When oil falls below $70....

[overthere]

My version is based on facts and evidence. Your version is based on wishful thinking and willful ignorance.

The German experiment is largely a failure. They will eventually return to the model which I have said all along: 10-15% renewables + fossil fuels for the rest.

Germany is in the process of building 26 power plants to take up some of the supply lost by the closure of nuclear plants. The fuel will be.... coal.

They also have oil and natural gas plants, mostly supplied by Russia, which is starting to look very scary for the Germans About 1/3 of their 'renewable' energy comes from biomass, which is another way of saying they burn wood pellets.

A real kneeslapper from Chermany comes from this offical government target, a commitment made in 2010 :

• Reducing CO2 emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050

Choosing 1990 as a baseline date for CO2 has much more to do with diddling the numbers than celebrating the reunification of East and West Germany. In 1990 East Germany was full of grossly polluting smokestack industries. Not surprisingly, these industries were economic failures under the Soviets and they nearly all shut their doors soon after the two Germanies united. And hey presto, the CO2 output levels take an immediate and strong drop with an investment of zero! What a coincidence.

[Michael Hardner]

It is still a number pulled out of a hat. But even if you accept the DOE numbers at face value you cannot have a grid built with wind/solar even if the Levelized Cost was the lowest because the majority of power has to come from sources that produce power when it is needed.

Yes, I have learned that from your posts...

[bush_cheney2004]

Germany is in the process of building 26 power plants to take up some of the supply lost by the closure of nuclear plants. The fuel will be.... coal.

Germany has also distributed a significant percentage of renewables power generation (and much higher costs) to consumers, who now pay some of the highest rates in the EU/world.

[overthere]

They also are closing their nuclear plants, while at the same time importing electricity on the Euro grid from ...nuclear sources.

[dre]

They do have a nice website with some nice marketing. But do you know how many times I've seen that for nuclear? Hyperion, Terrapower, countless others.

They arent exactly just a website, they are building a 500mw plant that will be operation in a couple of years.

I hope it works out for them, I really do, but to say that our problems are solved because of NetPower and the Allam cycle is far, far, far overstating things. Otherwise this company would already have been bought out for somewhere around... $10 trillion dollars or so.

I never said this one technology will solve our problems. You made the claim that nuclear is the only option to reducing co2 emissions, and I pointed out thats simply not true. Current nuclear plant designs are just not a viable way to generate cost effective electricity.

You are way more likely to see a strategy of reducing emissions using nat-gas, at least until nuclear and renewables become viable in the North American market place.

[Bonam]

I never said this one technology will solve our problems. You made the claim that nuclear is the only option to reducing co2 emissions, and I pointed out thats simply not true. Current nuclear plant designs are just not a viable way to generate cost effective electricity.

Not "cost effective" when competing directly with coal/oil, where one does not take into account the environmental and health costs of coal/oil. If the environmental and health costs associated with coal/oil were not externalized, nuclear would be competitive in cost. This is the same argument that is made for renewables and "clean fossil fuel" technologies all the time. Except that nuclear is actually ready to deploy on the scale needed to provide the majority of worldwide electricity needs, if it was politically viable to do so.

[dre]

Not "cost effective" when competing directly with coal/oil, where one does not take into account the environmental and health costs of coal/oil. If the environmental and health costs associated with coal/oil were not externalized, nuclear would be competitive in cost. This is the same argument that is made for renewables and "clean fossil fuel" technologies all the time. Except that nuclear is actually ready to deploy on the scale needed to provide the majority of worldwide electricity needs, if it was politically viable to do so.

Nuclear has a lot of costs to internalize as well... Almost all the plants in the world are heavily subsidized... in most cases the government pays for most of the fuel cycle. Not to mention nobody will build them without low interest government loan guarantees, or public funding. I would actually guess that nuclear has even more externality than other fossil fuels, its the recipient of more subsidies than all other forms of energy put together.

And its not just a matter of political viability when it comes to deploying nuclear "world wide". The problem is in most places theres much better options.

[Moonbox]

I would actually guess that nuclear has even more externality than other fossil fuels, its the recipient of more subsidiesthan all other forms of energy put together.

and produces more energy than all of the other forms put together...reliably...without emissions. I shudder to think what our rates would be if Ontario was generating 55% of it's electricity from wind and solar farms instead of the ~4% it is now.

[dre]

and produces more energy than all of the other forms put together...reliably...without emissions. I shudder to think what our rates would be if Ontario was generating 55% of it's electricity from wind and solar farms instead of the ~4% it is now.

On what planet does nuclear produce more energy than all other forms put together? In North American its about 19%.

[Bonam]

On what planet does nuclear produce more energy than all other forms put together?

Think he meant all other forms of non-fossil fuels / renewables.

[dre]

Think he meant all other forms of non-fossil fuels / renewables.

