Latest news with #fossilfuel
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Yukon Energy selects potential sites for $100M fossil fuel generator project
Yukon Energy has selected 10 potential sites for a $100-million fossil fuel generator project called the Whitehorse Power Centres. The project will include two thermal power centres, and a new substation on Long Lake Road in Whitehorse. The utility is also considering a third power centre as a contingency. The generators will be powered by diesel, LNG, or both. Yukon Energy has identified five potential sites for the generators north of Whitehorse's city centre, between the city's waste management facility and Deep Creek, and five other sites to the south, between Robert Service Way and the McCrae area. The south power centre is expected to be in service by winter 2027, and the north power centre by winter 2030, according to Yukon Energy's project description. The utility says the project is needed to keep up with the growing demand for electricity, which is highest in the territory's capital. "Right now, there is an urgent need to build more sources of electricity that Yukoners can rely on during the winter," said Yukon Energy vice president Stephanie Cunha. "Yukoners use about three times more electricity in the winter than they do in the summer." Cunha says the project will add 150 MW of diesel or LNG capacity, which will be needed by 2040. Capacity refers to the amount of power that Yukon Energy needs to generate at a single point in time, Cunha said. "This past week, Yukoners needed about 35 megawatts at any given time," Cunha said. "In the winter, Yukoners need about 110 megawatts at any given moment." Yukon Energy primarily relies on hydropower to generate electricity, but for the past seven winters the utility has rented diesel generators to keep up with demand. Last winter, it rented 22 diesel generators, which cost $6.2 million. Cunha says building the power centres is more cost-effective in the long term than continuing to rent diesel generators. She also said that the rental generators are "less reliable than permanent assets." Project not 'in step' with rest of Canada In its five-year plan, published in April 2025, the utility said it was "committed to advancing renewable electricity projects as a core component of our vision for the future." However, Cunha says the utility needs to add fossil fuels first, to ensure that Yukoners can keep their lights on in the winter and that the utility can respond quickly to outages. "The Yukon Energy system is under considerable strain at the moment…. From the utilities perspective, that's really the only option right now with regards to how dire the situation is in the Yukon," said Rosa Brown, a senior analyst with the Pembina Institute's renewables and remote communities program. However, Brown says the project is not "in step" with the rest of Canada. "Investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure also means continued commitment to infrastructure that's being phased out," she said. In its project description, Yukon Energy said that the new power centres will help create the grid stability needed to develop more renewable resources like solar and wind. She added that the power centres will include space for batteries that could store future solar and wind power. First Nation calls for delay Currently, the power centres project is in the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board's (YESAB) pre-submission engagement process. This stage allows First Nations and communities, among other affected parties, to review the project before Yukon Energy submits its full proposal to YESAB for assessment. In letters to YESAB, Ta'an Kwäch'än Council and its development arm, Da Daghay Development Corporation, asked that YESAB postpone the deadline for the pre-submission engagement process. As part of this phase, YESAB gives affected parties 15 days to request a postponement to a deadline. In its letter, Ta'an Kwäch'än Council said that 15 days is not enough time for the Nation to "undertake a detailed evaluation of this document to determine how long of a postponement is required." In their letters to YESAB, the Nation and its development arm state that the project has the potential to impact treaty rights and their way of life, while also providing economic benefits. They also say that given the length of Yukon Energy's project description, both the First Nation and the development corporation need more time to determine if a postponement is necessary. "While we are not yet able to propose modifications to the process, we are similarly not in a position to endorse the project description," reads the letter from Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. Yukon Energy asking for public input In 2019, Yukon Energy proposed a similar project, to build a 20-megawatt thermal plant in Whitehorse, but that plan was later scrapped after consultations with the public. Some residents were concerned about the potential noise from the generators, and some suggested that Yukon Energy should pursue renewable energy alternatives instead. Cunha says things have changed since 2019. "Now, more so than in 2019, there is an urgent need to add new reliable, dependable sources of winter energy to meet increased demands," she said. Yukon Energy will host two open houses about the Whitehorse Power Centres project, on Aug. 14 and Aug. 26 in Whitehorse. People can also leave comments about the project on Yukon Energy's website.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Wall Street Sees Decline in Dealmaking for Oil and Gas Clients
By and Lauren Rosenthal Save Today's newsletter looks at the decline in lending for fossil fuel projects. Plus, a scoop on the return of a key federal database that the Trump administration killed. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe. By Alastair Marsh
Bloomberg
30-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The World Is Far Off From a Landmark Goal to Triple Renewables
A landmark pledge made by countries less than two years ago to triple the world's renewable capacity by 2030 already looks in danger of not being met, a new report finds. Targets put forward by national governments for the rollout of technologies like wind and solar will bring global installations far short of what countries committed to at the United Nations COP28 summit in 2023, according to Ember, a climate think tank. The renewable goal was agreed in Dubai as part of a hard-fought deal to commit to a transition away from fossil fuel.
