiction in energy is primarily concerned with regulation of inter-provincial and international trade
International trade
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product...
and commerce, and the management of non-renewable resources on federal lands
Federal lands
Federal lands are lands in the United States for which ownership is claimed by the U.S. federal government.-Primary federal land holders:*Bureau of Land Management*United States Forest Service*United States Fish and Wildlife Service*National Park Service...
.
Federal regulation
The National Energy BoardNational Energy Board
The National Energy Board is an independent economic regulatory agency created in 1959 by the Government of Canada to oversee "international and inter-provincial aspects of the oil, gas and electric utility industries"...
(NEB) is an independent federal regulatory agency that regulates the Canadian energy industry. The NEB was created in 1959 and reports through the Minister of Natural Resources to the Parliament of Canada
Parliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...
. Its primary responsibilities include:
- Inter-provincial and international oil and gas pipelinesPipeline transportPipeline transport is the transportation of goods through a pipe. Most commonly, liquids and gases are sent, but pneumatic tubes that transport solid capsules using compressed air are also used....
and power lines, - Export and import of natural gas under long-term licenses and short-term orders,
- Oil exports under long-term licenses and short-term orders (no applications for long-term exports have been filed in recent years), and
- Frontier landsFrontier LandsFrontier lands are Crown owned lands in Canada's North and offshore areas not under the jurisdiction of a federal/provincial shared management agreement...
and offshore areasOffshore drillingOffshore drilling refers to a mechanical process where a wellbore is drilled through the seabed. It is typically carried out in order to explore for and subsequently produce hydrocarbons which lie in rock formations beneath the seabed...
not covered by provincial/federal management agreements.
In 1985, the federal government and the provincial governments in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
and Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
agreed to deregulate the prices of crude oil and natural gas. Offshore oil Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada is the region of Canada comprising the four provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec: the three Maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia – and Newfoundland and Labrador...
is administered under joint federal and provincial responsibility in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
and Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
.
Provincial regulation
Provincial regulation of oil and natural gas activities, pipelines, and distribution systems is administered by provincial utility boardsPublic Utilities Commission
A Utilities commission, Utility Regulatory Commission , Public Utilities Commission or Public Service Commission is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a public utility...
. The producing provinces impose royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
and taxes on oil and natural gas production; provide drilling incentives; and grant permits and licenses to construct and operate facilities. The consuming provinces regulate distribution systems and oversee the retail
Retail
Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...
price
Price
-Definition:In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.In modern economies, prices are generally expressed in units of some form of currency...
of natural gas to consumers
Consumer
Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...
. The key regulations with respect to the wholesale
Wholesale
Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...
and retail electricity competition are at the provincial level. To date, two provinces (Alberta and Ontario) have initiated retail competition
Competition (economics)
Competition in economics is a term that encompasses the notion of individuals and firms striving for a greater share of a market to sell or buy goods and services...
. In Alberta, the electricity sector is largely privatized, in Ontario the process is ongoing. In other provinces electricity is mostly generated and distributed by provincially-owned
Crown corporations of Canada
Canadian Crown corporations are enterprises owned by the federal government of Canada , one of Canada's provincial governments or one of the territorial governments. Crown corporations have a long standing presence in the country and have been instrumental in the formation of the state...
utilities.
Constitutional issues
Canadian energy policy reflects the constitutional division of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments. The Constitution of CanadaConstitution of Canada
The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law in Canada; the country's constitution is an amalgamation of codified acts and uncodified traditions and conventions. It outlines Canada's system of government, as well as the civil rights of all Canadian citizens and those in Canada...
places natural resources under the jurisdiction of the provinces
Canadian federalism
Canada is a federation with two distinct jurisdictions of political authority: the country-wide federal government and the ten regionally-based provincial governments. It also has three territorial governments in the far north, though these are subject to the federal government...
. The provincial governments own most of the petroleum, natural gas and coal reserves, and control most of the electricity production. This means that the national government must coordinate its energy policies with those of the provincial governments, and intergovernmental conflicts sometimes arise. The problem is particularly acute since, while the energy consuming provinces have the bulk of the population and are able to elect federal governments which introduce policies favouring energy consumers, the energy producing provinces have the ability to defeat such policies by exercising their constitutional authority over natural resources.
Section 92A of the Constitution Act, 1867
Constitution Act, 1867
The Constitution Act, 1867 , is a major part of Canada's Constitution. The Act created a federal dominion and defines much of the operation of the Government of Canada, including its federal structure, the House of Commons, the Senate, the justice system, and the taxation system...
assigned to the provincial governments the exclusive authority to make laws in relation to non-renewable resources and electrical energy, while Section 125 prevented the federal government from taxing any provincial government lands or property (although the three prairie provinces were exempted from these provisions as a condition of their entry into Confederation until the Natural Resources Transfer Acts
Natural Resources Transfer Acts
The Natural Resources Transfer Acts were passed by the Parliament of Canada in 1930 in order to give the Prairie provinces jurisdiction over their crown lands and natural resources, a right they were not given when they entered Confederation...
of 1930). On the other hand, the federal government has the power to make treaties with foreign countries. This has important implications for treaties involving energy production, like the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , aimed at fighting global warming...
, which the Canadian government signed in 2002. Although the federal government had the authority to sign the treaty, it may require the cooperation of the provincial governments to enforce it.
History
Historically, wood fires and human muscles provided the bulk of energy in Canada. When foreigners think of Canada the log cabin and campfire often spring to mind. The arrival of the horse from Europe by way of Mexico substituted animals for humans in the transportation system, initially to the benefit of the native people, but later to their disadvantage. Subsequent developments in energy sources, like coal and petroleum, paralleled and in some cases preceded those in the United States. In 1846, Abraham Gesner built the world's first refinery producing kerosene from coal in Nova Scotia, and in 1853 moved to the United States to build more refineries there.When the four original provinces of Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
, New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
joined together to form the Dominion of Canada in 1867, the fathers of Confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
wrote a constitution that (in theory) created a country with a strong central government and relatively weak provincial governments. They did so in reaction to the recent Civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
in the United States, where (in theory at least) the states are very powerful and the federal government is weak. In doing so, they assigned control over and ownership of natural resources to the provinces. In 1870 the British government transferred the territory controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
to the new Canadian government control, a vast area of 4 million square kilometres which included most of the modern provinces of Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
and Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
. At the time, the largest industry in it was the fur trade, which was under federal control, and the Canadian government was unaware of the enormous mineral wealth it held, particularly the massive quantities of fossil fuels toward the western margins and the hydroelectric potential of the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...
. As a result of future developments, this gave the governments of the provinces, particularly that of Alberta, far more wealth and power than the founders originally envisioned.
History of coal in Canada
Coal has been mined in Canada since 1639 when a small mine was opened at Grand Lake, New Brunswick. In 1720 French soldiers opened a mine in Cape Breton, Nova ScotiaCape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia
Cape Breton Regional Municipality often shortened to simply CBRM, is a regional municipality in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton County.According to the 2006 Census of Canada, the population within the Cape Breton Regional Municipality is 102,250...
to supply the fortress of Louisbourg. Cape Breton later supplied coal to Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and other American ports. Commercial mining in New Brunswick began in 1825 although most of the province's coal production has been used locally. In western Canada
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...
, coal was first mined on Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...
from 1853. Starting in the 1880s, the building of the transcontinental railways through Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
and British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
caused coal mines to be developed in various locations near railway lines in the prairies and mountains. By 1911 western mines produced most of the coal in Canada and, despite downturns, gradually expanded to produce over 95% of Canadian coal.
Coal was subsidised in Canada from 1887. The mines of Cape Breton were involved in this tariff protection to help it compete against American coal entering Ontario via the Great Lakes. Cape Breton coal was dug underground then shipped to Toronto and Montreal. The vast industries of the east, including steel mills, were fuelled with this coal. While there were difficulties and strikes, coal powered Canada into the Second World War. There were several Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
s into coal: one in 1947 and other in 1965.
