This opinion was written by Martin Olszynski, a law professor at the University of Calgary, and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 14, 2023.

‘Tell the Feds,” says the Government of Alberta’s recent $8-million ad campaign opposing federal clean electricity rules. If you’re a resident of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario or Nova Scotia, you’ve likely heard or seen them.

Who could disagree with statements like “No one wants blackouts. What Canadians want is reliable and affordable power”? Nor does anyone want “to freeze in the dark.”

These messages seem sound, but they are grossly exaggerated if not outright false. Independent experts have already debunked the campaign’s central claims. With some effort and planning, the transition to a cleaner power grid could actually save Canadians hundreds of dollars in power bills annually, all while providing reliable and climate-friendly electricity.

But in this misinformation age, even the most engaged citizens will struggle to stay on top of the continuous need for fact-checking and claim-debunking. Instead, Canadians should consider a government’s policy track record as a handy shortcut – especially when that government wraps its arguments in feasibility, affordability and protecting the public purse. Alberta’s actual track record undermines each and every one of these arguments.

Alberta insists that carbon capture and storage (CCS) for natural gas power isn’t feasible under the proposed federal clean electricity rules. But it is clamouring for the federal government to spend billions on the same technology in the oil sands, where industry insists it’s proven and reliable. So much for infeasibility!

Alberta says Ottawa’s clean-electricity rules will lead to unaffordable power, but the province’s own electricity market is so dysfunctional that it has the most expensive electricity in the country, the predictable – and predicted – result of market power being concentrated among a handful of companies. So much for affordability!

In fact, you may recall that Alberta had a booming solar and wind business, which was undoubtedly tempering some of that market power concentration, until Premier Danielle Smith shut it down this past summer. In announcing a public inquiry and accompanying six-month moratorium, the government expressed grave concern about the future cleanup costs of renewable energy projects. Meanwhile, the oil and gas sector’s cleanup costs sit at more than $100-billion officially – with internal regulator estimates as high as $260-billion – and calls for meaningful reform are systematically ignored (to say nothing of any kind of inquiry or moratorium).

How much money has the province required the oil and gas industry to set aside for this cleanup? Roughly $1.3-billion, or 1 per cent of what is needed. The province has even mused about giving companies royalty holidays on future production if they clean up some wells, even though doing so is already a legal obligation. So much for the public purse!

Worse still, this state of affairs is no accident. A recent paper from the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, of which I was a co-author, makes painfully clear that this massive regulatory failure is the predictable consequence of decades of policy choices that consistently put the oil and gas industry’s desire to minimize its costs above the public interest in cleaning up wells and related infrastructure.

The same approach has stalled progress on greenhouse gas emissions as well. Despite repeated commitments over almost two decades, Alberta’s oil sands are still 35 per cent more GHG-intensive than average oil production globally. And while most provinces’ emissions have declined since 2005, Alberta’s have risen by 8.5 per cent, making them the highest among all provinces and territories – by a wide margin.

So of course Alberta’s Premier opposes federal clean-electricity rules – and will oppose an oil and gas GHG emissions cap if and when it is announced. When a provincial government appears intent on picking up the tab on hundreds of billions of the sector’s cleanup liabilities, with the potential to double, triple or quadruple Alberta’s current debt of $80-billion, it’s no surprise that same government is unwilling to impose the costs associated with meaningful climate regulation – and will oppose such efforts from others.

Viewed this way, the “Tell the Feds” campaign isn’t about feasibility, affordability or reliability, but rather a thinly disguised attempt to enlist ordinary Canadians in Alberta’s unyielding service to the fossil fuel industry. But as year after year of extreme weather and fire seasons have made clear, climate inaction and delay come with their own significant – sometimes immeasurable – costs for the rest of us. Canadians would be justified in telling Alberta those are costs they’re no longer willing to bear.

This article was written by Gloria Dickie and was published by Reuters News on November 14, 2023.

Environment Canada’s 30-year data shows average temperatures on rise

This article was written by Patty Winsa and was published in the Toronto Star on November 13, 2023.

When it comes to the weather, what does “normal” mean anymore?

It’s a question that Environment and Climate Change Canada answered recently, releasing the latest round of “normals” — data that includes averages of temperature and precipitation over a 30-year period, in this case from 1991 to 2020, for a number of weather stations across Canada.

