Reuters has an interesting story about a project to put solar panels in North Africa, with power lines to transmit this electric to Europe.  The story states:

The European Union is backing projects to turn the plentiful sunlight in the Sahara desert into electricity for power-hungry Europe, a scheme it hopes will help meet its target of deriving 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 2020.

“I think some models starting in the next 5 years will bring some hundreds of megawatts to the European market,” Oettinger told Reuters after a meeting with energy ministers from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

He said those initial volumes would come from small pilot projects, but the amount of electricity would go up into the thousands of megawatts as projects including the 400 billion euro ($495 billion) Desertec solar scheme come on stream.

$400 Billion euro sounds like a lot of money.  But perhaps it isn’t, considering they are going to produce a lot of power.  Let’s do some math:

Europe today gets 4.2% of it’s electricity from wind, which according to the EWEA produce 142 TWh (terawatt-hours) of electricity in 2008.  Dividing by 8760 hours in a year, this is 16.21 GW (gigawatts).  Dividing by 4.2% gives a total power demand in Europe of 386 GW.

Let’s generously assume that the Sahara Solar projects will provide ALL of the EU’s 20% target for electricity generation.  That would mean the Sahara solar project would need to produce 77 GW of electricity.  At the quoted cost, this works out to 6412 USD / kW of flowing power.  Of course, solar has a low (<50%) onstream factor due to night, so the cost per installed kW is lower, perhaps around $3000/kW.   But it is the flowing kW that matters.

How does this compare to other power generation options?

Well, gas-fired combined cycle plants cost between $1300 and $1500 USD/kW.

Coal-fired plants cost between $1200 and $2000 USD/kW, depending on whether it is a traditional thermal plant or IGCC type facility.

Nuclear projects cost between $3000 – 5000 USD/kW, depending on jurisdiction and local labour costs.

So this solar plan is expensive.  And doesn’t provide power at night.

No wonder the company behind it wants subsidies:

The Desertec consortium includes major firms such as Siemens, RWE and Deutsche Bank. They are expected to seek public money for the project.

So Michael Ignatieff has decided to give up on Alberta when it comes to elections. He is taking a stand against oil tankers of the BC coast, proposing a ban on such tankers.    The Liberals clarified:

Ms. Murray indicated the Liberals are against large supertankers and not the many other ships that sail B.C. waters. The Liberals don’t oppose the smaller tankers carrying a light oil called condensate that already ply the choppy waters of Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound around Haida Gwaii.

The Liberals also did not take a stand on the oil tankers that sail past downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park taking crude from a facility in Burnaby, a terminus of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta.

So they aren’t against all tankers.  Just additional tankers that would carry more export oil from Alberta from the proposed Gateway Pipeline terminal at Kitimat.  This pipeline is expected to provide an additional outlet for Alberta’s production, which may somewhat decouple Alberta prices from US demand by providing additional markets.  Isn’t it the Liberals that created the “Team Canada” missions to help Canadian businesses expand to markets other than the United States?

So, by deciding that exporting more of Alberta’s oil is bad, does Ignatieff expect to win any seats in Wild Rose Country?

Nothing like destroying the incentive to work hard and save for your own retirement…

In Victoria Friday Mr. Flaherty fanned the flames further when he told executives that citizens who have saved enough for retirement will eventually be asked to help those who haven’t.

So, what you are saying is that if I save lots of money for retirement and have a nice nest-egg – that is my net worth is a large positive number – that I will have to pay more in taxes so that those people who chose not to save money are not destitute?   Exactly how is that fair?  This sounds like the socialist version of the Grasshopper and the Ant…

Has Flaherty suddenly switched to the NDP???

Jim Flaherty, the Canadian federal finance minister, has posited in a letter to his Ontario counterpart, that perhaps the premiums that all Canadian workers (and their employers) pay should be increased to increase the amount of money Canadians are saving for retirement.

This is a very bad idea.