Federal involvement in Cape Breton, continued with the Cape Breton Development Corporation
Cape Breton Development Corporation
The Cape Breton Development Corporation, or DEVCO, was a Canadian federal government Crown corporation. It ceased operation on December 31, 2009, after being amalgamated with Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation ....
, or Devco which was in reality a large subsidy. The completion of the trans-Canada pipeline, nuclear reactors and the Hibernia oil fields have finished coal in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
. On the other side of the country, Vancouver Island is covered in coal: there are coal fields in Cassidy, Nanaimo, Campbell River
Campbell River, British Columbia
Campbell River is a coastal city in British Columbia on the east coast of Vancouver Island at the south end of Discovery Passage, which lies along the important coastal Inside Passage shipping route...
and Fort Rupert. Coal was mined at Nanaimo for one hundred years from 1853-1955. Coal was fed in ship's furnaces, railroad engines, and industry. In BC's interior coal was mined at Merritt
Merritt, British Columbia
Merritt is a city in the Nicola Valley of the south-central Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Situated at the confluence of the Nicola and Coldwater rivers, it is the first major community encountered after travelling along Phase One of the Coquihalla Highway and acts as the gateway to all...
, Coalmont
Coalmont, British Columbia
Coalmont is a tiny mining town, northwest of Princeton, British Columbia, Canada, on the north bank of the Tulameen River. It is near the community of Tulameen and Otter Lake and the Coldwater Junction of the Coquihalla Highway. The town was established in 1912 to serve as a supply point to the...
, Fernie
Fernie, British Columbia
Fernie is a city in the Elk Valley area of the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia, Canada, located on BC Highway 3 on the eastern approaches to the Crowsnest Pass through the Rocky Mountains...
and Hudson's Hope
Hudson's Hope, British Columbia
Hudson's Hope is a district municipality in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, in the Peace River Regional District. It covers an area of with a population of 1,157 people. Having been first settled in 1805, it is the third oldest community in the province, although it was not incorporated...
. The development of coal mines in the west is integrally mixed with the building of railways—the Canadian Pacific Railway was directly involved with the Fermie mines. A separate railway—the Crow's Nest Line—was built to move coal from the Rockies to the smelter at Trail. Alberta's bedrock is literally a layer of coal—coal underlays much of the Rocky Mountains. Historically, there were underground pits in Lethbridge
Lethbridge
Lethbridge is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada, and the largest city in southern Alberta. It is Alberta's fourth-largest city by population after Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer, and the third-largest by area after Calgary and Edmonton. The nearby Canadian Rockies contribute to the city's...
, Pincher Creek
Pincher Creek, Alberta
Pincher Creek is a town in the southwest of Alberta, Canada. It is located immediately east of the Canadian Rockies in the centre of ranching country, north of Waterton Lakes National Park.The town's mayor is Ernie Olsen.- History :...
, Canmore and Nordegg
Nordegg, Alberta
Nordegg is a hamlet in west-central Alberta, Canada within Clearwater County. It is located in the North Saskatchewan River valley in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, at the crossroads of David Thompson Highway and the Highway 734 spur of the Bighorn Highway.- History :The community was...
.
The discovery of huge oil fields in western Canada starting with the Leduc, Alberta
Leduc, Alberta
- Demographics :The population of the City of Leduc according to its 2011 municipal census is 24,139, a 3.6% increase over its 2010 municipal census population of 23,293....
field in 1947, and growing imports of cheap foreign oil into eastern Canada drastically affected the demand for Canadian coal. Beginning about 1950, almost all the coal used for heating, industry, and transportation was replaced by petroleum products and natural gas. This had a devastating effect on the coal mining communities of Atlantic Canada, although in western Canada the loss of jobs in the coal industry was more than compensated for by gains in the oil industry.
Coal mining began an expansion phase in the late 1960s with the signing of long-term contracts to supply metallurgical coal to the booming Japanese steel industry. This was of little benefit to Atlantic Canada, but led to the re-opening of closed mines and the development of new mines in Alberta and BC. Around the same time, Alberta and Saskatchewan began to use their substantial coal resources to generate electricity. Crude oil price increases in the 1970s and early 1980s increased the demand for coal worldwide. New mines opened in Alberta and BC, and new port facilities were built in BC to supply the growing demand in Asia.
Coal in modern day Canada
Canada has the tenth largest coal reserves in the world, an enormous amount considering the sparse population of the country. However, the vast majority of those reserves are located hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the country's industrial centers and seaports, and the effect of high transportation costs is that they remain largely unexploited. As with other natural resources, regulation of coal production is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the provincial governments, and it only enters federal jurisdiction when it is imported or exported from Canada.Over 90% of Canada's coal reserves, and 99% of its production, are located in the three Western provinces of Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, and Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
. Of these, Alberta alone has 70% of Canada's coal reserves, and 48% of the Texas-sized province is underlaid by coal deposits. British Columbia has one of the thickest coal deposits in the world, the Hat Creek deposit, which is 550 metres (1800 ft) thick. There are also smaller, but substantial, coal deposits in the Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
and Northwest Territories
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
and the Arctic Islands
Arctic Islands
Arctic Islands may refer to:* Canadian Arctic islands* Islands in the Arctic, see :Category:Islands of the Arctic Ocean* Russian Arctic islands...
, which are even further from markets. The Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
and New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
have coal deposits that were historically a very important source of energy, and Nova Scotia was once the largest coal producer in Canada, but these deposits are much smaller and much more expensive to produce than the Western coal, so coal production in the Atlantic provinces has virtually ceased. Nova Scotia now imports all the coal for its steel mills and power plants from other countries like Colombia. At the same time, the Western provinces export their coal to 20 different countries, particularly Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, in addition to using it in their own thermal power plants. Elk Valley Coal
mine is the second biggest coal mine in the world.
The region between New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, a distance of thousands of kilometres which includes the major industrial centers of Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, is largely devoid of coal. As a result, these provinces import almost all of the coal for their steel mills and thermal power plants from the United States. Unfortunately coal from the Eastern United States is high in sulfur content, and this has contributed to a serious air quality problem, particularly in heavily populated Southwestern Ontario.
Petroleum
First fields
In 1858 James Miller Williams dug the first oil well in North America at Oil Springs, Ontario, preceding Edwin Drake who drilled the first one in the United States one year later. By 1870 Canada had 100 refineries in operation and was exporting oil to Europe. However, the oil fields of Ontario were shallow and small, and oil production peaked and started to decline around 1900. In contrast, oil production in the United States grew rapidly in the first part of the 20th century after huge discoveries were made in Texas, Oklahoma, California and elsewhere.Turner Valley era
In 1914, Turner Valley became the first significant field found in Alberta. Eastern Canadian investors and the federal government showed little interest and the field was developed primarily by subsidiaries of U.S. companies. It was originally believed to be a gas field with a small amount of naptha condensed in the gas, but due to the lack of regulations, about 90% of the gas was flared off to extract the small amount of petroleum liquids, an amount of gas that today would be worth billions of dollars.In 1930, crude oil was discovered in the Turner Valley field, below and to the west of the gas cap. This came as a shock to geologists because the free gas cap, which could have provided the reservoir drive to produce the oil, had largely been produced and flared off by that time. As a result, less than 12% of the original oil in place at Turner Valley will ever be recovered.
The Alberta provincial government became upset by the conspicuous waste so in 1931 it passed the Oil and Gas Wells Act, followed in 1932 by the Turner Valley Conservation Act. However, the federal government declared both Acts unconstitutional, and the wasteful burning of natural gas continued. However, in 1938 the provincial government established the Alberta Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board (today known as the Energy Resources Conservation Board
Energy Resources Conservation Board
The Energy Resources Conservation Board is an independent, quasi-judicial agency of the Government of Alberta. It regulates the safe, responsible, and efficient development of Alberta's energy resources: oil, natural gas, oil sands, coal, and pipelines...