What the new data shows is that, in many cities and towns, average monthly temperatures have increased, in some cases by more than three degrees Celsius.

In Toronto, the most recent normals show that average temperatures are half a degree to one degree higher most months compared to what was considered normal for the period between 1961 to 1990.

In northern cities such as Whitehorse, the changes are more pronounced.

The latest average (“normal”) for the city in January is -15 C, 3.7 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in the normals released 30 years ago. In December, it’s 3.1 degrees Celsius higher.

Experts say those degrees matter. “Every degree of temperature change can have exponential impacts on climate conditions,” said Dan Henstra, a political science professor and co-lead of the Climate Risk Research Group at the University of Waterloo. “Warmer air carries more moisture, meaning more potential for more extreme rainfall and even extreme snowfall. Average temperatures, even one degree warmer, can exacerbate heat waves in the summer months, which are already unbearable for many residents in cities like Toronto and other dense urban areas who don’t have access to air conditioning.”

Residents in cities can be especially vulnerable because concrete and other materials absorb the warmth and re-emit it, leading to heat islands — areas that are hotter than those with more natural vegetation.

In northern areas of the country, the warmer temperatures can lead to permafrost thaw, which can cause roads to heave in the freeze and thaw cycle.

The new normals have been released at the same time Environment Canada modelling is predicting the entire country can expect a fall and winter that is warmer than even the new 30-year normals.

Part of that warmth could come from El Niño, a warmer weather pattern in the Pacific, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed began in June and could be moderate to strong by late fall or early winter.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts a high probability that one of the next five years will be the hottest on record due to El Niño, which could result in a rise in the annual mean global temperature of between 1.1 to 1.8 C in the next five years.

The weather pattern is expected to lead to an increase in temperatures over Alaska, Yukon, B.C. and, to some extent, the Prairies, as well as an increase in precipitation on the U.S. West Coast.

It’s less certain if it will bring more precipitation to Canada’s West Coast, because El Niño doesn’t typically have the same impact as it does further south, said Greg Flato, director of the Climate Research Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

Modelling by ECCC didn’t show a high probability the next six months would be wetter, or dryer, than normals for most of Canada.

Currently, the global average temperature is 1.1 C above the pre-industrial average. The global average is used because warming won’t occur everywhere at the same rate.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries have pledged to try to keep the global long-term average temperature from increasing much more than 1.5 C, and ideally well belo 2 C relative to pre-industrial temperatures, said Flato.

The new normals from ECCC show some Canadian cities have warmed close to a degree or more compared to normals 30 years ago.

“From that point of view, one degree is big because that’s kind of the same target that we’re trying to not let the global average temperature get too much above,” said Flato.

The normals released by ECCC are calculated once a decade using data from the preceding 30 years, a time period defined by the WMO as a kind of standard that averages out “the day-to-day, year-to-year variability that is the weather we experience,” said Flato.

It “gives you an indication of the average conditions over that 30year time frame,” he said. “And we refer to those as climate normals.”

Unlike weather predictions, which provide an actual value for temperature or precipitation, the normals are used for comparison to indicate whether temperature or precipitation will be above or below normal.

There is data going back to 1850, but more recent data is used for the normals because “nobody alive today has any recollection of what the 1850 to 1900 average was like,” said Flato. “So it’s not so compelling.”

However, when it comes to climate change, it’s the historical data that is used as the marker to measure the increase in the average global temperature because it predates the emission of greenhouse gases from human and industrial activities, according to the WMO.

And Canada has been warming more quickly than the global average because the country’s land mass is large and warms more quickly than ocean areas.

And, in the higher latitudes of the country, particularly in the Arctic, warming is happening more quickly because of the loss of snow and sea ice, creating larger areas of open ocean, a darker surface that absorbs more solar radiation.

Flato said data already shows the snow cover season is getting shorter over most places in Canada, aside from a few areas in the mountainous parts of the Rockies. “The snow doesn’t stay on the ground until later in the fall and it melts away earlier in the spring,” he said.

In northern areas of the country, the warmer temperatures can lead to permafrost thaw, which can cause roads to heave in the freeze and thaw cycle

This article was written by Gideon Forman and was published in the Toronto Star on November 11, 2023.

GIDEON FORMAN IS A CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY ANALYST AT THE DAVID SUZUKI FOUNDATION.

