the benefits. This is the idea behind a federal initiative encouraging Canadians to buy fuel-efficient vehicles by offering rebates
ranging from $1,000 to $2,000.
Sometimes newer technologies harken back to older times.
For example, wind-assisted ships that use a computer-controlled,
helium-filled kite to capture wind energy can reduce a vessel’s
fuel consumption by 20 per cent or more. Fuel can represent as
much as 60 percent of a merchant ship’s operating costs, so this
innovation has high economic potential. Wind-assisted boats also
produce less pollution, and in GHG terms this is no small matter.
The world’s 50,000 or so trading vessels carry 90 per cent of
global trade. Most fly flags of convenience, and their emissions
are subject to little national control.
In the matter of electricity generation, fuel switching—using
natural gas instead of coal, for example—reduces carbon dioxide
emissions by using a cleaner fossil fuel. It replaces an abundant
fuel with a scarcer one, though, and is therefore not a sustainable long-term strategy. Still, the Paris-based International Energy
Agency says that emissions from coal-powered electricity generation can be reduced immediately, and also over the longer term.
Cost-effective CO2 emission reductions can be achieved
almost immediately by burning coal with less waste. Long term,
carbon capture and storage (CCS) offers the potential for near-zero carbon dioxide emissions from coal-based power plants.
“These strategies are complementary,” says the IEA report.
“Deployment of modern, efficient coal-fired electrical generation technologies in the short to medium term can enable carbon
capture for less cost in the longer term, if those power units are
designed to enable cost-effective carbon capture retrofitting when
that technology becomes available for commercial application.”
Of particular importance to the petroleum industry, carbon
reduction can involve warehousing GHG in depleted oil and gas
reservoirs. It is in the arcane area of CCS that Canada’s petroleum
industry can make a world-class contribution to the problem.
ENVIRONMENT
Massive Capacities.
Pressure Vessel Components.
Edmonton Exchanger specializes in the fabrication of
large-scale pressure vessel components and features
steel forming capacities that are some of the largest
of their kind.
Our steel plate forming capabilities range up to an
8” thickness for vessel head and shell production.
Heads are formed up to 28’- 6” in diameter and
shells up to 144” in length.
We offer the most extensive one-stop head forming
and shell rolling capabilities in North America, and
one of the largest pressure vessel quality steel plate
inventories in the world.