) to initiate conservation measures, and this time was successful in implementing it.
This body was the regulator of oil and gas production in Alberta, and therefore of most production in Canada. As the provincial regulatory authority with the most experience in the industry, it became a model for the other oil and gas producing provinces - indeed, it has been used as a model by many national petroleum industries around the world.
Post-war discoveries and development
At the end of World War II, Canada was importing 90% of its oil from the U.S. The situation changed dramatically in 1947 when, after drilling 133 consecutive dry holes, Imperial OilImperial Oil
Imperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
decided to drill into a peculiar anomaly on its newly-developed seismic recordings near the then-village of Leduc
Leduc, Alberta
- Demographics :The population of the City of Leduc according to its 2011 municipal census is 24,139, a 3.6% increase over its 2010 municipal census population of 23,293....
to see what it was. The Leduc No. 1
Leduc No. 1
Leduc No. 1 was a major crude oil discovery made near Leduc, Alberta, Canada on February 13, 1947. It provided the geological key to Alberta's most prolific conventional oil reserves and resulted in a boom in petroleum exploration and development across Western Canada...
well identified a large oil field, and provided the geological key for other important discoveries within Alberta. Geologists soon began to identify and drill other Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
reef
Reef
In nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....
s within the province - mostly in the north-central portion of the province. The Alberta oil rush began, and drillers quickly began to identify other important oil-bearing formations like the one hosting the giant Pembina oilfield.
The Leduc discovery and the string of even bigger ones that followed rapidly backed imported oil out of the Canadian prairies and produced a huge surplus of oil which had no immediate market. In 1949, Imperial Oil applied to the federal government to build the Interprovincial Pipeline
Enbridge
Enbridge Inc. is a Calgary, Alberta based company focused on three core businesses: crude oil and liquids pipelines, natural gas transportation and distribution, and green energy. The company has approximately 6,000 employees, mostly in Canada and the United States...
(IPL) to Lake Superior
Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...
, and in 1950 it was completed to the port of Superior, Wisconsin
Superior, Wisconsin
Superior is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 26,960 at the 2010 census. Located at the junction of U.S. Highways 2 and 53, it is north of and adjacent to both the Village of Superior and the Town of Superior.Superior is at the western...
. Many people questioned why it was built to an American port rather than a Canadian one, but the federal government was more interested in the fact that oil exports made a huge difference to Canada's trade balance and completely erased the country's balance of trade deficit.
By 1956 the pipeline was extended via Sarnia, Ontario
Sarnia, Ontario
Sarnia is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada . It is the largest city on Lake Huron and is located where the upper Great Lakes empty into the St. Clair River....
to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
and became, at 3,100 km, the longest oil pipeline in the world. In the interest of increasing oil exports, extensions were built to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and other refinery locations in the Midwestern United States
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
during the 1960s. In the other direction, in 1950 the federal government gave approval to build a pipeline west, and in 1953 the 1,200 km Transmountain Pipeline was built from Edmonton to the port of Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
with an extension to Seattle, Washington. These pipelines did more to improve the energy security of the United States than that of Canada, since the Canadian government was more interested in the country's trade balance than in military or energy security.
National Oil Policy (1961)
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
to the west, the vast boreal forest to the north, and the bottomless swamps of the Canadian shield
Canadian Shield
The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier Canadien , is a vast geological shield covered by a thin layer of soil that forms the nucleus of the North American or Laurentia craton. It is an area mostly composed of igneous rock which relates to its long volcanic history...
to the east, but was highly accessible from the vast industrial areas of the U.S. Midwest to the south. Its landlocked location was easier to defend from foreign attack than the United State's own oil fields in Texas, Alaska and California. As a result, the U.S. gave preference to oil imports from Canada, and for the purposes of energy policy treated Alberta as if it were a U.S. state. Since this resulted in producers in Alberta receiving better treatment from the United States government than the Canadian government, producers asked the federal government for access to the Eastern Canadian oil market. Oil producers in Alberta calculated they could deliver Alberta oil to the refineries at Montreal for a cost equal to or only slightly higher than the price of imported oil. However, the Montreal area refineries and the Quebec government balked at the restriction, so the result was the National Oil Policy of 1961. This drew a dividing line at the Ottawa River and gave Canadian producers exclusive rights to the areas to sell oil to the west of the line. Refineries to the east of the line could continue to process imported oil.
There is a common misapprehension in eastern Canada that the National Oil Policy resulted in higher gasoline prices for those areas west of the Ottawa Valley than those receiving imported oil. In fact the differences in gasoline price depended on market conditions and usually amounted to a fraction of a cent per litre. In reality, Alberta producers were capable of meeting the price of international oil at Montreal. The misunderstanding results from the fact that the refineries at Montreal were operated by the subsidiaries of multi-national corporations, and while their parent companies had much lower operating costs in Venezuela and the Middle East, they forced their subsidiaries to pay full world price for the oil they delivered to Montreal. Thus, while Imperial Oil, for instance, charged approximately the same price for gasoline in Montreal as in Toronto, regardless of whether it was made from domestic or imported oil, its parent company (Standard Oil of New Jersey, now known as Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
), was a partner in Aramco in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, where production costs were much lower. As a result, the lower costs increased the profits of Exxon rather than lowering prices for customers of Imperial Esso. In addition, because they were realized in third-world countries, these profits were taxed neither by the government of Canada nor (because of some special features of U.S. tax law) the United States. However, Montreal refineries would always point out that foreign oil was "cheaper" than domestic oil, while avoiding mentioning that it was cheaper for their owners, but not for their customers.
Government energy companies
In 1970, Quebec created a provincially owned petroleum company called SOQUIP. A year later, the Gordon Commission's nationalist flavour found practical expression with the creation of the Canada Development CorporationCanada Development Corporation
The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment...
, to "buy back" Canadian industries and resource with deals that included a takeover of the Western operations of France's Aquitaine and their conversion into Canterra Energy. Also in 1971, the federal government blocked a proposed purchase of Canadian-controlled Home Oil by American-based Ashland Oil.
The wave of direct action spread to Alberta when Premier Peter Lougheed
Peter Lougheed
Edgar Peter Lougheed, PC, CC, AOE, QC, is a Canadian lawyer, and a former politician and Canadian Football League player. He served as the tenth Premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985....
and his Conservatives won power in 1971, ending 36 years of Social Credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
rule. Lougheed's elaborate election platform, titled New Directions, sounded themes common among OPEC countries by pledging to create provincial resources and oil growth companies, collect a greater share of energy revenues, and foster economic diversification to prepare for the day when petroleum reserves ran out. The idea of limited resources emerged from the realm of theory into hard facts of policy when the NEB rejected natural-gas export applications in 1970 and 1971, on grounds that there was no surplus and Canada needed the supplies. The strength of the new conservationist sentiment was underlined when the NEB stuck to its guns despite a 1971 declaration by the federal Department of Energy that it thought Canada had a 392-year supply of natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
and enough oil for 923 years.
Energy crises (1973 and 1979)
In 1973, this situation changed abruptly.The Canadian government had already begun to change its energy policy. Inflation had become a national problem and oil prices were rising, and on September 4, 1973 Pierre Trudeau asked the western provinces to agree to a voluntary freeze on oil prices. Nine days later, his government imposed a 40-cent tax on every barrel of exported Canadian oil. The tax equalled the difference between domestic and international oil prices, and the revenues were used to subsidize imports for eastern refiners. At a stroke, Ottawa began subsidizing eastern consumers while reducing the revenues available to producing provinces and the petroleum industry. Alberta premier Peter Lougheed soon announced that his government would revise its royalty policy in favour of a system linked to international oil prices.
Two days later, on October 6, the Yom Kippur War broke out – a nail-biting affair between Israel and the Arab states. OPEC used the conflict to double the posted price for a barrel of Saudi Arabian light oil, to US$5.14. Saudi and the other Arab states then imposed embargoes on countries supporting Israel, and oil prices rose quickly to $12.
