I mean you’re talking about removing an energy export and replacing it with imports. How do we get the money to begin with to pay for the solar and batteries we will need to import from China, who refine all the rare earth and builds all the solar panels using cheap coal?
Fun fact, the materials needed for an renewables-electric based economy are not single use consumable, the way hydrocarbons are. So if anything, the best use of our current petro-economy is to …build the renewables-electric based infrastructure. Not to mention that “Canada holds some of the largest known resources of rare earths globally”. Maybe if instead of subsidizing oil and gas or spending ridiculous amounts of money on becoming an arms exporter, we funded research and development in renewables technologies we could actually develop home grown technologies of scale?
It’s easy. Solar costs the least. Export oil/lng/other resources trade for solar. Cheaper than using our own energy. Still ton of local jobs deploying solar.
I mean you’re talking about removing an energy export and replacing it with imports. How do we get the money to begin with to pay for the solar and batteries we will need to import from China, who refine all the rare earth and builds all the solar panels using cheap coal?
Fun fact, the materials needed for an renewables-electric based economy are not single use consumable, the way hydrocarbons are. So if anything, the best use of our current petro-economy is to …build the renewables-electric based infrastructure. Not to mention that “Canada holds some of the largest known resources of rare earths globally”. Maybe if instead of subsidizing oil and gas or spending ridiculous amounts of money on becoming an arms exporter, we funded research and development in renewables technologies we could actually develop home grown technologies of scale?
It’s easy. Solar costs the least. Export oil/lng/other resources trade for solar. Cheaper than using our own energy. Still ton of local jobs deploying solar.
Nickel and iron aren’t rare earths.
Well sure, but all the metal processing is China, I assume most people don’t understand the intricacies.
Presumably this can be easily done in Canada as the technology is over 100 years old: in this, we’d be making nickel-iron batteries, not smart phones.