Best and Worst of 2009: A Preview
We’re in the process now of putting together our annual “Best and Worst” feature for the December issue and, oh, what a year it’s been. Choosing our top 10 business stories of the year has never been so competitive. Do you go for the arrest of Calgary’s $400-million Ponzi schemers or Capital Power Corporation’s $500-million initial public offering?
by Michael McCullough
Many of the top stories, of course, are conflations of each other. The explosion of shale gas production, for example, is the meta-story behind such phenomena as the collapse in the price of natural gas, the colossal provincial deficit and the loss of 60,000 jobs in Alberta since this time last year.
(It’s interesting how former Alberta Energy analyst Jim Roy’s once laughable prediction that the new royalty framework would result in a decline in provincial royalties has come to pass. A government report issued this month estimated that the government would forego $2 billion in revenue over a three-year period as a result of the framework’s sliding royalty scale that gives producers a holiday when prices are down and taxes them to the hilt when prices are up. And you know where prices are. This is the opposite of how it should work. Government needs stability in its revenue stream. It’s business that is set up to take risks. But to take risks it needs the prospect of huge rewards on the upside.)
Another meta-story changing the landscape in Alberta involves the electrical power industry. What do Enmax Corporation’s fight over Bill 50, TransAlta Corp.’s takeover of Canadian Hydro Developers and the Capital Power IPO have in common? They are all reactions to anticipated emissions control legislation that is going to seriously add to the cost of generating and transmitting power the old way – in massive coal-fired plants far from the people who end up using it.
Enmax believes the future lies in “distributed generation” – that is, producing power in small quantities where it is consumed (homes, enterprises) by renewable (wind, solar) or high-efficiency (heat recovery) means. Going against the herd, Enmax wants to hasten this transformation and be the dominant provider of small power generation systems currently being tested in employees’ homes. Hence in its view Alberta does not need more high-voltage wires crossing the landscape, as Bill 50 would make possible without public hearings.
By contrast, TransAlta isn’t looking to transform its whole business model, but it is prepared to pay a premium per megawatt generated for renewable power producer Canadian Hydro in order to earn emissions credits that might offset the CO2 emissions at its coal-fired plants. (Atco Power, which took a long time to see the green light, is now proposing a system of dams on the Slave River system for the same reason.)
Capital Power, meanwhile, is now free to raise money in the markets to attempt renewable takeovers like TransAlta’s and organically grow its renewables arm that includes things like generating power from methane from biomass at its Edmonton Goldbar plant. At the same time parent Epcor Utilities (read: Edmonton taxpayers) is relieved of the potential liability of crushing new emissions control regulations.
Another potential scenario, not anticipated in these corporate moves, is that with the newfound abundance of natural gas we will see more thermal generation using this cleaner-burning fuel than coal. By some estimates, the United States could cut its greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by 40% in a matter of months simply by running its existing gas-fired peaking power plants full-out and idling the dirtiest coal-fired generators.
This reshaping of the electrical power industry is just beginning and, I expect, will be a feature of our Best and Worst package for years to come.
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