First, increasing payroll taxes is a known employment killer.  Employing people costs companies more, so they have an incentive to reduce hiring.

Second, the CPP is a backstop pension plan.  The amount of money I would ever recover from CPP is not really enough for anyone to live on – so no one should rely solely on it anyway.

Third, the CPP is a giant Ponzi scheme ( less now than it used to be).  The money I put in is not being invested for my future retirement.  Much of my contributions  will be used to pay the pensions of the boomers.  Work out the rate of return on maximum CPP contributions versus maximum benefit, considering 30 years of paying in and 30 years of withdrawls (assuming long life) – it’s terrible (like <3% terrible), because it’s a scam.

Fourth, while the advent of the CPPIB is an improvement over the  true Ponzi scheme it was until the early 2000′s, I do not trust the governments of the future to keep their hands off it.  As the CPPIB fund becomes a massive sovereign wealth fund, many politicians will want to use it’s financial power to invest in ill-advised pet projects.

So, Mr. Flaherty – don’t do it.  Doubling the allowable RRSP contribution limits would be better.

The Government of Canada is proposing to purchase 65 F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft from Lockheed-Martin, to replace the now 30 year old CF-18 fleet.

Boeing, who lost the Joint Strike Fighter competition (their X-37 was rejected by the Pentagon when compared to Lockheed-Martin’s X-35), is trying to sell us the now 15 year old F-18F Super Hornet, which will be a 22 year old design when the F-35 is available.

Note that the F-18F is a stopgap aircraft that the US Navy is using to replace the 1970s era F-14′s with until the F-35C is available.

And since Canada has already invested $160 Million on the F-35 development program (and committed much more), it would be silly to back away now.  Plus, if the UK and US are buying this airplane, it would make sense to share a platform.

Now – if the F-35 does fail to live up to it’s promise (as sometimes new designs do), we should put into the contract with LM that we have an out.  Or that they would supply us with the F-22 instead (for a discount).

Yet another example of interprovincial trade restrictions that exist for no reason other than to prevent competition and create work for government bureaucrats.

Contemporary Security Canada, which also provided private security for the Vancouver Olympic Games, was selected by the RCMP to provide approximately 1,100 private security guards to screen pedestrians throughout the summits in Huntsville and Toronto.

But security guards and the companies they work for are required by provincial law to be licensed, and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services said Contemporary Security Canada is not currently approved.

Wait - a company that can do work in BC (and by extension Alberta and Saskatchewan via TILMA, I assume) needs to do extra paperwork and wait for the Ontario government to approve them?  Why doesn’t Ontario simply accept that BC is a reasonably equivalent jurisdiction?

Ms. Blondeau said the ministry is working to do background checks on the company and the security guards they have hired for the high-profile international event. But she said they found out about the issue only after the company was hired.

“My understanding is that the RCMP has a long-standing relationship with this company,” she said. “So they secured them and we found out about it after the fact. It’s an inconvenience.”

Wait - so the RCMP uses this firm a lot (and thus trusts them), but now we need the provincial government to approve them too?  Since the RCMP is spending the money here, on behalf of the federal government, why is it necessary to have another level of government involved in the transaction?

The company must pay a fee and go through a rigorous process to become a licensed agency, and Ms. Blondeau said they will be able to work at the summits only if they are approved.

“If they are an agency that is approved to do business in Ontario, then they can proceed,” she said.

And bureaucracy stifles business some more…

The failure is not in solving the problem, it is in the rush to judge who is responsible for a problem.  Because the finger pointing scares people from wanting to be involved in solving the problem.  It scares people from wanting to propose new ideas or try new things out of fear of being blamed when it goes wrong.