This is an extraordinary moment for renewable electricity.

Solar and wind power have never been cheaper, they’re enjoying technological breakthroughs that greatly boost their efficiency and their worldwide growth is astounding. Smart money in Ontario and around the globe is abandoning fossil fuels not just because of the climate crisis, but because renewables make so much business sense.

The Pembina Institute says that, in many places in Canada, clean energy (including wind, solar, demand-side management, energy efficiency and storage) is now less expensive than gas-fired. In Alberta, for example, the cost of power at a combined-cycle gas plant is $57 per MWh, while the cost for clean energy is just $48.

These findings are consistent with data from other experts. The think tank Clean Energy Canada found that, “In Alberta and Ontario, wind can now produce electricity at lower costs than natural-gas-fired power.” In a statement released in May, the Atmospheric Fund said that in Ontario, wind and solar are “the cheapest sources of new supply.”

Not surprisingly, solar cells are becoming more efficient. A recent article in the Guardian says scientists working in the field have just made an important breakthrough. Stefaan De Wolf of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology calls 2023 a “revolutionary year.”

The Guardian explains the advance in solar efficiency this way: “The breakthrough is adding a layer of perovskite, another semiconductor, on top of the silicon layer. This captures blue light from the visible spectrum, while the silicon captures red light, boosting the total light captured overall. With more energy absorbed per cell, the cost of solar electricity is even cheaper, and deployment can proceed faster.”

In a report tracking progress in 2022, the International Energy Agency found renewables just keep breaking growth records: “Renewable electricity capacity additions rose to 340 gigawatts (GW), their largest ever deployment … Investment in clean energy reached a record USD 1.6 trillion in 2022.”

And the IEA’s “Electricity Market Report,” released in July, proclaimed that, “depending on weather conditions, 2024 could well become the first year in which more electricity is generated worldwide from renewables than from coal.” What an extraordinary milestone that would be!

Especially impressive, says the IEA, is the growth in solar: “Solar PV generated a record of nearly 1,300 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, up 26 per cent from 2021 and logging the largest absolute generation growth of all renewable technologies in 2022.”

If Ontario wants to enjoy this upsurge in renewable electricity, it’s crucial that fossil-fuelled generation doesn’t get in the way. The federal government is now working on its clean electricity regulations — supported by 71 per cent of Canadians — and we need to ensure they phase out all gas- and coal-fired power by 2035.

Ontario is planning to expand its gas plants and build new ones. This is a massive threat to the affordability and economic benefits that renewables could provide. Every resident — especially members of the business community — should urge Ottawa to put the brakes on Ontario’s gas-plant build out and require winding down of fossils on the grid. As the IEA said in July, “Now is the time for policymakers and the private sector to build on this momentum (of renewables) to ensure emissions from the power sector go into sustained decline.”

If we care about saving money — not to mention saving the planet — we must insist that Ontario be powered by wind, water and sun in short order.

Canada’s commitment to cutting emissions outweighed by its support for oil and gas, experts say

This article was written by Suman Naishadham and Victor Caivano, and was published in the Toronto Star on November 10, 2023.

During a May wildfire that scorched a vast swath of spruce and pine forest in northwestern Canada, Julia Cardinal lost a riverside cabin that was many things to her: retirement project, gift from her husband and somewhere to live by nature, as her family had done for generations.

“That was our dream home,” said Cardinal, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, as she scanned the cabin’s flattened, charred remains in September. “It’s like a displacement.”

Thousands of wildfires in Canada this year have incinerated an area larger than Florida, releasing into the atmosphere more than three times the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced by Canada in a year. And some are still burning.

Home to dense forests, sweeping prairies and nearly a quarter of the planet’s wetlands, Canadian leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have long insisted the country can exploit its natural resources while protecting biodiversity and leading the global fight against climate change.

But the seemingly endless fire season, which created hazardous air in many U.S. states thousands of kilometres away, is putting a spotlight on two aspects of Canada that increasingly feel at odds: the country’s commitment to fighting climate change and its status as the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and fifth-largest gas producer — fuels that when used release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and intensifies the dry conditions for wildfires to swallow millions of acres.

“They’re portraying Canada as environmental,” said Jean L’Hommecourt, an environmental advocate belonging to the Fort McKay First Nation. “But the biggest source of the carbon is here.”

