¹ J. H. Dales, “Energy Sources in Canada” (hereafter cited as Dales) and Loosmore, R. J., “Energy Sources in Canada: A Reply” (hereafter cited as Loosmore), this Journal, XXIII, no. 2, 05, 1957, 254–60 and 260–6 respectively.Google Scholar

² D.B.S., Reference Paper No. 73, p. 11.

³ Apart from questions 16 and 17, 25 and 26, which are presumably already included in the new form of the questionnaire mentioned by Mr. Loosmore (p. 262) which was brought into use in 1955.

⁴ Reference Paper No. 74, p. 7.

⁵ On page 7. The D.B.S. articles in the Canadian Statistical Review for July and August, 1957, go a little further in recognizing the role of water-power but still do not accord it any independent place in the consolidated tables. Some tables in the third article (Oct., 1957, iv, v) include an explicit category for hydro-electricity.

⁶ Apart from a reference in a footnote on page 8 to the revision of the Census of Industry schedules.

⁷ An analogous problem as to the statistical treatment of nuclear energy is likely to require solution in the near future.

⁸ Loosmore, 261. The D.B.S. articles in the Canadian Statistical Review are presumably intended for the general reader and although there are some useful innovations, especially a comment on the importance of water-power, the main consolidated tables in the first two are on the same pattern as those in Reference Papers 69 and 74. The third article includes consolidated tables based on the net accession of energy in which hydro-electricity is given its due place.

⁹ D.B.S., “Canada’s Changing Energy Pattern,” Part 1, i.

¹⁰ Loosmore, 262.

¹¹ The point is forcibly made in Passer, H. C., The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875–1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Electricity was not to be important as a form of primary energy. The sources of power—falling water, expanding gases, and steam generated by coal, oil, gas, or some other combustible—were to remain as before. Electricity was to serve as a means to transmit power from the prime mover to the place of use more economically and more conveniently than any other method ever known. Electricity would primarily replace the belts, the cables, and the shafts. And it would permit the transmission of power where, for economic or physical reasons, transmission by mechanical means had never been practical.” C.f. also Davis, , Canadian Energy Prospects, 365 Google Scholar: “Coal, crude oil, unprocessed natural gas, water power and fuelwood are referred to as primary forms of energy. Manufactured products obtained by processing or converting the primary supplies to other and often quite different commodities like coke, manufactured gas and thermal electricity are classified as secondary sources.”

¹² D.B.S., “Canada’s Changing Energy Pattern,” Part 2, v. Part 3 (iv, v) does, in its tabulation of net accession of energy, give water-power an explicit place co-ordinate with coal, crude petroleum, natural gas, and fuelwood and wood waste, although, because no data are available for water-power as such, the figures given are for hydro-electricity.

¹³ Some of the relationships of course involve more than three stages and other important uses should be delineated. The diagram is drastically oversimplified. It is intended only to illustrate the basic distinction between original and derivative energy sources. A more complex type of diagram is that used (p. 4) in the United Nations paper, “World Energy Requirements in 1975 and 2000” in Proceedings of the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (Geneva, 08, 1957), I, 3–33 Google Scholar, and by Davis, , Canadian Energy Prospects, 67.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Because the weight of coal and coke can both be measured in tons it does not follow-that two tons of coke make twice the “contribution” of one ton of coal. This simple comparison may indicate their relative importance in the context of, say, a transportation problem, but it may disclose nothing as to their relative significance in any general sense, whether economic or technical.

¹⁵ Even in these cases, would not straightforward index numbers showing comparative changes in the quantities of each fuel and of electricity, produced or used, be simpler and just as useful?

¹⁶ D.B.S., “Canada’s Changing Energy Pattern,” Part 1, i.

¹⁷ Ibid., Part 3, ii.

¹⁸ Ibid., Part 2, i.

¹⁹ Palmer C. Putnam, Energy in the Future (Toronto, 1953), 87–8, gives 38 per cent as a possible technical efficiency of “the most modern” steam generating station.

²⁰ Loosmore, 264. This passage continues “In order to measure the energy potential of all fuels and electricity, the B.t.u. was used as the common unit. The British thermal unit is not a fuel, and its use carries no implications about measuring hydro-electricity as if it had been generated by a process which did not, in fact, take place.” Its use does, however, seem to carry implications about measuring coal and the other fuels as if they had been used in a process which did not, in fact, and could not, take place, i.e., some non-existent process which would make available for use 100 per cent of their full theoretical energy potential.

²¹ Davis, , Canadian Energy Prospects, 33.Google Scholar See also ibid., 366, where estimates for efficiency of conversion of 90 per cent and 25 to 35 per cent respectively are given.

²² Report No. 2570 uses (p. 10) a figure for 1955—based on D.B.S. figures as to different fuels actually used in thermal central electric stations—of 17,480 B.t.u.’s per k.w.h. of electricity produced and used as primary power.

²³ It is perhaps worth while to quote a passage (p. 378): “Coal is the major source of energy used in Canada, providing more than one-half of the energy provided by water power and the mineral fuels. Next in importance is water power. The importance of water power as a source of energy is much greater than is generally realized. It has provided substantially more energy in most recent years than have the Canadian coal mines. Over the last decade it has furnished nearly 30 per cent of total energy obtained from water power and the mineral fuels. Petroleum ranks next after water power and is about one-half as important a contributor to Canadian energy needs. The amount of energy obtained from natural gas is relatively small in comparison with the total, largely because the areas in which it is available are more limited. Wood fuel as a source of energy ranks between petroleum and natural gas, probably rather nearer to the former than the latter in importance.” A chart based on the Bank of Canada figures “shows the relative importance of water power, coal, petroleum and natural gas as sources of energy in each of the years 1926 to 1945.” See also App. C, p. 655. Davis, , Canadian Energy Prospects, 366 Google Scholar, rejects this device on the grounds that it “results in an inflated (about three times) measure of the primary energy actually available as water power.” He adds that “Its higher efficiency in use, meanwhile, is recognized in the accompanying analysis of effective outputs.” This does not preclude a number of statements about proportionate contributions of and relative dependence on various energy sources apparently calculated on the basis of percentages derived from the simple B.t.u. measurement, which do not seem to me realistic without appropriate allowance for differences of efficiency in production.

²⁴ Table II, p. 5, makes the basic distinction between original sources of energy and electrical power which seems to me essential. It is noteworthy that, although this report uses, as Mr. Loosmore points out (p. 265), “a straight energy equivalent basis to convert fuel and electricity into a common unit,” yet it draws attention (p. 3) to the fact that “rather substantial quantities [of the full calorific value] were lost in the generation of electric power.” See also Dewhurst, J. Frederic and Associates, America’s Needs and Resources: A New Survey (New York, 1955), App. 25–3Google Scholar, where the computations cover both energy losses in processing (including generation of electricity) and in use.

²⁵ Pp. 33, 366. In summarizing “effective use,” Mr. Davis uses a figure which incorporates both losses in processing and in end-uses; also pp. 8, 66, 313, and 361–4.

²⁶ Loosmore, 265.

²⁷ Any electricity, whether generated by steam or falling water or any other prime mover, can, of course, be put to work “much more efficiently than liquid fuels or coal.” As the bulk of electricity is generated by water-power in Canada the superior efficiency of electricity as such appears here to be equated with that of hydro-electricity.

²⁸ It was impossible to give in Reference Papers 69 and 74 any figure for water-power used, not to generate electricity, but to provide direct, mechanical power, notably in the pulp and paper industry. While this is of diminishing importance it is perhaps not yet negligible.