Mining Power Issues – Page 13 – Republic of Mining

NEWS RELEASE: Wataynikaneyap Power ownership grows to 20 First Nation communities and project receives key approval

March 13, 2015March 12, 2015

Click here for an updated preliminary business plan: http://wataypower.ca/sites/default/files/Wataynikaneyap%20Preliminary%20Business%20Plan%20-%20November%2028%202014.pdf

To view the map associated with this release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/MapWatay.pdf

March 12, 2015 – Thunder Bay: Wataynikaneyap Power today held a press conference announcing that Sandy Lake First Nation and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation will join the Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission Project, bringing the number of communities participating in the First Nation-led company to twenty. Each community is an equal owner in the project to bring grid-connection to remote First Nation communities, currently serviced by diesel generation.

“Having 20 communities come together to own a major infrastructure project at any one time is truly unprecedented,” says Margaret Kenequanash, Chair of Wataynikaneyap Power. “Our communities see the value of controlling infrastructure development in our traditional homelands to ensure responsible development while maximizing benefits to our communities. I would like to welcome both Sandy Lake First Nation and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation as partners and shareholders in this unique and exciting project.”

“It is an honour to join the other First Nations on this very important and much needed infrastructure project,” says Sandy Lake Chief, Bart Meekis. “Grid connection will bring many benefits to our community including the opportunity to develop renewable energy projects.”

Moosonee railway extension gaining momentum – by Len Gillis (Timmins Times – February 25, 2015)

February 26, 2015

http://www.timminstimes.com/

Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Lawrence Martin will be joining the chiefs of the Matawa Tribal Council at the annual prospectors’ convention in Toronto next week to outline his plans for a new railway line running from Moosonee to the Ring Of Fire mining project.

Martin said he met with Neskantaga Chief Peter Moonias earlier this week to outline the idea, but Martin said Moonias could not make any sort of a commitment on behalf of the Matawa First Nations, which is claiming territorial jurisdiction over the mining area. Martin said however there is growing support for Mushkegowuk.

Regardless, grand chief Martin said the idea is gaining momentum and more people are willing to listen to the idea. He said he expects mining executives at the Prospectors and Developers Convention next week will be interested in hearing the proposal, given the overall interest in the mining project.

The Ring of Fire is the name give to a huge deposit of chromite located in the McFauld’s Lake and Webequie area, about 600 kilometres north west of Timmins. Chromite is an important mineral element in manufacturing stainless steel. The Ring of Fire area could become the largest chromite mining site in North America, a venture measured in the tens of billions of dollars.

In January, Martin revealed the idea of creating a rail link across Mushkegowuk territory into the Ring Of Fire area with a two-pronged objective; one to bring in a rail link and secondly to bring in a high-voltage energy transmission line.

Renewable future for mine power shines bright – by Simon Rees (MiningWeekly.com – February 10, 2015)

February 10, 2015

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Renewable power is reliable, proven and continues to offer the mining industry an attractive means to obtain lower-cost energy at remote operations, Hatch director of renewable power Michel Carreau told an audience at a seminar hosted by the Canadian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce’s Competence Centre for Mining and Mineral Resources on Friday.

The mining and renewable energy sectors must continue engaging with each other to develop joint solutions, he added. “This is a meeting of two worlds that, until quite recently, hadn’t worked together.”

Before a mining company selects a renewable component – whether wind, solar or another option – it must consider the economic viability and rate of return against the estimated mine life. The longer a mine is operational, the greater benefits renewables can deliver.

“Levels are typically fixed. For example, 15 cents per kW an hour would be a good bargain across 25 years,” Carreau said. “And while fuel costs are lower right now, remember this is just a moment in time; it will go up [in price].”

The level of power penetration by a renewable component varies; most provide mine sites with between 10% and 20% of their energy when in use. The goal of both the industries is to push this to a much higher level over the next five to ten years.

Mushkegowuk Ring of Fire plan attracts railroader interest – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – February 3, 2015)

February 3, 2015

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. Ian Ross is the editor of Northern Ontario Business ianross@nob.on.ca.

The Mushkegowuk Council’s conceptual plan for a Ring of Fire railway, power corridor and James Bay port took a strange twist with possible partnership talk involving a private railway company with a keen eye on buying the Ontario Northland Railway.

Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Lawrence Martin caused a media stir at a Jan. 22 energy conference in Timmins when he told reporters that his northeastern Ontario tribal council was considering teaming up with TGR Rail to extend rail service to the coast and into the Ring of Fire.

TGR, a Toronto-based rail services company, claims it has the financing and the team in place to acquire and expand the rail assets of the North Bay-based Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC).

The company contacted Mushkegowuk last year when the tribal council on the eastern side of the Ring of Fire began floating the idea of an energy infrastructure corridor.

It calls for a multi-use easement corridor of power, fibre optic and rail links that would provide all-season access and grid-based electricity to isolated communities and the remote mineral deposits with a connection to a proposed saltwater port to move chromite ore to the coast.

Big Hydro’s big days are behind it – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – January 5, 2015)

January 9, 2015

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

To paraphrase what another politician said about another energy megaproject, British Columbia’s plan to build a new $8.8-billion hydro project on the Peace River is hardly a no-brainer.

Depending on your assumptions about future electricity demand, environmental regulations and market trends, you could make a credible case for the 1,100-megawatt Site C power project that Premier Christy Clark has just green-lighted. But Ms. Clark’s refusal to submit her plan to a review by the B.C. Utilities Commission suggests she’s not especially confident of winning the argument.

This raises a broader credibility problem facing all of Canada’s provincially owned electric utilities. They are run by political appointees who answer to politicians who live to cut ribbons. The utilities are fiercely jealous of their prerogatives as near-monopoly suppliers of electricity and fight incursions by the private sector. When they make the business case for a new publicly financed hydro megaproject, it’s hardly an objective exercise.

So, from Newfoundland to B.C., hydro megaprojects are back in fashion. From Muskrat Falls to Site C – with Quebec’s La Romaine and Manitoba’s Keeyask and Conawapa in between – governments are again betting billions on Big Hydro. But they are confusing economic development with sound energy policy.

Ontario’s magical economy isn’t working – by Catherine Swift (National Post – January 8, 2015)

January 8, 2015

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Socialism in its various guises has never worked to the benefit of average, middle-class people. Take the Government of Kathleen Wynne as a real-time case in point. A number of recent developments in the province have focused the mind on how the current Ontario government’s policies are hurting, not helping, average Ontarians.

The Wynne government professes to be the savior of the lower- and middle-class. All factual evidence suggests otherwise. As last month’s report by Ontario’s Auditor General (AG), Bonnie Lysyk, pointed out in stark terms, all efforts of Ontarians to contain their rapidly increasing hydro bills by doing their laundry in the middle of the night are for naught. Anyone who was paying attention to their hydro bill would have already known this.

A recent bill showed that my household’s hydro consumption was precisely the same as the comparable period last year, with maximum “off-peak” usage, yet the bill increased by 8% – four times the rate of inflation. Informed analysts know that the main driver of hydro costs in Ontario is the “Green Energy” policy imposed by the government, an approach that is being abandoned elsewhere around the world as evidence showed it had negligible environmental benefit. The exodus of manufacturers from Ontario is in part driven by uncompetitively high hydro costs.

Another recent policy proposal that will do nothing but harm average Ontarians is the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP). As designed, this plan will hurt lower income families the most.

Northwestern Ont. transmission line may threaten caribou habitat (CBC News Thunder Bay – December 16, 2014)

January 23, 2015December 18, 2014

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

A new report says caribou in Ontario’s boreal forest are facing increasing man-made threats — and specifically points out a proposed transmission line running between Dryden, Ignace and Pickle Lake.

Anna Baggio of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Wildlands League said the route would disturb prime caribou habitat.

“Let’s not place permanent infrastructure in these really hammered southern caribou ranges,” she said. “And if you have to build some of this infrastructure — if it’s an absolute imperative — then at least situate it along an existing highway.”

Baggio said the province needs to do a better job of living up to its commitment to protect woodland caribou. “If we can protect woodland caribou habitat, then we can protect the habitat of a whole other suite of species,” she said.

“If we don’t do a good job on Boreal caribou, it’s sort of like a canary in the coal mine for us … It shows us that our practices and our intentions in the Boreal forest are not where they need to be.”