Oil focus and advocacy

Canada is among roughly 100 nations that have pledged by midcentury to reach “zero emissions,” or take as much greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere as it contributes. At last year’s UN climate conference, known as COP27, it also joined other rich nations to promise more money for developing countries to fight climate change.

Yet to the same conference, Canada brought the second-largest delegation of fossil fuel executives of any country in the world, an analysis by The Associated Press found. Eleven executives from major Canadian oil, gas and steel companies, including Enbridge and Parkland Corporation attended COP27 — where countries set climate priorities and timelines for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The only country to send a larger delegation of fossil fuel executives was Russia, AP found.

“We’re not there to drive an agenda, but we do have a perspective to offer,” said Pete Sheffield, chief sustainability officer at pipeline and natural gas giant Enbridge Inc., echoing what other Canadian energy executives told the AP about their attendance at COP27.

One such perspective is that Canadian oil producers can keep extracting oil at current rates, and with the help of technology, clean up their own operations so the country can still hit its climate targets. But even if Canada’s oil producers manage to do so, their plans don’t consider the greenhouse gas emissions that result from when customers use their products to power cars, heat homes, take flights and so forth.

Sustainable future?

Scientists at Climate Action Tracker, a group that scrutinizes nations’ pledges to reduce emissions, label the country’s progress as “highly insufficient,” stressing Canada needs to implement its climate policies much faster to reach its own targets. For the high-carbon energy sector, much of the plan rests on the build-out of carbon capture, a technology that pulls in carbon dioxide, either at the source of emissions or from the air. But carbon capture is energy intensive, expensive and years away from operating at scale.

“There’s no way Canada can reach our 2050 target if oil and gas doesn’t do its fair share,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change.

The wildfires, which scientists say will burn more and longer as the planet warms, will add to the challenge of cutting emissions. They also pose significant health risks to Canadians and anyone who comes in contact with the smoke.

In June, a fire got close to the subarctic, mostly Indigenous hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta. A former fur trading settlement, it abuts one of the world’s largest inland deltas. In warmer months, the village can only be reached by boat or plane, since the main road into town is made of ice that melts in the spring. When the wildfires approached, residents first tried fleeing by boat, only to realize that water levels at the massive Athabasca Lake had gotten so low, they couldn’t leave. Soon after, the Canadian military sent its aircraft to evacuate people to Fort McMurray, where hundreds of people stayed for weeks.

In the blaze, Julia Cardinal and her husband Happy Cardinal would lose their cabin, which was about a 45-minute boat ride from Fort Chipewyan. Several months later, the trauma of the fire is still vivid.

“That was our home,” said Julia Cardinal, as she walked over the burned cabin, identifying the pots, pans and nails that survived the blaze. “There are some things we will never, ever replace.”

This article was written by Aaron Cosbey and was published in the Toronto Star on November 10, 2023.

AARON COSBEY IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

Every two years, a group of analysts from around the world join together to work through a straightforward calculation. They add up all the planned future production of oil, gas and coal worldwide, add up how much carbon it would emit when burned, and then calculate how far that would push us past the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 and 2 C of warming.

Given this year’s wave of global climate-related disasters even at 1.2 C, that’s an important question.

The 2023 version of the Production Gap Report — compiled by five leading research organizations worldwide, including Canada’s International Institute for Sustainable Development — is not happy reading. Projections call for more than twice as much fossil fuel production by 2030, as would be consistent with the 1.5 C target, and roughly 70 per cent too much for 2 C of warming.

From an environmental perspective, this is unsettling. The global fossil fuel sector is collectively betting that the world will not make significant progress toward the targets that the countries of the world have set in order to spare us from the worst climate change impacts. If they are right, one of Canadians’ most climate-impacted years in history, replete with wildfires, floods, storms, droughts, and extreme heat events, will become the baseline from which things just get worse.

From an economic perspective, the news for Canada’s oil and gas producers is also unsettling. There is a huge disconnect between those projected production increases and what every credible analyst projects for the future of demand for fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projected this year, for the first time ever, that even their most lax climate policy scenario will see global demand for oil, gas, and coal peak before 2030.

To illustrate the disconnect: the Production Gap Report projects production of oil in 2050 at 116 million barrels per day and IEA predicts that under announced policies demand will be 55 million barrels.

