One of the big shifts the world will see over the next few years will be a concerted push to eliminate Europe’s reliance on energy exports from Russia, and secondly, an increase in alternative energy sources. I’ve mentioned in the past that by orders of magnitude, any change in energy consumption over time will come from higher long-term oil and gas prices, rather than government subsidies.

 

Sometimes, I wish I was the leader of Canada for a day, to sort out one very significant and extremely costly issue: the export of our energy. Canada announced that they will “open their taps” further and increase oil and gas exports by the equivalent of 300,000 barrels a day to help nations that are trying to shift away from Russian supplies. Energy producers can raise shipments of crude by 200,000 barrels a day and natural gas by the equivalent of 100,000 by year-end by accelerating planned projects to expand output.

Canada and the U.S. already have the pipeline capacity to handle the extra volumes, with some of the extra oil expected to be shipped to Europe via the Gulf Coast. 

 

But if I was the leader, I would make the development of export facilities a massive priority: our inability to export an additional 900,000 equivalent barrels of oil to the U.S. if we were able to agree on pipeline expansions to the U.S. comes at a great cost to all of us (rather than the U.S. buying from Venezuela or other nefarious sources), not to mention the extreme cost of shipping by railroad. We need LNG export facilities: this would create jobs, infrastructure development, and a lessened reliance for the rest of the world on energy from Russia. We could then use some of the profits to build excellence in Canada for alternative energy development: how’s that for a platform?!  Canada has no LNG export terminals yet, but a consortium is building a large one on Canada’s west coast that is expected to be ready by the middle of the decade. 

 

Even Elon Musk (who benefits greatly from government subsidies to sell his “green” Tesla EV’s), is pragmatic "Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately,"  The shift to alternative energy has to be done in the context of the reality of the world we live in.

 

On a separate note, I did experience the future yesterday: check out this unmanned kiosk at the train terminal at the amazing Bright line Train terminal, where we took the train (and reduced our carbon footprint!).  We just inserted out credit card, entered the secure area, took what we needed off the shelves, put into a bag, and were billed for what we bought as we left: no scanner, no staff.  Think of the technological and employment shifts of running a retail company like this, rather than a traditional store…

 

 

I predict that one day soon, there will be a convenience chain that uses this model to disrupt the sector. I just need to figure out which company that will be!

 

Have great weekend.