136. New PM in Britain, James locates Australia, Brian gets lost in a blizzard

The Clean Energy Show

Toyota may finally be waking up to Electric Car Reality. New U.K. PM Sunak gets a 3 out of 5 on climate. Our city gets an elecric truck and loves the savings. Brian nearly dies in his Tesla Model 3 in a snowstorm but he thinks it should have been called a blizzard. A wind turbine gets hit by lighting off the coast of Ireland and blows up. We have the exclusive footage!

The Fully Charged Live show is coming to Australia and we've yet to be invited.

Canada will need 10x more wind and solar energy, supported by energy storage, to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. That seems surprisingly small.

Grid adaptation for EV adoption in Calgary, Canada. James is sceptical of the threat to grids by EVs.

Ola Air 1 electric scooter is unveiled at a low price for India.

Biggest component of the fossil fuel system is energy loss.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to episode 136 of the Clean Energy Show.

I'm Brian Stockton.

I'm James Whittingham.

This week, Toyota may finally be waking up to electric car reality.

Turns out they just slept through their alarm, which wet off five years ago.

Fully charged live show is coming to Australia.

James and I are still waiting for our invite to the Canadian show, but we would love to go to Australia and hang out with our two listeners there.

Liz Truss, the UK's solar hating Prime Minister, has resigned.

The new PM is Rishi Sunak, who I think is ahead of Lettuce.

I don't know, I just wasn't really paying attention.

All that is so much more on this edition of the Clean Energy Show.

I was going to list all the other things that we had to talk about this week.

I apologize to Australia again for my Southern hemisphere ignorance.

Our city buys an electric truck and we hear why they think it's a good idea.

And, yeah, all kinds of wonderful things that we're going to have to speed through, because I got a big fat show for you this week.

I have a big fat story for you this week.

I was on a lovely electric car road trip to Saskatoon, our city to the north, on the way home, decided to stop in Moosejaw, which, as we've said before, is a real place.

Yes.

And, man, I got caught in the worst blizzard I have ever been in in my entire life.

Really? Yeah, because I'm only 48 minutes away from there.

I don't understand.

Why was it so bad? Yeah, well, this was a weird spring storm.

Oh, sorry, fall storm.

We've had really warm weather here, like it was plus 20 Celsius just a few days ago.

And they had some warnings out.

They called it a snowfall warning, but I have a bone to pick with Environment Canada, because it really should have been a blizzard warning.

They have criteria for blizzard warnings, Brian.

It has to be windy and zero visibility in a certain temperature, depending on the region.

It actually varies by region.

This is our Canadian weather service.

That's right.

And I think the one thing we may not have had was temperature, because it was only around zero, but we had all the other things.

So we wanted to stop in Moose Jaw on the way home.

Pictures.

What? It was for work.

My partner had a bit of work to do and it involved taking pictures in Moose Jaw.

So, yeah, the snow starts to fall and we start driving in Moosejaw.

In about 30 minutes out of Moosejaw, the snow was just getting super heavy and thick and cars were going in the ditch.

This is a fairly small highway, just like a twolane highway.

And, yes, we had to slow down to, like, 40 just about lost control of the car.

At one point it started to slide around.

I managed to regain control, but it was a serious white knuckle drive those last 20 km into Moose Jaw.

We were worried we weren't going to make it.

There were cars in the ditch, people slept overnight.

Man, that could have been used.

Exactly how much of a charge did you have at that point? I have to ask.

We rolled into Moose Jaw with a 20% charge, which is not great.

That's not great for spending the night.

Well, I don't understand why you thought that was a good idea.

Because I'm going to flash back to Friday night in the weather forecast here.

Do know that there is a special weather statement in place through much of southern and eastern Saskatchewan and there will be major impacts along with this Natasha, including possibly some treacherous conditions on the road.

So people should prepare for that and maybe some power outages.

So it'd be good to have an emergency kit as well.

I'll full update coming up a little bit later.

It's almost like they saw it coming.

I heard that same report and they said, yeah, some snow and it probably won't stay around.

It'll probably melt.

I don't know.

I don't think we were sufficiently warned.

What do they have to do? Come at you with a Taser? A blizzard warning.

It should have been a blizzard.

Oh, you stupid old man.

A blizzard warning is there for a reason.

It means it's a blizzard.

It means the highways are not going to be possible.

It could be a light freezing rain and a beautiful day.

The sun could be shining.

It could be just treacherous.

A blizzard warning is a blizzard warning.

It was a blizzard.

It was definitely the worst snow storm, whatever you want to call it, the worst one I've ever driven through.

And we just barely made it.

And then we had to stay two nights.

We had to stay two nights in Mousse.

That's absurd because the road was just not did you get your picture? Did you take it at least? No, we did not.

Oh my God.

Yeah, we'll have to go back.

But yeah, we could have maybe driven back on the second day.

Only stayed one night, but the road was still moose Jaw was the epicenter for this storm that it got around a foot of snow in Moussehow.

Yeah, but we got to stay at the lovely Grant Hall Hotel in Moosejaw, which is this historic hotel on Main Street.

And we had power the whole time.

But on the other side of Main Street, no power for about 8 hours.

Half the town was without power, but we were relaxing comfortably in the Grand Hall hotels.

Quite lovely.

All right.

I have here the blizzard threshold criteria for Canada.

The national.

Except for north of the tree line.

Which is while it varies in various parts.

I guess where suddenly it becomes forced and it's not prairie and whatnot when winds of 40.

That's a calm day around here or greater are expected to cause widespread reductions in visibility to 400 meters or less due to blowing snow or blowing snow in combination with falling snow for at least 4 hours.

You're right, I think it should have been a blizzard if that's all it is.