Baggio said the notion of ploughing “a transmission line through some of the best remaining intact caribou habitat … is perplexing.

B.C. approves $8.8-billion Site C hydroelectric dam – by Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2014)

December 17, 2014

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

VICTORIA and Vancouver — The B.C. government has approved the construction of the Site C dam on the Peace River at an estimated cost of almost $8.8-billion, making it the largest public infrastructure project in the province’s history.

But the government will delay the project until next summer and has adjusted the price to be $900-million higher than what BC Hydro had proposed. The project faces a series of lawsuits, and on Tuesday, environmentalists, First Nations and the NDP renewed their opposition to the dam.

Premier Christy Clark, at a news conference in Victoria, said the revised budget reflects “the true cost” of building the dam, but she believes it remains the cheapest option to meet British Columbia’s growing demand for electricity in the future.

“I believe the people of our province will continue to prosper,” she said. “We need to ensure there is power – clean, reliable, sustainable power.”

Site C will be built downstream of the W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams in northeastern B.C., and will be the first major hydroelectric dam to be built in the province since completion of the Revelstoke dam in 1984.

Why Has South Africa Plunged Itself Into Darkness — Again? – by David Himbara (Huffington Post – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

David Himbara is an educator, political economist and author.

Doug Kuni, a South African electricity expert, has advised his compatriots to buy candles and those who can afford it, to aquire a generator because “you are going to need it for the next five to ten years.” Kuni may be right. South Africa’s power system, including the utility company that runs it, Eskom, is in a mess. Shockingly, of the country’s installed 45,583 megawatts of electricity only 24,000 are available at present due to a series of old and new crises. There simply is not enough electricity to supply households and industry.

This is not the first time that South Africa has been plunged into darkness — the 2008 power crisis was equally painful.

What is the problem here? The money stops with the country’s leadership.

In the aftermath of the 2008 episode, the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, famously acknowledged his government’s failure to invest in energy infrastructure: “When Eskom said to the government: ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’…We said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong.”

The extraordinary leadership lapse in judgment becomes more evident when South Africa is compared to other mid-sized economies in terms of power-generation between 1994 and 2010.

Wataynikaneyap Power signs agreement with Aecom – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – December 9, 2013)

December 12, 2014

(Please note this article is from December 2013)

http://www.wataypower.ca/

A new energy company is planning and permitting a transmission line into Ontario’s Far North to power up an underground mine and connect remote Aborginal communities that exist on expensive diesel generation.

A group of 18 northwestern Ontario First Nations have teamed up on a joint venture with Goldcorp, operators of the Musselwhite Mine, to carry out a $1-billion project to beef up power capacity in the region.

Wataynikaneyap Power (Watay Power) has a two-phase plan that begins with stringing a 230-kV transmission line 300-kilometre long north from Dryden to Pickle Lake by 2016, and eventually further north into the communities of the James Bay region by 2017.

The early stages of an environmental assessment for the first phase is underway and a corridor study is examining options for the second phase.

Liberal Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli should resign – by Christina Blizzard (Toronto Sun – December 10, 2014)

December 10, 2014

http://www.torontosun.com/

TORONTO – Not only should Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli resign. He will resign. His performance Tuesday as he slammed provincial auditor general Bonnie Lysyk was shocking.

Now that voters have given the Liberals a majority, they’ve become arrogant. In my years at Queen’s Park, I’ve never seen a politician suggest an auditor got it wrong.

Lysyk had just released her annual report, which included a scathing review on the smart meter program. Chiarelli’s response was the political equivalent of patting her on the head, telling her it’s complicated and, well, what does she know.

Asked why we would believe a politician’s figures over those of an independent officer of the legislature, Chiarelli got testy, suggesting the electricity system was too complicated for her to understand.

“Why are my numbers more credible than hers? First, the electricity system is very complex, is very difficult to understand,” Chiarelli told reporters.

[Ontario government] Smart Meters continue to be stupid – by Christina Blizzard (Toronto Sun – December 10, 2014)

December 10, 2014

http://www.torontosun.com/

Turns out Smart Meters were a really dumb idea. Who knew? Well, beleaguered homeowners desperately trying to pay their skyrocketing hydro bills certainly had a pretty good idea.

