Naw-Rúz to those of the Bahá’í faith.
The New Year holiday marks the spring equinox, spiritual growth, and renewal.
🚌 Our subject line yesterday erroniously said that the new OC Transpo generators for the electric bus fleet would use ‘liquid natural gas‘ whilst the encapsulated story noted correctly that they would use ‘natural gas’. Liquid natural gas and natural gas are two very different things, with liquid natural gas being quite expensive. We apologise of the error.
However, this did inspire reader Nick to write to us and point out a few things to keep in mind about the whole electric bus project:
• Even if the buses were to charge 100% on natural gas electricity for their entire operating life it would still reduce emissions by about 40% compared to diesel internal combustion engines due to the vastly more efficient electric drivetrain.
• More likely the gas generators will be used at first and eventually the buses will charge from the grid when capacity is available, further reducing emissions (Ottawa electricity is effectively zero carbon since it's almost entirely hydro, and new supply will be non-emitting)
• The lack of grid capacity is also an extremely new phenomenon as the province’s electricity demand is actually growing for the first time since before the 2008 financial crisis, and it's growing faster than anyone expected. So fast that this is not something that would have been clear when the bus fleet conversion would have been planned
• This is also an issue that could easily be resolved within the operating lifetime of the buses – After a lost decade in which almost nothing was built, the province is right now in the very early stages of the largest electricity infrastructure upgrade since the 1970s. Once new non-emitting generation capacity and grid infrastructure are brought online, it’s also not as if these gas units would be stranded assets as they would still be valuable for system reliability/back-up power
Thank you reader Nick for that good explanation.
– Martha and Darren
