iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This is the big lesson from Ukraine. The supply chain for drones is the platform, not the specific models you have in inventory. Those will be used up or obselete in weeks or months.

000

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It's also the main security help we could give to Europe, as a secure drone supply base, out of reach of 'the zone of economic denial' from the likes of Russia, but also independent of the US and China.

000

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

And that sort of hedgehog is what would protect agaisnt local security pressures, not conscription.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Having a domestic full stack EV industry is a national security imperative. Doesn't have to be all domestic companies, but they have to be *here*. An EV stack has all the components for a high volume drone stack. And that is the root of any 'hedgehog' strategy.

201

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

There are economic and environmental reasons to push on the transition, but we need to be really smart about it to not hurt security.

000

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Seperate for environmental reasons, but for Canada moc8ng away from fossil fuels does *NOT* help national security overall, and if we don't get the full stack battery, power converter, motor etc stack, it could arguably worsen national security.

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

That is fully as many donestic built units as total sold. We likley could build plus import enough to cover, but the model mix would still be an issue.

010

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We currently do not, but only ~10-15 years ago we did. We built a limited number of models, and swaped with the American factories (inc Toyota and Honda, to get the model mix demanded.

200

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The one area that would be a nice kick is to stop buying US made cars and trucks.

220

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Also, as a minimal importer of US supplied energy (only locally for local cost of delivery reasons), cleaning up does nothing to decouple from the US. It can be good in it's own right, but would free up more to export south...

120

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That is to get full loads on Aframax tankers (~0.5-0.7 Mbbl). Roberts bank can do VLCCs at ~2Mbbl per ship. Much bigger yet.

020

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I feel vindicated now...

020

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Bigger ships = less transits. Esp if they can shift some current Burrard inlet loadings to Roberts bank...

130

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Ibassume if it was a FID, all provincial approvals were already in place, so no take backs from the next gov?

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Only if that is more than the inputs embodied in fertlizer, harvesting, labour, etc, etc...

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This. That's what was bugging about Markham's framing.

131

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If minimal public money is at risk, seems fine to me if the corperate money wants to take on that risk...

180

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How much public investment is there in phase 2?

120

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Ottawa should make it clear that if AB's staus is made unclear (via the first referendum) it will need to be resolved before *any* binding funding comitments are made, or such comitments are conditional on remaining in the confederation...

040

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That is the point I would like to see analysed. Could we do pre-work so that we can quickly (in days) reverse line 9, and start bringing oil imports in via montreal? The oil would be more expensive, but as an inusrance plan it is probably *much* less investment...

010

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It's not a completely crazy idea to at least evaluate. But on straight economics it will never look attractive, as it's effectively a super exensive way to mildly boost exports to the US (the share currently that transits back). But as long as MI wants to shut it down, it's a risk anyway.

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Leaning into (locally produced) EVs would also mitigate the risk by reducing the shortfall potential...

000

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

'Northern shield' can only be valued in terms of an inusrance policy. As such the big question is what would the consequnces, and cost impact of line 5 shutdown. Could we do it via reversing the line to QC and rail? Or would it be fuel shortages?

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Digging into it, it's mostly AB conventional oil that goes to Sarnia. They ship oil sequntially in pieplines, and they don't mix much, so they can ship multiple grades in one line.

120

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If we want to do the deep decarb expansion with mostly variable resources, we will have to accept that we will be discarding a quarter to a half of the power generated, and price that in. The 'excess' is a siren song. It's produced when it's not needed, and can't be absorbed economically.

000

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Use mountain or Midwest to compare to the prairies, NY or NE to compare ON/QC etc. Use the optimizer sweep. to see the shifts as you go to 90 or 95% hourly matching of clean.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

As the power gets to the very deep decarb, the mixture needs to shift to more firm supply, as variable resources are less able to be absorbed without fuel to offset. Here is a great dashboard: dashboardamerican.github.io/clean-dashbo...

dashboardamerican.github.io

Energy System Simulator

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

To that extent, where there are very good onshore wind and solar (comparable to the C.tax inclusive marginal cost of gas), they are fine to fuel save against gas firm capacity. But long term, once we have the big electrification in place, and we need to finish with the power sector, holds us back.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

To the extent that more decarb on power makes it more expensive, that is the complete backwards of what we want, as that will slow the other stuff. We should be focusing on expanding power, affordably, w/o adding (appreciable) GHG in doing so.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

More to the point, and bigger picture. With 100B, we should not decarb power. Our power is mostly decarb already. It's only ~7% of our total GHG. We should be focusing on electrification of transport, industry, and then heating.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Use it to get to NOAK of everything we need, while streamining to get build costs to <2X China. 100B is far short of getti g all the way, but that would put us on the right path...

020

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I would far rather build generation, in relative proximity to users, that can be modulated through limited storage to cover the vast majority of uses cases, at high utlization.

120

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I disagree, but for a different day. I think this approach leads to a very high floor on power costs as system costs (storage, TX, etc) are allocated to users. The distance needed for low correlation is huge, and we don't ever get real regional anti-corrleation (which is what we really need).

020

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🤷‍♂️ Them we better get the Capex down... Otherwise we are going to be burning gas for the long haul...

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A budget crunch ends continued efforts at decarb. Slow and steady is much better than dash and crash.

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's gonna take as long as it takes... If we don't get good at nukes, we are not getting off gas as our 'beyond hydro' firm power...

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's not fine, that way goes bancrupt power systems / gov budgets! If you actually try to do it at scale anyway.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

High heating demand is the main show! I struggle to see how we get there w/o some form of Distirct heating. I also think this will be the more predominat use of deep geothermal, to provide the main heatvsource to those in heating centric climates.

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think we have lots of options for diurnal coverage (which will be basically just BESS eventually), but beyond that we have not actually come up with anything other than resevoir hydro, geological gaseous fuel storage, or tanked liquid fuel storage for longer terms that are playsibly economic.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I don't think there is a real consensus yet. The challenge with long duration storage is unless it can offer *capacity* value, i.e. high availability in the worst case event for it (a long sustained low ouptut period followed by a severe low output period), it's economics are terrible as fuel saver

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

That's with the ITC, they have it at ~240 w/o those...

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Make that Euros or Pounds and that's more the ballpark. And those are super mature markets.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Geothermal to the extent they have the resources, enough wind to trade to BC for some firm hydro in a pinch, nukes to cover the rest (with a soupson of PV), and some batteries to cover short duration peaks / load imbalances.

100

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The problem with 'catching the peaks' to make use of the 'excess' is that the periods of availability are too concentrated, leading to low utlization of anything trying to make use of that 'excess'. We need to cost variable sources based on the usable output, not the total.

110

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We should not do offshore. Period. FOAK nuclear prices for non-firm power. Onshore can work decently while supporting hydro.

210

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The duration of luls is inconsitent, but sometimes are long than anything but resevoir hydro or stored fuels can manage, but infrequent enough to crush the economics of any storage more expensive than those.. (Too few cycles per year for the deep parts of it).

130

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The issue here is that wind tends to have poor allignment with demand. Higest output in mild weather (shoulder seaons like now, and mild winter weather) but tends to underperfom during hot and some extreme cold periods.

230

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Large resevoir hydro. And once we have augmented/extended large resevoir hydro as much as it practically can absorb, we have about as much wind as we should build. After that we need something else.

111

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Vanadium is too expensive...

120

Jesse @ember42.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There is no economically plausible benefit for large scale, fully across county transmission. Integration around the hydro hubs? Yes, but linking those doesn't add much.

000