Now the provincial auditor has confirmed with cold, hard facts about what hydro customers have been saying for the past seven years.

In her damning report Tuesday, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk painted a sorry picture of how your hydro bill ran so far out of control. The savings we were promised for Smart Meters didn’t materialize – and the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne have wreaked untold misery and hardship on households across the province.

Anyone who’s opened a hydro bill and groaned or wept at the staggering costs it’s added to their household costs can see how badly Smart Meters were bungled by the Liberals.

They massively over-estimated the net benefits – easy to do when you consider that, unlike other jurisdictions, they didn’t bother to do a cost-benefit analysis.

The Liberals projected Smart Meters would have a net benefit of $600 million over 15 years. Turns out, they were $512 million wrong.

Ontario’s economy lurches from disaster to disaster – by Livio Di Matteo (Troy Media – November 27, 2014)

November 27, 2014

http://www.troymedia.com/

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Thunder Bay’s Lakehead University.

The province has surpassed Quebec as the largest federal total transfer recipient in the country

THUNDER BAY, ON/ Troy Media/ – Ontario’s economic prospects have declined, with implications – despite Finance Minister Sousa’s insistence he can balance the budget – for both its future standard of living and its fiscal position.

Although employment, fueled by a lower dollar, has rebounded, the province’s economic fall from grace over the last two decades is evident from a number of key economic indicators.

While still the largest economy among the 10 provinces, its share of provincial output dropped from 42 per cent in 1990 to 37 per cent by 2013. Its real per capita GDP was the second highest (after Alberta) in 1990 but has dropped to fifth place, behind British Columbia and above Manitoba. Its real per capita GDP growth has been one of the lowest in the country.

Ontario’s economy reached a crucial point after the 1980s economic boom that saw free trade with the U.S. and a shift away from the traditional east-west economic alignment. After the jarring recession of the early 1990s, its decline was forestalled by both a combination of a lower dollar and booming U.S. economy, which drove Ontario’s export sector, and a public sector restructuring that lowered taxes.

Cheap energy is the new cheap labour – by John Gapper (Financial Times – November 26, 2014)

November 27, 2014

http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

For companies wondering where to locate, the world has turned upside down

The price of oil keeps on falling; the shale gas boom has reduced the price of natural gas in the US to a third of that in France; Germany has appealed to Sweden for its support in expanding two coal mines; and the EU’s effort to switch to clean energy is troubled. For companies wondering where to locate, the world has turned upside down.

Cheap energy is the new cheap labour. For two decades, the biggest driving force in industrial globalisation was the gap in the price of labour between the developed world and China. That induced many industries – textiles, electronics and others – to shift production from high-cost factories in the US and Europe to places where people would work for a fraction of the cost.

Now, as the wage arbitrage between the north and south narrows, the energy gap is widening. Wage rates adjusted for productivity in China have risen to more than half the level in the US, according to Boston Consulting Group. Meanwhile, energy prices have been falling and the Opec oil-producing countries have failed to halt the decline. Some fortunate countries, especially the US, are gaining from both of these trends at once.

Although cheap fuel theoretically helps every energy-dependent country, the gains are distributed unevenly. The big beneficiary, thanks to shale natural gas, is the US. Not only is it helped by companies bringing manufacturing home but it is also an oasis of cheap gas. That is luring energy-intensive industries such as chemicals, petrochemicals, aluminium and steel.

Renewables are not enough – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2014)

November 25, 2014

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

All over Ontario, giant wind turbines are sprouting up across the rural landscape and ruining people’s lives. Ordinary people are trying to fight them off in court, but they don’t have a chance. The multinational wind industry has a lot more money than they do. The law is on Big Wind’s side. So is Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government, which has pledged to triple the number of wind and solar generators and stick taxpayers with the bill.

But the fundamental problem with Big Wind is much bigger than its cost and unreliability. The problem is that today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us from the effects of climate change – and we’re wasting our time by trying.

That’s the conclusion Google has reached. Google has invested many years and significant resources in tackling the world’s climate and energy problems. Its biggest initiative was called RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal), a massive effort to find renewable energy sources that could compete in cost with coal.

Last week, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, two of the engineers at the heart of the RE<C project, published an article describing what they learned, and why Google threw in the towel. “We had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists,” they wrote.