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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

Name another oil producer that can fully cover it's local demand with hydro power.

I can name several that can cover significant part of local demand with solar power. Or perhaps they'd have energy storage to fully cover it by now had they invested into that.

If the requirement you set is a hard limit on hydro, then sure, few nations could qualify.

But if you instead ask for "another oil producer that could fully cover it's local demand with energy sources not from hydrocarbons" a lot more nations would be included in the answer such as United Kingdom which has abundant wind, decent solar, some nuclear, and some potential hydro.

There's a difference between "make sure local energy needs are provided for" and "encourage overuse and expansion of local energy needs by barely taxing" (the US, and to a lesser degree, Canada), or even "subsidizing overuse via artificially-low prices" (much of OPEC).

Canada, probably could, if not for the exception incompetence of it's leadership over decades.

That's debatable - Quebec generates close to 50% of Canada's Hydro power and has been part of world leaders in the field. The province has been pretty competent in the past decades - of course with challenges - but the rest of Canada would be lost without Hydro-Quebec being behind most projects and investments (expertise, management, financing...)

Ontario has lots of hydro including Niagara Falls, BC has the new site C.

What I’m saying is Canada has the potential to generate more hydroelectricity but environmental concerns largely delay or prevent further expansion.

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