Some in Canada’s oilpatch dismiss these concerns, arguing that ethical, low-cost, low-emission Canadian producers will be among the last global producers standing, arguments I have rebutted elsewhere.

But those arguments are a sideshow. The real question is: should Canadians care whether we sell the proverbial last barrel of oil, the last cubic metre of gas?

Long before we get there, our producers will be selling into a lowprice market, making low profits, and remitting few royalties and taxes. Investment in new production will tank, with employment in the sector following (accelerating existing trends).

The post-peak survivors may still be selling oil and gas, but we will not be getting the government revenues and employment that are the reason we want them to sell it in the first place.

What does all this mean for Canada?

First, it means we should stand firm on our emissions targets — 40 to 45 per cent reductions by 2030, and net zero by 2050 — even if they contradict the expansion plans of our oil and gas producers. We can’t allow the fossil fuel sector’s bet against climate policy to be proven right.

Second, we should stop using public funds to support fossil fuel production. Oil and gas are ultimately sunset sectors and will not contribute to Canadian prosperity in the future as they have done in the past, so our support will not pay off in jobs or government revenues. In fact, if support encourages those sectors to grow, it will just set up fossil fuel dependent workers, communities, provinces, for a more painful post-peak crash.

Third, we should invest public dollars instead into cushioning the crash as much as we can, helping workers shift to more promising sectors, and helping to grow those new sectors, many of which can build on oil and gas sector skills and resources.

The Production Gap Report paints a picture of a world we can’t afford to see come true. Canadian policy can help craft a more livable, prosperous alternative.

This article was written by Jordan Omstead and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 9, 2023.

Canada and other major fossil-fuel-producing countries are failing to meet targets to keep global warming in check, a newly released major international report warned Wednesday, putting the world’s energy transition at risk.

The 2023 Production Gap report says the countries are planning to produce 110 per cent more fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with keeping global warming to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels, and 69 per cent more fossil fuels than what’s in line with a 2 C target.

“These plans throw the global energy transition into question. They throw humanity’s future into question. Governments must stop saying one thing and doing another, especially as it relates to the production and consumption of fossil fuels,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, wrote in a foreword to the report.

The report – co-produced by the United Nations Environment Programme, Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development and several other leading climate groups – comes ahead of the COP28 climate conference later this month in Dubai, where leaders will discuss efforts to curb global emissions.

Of the 20 major fossil-fuel-producing countries profiled in the report, Canada’s planned increase to oil production for 2030, compared with 2021 levels, ranks behind only Brazil, the United States and Saudi Arabia, and just ahead of Russia and Kuwait. Norway and the U.K. were the only two countries projected to decrease both oil and gas production for 2030, according to the report.

By 2030, the United Nations estimates global emissions need to be cut by 43 per cent compared with 2019 levels to keep warming at 1.5 C and to get on a pathway to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

And while the vast majority of the countries have pledged to hit the net-zero target, the report says none have committed to production cuts in line with a 1.5 C limit.

“Despite governments around the world signing up to ambitious net-zero targets, global coal, oil and gas production are still increasing while planned reductions are nowhere near enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Angela Picciariello, senior researcher with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The 2015 Paris Agreement sets out a global commitment to keep average temperature rise well below 2 C compared to preindustrial times and aim for 1.5 C. Scientists have said crossing that 1.5 C threshold could unleash some of the most severe climate-change effects, such as more frequent and severe heat waves.

The report comes on the heels of an audit released Tuesday by Canada’s federal Environment Commissioner.

That audit found Canada was well short of its emissions targets for 2030 and fewer than half of the policies outlined in the Emissions Reduction Plan had a timetable for implementation.

The international report released Wednesday does, however, highlight some encouraging signs.

It notes Canada is one of the countries that has taken steps to end international public financing for fossil-fuel projects. It also says Canada has joined three other countries – China, Germany and Indonesia – in starting to develop scenarios for domestic fossil-fuel production consistent with national or global net-zero targets.

The report puts some cold water on carbon capture and storage technologies.

It says those technologies could play a role in helping reduce the emissions footprint of hard-to-transition sectors, but “they are not a free pass to continue with business as usual.” Around 80 per cent of carbon capture pilot projects over the past 30 years have failed, the report said.

“Counting on these largely unproven and relatively costly technologies being rolled out at scale is thus a potentially risky and dangerous strategy,” the report says.