Bloomberg
24-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
AI Should Pay a Price for Its Environmental Damage
Humanity has collectively decided to keep pampering the fossil-fuel industry despite knowing for decades that its products are not only harmful to long-term well-being but also imminently replaceable. It shouldn't make the same expensive mistake with artificial intelligence. Last week, Laurence Tubiana, chief executive officer of the European Climate Foundation, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, suggested taxing AI to raise money for climate adaptation. Tubiana helped craft the Paris climate accord and is part of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a group rummaging through the world's couch cushions for spare change to help it adjust to an environment growing more chaotic and destructive as the planet gets hotter. The group has identified some obvious targets, such as taxing ' premium flyers,' cryptocurrencies, fossil-fuel profits and shipping emissions.
Daily Mail
21-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Manifold problems at BP: New boss must restore confidence at board level and with investors, says MAGGIE PAGANO
BP investors are restless souls at the best of times, and for good reason. Now they are even more anxious following the surprise choice of Irishman Albert Manifold as the long-awaited chairman, a role they prayed would be filled with someone of enough stature to steer the oil giant back to being a fossil fuel company again. The muted response in BP shares certainly bore out their concern. Analysts were equally underwhelmed at the appointment, describing the move as panic after industry heavyweights turned the top job down. There are also worries that Manifold, unquestionably a brilliant chief executive of the Dublin-based construction materials group CRH Holdings, will be tempted to switch BP's listing to the US to get a higher valuation, as he did with CRH. Others say that he doesn't have any experience of the oil and gas sector, nor the skills required to be a chairman –rather than a chief executive – as the focus needs to be on accountability and governance rather than running operations. That's the case against Manifold. My own hunch is that the City has been far too swift to judge his experience so negatively. If Manifold's reputation is as formidable as his background suggests, the Dublin-trained accountant with an MBA and an MBS under his belt, could prove to be just the man to turn the tide at BP. In fact, the fast-talking, fiercely driven yet modest 62-year-old sounds rather a good egg, one who prefers to be out on the road meeting clients overseas rather than the high life like so many of his peers. Something that high-flying BP executives might want to watch out for. Manifold is credited with turning CRH from a small cement and other base-materials supplier into a fully-fledged billion pound construction giant. He joined CRH some 26 years ago, rising to become chief executive in 2014. Since then, Manifold totally reshaped CRH's portfolio, buying up assets from Lafarge and Holcim during their 2015 merger, snapping up the US-based Ash Grove Cement Company and at the same time divesting of non-core businesses. As CRH moved deeper into the US, he did the sensible thing, which was to list CRH in New York as well as keeping its FTSE 100 London listing. That was a smart move – CRH's share price has soared by almost 400 per cent with its market value shooting to $50billion. While it's true that Manifold's skills have been in operations, it's also evident from his achievements that he had a long-term vision and the nous to deliver that strategy. Turning tactics into strategy is just what BP needs after the misguided ambition of former chairman Helge Lund and ex-boss Bernard Looney, and the mad dash for renewables. Manifold takes the hot seat at a crucial time. BP has a mountain of debt, a mutinous investor in the activist US hedge fund Elliott and is in the middle of a $20billion fire-sale of non-core assets like wind farms and petrol stations. The company also had to deal with speculation of a Shell takeover, since denied. Yet despite BP's underperforming shares, it still has a decent dividend yield and the board is clearly working flat out to put its 'reset' strategy into operation. If BP can achieve this, and if it can get oil production up to 2.5m barrels of oil a day by the end of the decade, then Barclays reckon the shares could rise as high as £5.25. Most of us have BP shares via our pensions. So we should all hope that Manifold proves the City wrong, and that even a fraction of his magic rubs off. Before he gets going, he must focus on restoring confidence at board level as well as with long-suffering investors. German reboot Who would ever have imagined that Europe's great industrial powerhouse would have to launch a Made in Germany project to restore confidence? But that's what 61 of the country's leading companies are doing with their promise to spend €631million on new investments over the next three years. They hope to kick-start the economy, which is still looking bleak after two years of recession. What they don't say is how they will bring down the sky-high cost of energy which is one of their biggest problems. Sounds familiar.