Problem is that would still be totally false.

[Bonam]

Problem is that would still be totally false.

It would be closer to true

Realistically, hydro is obviously a major contributor right now, but it is maxed out in many areas, and even where it is not maxed out, it is often not politically feasible to construct additional large dams. Of course, nuclear power plants aren't politically feasible in a lot of areas either.

The reality is the environmental movement makes a lot of noise about wanting to cut CO2 emissions... but most of the available solutions, solutions that have been technologically feasible for decades now, are also opposed by them. A runaway greenhouse effect that causes catastrophic sea level rise, ocean acidification, mass extinction, etc, is obviously a much greater threat than having to dig a hole somewhere to safely store a few tons of nuclear waste... and yet nuclear is routinely rejected by environmentalists. Similarly, flooding a few areas and killing some fish is also a far lesser danger, and yet large scale hydro projects are also opposed by environmentalists. They only want their favorite technologies of wind and solar (and even smaller contributors like tidal, geothermal, etc). Wind and solar have their place, but also their major limitations, which will not be technologically resolved for some time. The position is simply logically inconsistent if one is to take the predictions of the dire consequences of CO2 emissions seriously. This inconsistency is what makes people like TimG, for example, highly skeptical of the science behind the movement.

I understand your point that in the current framework, nuclear plants are more expensive than coal and oil. It is a valid point. But they are not THAT expensive. We could provide all the world's electricity needs with nuclear without breaking the bank. The same cannot be said for wind or solar, or hydro, or geothermal or tidal. Not only can we do it now, but we could have done it 20+ years ago, when the predictions of global warming were first coming into the limelight. Instead, we have dithered for decades while CO2 concentrations have risen by another ~100 ppm, refusing to use the one viable technology that we have, largely because people are afraid of the word "nuclear". And, despite the Allam cycle that you mentioned earlier and other experimental technologies, I guarantee you we will continue to dither for decades more, while CO2 concentrations rise by another couple hundred ppm.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Bonam

[dre]

.We could provide all the world's electricity needs with nuclear without breaking the bank. The same cannot be said for wind or solar, or hydro, or geothermal or tidal. Not only can we do it now, but we could have done it 20+ years ago, when the predictions of global warming were first coming into the limelight. Instead, we have dithered for decades while CO2 concentrations have risen by another ~100 ppm, refusing to use the one viable technology that we have, largely because people are afraid of the word "nuclear".

I see this claim trotted out so often, but I dont believe it for a second. The reason we havent been building nuclear plants is not because people are afraid of any words, its because in North America its not a cost effective option. In places where it DOES make sense nuclear plants are being built. Hundreds of new plants have been built in the last couple of decades.

As for providing the worlds electricity needs, thats only partially true. Based on the current fuel supply model, there is a supply/demand gap thats rather large. Existing plants use more uranium than is mined each year, and are running on civilian and military stockpiles that will be depleted before to long. Even without expanding the use of nuclear the current know reserves will be depleted in about 70 years... and prices will skyrocket long before then. That leaves us trying to harvest fissile fuels from seawater which costs twice as much, or replace our existing compliment of plants with fast-breeder reactors (a major undertaking). Or building thorium plants instead which will required lots more research and development.

Based on the current fuel supply model, if we want to have enough fuel to run new reactors through the end of their 50 year duty cycle, we can only expand our use of nuclear energy by about 2% globally.

Like I said... NatGas is a far more attractive option, in places that have lots of it. Nuclear will continue to be a small niche-player without further research development.

As for the rest of your post, about inconsistency on the part of some environmentalists... I dont have much of a bone to pick with it.

[overthere]

As for providing the worlds electricity needs, thats only partially true. Based on the current fuel supply model, there is a supply/demand gap thats rather large. Existing plants use more uranium than is mined each year, and are running on civilian and military stockpiles that will be depleted before to long. Even without expanding the use of nuclear the current know reserves will be depleted in about 70 years... and prices will skyrocket long before then. That leaves us trying to harvest fissile fuels from seawater which costs twice as much, or replace our existing compliment of plants with fast-breeder reactors (a major undertaking). Or building thorium plants instead which will required lots more research and development.

Based on the current fuel supply model, if we want to have enough fuel to run new reactors through the end of their 50 year duty cycle, we can only expand our use of nuclear energy by about 2% globally.

Like I said... NatGas is a far more attractive option, in places that have lots of it. Nuclear will continue to be a small niche-player without further research development.

Supplies from accessible and known reserves are actually about 90 years, and your comment presumes that there is no other uranium in existence. When there is an adequate supply, and 90 years is certainly that, exploration slows down. If demand jumps or supply dwindles, they will find more, since uranium is actually a fairly common mineral. What happens is that exploration and exploitation will follow demand, as we have just seen happen with tight gas supplies.

