Today’s horoscope
Georgia Nicols 4 minute read Preview
Today’s horoscope
Georgia Nicols 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT
MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions after 10 p.m. today. The moon is in Pisces.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
This is a great day to make art, which is good news for your sign as so many of you are artisans. (You can do anything with your hands, even without training.) Enjoy time alone and give yourself the luxury of doing what you want to do.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
Alberta sees its way through the fog
Editorial 4 minute read Preview
Alberta sees its way through the fog
Editorial 4 minute read 2:01 AM CDT
“The owls are not what they seem.”
It was a confusing line in a confusing television show, back when television watchers had to wait a week, or sometimes more, for a new episode of a show.
What the owls were — or weren’t — was one small element of the astounding panoply of events in Twin Peaks.
In case this is all flying right over your head, Twin Peaks was a surrealist television show, a mystery/horror/something that premiered in 1990. It had an amazing ability to leave viewers both entertained and, well, hanging.
Manitoba Hydro is pressing ahead with its proposed $3-billion gas-turbine project in Brandon as though approval was a foregone conclusion. Six weeks of Public Utilities Board hearings exposed serious doubts about the need for three turbines, their escalating cost and whether more affordable alternatives have been adequately examined. Yet before the PUB has delivered its recommendations and the government has authorized the investment, Hydro applied for an environmental license on Oct. 8.
Starting the environmental review early may save time but proceeding before the premier and his cabinet have made a decision risks reducing regulatory scrutiny and political approval to mere formalities. Has the government already given Hydro the green light?
Few dispute that Manitoba will need more capacity as demand grows. Daymark Energy Advisors, the PUB’s independent consultant, concluded that Hydro had established a need for additional capacity by 2030. However, Daymark questioned the size of the projected shortfall, Hydro’s load forecasts and its turbine cost assumptions. Hydro itself acknowledged that its planning costs were based on 2024 information, and that surging North American demand for gas turbines has since put significant upward pressure on prices. Then there’s the impact of Trump’s trade war. These are not minor details, but updated costs have not been obtained.
The bigger problem is how Hydro has framed the alternatives. Interim CEO Hal Turner recently argued that wind and battery storage alone cannot reliably carry Manitoba through prolonged extreme cold. Fair enough. However, critics are not proposing wind and batteries alone.