Secretary of State John Kerry makes a toast with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a luncheon meeting at the State Department in Washington.The Associated Press
Alex Simakov is a Canadian clean-energy consultant residing in France. He is a former policy adviser to Ontario’s Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines.
Alberta’s plans to invoke its new sovereignty act against the federal government’s clean-electricity regulations is the latest in a long series of blows against the Liberal Party’s climate strategy.
It comes fast on the heels of this month’s Federal Court’s ruling against the single-use plastic ban, the court’s invalidation of much of the Impact Assessment Act, provincial rebellion over the Clean Electricity Regulations, and Ottawa’s rollback of the carbon tax on home heating oil.
Now facing a new revolt from Premier Danielle Smith, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals will no doubt be seeking inspiration for a new direction.
If history is any guide, they may look to their counterparts in the U.S. Democratic Party, especially the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. Asked at the recent Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore what was standing in the way of climate progress, Mr. Kerry said “put it down to greed, g-r-e-e-d, greed.”
It’s a loaded, catch-all phrasing that reflects the widespread and long-simmering demonization of those seen to be on the other side of the climate issue. For all his good intentions, Mr. Kerry’s answer was both wrong and counterproductive, and Canada would fare poorly to adopt his moralizing stance.
As Western economies exhaust the lowest-hanging fruit of power-sector decarbonization and struggle with the cost inflation bedevilling deployment of emerging clean technologies – not to mention developing countries’ insistence on their right to fossil fuel consumption – there is a growing temptation among political leaders to reframe climate action as a question of morality. This would be a mistake, and distracts from genuine techno-social challenges confronting the next stage of our climate transition.
Achieving Canada’s net-zero 2050 commitments amounts to replacing the 80 per cent of our final energy consumption derived from fossil fuels with non-emitting electricity, mainly in transportation, residential heat and heavy industry – with some assistance from carbon capture for the rest. This requires a more than tripling of our existing generating capacity through the addition of new nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal and energy storage assets, while at least doubling the size of our transmission and distribution infrastructure to connect end consumers.
What we need today is not moral righteousness, but painstaking reform and restructuring of electricity system operators, utility commissions, land-use planning, safety regulators and myriad other institutions. This work is well under way, but proceeding at the slow, cautious pace inherent to bureaucratic bodies.
Greed, as invoked by Mr. Kerry, is largely immaterial to further progress, especially compared with the hurdles of outdated energy market design, regulatory barriers, and classic NIMBY obstructionism. Its invocation also obstructs the very real trade-offs involved in these deliberations. The adoption of a clean power grid will eventually result in lower costs, but it would be foolish to pretend that most Canadians are not paying significantly higher energy bills to finance this transition – and are expected to do so for the foreseeable future. By how much are we willing to further increase household electricity prices to accelerate clean infrastructure expansion?
No less challenging are the environmental trade-offs; what is our comfort level with transmission lines cutting through a forest, or the opening of new copper and graphite mines to manufacture the cables? Climate activists advocating for emission reductions in the abstract will too often oppose the messy work of real-world energy projects.
And if greed is a red herring in understanding the challenge, it is particularly counterproductive in achieving the solution. Insofar as Mr. Kerry invokes it as shorthand for “profit-seeking behaviour,” we will need more, not less of it, to decarbonize economies. Clean-technology proponents and their investors often require even greater returns to offset emerging technology risks and the incumbency advantages enjoyed by legacy fossil- fuel systems.
Ignoring these realities and gaslighting Canada with a moral framing would be grave disservice. Especially because – despite their many setbacks – the federal government has several worthwhile achievements under its belt, notably the introduction of a manufacturing and investment tax credit (ITC) regime for clean technology deployment. Ottawa has, at times, also been an ally to more ambitious provincial campaigns, including the Government of Ontario’s world-class initiative in small modular reactor (SMR) procurement.
The Federal Court’s slate of rulings, and Premier Smith’s entrenched stance against federal regulation of power markets, offer Mr. Trudeau the long overdue opportunity to reconsider a climate strategy that is feeling increasingly dated since its conception in the 2015 election. Not least because of the growing enthusiasm and leadership from Indigenous communities in driving these investments, the government must recognize that enablement – not delay – is the only path forward in achieving a thriving, sustainable economy.