These events aggravated tensions among provincial, federal and industry leaders. The rest of the 1970s were marked by rapid-fire, escalating moves and counter-moves by Ottawa, Western provinces and even Newfoundland. The atmosphere was one of urgency, alarm and crisis, with global conflicts adding gravity to the federal-provincial quarrelling.
In 1979-1980, further crises in the Middle East led to panic-driven pricing. The Iranian Revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
came first. War between that country and Iraq soon followed. Oil prices more than doubled, to US$36 per barrel.
National Energy Program (1980-1985)
Introduced by the Liberal government under Pierre TrudeauPierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...
on October 28, 1980, the controversial National Energy Program
National Energy Program
The National Energy Program was an energy policy of the Government of Canada. It was created under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau by Minister of Energy Marc Lalonde in 1980, and administered by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.-Description:The NEP was...
(NEP) gave the Federal government control over petroleum prices, imposing a price ceiling and export duties, in an effort to control costs and ensure supply for consumers.
The federal government had two major challenges in creating a truly national energy program. The first problem was that Canada is both an importer and an exporter of oil. It imports oil from offshore sources such as Venezuela and the Middle East into its Eastern provinces, while simultaneously exporting oil from its Western provinces into the United States. While it was popular in Eastern and Central Canada, the program incurred strong resentment in Western Canada where oil and gas production are concentrated. The second problem was that the provincial governments, rather than the federal government, have constitutional jurisdiction over natural resources, and in fact, the Government of Alberta actually owned most of the oil in Canada. This provoked a head-on confrontation with the government of Alberta, since any reduction in oil prices came directly out of Alberta government revenues. The conflict was made worse by the fact that the Alberta government had constitutional mechanisms available to it by which it could remove oil from federal taxation and shift the costs of oil subsidies onto the federal government. This drastically increased the federal government deficit.
The National Energy Program had a number of other serious flaws. The most serious was that it was based on a world price steadily increasing to $100 per barrel. In fact, world oil price declined to as little as $10 per barrel in the years following. Since the federal government based its spending on the larger figure, the result was that it spend a great deal of money on subsidies that could not be recovered in taxes on production. Furthermore, due to proximity to the U.S. market companies had opportunities to make money by playing differentials in prices. For instance, refiners in Eastern Canada would import oil subsidized down to half the world price, refine it into products, and export the products to the U.S. at full world price. Airlines flying between Europe and the U.S. via the polar route would take off with as little fuel as possible, and stop briefly in Canada to fill up before continuing on to their destination. Trucking companies operating between locations in the Northern U.S. would detour their trucks through Canada to refuel. None of these transactions was illegal, or even unusual considering the integrated nature of the economies, but all had the effect of transferring billions of Canadian tax dollars to the balance sheets of (mostly foreign owned) companies. A third flaw was that the NEP assumed that future oil discoveries would be made in areas under federal jurisdiction, such as the Arctic and offshore. In fact, as it turned out, most of the major oil discoveries in Canada had already been made, and the expensive subsidies given by the federal government to companies exploring in federal jurisdiction were a waste of money. All of these flaws resulted in large, and unexpected, increases in the federal budget deficit.
The final result of the NEP was that the federal government failed to keep fuel prices low, while incurring very large financial losses, and alienating the voters in its fastest-growing provinces. In the subsequent election in 1984, the governing Liberal party was soundly defeated. The winning Progressive Conservative party delayed dismantling the policy for another two and a half years. This delay contributed to the creation of the Reform Party of Canada
Reform Party of Canada
The Reform Party of Canada was a Canadian federal political party that existed from 1987 to 2000. It was originally founded as a Western Canada-based protest party, but attempted to expand eastward in the 1990s. It viewed itself as a populist party....
. Subsequent federal governments have avoided introducing similar policies.
Petro-Canada
In 1975 the Liberal government reacted to the 1973 oil crisis by creating a federally-owned oil company, Petro-CanadaPetro-Canada
Petro-Canada was a crown corporation of Canada in the field of oil and natural gas. It was headquartered in the Petro-Canada Centre in Calgary, Alberta. In August, 2009, Petro-Canada merged with Suncor Energy, a deal in which Suncor investors received approximately 60 per cent ownership of the...
. The Crown corporation was originally developed to be an "eye on the petroleum industry" during a period of perceived energy crisis. Initially, its assets consisted only of the federal government's share of the oil sands company Syncrude
Syncrude
Syncrude Canada Ltd. is the world's largest producer of synthetic crude oil from oil sands and the largest single source producer in Canada. It is located just outside Fort McMurray in the Athabasca Oil Sands, and has a nameplate capacity of of oil, equivalent to about 13% of Canada's consumption...
and the Arctic oil explorer Panarctic Oils.
However, the government quickly expanded it by buying the Canadian assets of foreign-owned oil companies, such as Atlantic Richfield in 1976, Pacific Petroleums in 1979, Petrofina
Petrofina
Petrofina was a Belgian oil company which merged with Total in 1999 to form TotalFina, but the name has now been changed back to Total after another merger...
in 1981, the refining and marketing assets of BP
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
in 1983 and of Gulf Oil
Gulf Oil
Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies...
in 1985.
Federal ownership brought Petro-Canada into conflict with the provincial governments which had control over the largest and lowest cost oil production in the country. They objected to federal intrusion into their constitutional jurisdiction, and tried to block federal incursions. For instance, when Petro-Canada attempted to buy Husky Oil
Husky Energy
Husky Energy Inc. is a large integrated Canadian energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. Husky's foundation is in Western Canada, where it has extensive conventional oil and natural gas assets, significant heavy oil production and a range of midstream and downstream operations, including...
in 1978, the Alberta government surreptitiously got control of Husky stock through Alberta Gas Trunk Line
NOVA Chemicals
NOVA Chemicals Corporation is a plastics and chemical company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, with Executive Offices in the Pittsburgh suburb of Moon Township, Pennsylvania and Lambton County, Ontario. It was founded in 1954 as Alberta Gas Trunk Lines and was later renamed to NOVA Corporation...
, and successfully blocked the takeover. In 1979 Petro-Canada acquired Westcoast Transmission Co. Ltd. and Pacific Petroleums Ltd., its parent company, as a fully integrated oil company for the then-record purchase price of $1.5 billion.
Petro-Canada overestimated the future price of oil, and consequently paid high prices for the oil assets it acquired, which subsequently fell considerably in value. Its assumption that big new oil discoveries would be made in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast turned out to be incorrect. Petro-Canada has since abandoned all the wells Panarctic drilled, and the discoveries it did make off the Atlantic coast were fewer, more expensive, and took longer to develop than expected. Hibernia
Hibernia (oil field)
Hibernia is an oil field in the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately east-southeast of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.The production platform Hibernia is the world's largest oil platform and consists of a 37,000-tonne integrated topsides facility mounted on a 600,000-tonne gravity base structure...
did not produce oil until 1997 and Terra Nova
Terra Nova (oil field)
Terra Nova is an oil field development project 350 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland. Discovered in 1984 by Petro-Canada, the field is the second largest off Canada's East Coast. Terra Nova is the first harsh environment development in North America to use a Floating Production Storage and...
until 2002. The government also expected Petro-Canada to force down what it considered the high price of gasoline to consumers, but Petro-Canada's oil production was more expensive and its oil refineries less efficient than those of the competing multi-national companies, and it found itself losing money on all aspects of the oil industry.
When the Conservatives
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and, after the 1970s, a centrist stance on social issues....
replaced the Liberals
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
in power in 1984, they began to reverse the nationalization process. In 1991, they passed legislation allowing privatization and began selling shares to the public. The Liberals returned to power in 1993, but had lost interest in having a national oil company
National Oil Company
A national oil company is an oil company fully or in the majority owned by a national government. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, NOCs accounted for 52% global oil production and controlled 88% of proven oil reserves in 2007.Due to their increasing dominance over...