The federal government rolled out a refundable tax credit for businesses investing in carbon capture and storage projects at an estimated cost of $2.6-billion over five years starting in 2022-2023, and $1.5-billion annually starting in 2026 until at least 2030. The Pathways Alliance, an industry group of Alberta oil sands companies, has been lobbying the federal government to support a massive carbon capture and storage network.

Given what the report calls the “risks and uncertainties of carbon capture,” it says countries should aim for a near total phase-out of coal production by 2040 and a combined reduction in oil and gas production by three-quarters by 2050 from 2020 levels.

Many countries, the report says, are also promoting gas as a “bridge” or “transition” fuel, with no apparent plans to transition away from it.

“Gas could hinder or delay the transition to renewable energy systems by locking in fossil-fuel based systems and institutions,” the report said.

Despite governments around the world signing up to ambitious net-zero targets, global coal, oil and gas production are still increasing while planned reductions are nowhere near enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

ANGELA PICCIARIELLO SENIOR RESEARCHER WITH THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

This article was written by Marieke Walsh and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 8, 2023.

Ottawa’s projections overly optimistic, Environment Commissioner says

Ottawa does not yet have a road map for meeting its 2030 emissions-reduction goals, the federal Environment Commissioner concluded in a bleak assessment that also found the government’s projections in this area are overly optimistic.

More than two years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged at an international summit that Canada would cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

In a report tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons, Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry DeMarco says an audit by his office found that the federal government is on track to continue Canada’s streak of missed climate targets.

The report says Ottawa’s own emissions projections reveal a gap between its emissions goals and the policies meant to fulfill them. Mr. DeMarco also found that the minority Liberals have dragged their feet on implementing key policies, failed to prioritize the most important policies and relied on unrealistic assumptions that undercut their own projections.

The result is that Canada is the only Group of Seven country whose emissions are higher now than in 1990, the report says.

“This is not my first time sounding the alarm,” Mr. DeMarco said at a news conference in Ottawa.

Seven years out from Canada’s next emissions-reduction deadline, his report points out that the country has never met an emissions goal, despite crafting more than 10 separate plans since 1990.

The Trudeau government is at a crossroads on climate policy. More than two weeks ago, Mr. Trudeau announced a surprise softening of his government’s carbon-pricing policy, exempting home heating oil from the levy, but not other fuels. The change catapulted the debate over carbon pricing back to the forefront, as premiers demanded more relief from the carbon price and experts warned the move could spell the end of the Liberals’ signature climate-change policy.

Mr. DeMarco said the change was announced too late for it to be factored into his report.

Despite the government’s carbon-price climbdown, Mr. Trudeau has said Ottawa is “doubling down” on the fight against climate change. On Parliament Hill on Tuesday, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told reporters an updated climate plan, which is expected by the end of the year, will have “good news.”

“We’re confident that we can get there. There’s still seven years before 2030,” Mr. Guilbeault said.

“I agree with the commissioner. We need to do more. We need to do it faster. And that’s exactly what our government is doing.”

But Mr. DeMarco said the government has not learned to move faster. For example, clean fuel regulations were years late, and the Liberals’ key 2021 campaign promise to cap oil and gas emissions is also delayed.

“If they have the will to act like it’s a crisis, rather than just saying it’s a crisis, then they can roll things out more quickly,” he told reporters.

In 2022, the federal government released an updated emissions-reduction plan, which said Canada would cut emissions 40 per cent by 2030. But the plan projected only a 36.4-per-cent reduction. At the time, the government maintained it would still hit 40 per cent, because some policies had not yet been modelled.

Mr. DeMarco said that conclusion from the government was not credible. The government “can’t just have a hope” to hit its targets, he said.

The government later released another report that showed an even wider gap, with Canada reaching a 34-per-cent reduction by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. That too was not realistic, the commissioner said.

Both reports were characterized by “overly optimistic assumptions, limited analysis of uncertainties, and lack of peer review,” the audit found.

Mr. DeMarco noted that the issues he is flagging in his latest report repeat concerns that he has raised in the past. Still, he said the government’s most recent plan is an improvement over past attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. He said there is still time to “course-correct.”

Dave Sawyer, the principal economist with the Canadian Climate Institute, a governmentfunded think tank, said Mr. DeMarco’s audit shows that the federal government needs to focus more on implementing the policies it announces.

