“The future is already here, it just hasn’t arrived in Alberta yet” – my apologies to cyberpunk writer William Gibson
My bastardization of Gibson’s quote is inspired by the University of Alberta’s energy transition online training course. This flaccid agitprop for the province’s oil and gas industry should be an embarrassment for any serious institution. Don’t waste your money taking it. But you should think about what Dr. Brad Hayes and friends are actually trying to accomplish.
Hayes is an adjunct professor in earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta and the head of Petrel Robertson Consulting, described as “Canada’s leading integrated petroleum geoscience consultancy.” What does an oil and gas consultant know about the global energy transition? Not very much, as it turns out. But he does have Alberta’s oil and gas narrative down pat.
The course is 27 modules long and between eight and 10 hours (I was so bored I eventually lost track) of Hayes and other experts droning to the camera. Very early on, under five minutes, it was clear what they were up to: persuading attendees (I can’t bear to call them students) that the energy future will look very much like the energy past for a long, long time.
The easiest way to explain their plan comes from Module 23 featuring Professor Monica Gattinger, director of the Institute for Science Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa, and an expert I’ve interviewed many times. She cites Dr. Marissa Beck’s 2020 study claiming that there are only two Canadian energy transition narratives.
Reality 1, which I call the “Oil and Gas Forever,” can be heard in any Alberta Tim Hortons or speech by Premier Danielle Smith. This narrative comes straight from OPEC courtesy of its World Oil Outlook 2045 report. Basically, a rising global population will create more energy demand than low-emissions energy (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear) can provide. Global oil consumption rises from 103 million barrels per day today to 116 million barrels per day by 2045, followed by a long plateau and eventually (maybe) a slow decline somewhere off in the foggy future. Natural gas, aided by rising LNG exports, enjoys a similar rosy outlook.
Reality 2, what I call “The World is on Fire,” is the climate crisis narrative. Advocates of this view are said to oppose oil and gas expansion, instead demanding a short phase-out of fossil fuel consumption. Canadian wildfires, drought, floods, and other assorted climate pestilences justify sacrifices and aggressive, interventionist public policies, according to the course.
The course very cleverly leads the attendee to the view that climate activists – including the federal government, which as we all know has it in for Alberta – are ideologues and following their prescription would lead to energy insecurity, energy poverty, and a host of other consequences too horrible to contemplate.
What the course does not do, and this is where I take great exception, is acknowledge that there is a third energy transition narrative. In fact, I took such an exception that Energi Media has created its own training course (the first of many, we hope) to explain the “Future is Electric” worldview.
Here’s the fundamental difference between the two: this energy transition is technology-led, unlike every other historical energy transition, which has been commodity-led. When your energy is made in a factory instead of extracted from the ground and combusted, different rules apply, the transition moves at a much faster pace, and the outcomes are different.
Don’t take my word for it. The three Energi Talks interviews below – Dr. Doyne Farmer of the Sante Fe Institute, Morgan Solar CEO Mike Andrade, Kingsmill Bond of the Rocky Mountain Institute – explain in some detail why this time the energy transition really is different. You can listen or read the transcripts.
Because this energy transition is technology-led, technology adoption theory goes a long way to explaining why clean energy costs have fallen so rapidly and why EV adoption has risen so rapidly, for example. This theory is explained in a general way during Energi Media’s 45-minute course, which is meant to be an introduction to the basics. A model, if you will, to help you organize and understand the firehose of energy transition information we’re flooded with every day.
Let me jump ahead to the conclusion: technology adoption theory leads one to a very different conclusion than the Oil and Gas Forever narrative. There is a reason respected forecasters like the International Energy Agency predict peak oil, gas, and coal demand by 2030, followed fairly quickly by steady decline.
Nevertheless, economic modeling is not a guarantee of the future. The IEA could be wrong. OPEC might be right; I highly doubt it, but it’s not impossible. Which narrative is likely to be correct should be the subject of vigorous debate in Alberta. Instead, the Oil and Gas Forever narrative is lauded as “rational” and “real” while its theory and evidenced-based counterpoint is simply ignored.
That’s wrong.
But you can judge for yourself. The University of Alberta course can be audited at no cost. Take it and the Energi Media course. Come to your own conclusions. Engage us in conversation even if you don’t agree with the Future is Electric narrative.
Just don’t pretend there is only one way to think about Alberta’s energy future.
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