One of the benefits North America and Europe have in its ability to compete on the global market is its capital-intensive infrastructure systems already built, in the form of pipelines and grids capacity. The key obstacle that new smaller scale projects carry, as compared to larger scale conventional energy projects, are off-take agreements; that is, guaranteed buyers of their future supply.
For example, Canadian small-scale players are competing with the larger crown corporation utility companies that control and own the supply of power, generating off a central grid or a natural gas pipeline. One needs to ask how public policy serves to benefit utility companies in the business of exporting containers of LNG, versus an intermodal facility built from the ground up, where supply of gas, power grid electric power is priced according to provincial rates for industrial clients.
In order to expand our supply, we need to be much more competitive in allowing risk to be shared by the private and the public sector in attaining a position to lead in a new technology, modelling its success in one project.
How do we do that? Let’s start the dialogue!