For example, he said, the think tank’s own modelling shows that, if the government were to implement a stringent cap on oil and gas emissions, Canada ”could be on track to more or less hit the target.” But the longer the delay in implementing the policy, the more risk there is, he said.

Overall, Mr. Sawyer said he isn’t surprised by the report’s findings. But he’s optimistic that Canada will be able to change its emissions trends.

“We’re in a much better place than we were a number of years ago,” he said.

In a statement on the commissioner’s report, the Official Opposition Conservatives said Mr. DeMarco’s audit shows the government’s “punitive plan won’t accomplish anything.” The party has not yet said what its own emissions plan would entail.

On Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre refused to say whether he would commit to Canada’s 2030 emissions-reduction targets, or the targets under the Paris Agreement.

NDP MP and deputy environment critic Alexandre Boulerice accused the government of “failing on climate,” in a statement to The Globe and Mail. He said the Liberals should impose a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to pay for home heating retrofits that would lower heating bills.

The climate targets report was released along with reports on a number of other audits by Mr. DeMarco.

One audit found that the Department of Natural Resources’ infrastructure program for zeroemission vehicles is on track to meet its 2026 target. But the report says there is still a “large gap” between the existing number of charging stations for those vehicles and the number needed by 2035.

The audit also found that 87 per cent of federally funded charging stations were placed in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.

In another audit, Mr. DeMarco’s office found that the federal government is failing to decarbonize its own vehicle fleet, and is currently on track to miss its deadline for greening those vehicles by a wide margin.

This opinion was written by Nichole Dusyk and Jessica Kelly, and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 8, 2023.

Nichole Dusyk is the lead for Canada energy and a senior policy adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Jessica Kelly is a senior policy adviser at the IISD.

If governments around the world maintain the status quo in terms of energy policies, we’ll see peak global demand for coal, oil and gas before 2030 – and clean technologies will play a much stronger role. That’s according to the latest analysis from the International Energy Agency, which recently released its annual World Energy Outlook, or WEO, report.

For Canada, the IEA research confirms it’s time for governments to heed the signals and end public support to the fossil fuel industry. This includes eliminating subsidies for liquefied natural gas expansion across the country. LNG Canada, the only such facility under construction, has already received more than $6.5-billion in public support from federal and provincial governments.

Global demand outlook for natural gas (including LNG) has been progressively revised downward in the “stated policies” scenarios of each of the past four WEO editions. This year’s report is also the second to project an absolute decline in global natural gas demand by 2030.

In a current world scenario (with no additional changes to existing climate policies), last year’s outlook for natural gas demand in 2040 was cut by around 570 billion cubic metres (a 12-percent reduction relative to 2021 forecasts). This year, forecasted natural gas demand in 2040 has been adjusted down a further 140 bcm. Even without more ambitious climate policy, the market is changing quickly and revealing that the structural shift away from natural gas has begun in many economies. There is no evidence that Canada’s LNG will find demand in an oversupplied and shrinking market.

Industry often claims that Canada can be a major LNG exporter and even an LNG superpower. This has led to a sense of urgency and pressure to build infrastructure quickly. The pipeline for TC Energy’s Coastal Gaslink, which is supposed to feed LNG Canada, was recently completed despite significant opposition and environmental violations. LNG enthusiasm assumes strong demand going decades into the future with opportunities to support European and Asian energy needs.

But this urgency to build is misplaced: The forecasts and analysis just don’t support the hype. The IEA’s most recent report highlights the EU’s accelerated move toward renewable energy sources after feeling the sting of gas’s use as a geopolitical weapon. China’s economic growth is slowing as well, with the IEA projecting its total energy demand to peak mid decade with a trend toward higher proportions of clean energy. Emerging Asian markets, with the highest LNG demand growth, are price-sensitive and will likely favour the lowest-cost producers.

This all means that developing LNG in Canada is an economically risky proposition. And propping up LNG as a “cleaner” energy export than some of Canada’s dirtier fuels is undermined by higher than-expected methane emissions in LNG supply chains, not to mention the large energy needs of LNG infrastructure itself.

Like natural gas, the outlook for LNG demand has been revised down. Demand in 2050 under current policies, according the WEO’s most recent outlook, is nearly 15 per cent lower than projected two years ago. The WEO also makes clear that if the world successfully limits global warming to 1.5 C through more ambitious climate policies, there is no need for new LNG facilities. Even projects that are already under construction, such as LNG Canada, risk becoming uneconomic before the end of their lifetime.