The current mess in the Gulf of Mexico is a very good example of this.  Dr. Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and the only scientist to go to the moon (Apollo 17) wrote a VERY good comparison of the current oil spill situation and the fire on Apollo 1 (he uses the internal NASA designation 204).  To quote:

“Failure was not an option” for Gene Kranz and his Apollo 13 flight controllers and engineers. In contrast, failure clearly has been an option for President Obama and those claiming to have been on top of this situation “from day one” in his White House and in the Departments of Interior, Energy and Homeland Security. With no single, competent, courageous and knowledgeable leader in charge of a comparably competent, courageous and knowledgeable team as we had with Apollo 13, the Administration has been doomed to failure from the start. The President, without any experience in real-world management of anything, much less a crisis, has no idea how to deal with a situation as technically complex as the Gulf oil spill.

…

NASA’s response to the 204 fire was to rapidly implement its previously well-formulated, objective investigation of its causes, both technical and managerial. Managerial responsibilities were identified, and George Low and his engineering team made appropriate changes without a prolonged exercise in finger pointing or the delays of another Presidential, buck-passing “commission.” NASA of that day moved forward and even accelerated the Apollo effort to its successful conclusion. Apollo 8’s Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbited the Moon less than two years after the 204 fire. Seven months after that, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, with Mike Collins in orbit overhead, landed on the Moon.

The lessons from the 204 fire were applied and we moved on. In contrast, President Obama’s and his Administration’s otherwise rambling response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been to stop offshore oil exploration by the United States.

…

Essential to the prevention of future accidents will be an objective, complete technical and managerial investigation of why a geological and engineering situation of known risks spun out of control. The primary question is, will such an investigation be possible in the politically charged, adversarial “boot on the neck” atmosphere created by President Obama and his team? Imagine if such an atmosphere had surrounded the 204 fire investigation and recovery.

Responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon accident ultimately lies with the chaotic regulatory environment for petroleum exploration created over recent decades by the Congress, courts, Department of the Interior and environmental pressure groups. Will we learn anything about regulatory overkill from this tragic loss of eleven lives, extensive environmental damage, and disruption of business and employment in the Gulf?

A second example of this, on a much smaller scale, has occurred in Calgary in the last week.  Last weekend, a small group of ne’er-do-wells decided to steal a city transit bus and take it on a joy-ride.  One of the miscreants has been apprehended in part because of an onboard video camera that captured the action.   In order to prevent future incidents, Calgary Transit has decided that they must install video cameras on all buses.  Excuse me, but isn’t that a knee-jerk reaction to a single event?  How often are there problems on a bus where video evidence would be useful in a court of law?  Or are we hoping that because Big Brother is watching that it will deter criminal activity?  This seems like an unnecessary expense to deal with an uncommon event.  If we have a problem with civil behaviour in society, perhaps we need to look at causes, not deal with the after effects.

A report in the Economist shows that Canada is not doing enough to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation:

Why does Canada not have lots of “new firms” patenting new ideas?  Norway and the Netherlands are both smaller than Canada, so I would hope Canada was at least in the same ballpark as Germany and France…

Now, I disagree with the Economist in their proposal to impose Pigouvian taxes as a means to encourage innovation – this is little different than the pandering to “pet” technologies they hope to avoid.

Lower taxes, more flexible labour markets and less government regulation of markets and products would be a very good first step towards encouraging innovation.

In the WSJ the recent daily trend in the stock, bond and currency markets is taken as evidence that confidence in the days-old European bailout and austerity plans is slipping.

First, a few days is hardly enough evidence. But second- what do they propose.

The real problem is that leaders in Europe need to admit to their citizens that the socialist welfare states they have created are not sustainable and must be dismantled. Not adjusted, but dismantled. Europe needs to get back to work and create wealth. They need lower taxes and balanced budgets. Which means no more subsidies, less government and less legally mandated vacation.

All the parties in Canada’s Parliament are wrong on whether to let the Auditor General do a performance audit of MPs expenses.  First because the A-G office has in the past performed such audits (1980 and 1991), but because we know from other jurisdictions (the UK being the most recent and egregious), an awful lot can be hidden.

So the decision of Parliament to reject the A-G’s request is tantamount to admitting they have something to hide…