, and continued the privatization process. In 1995 the federal government reduced its interest to 20 percent, and in 2004 sold the remaining shares. Petro-Canada has done better since privatization. The oil price increases since 2003 made its high-cost production profitable, and consolidation of its refining operations to fewer but larger refineries reduced its downstream costs even as prices increased.
On March 23, 2009, Petro-Canada and Suncor Energy
Suncor Energy
Suncor Energy Inc. is a Canadian integrated energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. It specializes in production of synthetic crude from oil sands...
announced they would merge to create Canada's largest oil company. At the time of the announcement, combined market capitalization
Market capitalization
Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...
of the two corporations was $43 billion. The merged organization would operate under the Suncor name, but would use the Petro-Canada brand in its retail operations. The companies estimated that the merger would save $1.3 billion per year in capital and operating costs, and said that the larger company will have the financial resources to move ahead with the most promising oilsands projects.
Non-conventional oil
Canada has oil sands deposits greater than the world's total supply of conventional oil at 1700 Goilbbl to 2500 Goilbbl. Of these, 175 Goilbbl are producible at current prices using current technology, which makes Canada's proven oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia. Production costs are considerably higher than in the Middle EastMiddle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, but this is offset by the fact that the geological and political risks are much lower than in most major oil-producing areas. Almost all of the Canadian oil sands are located in Alberta. The Athabasca oil sands
Athabasca Oil Sands
The Athabasca oil sands are large deposits of bitumen, or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada - roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray...
are the only major oil sands deposits in the world which are shallow enough for surface mining.
Commercial production began in 1967 when Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) launched the world's first major oil sands mine. Syncrude
Syncrude
Syncrude Canada Ltd. is the world's largest producer of synthetic crude oil from oil sands and the largest single source producer in Canada. It is located just outside Fort McMurray in the Athabasca Oil Sands, and has a nameplate capacity of of oil, equivalent to about 13% of Canada's consumption...
opened the second major facility in 1978. The third, by Shell Canada
Shell Canada
Shell Canada Limited is the subsidiary of Dutch-based Royal Dutch Shell and one of Canada's largest integrated oil companies. Exploration and production of oil, natural gas and sulphur is a major part of its business, as well as the marketing of gasoline and related products through the company's...
, started in 2003. The oil price increases of 2004-2007 made the oil sands much more profitable, and by 2007 over $100 billion worth of new mines and thermal projects were under construction or on the drawing boards. Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
announced that in 2006 its Canadian oil sands operations were almost twice as profitable on a per-barrel basis as its international conventional oil operations and in July 2007, it announced it would start a massive $27 billion dollar expansion of its oil sands plants in Alberta.
Cost of production in the oil sands, from raw tar sand to fractionate in the pipe feed, was $18 dollars per barrel; now with improvements it is in the 12-15 dollar range. Rapid price increases in recent years have greatly contributed to the profitability of an industry which has traditionally focused on reducing operating costs, and continues to do so. Critics argue that the focus on operating costs does not sufficiently address environmental issues - for example, "ravaged landscapes, despoiled rivers, diseased denizens, and altered atmospheric chemistry."
Oil sands operations differ from conventional oil in that the initial profitability is somewhat lower, but the geological and political risks are low, the reserves are vast, and the expected lifetime of production extends for generations rather than just a few years. Governments have an incentive to subsidize the start-up costs since they will recover their initial subsidies from tax revenues over a long period of time. From the standpoint of federal-provincial revenues, they also differ in that the federal government will receive larger higher share and higher return on its incentives than it would from conventional oil, while the provincial share, although substantial, will be proportionally smaller. Consequently, there has tended to be much less intergovernmental conflict and more agreement on how these projects should be handled.
If global oil prices remain high, it is likely that Canada will become one of the largest oil producers in the world in the next few decades. If so, there will be environmental issues, resulting more from the vast scale of the operations rather than the toxicity of the products. The oil sands deposits are roughly the size of Florida and the operations would drastically alter the landscape, which until recently was largely wilderness. In addition, concerns have been raised about water supplies, since the mines and steam projects would use a large portion of the flow of several major rivers. The most serious problem in the short term is an acute labor and housing shortage which has driven vacancy rates in the oil sands area to zero and wages to extremely high levels. However, given the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue expected to be generated by the oil sands in the next few decades, it is likely that future projects will be approved regardless of the problems.
Also 19 deposits of oil shale
Oil shale
Oil shale, an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced...
s have been identified in Canada. The most explored deposits are in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
and New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
. These are not as large as those in the Western United States, and will probably remain undeveloped in the foreseeable future since they are much more expensive and much smaller than the oil sands.
Natural gas
The natural gas industry is older in Alberta than oil, dating from 1883 discoveries near Medicine Hat. During the first half of the twentieth century, those who applied for permits to export Alberta natural gas often made the painful discovery that it was politically more complex to export gas than oil. Canadians tend to view oil as a commodity. However, through much of Canadian history, they have viewed natural gas as a patrimony, an essential resource to husband with great care for tomorrow. Although the reasons behind this attitude are complex, they are probably rooted in its value for space heatingSpace heating
A space heater is a self-contained device for heating an enclosed area. Space heating is generally employed to warm a small space, and is usually held in contrast with central heating, which warms many connected spaces at once...
. This trend goes back as far as an incident at the end of the nineteenth century, when Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
revoked export licenses for natural gas to the United States.
By the late 1940s Alberta, through its Conservation Board, eliminated most of the wasteful production practices associated with the Turner Valley oil and gas field. As new natural gas discoveries greeted drillers in the Leduc-fuelled search for oil, the industry agitated for licenses to export natural gas. In response, the provincial government appointed the Dinning Natural Gas Commission to inquire into Alberta's likely reserves and future demand.
In its March 1949 report, the Dinning Commission supported the principle that Albertans should have first call on provincial natural gas supplies, and that Canadians should have priority over foreign users if an exportable surplus developed. Alberta accepted the recommendations of the Dinning Commission, and later declared it would only authorize exports of gas in excess of a 30-year supply. Shortly thereafter, Alberta's Legislature passed the Gas Resources Conservation Act, which gave Alberta greater control over natural gas at the wellhead, and empowered the Oil and Gas Conservation Board to issue export permits.
The federal government's policy objectives at the time reflected concern for national integration and equity among Canadians. In 1949, Ottawa created a framework for regulating interprovincial and international pipelines with its Pipe Lines Act. Alberta once again agreed to authorize exports. The federal government, like Alberta, treated natural gas as a Canadian resource to protect for the foreseeable future before permitting international sales.
Although Americans were interested in Canadian exports, they only wanted very cheap natural gas. After all, their natural gas industry was a major player in the American economy, and American policy-makers were not eager to allow foreign competition unless there was clear economic benefit.
Because of these combined factors, proposals for major gas transportation projects carried political as well as economic risks. Not until the implementation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement
Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement
The Free Trade Agreement was a trade agreement signed by Canada and the United States on October 4, 1988. The agreement, finalized by October 1987, removed several trade restrictions in stages over a ten year period, and resulted in a great increase in cross-border trade...
(signed in 1988) did natural gas become a freely traded commodity between the US and Canada.
Electricity
Early history
The use of electricity in Canada began with a few trial installations of electric arc lights in MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
and Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
in 1878 and 1879. A permanent arc lighting system was installed in Toronto in 1881 and used to illuminate a number of stores, including Eaton's
Eaton's
The T. Eaton Co. Limited was once Canada's largest department store retailer. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue...
. In Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, arc lights were installed in several mills. By 1883 arc lights were installed in the streets of Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
, and by 1890 numerous cities from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's is the capital and largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador, and is the oldest English-founded city in North America. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. With a population of 192,326 as of July 1, 2010, the St...
to Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
had arc lighting.
