As some 5 million litres of bitumen, water and sand gushed from a leaky new pipeline in northern Alberta last week, Canada’s premiers were being slammed for putting out a new national energy strategy that prioritizes pipelines over the planet.
The final Canadian Energy Strategy, released in St. John’s last week after three years of negotiations, claims to “chart a path for shaping the sustainable development of Canada’s energy future.” There was certainly a lot of on-camera posturing by pro-oil and pro-climate-action premiers who were reportedly duking it out behind the scenes. But just because the final doc mentions climate change more frequently than pipelines doesn’t mean the climate’s a winner.
Prior to the premiers’ meeting, Glen Murray, Ontario’s minister of environment and climate change, told NOW that Ontario and Quebec wanted the national energy strategy to “settle on how much oil we can burn and stay within a carbon budget… [without] destroying the planet. Then [we’ll] figure out a what’s left and how we manage our oil resources [so] we don’t get in the way of our ability to get to net zero.” That, Murray says, was the goal going in.
The final document does talk generally about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to a lower-carbon economy, all lovely. But “action” points and goals are vague, basically calling for further collaboration in “developing options” for greenhouse gas reductions. Nothing about carbon budgets, getting to net zero or firm caps on national greenhouse gases.
Greenpeace’s Mike Hudema says “despite some interesting language on climate and renewable energy, the strategy fails to prioritize sustainable forms of energy, has no binding targets and won’t bring us to the low-carbon economy that climate science demands. It’s absurd that while Alberta is dealing with one of the largest spills in Canadian history, Canada’s premiers would help pave the way for more tar sands pipelines [that would] lock this country into a carbon-polluting future for decades to come.”
Jay Ritchlin, director general of the David Suzuki Foundation for BC and western Canada, says the org is “happy to see the focus on energy conservation and efficiency, clean energy, climate change and greenhouse gas reductions.”
But he notes the strategy also facilitates pipeline expansion across the country. “The premiers can’t have it both ways. Increasing fossil fuel production and infrastructure is incompatible with a clean-energy future.”
Climate Action Network Canada’s Louise Comeau says the problem is that the strategy commits the provinces to a “non-discriminatory” approach to energy and energy transmission across Canada when they should discriminate in favour of clean energy.
“Governments discriminate against smoking and toxics in food and consumer products. What’s needed now is discriminatory policy against fossil fuels if we are going to drastically reduce the carbon pollution putting our health and well-being at risk.”
Comeau notes that the strategy does give the provinces’ energy ministers some promising homework: they’re supposed set up committees to look into energy efficiency, GHG reductions, transitioning to a lower-carbon economy, supporting new energy technologies and improving access to affordable clean energy, all while figuring out how they’re going to work together to “deliver energy to the people” (both the clean and dirty kind).
The ministers have until 2016 to report back. By the looks of the strategy, pipelines so far have the upper hand.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
