Then what?

After you do your environmental duty and dump your gas car, then what?!  I mean, who's going to fork out $50 or $60 K for a Tesla?!  The latest is that Tesla is actually cutting production because they can't get lithium for their batteries.

Duh?!!

And if you're dumb enough and rich enough to buy one, where are you going to charge it?  Alberta is experiencing rolling blackouts because there isn't enough supply to run a measly, little province of 4 million frigid souls.  My question is, what is Marie-France Samaroden, vice-president of grid reliability operations for the Alberta Electricity System, doing?  She must be getting a huge whack of dough and yet she can't figure out the meaning of the word "reliability".

My other question is why the rebate?  If the idea is to get people to buy less gas, why are we getting a rebate at all?  Doesn't that cancel out the incentive to use less?

Duh?!!

During the January cold snap, grid alerts and rolling blackouts were also the norm, as Albertans faced days of supply uncertainty.  If you can believe it, four -- yes four! -- natural gas-fired power plants failed because of "cold-weather" issues.  People, this is Alberta.  It gets cold here!  Time to freshen up your reliability chops, Ms. Samaroden.  

"We do our best to forecast and look forward as to what the supply will be, but there's always forecast uncertainty and operational issues that occur," she said by way of excuse.  Isn't that your job?  To figure out good, old-fashioned supply and demand.  What are you paid again?  

Laughably, the much-lauded windmill generators didn't work because guess what?  There wasn't enough wind to spin them in farms all across the province!  Hahahaha!

Useless most of the time.

Said Premier Danielle Smith, "The province's electricity system has been built completely backward.  It gives renewables an outsized role in supplying Albertans with power.  We should be able to rely on a certain amount of baseload power and then have another way of approaching the issue of intermittency."

She's right, of course.  But try telling that to the incomprehensibly thick federal minister of the environment, Stephen Guilbeault.  Nothing like having a convicted felon running the energy needs of an entire country.

Felon-in Chief, Stephen Guilbeault.  An outrage.