The first successful installations of Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's incandescent lighting systems began in Ontario and Quebec starting in 1882. In 1886 a small plant supplying incandescent lights was installed in the Parliament Buildings
Parliament Hill
Parliament Hill , colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. Its Gothic revival suite of buildingsthe parliament buildings serves as the home of the Parliament of Canada and contains a number of architectural...
in Ottawa. These direct current
Direct current
Direct current is the unidirectional flow of electric charge. Direct current is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type electric machines of the dynamo type. Direct current may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through...
(DC) systems could serve only a radius of 800 metres (2,624.7 ft) from the power plant. However, in 1888 the first permanent installation of a Westinghouse
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Westinghouse Electric was an American manufacturing company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...
alternating current
Alternating current
In alternating current the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction. In direct current , the flow of electric charge is only in one direction....
(AC) system was installed in Cornwall, Ontario
Cornwall, Ontario
Cornwall is a city in Eastern Ontario, Canada and the seat of the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Ontario. Cornwall is Ontario's easternmost city, located on the St...
.
The competition between AC and DC came to a head during the development of the potential of Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
because AC systems could supply electricity over much longer distances than DC systems. This was enormously important to Canada, which had numerous potential hydroelectric sites in remote locations. In 1897 a transmission system was built from the Batiscan River
Batiscan River
The Bastican River flows in Quebec, Canada. It rises in the Mauricie Region, and empties into the Saint Lawrence River at a point downstream and northeast of Trois-Rivières....
16 miles (25.7 km) to Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières
Trois-Rivières means three rivers in French and may refer to:in Canada*Trois-Rivières, the largest city in the Mauricie region of Quebec, Canada*Circuit Trois-Rivières, a racetrack in Trois-Rivières, Quebec...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
. In 1901 Shawinigan Falls was harnessed, and by 1903 a 50,000 volt power line carried electricity from it to Montreal.
Development in Ontario
In 1906, influenced by Adam BeckAdam Beck
Sir Adam Beck was a politician and hydroelectricity advocate who founded the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.-Biography:...
, the Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
Legislature created the Hydro-Electric Power Commission
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro was the official name from 1974 of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario which was established in 1906 by the provincial Power Commission Act to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara...
(HEPC) to build transmissions lines to supply municipal utilities with power generated at Niagara Falls by private companies. In 1910 the HEPC began building 110,000 volt electric power lines to supply electricity to numerous municipalities in southwestern Ontario. In 1922 it started building its own generating stations, and gradually it took over most power generation in Ontario. In 1926 it signed long-term contracts to buy electricity from power companies in Quebec, but these proved controversial when jurisdictional disputes impeded development of the St. Lawrence
Saint Lawrence River
The Saint Lawrence is a large river flowing approximately from southwest to northeast in the middle latitudes of North America, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. It is the primary drainage conveyor of the Great Lakes Basin...
and Ottawa River
Ottawa River
The Ottawa River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For most of its length, it now defines the border between these two provinces.-Geography:...
s and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
reduced demand. However, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
they proved an extremely important source of power for war production.
After WWII, the development of the Saint Lawrence Seaway
Saint Lawrence Seaway
The Saint Lawrence Seaway , , is the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal...
in conjunction with American power authorities allowed the development of the potential of the St. Lawrence River, and agreements with Quebec allowed Ontario to develop sites on the upper Ottawa River. However, hydroelectric capacity in Ontario was inadequate to meet growing demand, so coal burning power stations were built near Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
and Windsor
Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor...
in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, Ontario turned to nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
. In 1962 the HEPC and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited or AECL is a Canadian federal Crown corporation and Canada's largest nuclear science and technology laboratory...
started operating a 25-megawatt Nuclear Power Demonstrator, and in 1968 they brought the 200-megawatt Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station into service. This was followed by the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
Pickering Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Pickering, Ontario. The facility derives its name from the City of Pickering in which it is located....
in 1971, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, in the communities of Inverhuron and Tiverton, Ontario. It occupies 932 ha of land. The facility derives its name from Bruce County in which it is located, in the former Bruce Township...
in 1977, and the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Clarington, Ontario. The facility derives its name from the Township of Darlington, the former name of the municipality in which it is located.The Darlington station is a large...
in 1989. In 1974, toward the beginning of this expansion, the HEPC was renamed Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro was the official name from 1974 of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario which was established in 1906 by the provincial Power Commission Act to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara...
, which had long been its informal name. Eventually, Pickering grew to eight 540 MW nuclear reactors, Bruce to eight 900+ MW reactors, and Darlington to four 935 MW units.
In the 1990s, the enormous debt from building nuclear power stations, combined with lower than expected reliability and life span, became a political issue. The Ontario government decided to open the market to competition. In the meantime, the closure of many of Ontario's nuclear reactors for rehabilitation, combined with increasing demand resulted in a substantial increase in coal-fired power generation, with resulting increases in air pollution levels. In 2003 a new government came into power in Ontario and pledged to phase out coal as a generation source, leaving open the question of how Ontario was to meet future demand.
Development in Quebec
The Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
government followed the example of Ontario in nationalizing its electrical sector, and in 1944 expropriated the assets of the monopoly Montreal Light, Heat and Power Company to create a new crown corporation called Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec is a government-owned public utility established in 1944 by the Government of Quebec. Based in Montreal, the company is in charge of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Quebec....
. In the post-war era, Hydro-Québec set about expanding and improving the reliability of the electric power grid, and demonstrated it could transmit electricity over long distances at extremely high voltages. Under Maurice Duplessis
Maurice Duplessis
Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis served as the 16th Premier of the Canadian province of Quebec from 1936 to 1939 and 1944 to 1959. A founder and leader of the highly conservative Union Nationale party, he rose to power after exposing the misconduct and patronage of Liberal Premier Louis-Alexandre...
the Quebec government preferred to leave electrification of rural areas to the Rural Electrification Agency., however after Jean Lesage
Jean Lesage
Jean Lesage, PC, CC, CD was a lawyer and politician in Quebec, Canada. He served as the 19th Premier of Quebec from 22 June 1960, to 16 August 1966...
took power in 1960, Hydro-Québec gained exclusive rights to develop new hydroelectric projects, and in 1963 it began the gradual takeover of all private distributors in the province. Driven by rapidly growing demand, Hydro-Québec built three major hydroelectric complexes in rapid succession: Manicouagan-Outardes
Manicouagan Reservoir
Manicouagan Reservoir is an annular lake in central Quebec, Canada. The lake covers an area of 1,942 km², and its eastern shore is accessible via Route 389. The island in the centre of the lake is known as René-Levasseur Island, and its highest point is Mount Babel...
on the North Shore
Côte-Nord
Côte-Nord is the second largest administrative region by land area in Quebec, Canada, after Nord-du-Québec...
of the Saint Lawrence River
Saint Lawrence River
The Saint Lawrence is a large river flowing approximately from southwest to northeast in the middle latitudes of North America, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. It is the primary drainage conveyor of the Great Lakes Basin...
, Churchill Falls
Churchill Falls Generating Station
The Churchill Falls Generating Station is a hydroelectric power station located on the Churchill River in Newfoundland and Labrador. The underground power station can generate 5,428 MW, which makes it the second-largest in Canada, after the Robert-Bourassa generating station. The generating station...
in Labrador
Labrador
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle...
, and the James Bay Project
James Bay Project
The James Bay Project is a series of hydroelectric development with a combined installed capacity of over 16,000 megawatts built since 1974 for Hydro-Québec by the on the La Grande and other rivers of Northern Quebec....
on La Grande River
La Grande River
La Grande River is a river in northwestern Quebec, Canada, which rises in the highlands of north central Quebec and flows roughly west to drain into James Bay. It is the second largest river in Quebec, surpassed only by the Saint Lawrence River....
. This, combined with lower than projected demand, created a surplus of electricity in Quebec, so in 1997, Hydro-Québec began wholesale marketing of electricity to the United States.
