What if Canada had spent $200bn on wind energy instead of oil?

The balance between inflation and dropping turbine prices. I'm sure there are trend lines somewhere...

Yeah, a time machine -- or reading any of the publications the Rocky Mountain Institute has been putting out since the 1970s (e.g. Brittle Power) that show, when accounting for externalities, renewables and energy efficiency have been cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear since the 1970s. Renewables and energy efficiency should have won in the marketplace for decades. Why didn't they? it is because of an tilted playing field where people don't pay the full cost (including risk) for fossil fuels and nuclear at the gasoline pump or on their electric bill -- but instead they pay it in higher health care costs, taxes for the military, or government-absorbed risk like for nuclear meltdowns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Institute "The Lovinses described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport, as well as giant centralized electricity-generating facilities, often burning fossil fuels such as coal or petroleum, or harnessing a fission reaction, greatly complicated by electricity wastage and loss. The "soft energy path" which they wholly preferred involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (and matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "soft technologies" (alternative technology) such as solar, wind, biofuels, and geothermal. According to the Institute, large-scale electricity production facilities had an important place, but it was a place that they were already filling in the middle 1970s; in general, more would not be needed. In a 1989 speech, Amory Lovins introduced the related concept of Negawatt power, in which the creation of a market for trading increased efficiency could supply additional electrical energy to consumers without increasing generation capacity—such as building more power plants."

> Article says 912 million barrels produced since 1999

Actually, it says:

> In 2017, the Alberta oil sands produced roughly 912m barrels.

The article doesn't actually tell us the whole history, it just cherry-picks one year.

There's other suspicious playing with numbers going on:

> About 60% was turned into gasoline and diesel, enough to fuel 73m vehicles

So.. if 100% had been turned into fuel for those vehicles, that would translate to.. 122m vehicles, weirdly identical to their number for electric vehicles.

Then they're comparing a 12L/100km (19.6mpg) ICE vehicle against a Chevy Bolt in the pricing section?

Not much to see here, sadly.

There was plenty of demand for electricity though, and electric cars are definitely not a new technology(0)

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#History

electric cars are probably still not the largest electricity consumer...