Nuclear has and will be slow to expand in the near future because it is capital-intensive. Coal and gas are much cheaper and fuel is plentiful. When that changes.....nuclear will fill the gap unless somehting cheaper comes along.

[GostHacked]

Something else happens to when the oil prices are this low.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/slumping-oil-prices-threaten-revenues-at-canada-s-top-banks-1.2136546

TORONTO -- Oil prices that reached a five-year low on Friday are starting to take a bite out of profits at TD Bank (TSX:TD) and raising concerns for the rest of the country's top lenders.

Canada's biggest banks earn up to 20 per cent of their revenues through providing investment and corporate banking services, with oil and gas companies an important part of that client base.

But with oil prices slipping -- they have tumbled roughly 35 per cent to under $70 a barrel from their mid-summer highs due to a strong U.S. dollar, low demand and a glut of global supply -- TD Bank says it will have to look beyond the oilpatch to make up its investment banking revenue.

I won't shed a tear for the banks when their profits are lower. A bank earning 5 billion instead of 6 billion really does not concern me. They won't pass any savings to me when they make money, but they will sure try to take what I have to make up for their losses.

[Moonbox]

I won't shed a tear for the banks when their profits are lower. A bank earning 5 billion instead of 6 billion really does not concern me. They won't pass any savings to me when they make money, but they will sure try to take what I have to make up for their losses.

If their profits go lower your fees will increase. That's sort of how those clowns operate. The profits never stay down for long. It's a pretty sweet racket.

[GostHacked]

If their profits go lower your fees will increase. That's sort of how those clowns operate. The profits never stay down for long. It's a pretty sweet racket.

So I save at the pump but get bent over at the bank. It is a racket for sure.

[TimG]

If their profits go lower your fees will increase. That's sort of how those clowns operate. The profits never stay down for long. It's a pretty sweet racket.

Just buy some bank stocks and stop complaining. A $2000-3000 investment should generate enough dividends to exceed any fees the bank may charge you.

[GostHacked]

Just buy some bank stocks and stop complaining. A $2000-3000 investment should generate enough dividends to exceed any fees the bank may charge you.

Banks should be paying ME to have my money there. But nope. A great time to propose buying bank stock when they are not making that much of a profit.

[Wilber]

Banks should be paying ME to have my money there. But nope. A great time to propose buying bank stock when they are not making that much of a profit.

Bank stocks are down right now so if you believe banks are going to be more profitable in the future, it is a good time to buy. While you are waiting for them to go up, they will pay you between 3.5 and 4% on your money to wait. You have to be prepared to wait though.

[Moonbox]

Just buy some bank stocks and stop complaining. A $2000-3000 investment should generate enough dividends to exceed any fees the bank may charge you.

Don't worry I do own bank stocks. $2-3000 worth of bank stocks would also barely make up for the fees you'd pay on a basic chequing account.

The idea of having to invest $3000+ in a company to not pay fees for having them lend your money to other people is BS considering the superior competition and offerings we see outside of Canada. No service/maintenance fees is standard for a basic chequing accounts outside of Canada. Here it's at least $4/month with all sorts of ridiculous fees tacked on.

[TimG]

The idea of having to invest $3000+ in a company to not pay fees for having them lend your money to other people is BS considering the superior competition and offerings we see outside of Canada. No service/maintenance fees is standard for a basic chequing accounts outside of Canada. Here it's at least $4/month with all sorts of ridiculous fees tacked on.

Apples to oranges. Other countries allow banks to make their money in other ways (i.e. like in Britain where you cannot change your bank once you sign up for a 25-year mortgage which means you got take whatever interest rate they offer you on renewal). Stable and profitable banks are good for the economy. If you want to benefit from these profits you can buy stock. I don't see the issue.

[Moonbox]

Apples to oranges. Other countries allow banks to make their money in other ways (i.e. like in Britain where you cannot change your bank once you sign up for a 25-year mortgage which means you got take whatever interest rate they offer you on renewal).

It's not apples to oranges and the scenario you describe is a fantasy. While their are certainly circumstances that may 'trap' you with your current lender for whatever amortization you agreed to, it's not because of any fine-print or terms on the agreement specific to the UK. If, for example, British borrowers fully-financed their house previously (or up to 125% which they used to be able to do), then a property price decreases or tighter government regulations would make it impossible for them to get qualified anywhere else. If their current lender knows this then they can almost dictate terms on a mortgage renewal. It's the same in Canada and all sorts of people have found themselves trapped to their lender because of the refinancing rules being changed a few years back.

Stable and profitable banks are good for the economy. If you want to benefit from these profits you can buy stock. I don't see the issue.

Because you're peddling the same tired argument we get from people defending the oil or telecom industries. "You're getting ripped off? Buy the stock!"