Development in British Columbia
The development of electric power in British ColumbiaBritish Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
began with the installation of electric lights in Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
in 1883. Created in 1897, the BC Electric Company built BC's first hydroelectric plant near Victoria the following year, and created subsidiaries to supply electricity to Victoria and Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, the province's two largest cities. BC Electric was taken over by Montreal-based Power Corporation in 1928. Before and during World War II, BC Electric primarily supplied power to the main cities of Vancouver and Victoria, leaving other regions with spotty and unreliable supply. In 1938, the BC government created the British Columbia Utilities Commission
British Columbia Utilities Commission
The British Columbia Utilities Commission is an agency of the government of the Province of British Columbia responsible for regulating rates and standards of service quality. The Commission's primary responsibility is the regulation of British Columbia's natural gas and electricity utilities...
, which limited BC Electric's profit margins. In 1945, the provincial government created a crown corporation, the BC Power Commission (BCPC), to acquire small utilities and extended electrification to rural and isolated areas. BCPC grew to supply more than 200 small communities throughout the province.
The American and Canadian governments signed the Columbia River Treaty
Columbia River Treaty
The Columbia River Treaty is an agreement between Canada and the United States of America on the development and operation of dams in the upper Columbia River basin for power and flood control benefits in both countries. For more information about the Columbia River Treaty, visit Columbia Basin...
in 1961 and ratified it in 1964, agreeing to share power from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River
Hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River
Hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries in North America.- Mainstem Columbia dams :-Snake River:-Pend Oreille-Clark Fork–Flathead:-Kootenai River:-See also:...
. To enable development of major hydroelectric sites on the Columbia
Columbia River
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state...
and Peace River
Peace River (Canada)
The Peace River is a river in Canada that originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows to the northeast through northern Alberta. The Peace River flows into the Slave River, a tributary of the Mackenzie River. The Mackenzie is the 12th longest river in the world,...
s, the BC government under Premier W. A. C. Bennett bought BC Electric in 1961, and the following year merged it with the BCPC to create the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, commonly known as BC Hydro
BC Hydro
The BC Hydro and Power Authority is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia generally known simply as BC Hydro. It is the main electric distributor, serving 1.8 million customers in most areas, with the exception of the Kootenay region, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis...
. During the 60s and 70s, BC Hydro built some of the largest hydroelectric projects in the world, notably the W. A. C. Bennett Dam
W. A. C. Bennett Dam
The W. A. C. Bennett Dam is a large hydroelectric earthfill dam on the Peace River in northern British Columbia, Canada. The dam, located 19 kilometres west of Hudson's Hope, and 85 kilometres northwest of Chetwynd, is named after the late former premier W. A. C. Bennett, and came on-line in 1968...
. More than 80% of BC Hydro's electricity is produced by 61 dams at 43 locations on the Columbia and Peace Rivers. Since that time the company's developments have been much smaller. During the 1980s BC Hydro changed its focus from building new hydroelectric plants to promoting energy conservation.
In 2010 the province enacted the Clean Energy Act which puts it on a path toward electricity self-sufficiency and energy conservation, while opening the door to energy exports, further investments in clean, renewable energy and a requirement that 93 percent of its electricity must come from clean or renewable sources.
Development in Alberta
With its earliest beginnings in the 1890s, Alberta's electricity system evolved as combination of a municipally and privately owned and operated systems based on coal-fired generation supplemented with some hydro. Most major municipalities operated municipally owned distribution systems.Beginning as early as 1887, Alberta had numerous small, privately owned firms that supplied towns across the province with electricity. However, service was often inconsistent—limited to a select number of businesses and provided only for a few evening hours.
Calgary Power
Calgary Power's first major project became the construction of the province's first large-scale hydroelectric plant, located at the Horseshoe Falls. The Horseshoe Falls Plant's opening on May 21, 1911, allowed Calgary Power to meet the needs of the city. According to the Morning Albertan, Calgary mayor J. W. Mitchell was aroused from a Sunday nap to flip the switch which officially opened the plant and connected the city with its first large-scale source of electricity. In 1911, Calgary Power supplied 3,000 horsepower of electricity to the city at a cost of $30 per horsepower. The city had 44,000 people in 1911, and the emerging need for mass transportation was met by the booming streetcar industry, which accounted for a significant share of the city's electric usage. By 1913, Calgary Power had constructed the Kananaskis Falls Plant as an additional source of power.In 1947, two years after the war ended, Calgary Power moved its head office from Montreal—then the nation's largest city and prime business center—to Calgary, reorganized, and incorporated as Calgary Power Ltd. At that time, Calgary Power supplied the province of Alberta with 99 percent of its hydroelectric power. Also in 1947, Calgary Power built its Barrier Hydro Plant and used it to test the use of a newly developed remote-control operation system. The automation efforts worked well enough that Calgary Power soon converted all of its plants to the Barrier Plant system. A control center that could operate the company's entire system was built in Seebe in 1951.
Calgary Power continued to expand through the 1950s and 1960s, developing its first underground distribution lines and building dams on the Brazeau and North Saskatchewan rivers. The reservoir built on the North Saskatchewan project, Lake Abraham, became the largest man-made lake in the province. Also at this time, Calgary Power began exploring thermal energy generation, since few sites remained that were suitable for hydro power development. The company built its first thermal generating plant in 1956 near Wabamun Lake, west of Edmonton and near large coal reserves.
Alberta Power
On July 19, 1911, Canadian Western Natural Gas, Light, Heat, and Power Company Limited was incorporated to provide natural gas from near Medicine Hat to other communities in southern Alberta. Electricity was also provided.In 1954, International Utilities became the corporate owner of Canadian, Northwestern and Canadian Western Utilities. Canadian Utilities purchased the McMurray Light and Power Company Limited and Slave Lake Utilities. Northland Utilities Limited was added in 1961. In the early 1970s, Canadian Utilities became the corporate parent of Canadian Western, Northwestern, Northland, and Alberta Power Limited, which was the electrical operations of Canadian Utilities.
Edmonton Power
On October 23, 1891 a group of entrepreneurs obtain a 10-year permit to build the Edmonton Electric Lighting and Power Company on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. The Edmonton Electrical Lighting and Power Company became a municipally owned electric utility in 1902, then the Electrical Distribution and Power Plant departments combined to form Edmonton Power in 1970. Electrical generation capacity was also expanded in 1970 with the coal fired Clover Bar Generating Station construction. Within the next eight years, another three units are added, bringing the combined generating capacity of the Clover bar and Rossdale generating stations to 1050 megawatts by 1979. Expansion occurred again in 1989 with the first Genesee unit is operating at full load and in 1994 with a second Genesee unit to a total capacity of both units to 850 megawatts. Electricity generated at Genesee was made commercially available through the Alberta Interconnected Grid by in the early 1990s. EPCOR was formed from the merger of Edmonton's municipal natural gas, power and water utilities in 1996 and converted into a public company in 2006. Then EPCOR Utilities Inc. spun off its power generation business to create Capital Power Corporation in 2009.Alberta Electrical Distribution System
This electrical system changed in 1996, when Alberta began to restructure its electricity market away from traditional regulation to a market-based systemAlberta electricity policy
In 1996, Alberta began to restructure its electricity market away from traditional regulation to a market-based system. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure....
. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure.
Consumers range from residential buyers to huge industrial consumers mining the oil sands, operating pipelines and milling forest products. On the supply side, generators range from wind farms east of Crowsnest Pass
Crowsnest Pass
Crowsnest Pass is a high mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies on the Alberta/British Columbia border.-Geography:...
to oilsands plants and other petroleum processing facilities which generate marketable electricity surplus to their own needs, to coal-fired plants near Edmonton. Because of lower altitude, cooler temperatures, greater supplies of water for cooling and steam generation, and large near surface supplies of thermal coal, central Alberta is thermodynamically the best place in Alberta to generate hydrocarbon-fuelled electricity.
