This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

On July 15, a state-of-the-art new pipeline near Fort McMurray, Alberta, ruptured, spilling five million litres of bitumen, sand and waste water over 16,000 square metres — one of the largest pipeline oil spills in Canadian history. Two days later, a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota derailed in Montana, spilling 160,000 litres and forcing evacuation of nearby homes.

At the same time, while forest fires raged across large swathes of Western Canada — thanks to hotter, dryer conditions and longer fire seasons driven in part by climate change — Canadian premiers met in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to release their national energy strategy.

The premiers’ Canadian Energy Strategy focuses on energy conservation and efficiency, clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. But details are vague and there’s no sense of urgency. We need a response like the U.S. reaction to Pearl Harbor or the Soviet Sputnik launch!

The premiers seemingly want it both ways. Despite its call to “Build on the ongoing efforts of individuals, businesses, governments and others to improve energy efficiency, lower the carbon footprint, and improve understanding of energy in Canada,” the strategy promotes fossil fuel business as usual, including expanded pipeline, oilsands and liquefied natural gas development, including more fracking.

The premiers’ plan is a non-binding framework, described as a “flexible, living document that will further enable provinces and territories to move forward and collaborate on common energy-related interests according to their unique strengths, challenges and priorities.” It doesn’t include specifics on how to revamp our energy production and distribution systems, but buys time until the next elections roll around.

Although the language about climate change and clean energy is important, the strategy remains stuck in the fossil fuel era. As Climate Action Network Canada executive director Louise Comeau said in a news release, “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.”

Fossil fuel development has spurred economic development, created jobs and provided many other benefits, but the risks now outweigh those benefits. The costs in dollars and lives of pollution, habitat and wildlife degradation, pipeline and railcar spills, and climate change — all getting worse as populations grow, energy needs increase and fossil fuel reserves become increasingly scarce and difficult to exploit — have become unsustainable.

Even job creation is no longer a reason to continue our mad rush to expand development and export of oil sands bitumen, fracked gas and coal. Many fossil fuel reserves are now seen as stranded assets that will continue to decline in value as the world shifts to clean energy and the scramble to exploit resources gluts the market. The Climate Action Network points out that Clean Energy Canada’s 2015 report on renewable energy trends showed that “global investors moved USD$295 billion in 2014 into renewable energy-generation projects — an increase of 17 percent over 2013.”

Yet, many of our leaders are still pinning their hopes on rapid oilsands expansion, massive increases in fracking for liquefied natural gas and new and expanded pipelines across the country — with benefits flowing more to industry than citizens.

It’s refreshing to see provincial premiers at least recognizing the threat of climate change and the need to address it through conservation, efficiency and clean technology, but we need a far greater shift to keep the problems we’ve created from getting worse. There are many benefits to doing so, including more and better jobs, a stronger economy, healthier citizens and reduced health-care costs, and greater preservation of our rich natural heritage.

The recent spate of pipeline and railcar oil spills, along with disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, are the result of rapid expansion of fossil fuel development, as industry and governments race to get the dirty products to market before demand dries up.

Canada’s premiers should take these issues seriously and commit to a faster shift from fossil fuels as they continue to develop their energy strategy. They must also stress the importance of having similar, stronger action from the federal government — and so should we all.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image Credit: Two Island Films

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Canada’s provincial leaders finalized the Canadian Energy Strategy Friday with a document many onlookers are criticizing as too reliant on traditional carbon-based sources of energy.

The strategy, intended to guide the integrated development of Canada’s energy resources across the provinces, places no restrictions on the release of greenhouse gas emissions and takes a proactive approach to building oil and gas pipelines.

According to officials who spoke with the Globe and Mail the strategy was meant to strike a balance between the energy ambitions of each province with growing concerns over global climate change.

“We have a path to pursue two critical national priorities,” a senior Alberta official said, ”how are we going to keep building our energy industry and how are we going to address climate change?”

Commitment to Cleaner Energy Long-Overdue

The Canadian Energy Strategy, although acknowledging the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the provinces, maintains an equal opportunity approach to all energy sources — an element of the document that weakens Canada’s stance in the rapidly evolving clean energy economy according to alternative energy analysts.

Clean Energy Canada, a climate and energy think tank, said the energy strategy lacks the strong commitments needed to advance low-carbon sources of energy.

“Today’s strategy recognizes the role that renewable electricity and pricing carbon will play in this shift, but still leans heavily on traditional fossil-based energy sources,” Sarah Petrevan, senior policy advisor with Clean Energy Canada, said.

Petrevan said the document merely gives a nod to clean energy without outlining any meaningful policy for its real-world development.

“This is 2015, and we need to do better,” she said. “We need deeper reductions, and a clear plan to deliver them, we hope [the premiers’] work over the next year will yield that.”

As DeSmog Canada has previously reported, Canada has no national climate legislation and has failed for years to deliver promised regulations for the oil and gas sector. According to Environment Canada, the country is on track to miss its greenhouse gas reduction targets agreed to under the Copenhagen Accord. 

Last year Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand released a scathing critique of Canada after she found the nation has no plan in place for reaching its climate targets and has “no climate vision” whatsoever.

Canada Missing Economic Benefits of Clean Energy

Petrevan added: “If the global economy were a baseball game, a home run would be heading straight for the clean-energy industry — but Canada hasn’t even left the dugout.”