I know the solution seems that simple, but consider a few things first. To start, obviously not everybody has a few thousand dollars to invest in every company they're forced to deal with that rips them off.

Next, consider why banking fees are so high. It's not because the capital or operating costs need to be offset. It's because stock prices are so high that fees need to sufficient to offer investors a solid ROI. If, as you suggest, everyone invests in the banks to recoup those fees, what happens to the stock price? Extend that logic.

Finally, we have to examine how the major banks in Canada cornered the market like they have. Understand that up until relatively recently the Canadian financial industry was far more heavily protected, segmented and regulated than it is today. The major chartered banks expanded over decades with little in the way of competition. Upon deregulation in the late 80's, they were in a position to buy up and consolidate the financial industry (buying the trust companies etc) because their previous monopoly/oligopoly of basic banking ensured they were the only ones with the resources to do so.

The Big 6 banks now are so entrenched now (occupying all of the best locations and property) that it's near impossible for a smaller competitor to even get noticed.

While you're certainly right that stable and profitable banks are good for the Canadian economy, low-risk businesses and investments should offer similarly modest returns.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Moonbox

[TimG]

The Big 6 banks now are so entrenched now (occupying all of the best locations and property) that it's near impossible for a smaller competitor to even get noticed.

Plenty of competition to the Big 6 in Vancouver. Many of the old video store properties were taken over by expanding credit unions. I do some of my business with a credit union myself. Why don't you switch?

[hitops]

As an energy exporter, by definition we lose more from falling oil prices than we gain by cheaper energy. This is basic math. Importers gain more, exporters lose more. The only way you gain from this an an exporters, is if you are the reason prices are falling (ie you are increasing market share), such as the US in this case.

It's not just loss of oil-related tax revenue and oil-related the jobs. It's the beat-down the dollar takes which erodes all of our savings and our purchasing power.

Germany is just a bigger version of really dumb Ontario energy policy.

That analogy is pretty accurate.

It's not apples to oranges and the scenario you describe is a fantasy. While their are certainly circumstances that may 'trap' you with your current lender for whatever amortization you agreed to, it's not because of any fine-print or terms on the agreement specific to the UK. If, for example, British borrowers fully-financed their house previously (or up to 125% which they used to be able to do), then a property price decreases or tighter government regulations would make it impossible for them to get qualified anywhere else. If their current lender knows this then they can almost dictate terms on a mortgage renewal. It's the same in Canada and all sorts of people have found themselves trapped to their lender because of the refinancing rules being changed a few years back.

Because you're peddling the same tired argument we get from people defending the oil or telecom industries. "You're getting ripped off? Buy the stock!"

I know the solution seems that simple, but consider a few things first. To start, obviously not everybody has a few thousand dollars to invest in every company they're forced to deal with that rips them off.

Next, consider why banking fees are so high. It's not because the capital or operating costs need to be offset. It's because stock prices are so high that fees need to sufficient to offer investors a solid ROI. If, as you suggest, everyone invests in the banks to recoup those fees, what happens to the stock price? Extend that logic.

Finally, we have to examine how the major banks in Canada cornered the market like they have. Understand that up until relatively recently the Canadian financial industry was far more heavily protected, segmented and regulated than it is today. The major chartered banks expanded over decades with little in the way of competition. Upon deregulation in the late 80's, they were in a position to buy up and consolidate the financial industry (buying the trust companies etc) because their previous monopoly/oligopoly of basic banking ensured they were the only ones with the resources to do so.

The Big 6 banks now are so entrenched now (occupying all of the best locations and property) that it's near impossible for a smaller competitor to even get noticed.

While you're certainly right that stable and profitable banks are good for the Canadian economy, low-risk businesses and investments should offer similarly modest returns.

Moonbox you haven't thought this through.

The fact that our banks are so heavily regulated is exactly why there is little competition in Canadian banking. It's directly related to the fees you pay. Heavily regulated industries are always more expensive to operate, and those costs get passed onto you.

Furthermore, it's a free country. If you don't like banks, don't use them. Fill a sock with gold under your bed if you want to. Or just don't use banks that charge you fees. It's extremely easy to get a checking account that charges you no fees at almost any bank (or even places like superstore).

What you mean by the fees are too high, is that the fees for specific type of conveniences you want are too high, such as special types of accounts or pulling money from atm's that are not your banks. However it's your choice to undertake those activities. I have not paid a fee to my bank in years, except those that I specifically choose to pay due to my own choices of the type of account and cc I want. I don't have to choose those, just as you don't, there are other options that cost nothing.

Don't complain that you don't have 2-3K to buy bank stocks with. Stop smoking, cancel you cable, sell the car and take the bus, lose the cell phone and in a few months you'll have it. Or....just get a free basic bank account where you pay no fees, save the fees instead then buy the bank stock. We all make choices. You just don't like the results of yours.

Edited December 8, 2014 by hitops