The industry is attempting to launch into a weakening market. Globally, multiple new LNG projects are slated to come online starting in 2025, mostly in the U.S. and Middle East, and will flood the markets with more than 250 bcm a year of new capacity by 2030 – roughly 45 per cent of today’s global LNG supply. This will drive prices down and influence the economic viability of projects coming online after 2027.

Given the clear signals about the long-term prospects of the LNG industry, governments in Canada need to protect taxpayers from this risk. It is essential to end the subsidies, tax breaks, exemptions, discounts and deferrals that have been provided to the country’s LNG sector. This includes having the public pay for the cost of building transmission lines to electrify LNG facilities. The loopholes for LNG in the federal government’s policy to eliminate “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies also need to be closed – permanently.

If the WEO makes anything clear, it is that the future is in renewables and electrification. Public support, both in Canada and abroad, should flow only to long-term clean energy solutions such as solar, wind and electric heat pumps.

This article was written by Catherine McKenna and was published in the Toronto Star on November 3, 2023.

CATHERINE MCKENNA IS THE FORMER MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE WHO, IN 2017, INTRODUCED CANADA’S NATIONAL CARBON PRICING SYSTEM. SHE IS THE CEO OF CLIMATE AND NATURE SOLUTIONS.

Canadians know that extreme weather caused by climate change — devastating wildfires, storms, floods — is already costing us billions of dollars. Canadians can also see we are now in a global race with the United States, Europe and China to attract investment in clean energy that creates growth and good jobs.

So you would think that serious politicians would at last agree that carbon pollution can’t be free — that it should be priced with predictable increases to encourage people and businesses to choose cleaner, less expensive energy solutions that also create good jobs and grow our economy.

You would be wrong.

But then life is full of ironies. Using pricing to change behaviour is a strategy drawn from any conservative playbook. By setting a price, a market can work its magic and people can make the best choices for their businesses and families.

This is the logic at the heart of Canada’s approach to meeting its climate commitments and driving carbon pollution out of our economy and environment.

But because I’m not a conservative and know that markets often hurt people who can least afford it, I made sure that the federal approach to carbon pricing had a special protection built in: it’s revenue neutral. This means that the money raised by putting a price on carbon is transparently rebated in the form of a quarterly Climate Action Incentive rebate made directly to Canadians’ bank accounts.

This isn’t something I expect our political opponents to advertise, but it doesn’t stop it from being true. Nor does it change the fact that Canada’s carbon pricing system follows the same approach successfully pioneered by conservative politicians.

Think prime minister Brian Mulroney and acid rain, or premier Gordon Campbell, who created Canada’s first carbon pricing system in British Columbia. Quebec premier Jean Charest made common cause with the all-American Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to set up a carbon market that, despite opposition in Quebec and California, propels both economies forward.

So on one hand we have today’s Conservatives who refuse to take lessons from their own. On the other, let’s remember that while we are in a fossil fuel climate crisis, the oil and gas industry is playing a double game. They are generating massive profits that they return to their shareholders while charging consumers exorbitant prices. At the same time they are demanding huge public subsidies to clean up the pollution they cause, while walking away from their already modest climate commitments.

We keep overlooking this fact: The skyrocketing price of heating oil and gas being paid by Canadians isn’t caused by the carbon price where all the money is given back. It’s the skyrocketing price of heating oil and gas being charged by large oil and gas companies.

This, incidentally, is why an oil and gas windfall tax is long overdue. It would address the climate crisis and improve affordability by giving that money back to families to help them get off fossil fuels and transition to cheaper, cleaner energy.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, if the same windfall tax currently paid by Canadian banks and insurance companies was paid by the largest Canadian oil and gas companies, proceeds would reach $4.2 billion in just five years. That would buy a lot of heat pumps.

Let’s not lose focus. The problem here isn’t carbon pricing. It’s the price of fossil fuels. As Clean Energy Canada has made clear, “fossil fuel inflation is the culprit for skyrocketing heating oil prices.” The sooner heating systems relying on fossil fuels are switched out — all across Canada — for cold-climate heat pumps, the better for consumers and for the planet. And a windfall tax can help Canadians get it done.