“We’ve lost out on nearly $9 billion in clean-energy export opportunities in 2013 alone. We need a plan to transition our economy and reap the benefits of the growth and jobs that come with it.”

Petrevan and others are pointing to an absence of federal leadership as a critical weakness in Canada’s fight against climate change.

In late 2013 Canada 2020 released a poll that showed while the vast majority of Canadians (84 per cent) think the federal government has a responsibility to the take lead on combatting global climate change, very few (16 per cent) believed it was an actual priority for the government.

Diana Carney, associate with Canada 2020, said the poll results confirmed a common public sentiment across the nation: “there is a leadership vacuum when it comes to fighting climate change in this country.”

Louise Comeau, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said Canada should make more effort to enter into the clean energy transition, arguing that is where the future job market lies.

The strategy’s ‘non-discriminatory’ approach to all forms of energy is out-of-touch, according to the network. “What’s needed is public policy favouring clean, renewable energy over the oil, coal and natural gas unbalancing the climate system,” the group stated in a press release.

Comeau said it is not uncommon for governments to restrict the entry of harmful products into the market.

“Governments discriminate against smoking and toxics in food and consumer products,” she said. “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.”

In early 2015 Clean Energy Canada released a report on the state of renewable energy, finding global investment in alternative energy increased by 17 per cent from 2013.

The report concluded Canada, by directing enormous subsidies and tax breaks towards the fossil fuel industry, is holding Canada’s clean energy revolution back.

Major Pipeline Rupture in Alberta Emphasizes Fossil Fuel Risks

This week a pipeline owned by oilsands operator Nexen ruptured near the company’s Long Lake facility southeast of Fort McMurray, releasing 32,000 barrels or 1.32 million gallons of bitumen emulsion into the surrounding environment.

The spill is a reminder of the high-stakes risk major oil pipelines pose to the environment, according to Peter Louwe from Greenpeace.

“Alberta has a long way to go to address its pipeline problems,” Louwe said, adding “communities have good reasons to fear having more built.”

The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion both plan on carrying increased oilsands crude to the coast of British Columbia. The National Energy Board refused to consider the climate impacts of the pipelines during public hearings, claiming upstream impacts were not relevant to the project’s application.

A similar argument has been made by the regulator regarding TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, currently the largest proposed pipeline on the continent.

According to the Pembina Institute the Energy East pipeline could generate up to 32 million tonnes of additional oilsands emissions from the crude it will transport, the equivalent of adding seven million more cars to Canada’s roads.

Dale Marshall, national program manager with Environmental Defence, said the premier’s energy strategy ignores the climate impacts of pipelines and is falling out of step with the rest of the world.

Marshall described the strategy as “a big step backwards.”

“By lending support to pipelines, the strategy will put Canada further out of step with the rest of the world where climate change is being treated as a serious matter,” he said.

“We in Canada need to come to grips with the fact that it’s practically impossible to grow the tar sands and reduce carbon pollution.”  

Image Credit: Government of Ontario via Flickr

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Canada’s premiers have agreed to expand the nation’s developing energy strategy to address climate change and green energy while acknowledging the Alberta oilsands are still an important part of Canada’s economic future.

Endorsing the proposed Canadian Energy Strategy when they met last week at an annual conference on Prince Edward Island, the premiers said in an accompanying document that the plan “will express a renewed vision that describes the kind of energy future that provinces and territories aspire to achieve.”

The premiers added visions and principals included in the plan will allow “provinces and territories to work together, in respect of their own jurisdiction, on energy issues and grow the economy, protect the environment, mitigate climate change, create new opportunities for individuals, organizations and businesses, and enhance the quality of life for all Canadians.”

In a section called “Climate Change and Social and Environmental Responsibility,” the plan included a strategy to address global warming and move towards a lower carbon economy.

The strategy would recognize the importance of environmentally and socially responsible energy development, transportation systems, and enabling technologies to support conservation, efficiency, and effectiveness in the use of energy resources.

And it would allow the nation to “transition to a lower-carbon economy through appropriate initiatives, such as carbon pricing, carbon capture and storage and other technological innovations, while meeting current and future energy needs.”

A related article in The Globe and Mail said the recently-elected premiers of Ontario and Quebec — Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard — suggested they were the driving force behind the strategy’s climate change considerations.

Despite the agreement, Wynne said there will be tensions between provinces that want to achieve progress on climate change, and others eager to boost oil exports.

“I think that is a tension that will continue to exist but the reason it is important to have a Canadian energy strategy is that we’ve got to manage that tension – it exists and we’ve got to deal with the realities of the oil sands, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of transporting that fuel, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of climate change,” she told the Globe and Mail.

The premiers agreed to finalize the strategy before their 2015 summer meeting.

While the proposed energy strategy does not include firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada, under the Copenhagen Accord, has committed to reducing domestic carbon emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, a level many analysts say will not be met. A recent report from Environment Canada shows that without stronger emissions reductions Canada will not meet that target.

By way of comparison, the European Union has set three key targets for 2020. These include a 20 per cent reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; raising the share of the region’s energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20 per cent; and a 20 per cent improvement in Europe’s energy efficiency.

EU projections indicate the region will comfortably meet its 20 per cent emissions-reduction target by 2020.

Image Credit: Premier of Ontario via Flickr.

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