The diversity of Alberta’s electricity supply has increased substantially in recent years. To a large extent because of deregulation, the province has more technology, fuels, locations, ownership, and maintenance diversity than in the past and the rest of Canada. The system’s reliability, its cost structure and Alberta’s collective exposure to risk are now met by a complex system based on diverse power sources. However, overloaded power lines between northern Alberta and the south of the province are wasting enough electricity to power half the city of Red Deer, Alberta
Red Deer, Alberta
Red Deer is a city in Central Alberta, Canada. It is located near the midpoint of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and is surrounded by Red Deer County. It is Alberta's third-most-populous city – after Calgary and Edmonton. The city is located in aspen parkland, a region of rolling hills...
.
Current situation
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
. The electrification of Canada, was spurred from the US. The Niagara electrical power plant spurred industrial development in Southern Ontario.
Soon major rivers across Canada had hydro schemes on them. The Canadian electrical grid was closely connected to and supplied large amounts of energy to the U.S. electrical grid. Many provinces have had a provincially-owned monopoly power generator, such as Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro was the official name from 1974 of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario which was established in 1906 by the provincial Power Commission Act to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara...
, Manitoba Hydro
Manitoba Hydro
Manitoba Hydro is the electric power and natural gas utility in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1961, it is a provincial Crown Corporation, governed by the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board and the Manitoba Hydro Act. Today the company operates 15 interconnected generating stations. It has...
, Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec is a government-owned public utility established in 1944 by the Government of Quebec. Based in Montreal, the company is in charge of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Quebec....
, Sask Power and BC Hydro
BC Hydro
The BC Hydro and Power Authority is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia generally known simply as BC Hydro. It is the main electric distributor, serving 1.8 million customers in most areas, with the exception of the Kootenay region, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis...
. Many major provincial hydoelectric schemes also included federal involvement and subsidies. These concerns embarked on vast building schemes in the postwar years raising some of the largest dams in the world.
Ontario, Canada's most populous province, generates some 9,600 MW annually, over half of that coming from one dozen nuclear reactors. Ontario also has coal, natural gas, and hydro facilities. However, Ontario is in a pickle as it must replace 80% of its generating capacity in the next twenty years—the old stations have time expired and the nuclear reactors are overstressed. A huge debate rages whether to go largely nuclear or go with renewables. Either way the bill is going to be in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars which will be reflected on the electric bills.
Uranium
Canada is a leader in the field of nuclear energy. Uranium mining in Canada took off with the Great Bear Lake deposit furnishing some material for the Manhattan ProjectManhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
. Today Cameco
Cameco
Cameco Corporation is the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In 2009, it was the world's second largest uranium producer, accounting for 16% of world production.-History:...
and Areva
Areva
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power; it also has interests in other energy projects. It was created on 3 September 2001, by the merger of Framatome , Cogema and...
are major produces of uranium for nuclear power. Cameco
Cameco
Cameco Corporation is the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In 2009, it was the world's second largest uranium producer, accounting for 16% of world production.-History:...
mines the world's largest high-grade uranium deposit at the McArthur River mine in Northern Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
.
ZEEP
ZEEP
The ZEEP reactor was a nuclear reactor built at the Chalk River Laboratories near Chalk River, Ontario, Canada . ZEEP first went critical at 3:45 PM, September 5, 1945...
was Canada's first nuclear reactor built in 1945. Canada set up its NRX
NRX
NRX was a heavy water moderated, light water cooled, nuclear research reactor at the Canadian Chalk River Laboratories, which came into operation in 1947 at a design power rating of 10 MW , increasing to 42 MW by 1954...
research reactor at Chalk River Laboratories
Chalk River Laboratories
The Chalk River Laboratories is a Canadian nuclear research facility located near Chalk River, about north-west of Ottawa in the province of Ontario.CRL is a site of major research and development to support and advance nuclear technology, in particular CANDU reactor...
in 1947. In 1962 the NPD reactor in Rolphton, Ontario was the first prototype power reactor in Canada. From this the NRC
National Research Council of Canada
The National Research Council is an agency of the Government of Canada which conducts scientific research and development.- History :...
and the AECL
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited or AECL is a Canadian federal Crown corporation and Canada's largest nuclear science and technology laboratory...
developed the CANDU reactor. Ontario Hydro's first production power reactor was constructed at the Douglas Point
Douglas Point
The Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station was Canada’s first full-scale nuclear power plant and the second CANDU Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor....
in 1956. Eighteen reactors were then built in the following four decades in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. In 2008 Nuclear power re-emerged with approved plans to build new reactors at existing stations at Darlington and Pickering, Ontario; another new station is planned for Peace River, AB. All are subject to planning and environmental reviews.
Renewable energy and carbon neutral energy
Wind power in Canada
As a means of pumping water and generating electricity in remote locations, wind power has a history in Canada dating back many decades, particularly on prairie farms. The amount of electricity generated by wind in Canada remains, however, small compared to other sources such as hydroelectricity...
is growing quickly. The first commercial wind farm in Canada was built in Alberta in 1993. A 15 megawatt tidal plant sits at Annapolis, Nova Scotia
Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia
Annapolis Royal is a town located in the western part of Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. Known as Port Royal until the Conquest of Acadia in 1710 by Britain, the town is the oldest continuous European settlement in North America, north of St...
, and uses the daily tides of the Bay of Fundy
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy is a bay on the Atlantic coast of North America, on the northeast end of the Gulf of Maine between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine...
.
The first commercial solar project was built in Stone Mills, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
in 2009.Skypower Ltd, used over 120,000 thin film photovoltaic solar panels, for a total of 9,1 megawatt, creating clean solar energy for 1000 homes annually.
Politicians have been willing to subsidize renewable methods using taxpayer funds to increase the amount and percentage of Canada's electricity generated.
Energy conservation in Canada
After the 1973 Oil Crisis, energy conservation came into vogue with smaller cars and insulated homes.Appliances were improved to use less energy. Also, out of this initiative came several debacles—these included
the Urea-formaldehyde
Urea-formaldehyde
Urea-formaldehyde, also known as urea-methanal, named so for its common synthesis pathway and overall structure, is a non-transparent thermosetting resin or plastic, made from urea and formaldehyde heated in the presence of a mild base such as ammonia or pyridine...
Insulation disaster and the ongoing Leaky Condo Scandal.
See also
- Climate change in CanadaClimate change in CanadaIn Canada mitigation of anthropogenic climate change is being addressed more seriously by the provinces than by the federal government.-Emissions:...
- Canada and the Kyoto ProtocolCanada and the Kyoto ProtocolCanada was active in negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. However, the Liberal government that later signed the accord took little action towards meeting Canada's greenhouse gas emission targets. In the decade after Kyoto, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions increased by around 30%...
- Renewable energy in CanadaRenewable energy in CanadaCanada generates a significant part of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, but has otherwise limited renewable energy generation, although wind power is growing quickly. A 15 megawatt tidal plant sits at Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and uses the daily tides of the Bay of Fundy...
- Alberta electricity policyAlberta electricity policyIn 1996, Alberta began to restructure its electricity market away from traditional regulation to a market-based system. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure....
- Ontario electricity policyOntario electricity policyOntario electricity policy refers to plans, legislation, incentives, guidelines, and policy processes put in place by the Government of the Province of Ontario, Canada, to address issues of electricity production, distribution, and consumption. Policymaking in the electricity sector involves...
- Science and technology in CanadaScience and technology in CanadaScience and technology in Canada consists of three distinct but closely related phenomena:* the diffusion of technology in Canada,* scientific research in Canada* innovation, invention and industrial research in Canada...
Further reading
- Froschauer, Karl. White Gold: Hydroelectric Power in Canada UBC Press ISBN 9780774807098
- An Energy history of Canada
- Energy Policies of IEA Countries -- Canada (2004) OECD/IEAInternational Energy AgencyThe International Energy Agency is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization established in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis...
. ISBN 92-64-108017 - The Great Oil Age