Well that was interesting. We just finished an online search wondering where climate change, humanity’s most profound challenge, and renewable energy, the world’s fastest growing energy sector, fit into Alberta’s provincial election party platforms. The result? “Reader has finished searching the document, no matches were found.”
The only platform to even address climate change directly is Evergreen’s. The party also has a solid renewable energy strategy. The New Democrats have a modest proposal for a $50-million Renewable Energy Development Fund. It seems that in Alberta we truly have our heads in the (tar)sand.
Defenders of current energy policy rightly point out that the 169 billion barrels of recoverable oil is enormous — the third largest recoverable reserve in the world. But take your head out of the sand for just a moment and you would see that even this impressive reserve pales in comparison to the carbon-free energy contained in the sunshine that bathes us and in the winds blowing through our hair, day after day after day — forever.
We typically talk about energy in units of joules, megawatt-hours or barrels of oil. So let’s start with barrels of oil. Calgarians’ total energy use, for heating and lighting our homes, driving our automobiles and running our economy, is the equivalent of approximately 40 barrels per person per year. Imagine a family of three with its yearly stock of 120 barrels of oil in the backyard. That’s a lot of energy. But when you crunch the numbers you would find that a typical 25-foot infill lot in inner-city Calgary has the equivalent of 240 barrels of oil in the form of solar energy raining down on it every year. If half that energy were harvested it would cover the energy requirements of that same family.
For the full FFWD article by EVDS Assistant Professor Noel Keough and Urban Studies teacher Geoff Ghitter, click here.