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Politico
6 days ago
- Business
- Politico
Annex this: Canada chases energy superpowerdom
Canada hopes to shake off its dependence on the United States by becoming an energy 'superpower.' But the new government's pursuit of dominance through both fossil fuels and clean power could ultimately undermine its climate goals. Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney built his campaign around opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada. He also entered office with a fair amount of climate cred: the former central banker once served as the United Nations' special envoy on climate action and finance and has long promoted a clean energy transition. But his Liberal government is now pledging to battle a brewing trade war with the U.S. by boosting exports of oil and natural gas, burning more fossil fuels domestically, and easing barriers to east-west flows of fuel and electricity. That message was driven home on Tuesday, when King Charles III opened the Canadian Parliament with a speech that left climate activists disillusioned, writes Sara Schonhardt. Charles' address, which was written by members of Carney's government, emphasized both clean and 'conventional' energy and heralded a new effort to speed up permitting for major projects. Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said Charles missed an opportunity to clarify Canada's energy future. 'Fighting climate change and becoming a renewables superpower, or doubling down on volatile fossil fuels?' Brouillette told Sara. 'We can't do both.' Next-door neighbors The United States' and Canada's energy fortunes are entwined. Canada is the largest source of U.S. energy imports, and the U.S. is by far Canada's largest buyer. With Trump's threat of increasingly severe tariffs, Canada wants to build out its energy infrastructure to enable it to more easily export to other countries. To be competitive, Canada's oil has to be 'produced responsibly,' the country's new energy minister, Tim Hodgson, said during a speech last week. He has proposed building carbon capture systems for the nation's oil sands. But climate activists say now is not the time to invest even more in carbon-polluting infrastructure. Canada is already lagging in meeting its climate target for 2030. The country set a new goal for 2035, but analysts say the target is too weak to comply with the Paris Agreement. Charles' speech still drew a major distinction between the Canadian government and the United States by mentioning the need to combat climate change. Trump has called climate change a hoax and moved to dismantle major parts of the U.S. government tasked with tackling it. The king's address — the first time the Crown has opened Parliament in decades — left the door open to future climate actions, emphasizing the creation of more national parks, marine protected areas and other conservation initiatives. It's Wednesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@ Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: Catherine Morehouse breaks down Trump's four executive orders aimed at boosting America's nuclear industry. Power Centers What exactly is Trump's energy council doing?It has been more than three since months since Trump launched a council to promote U.S. energy supremacy, write Carlos Anchondo and Ian M. Stevenson. While some Trump supporters credit the group with a variety of achievements — from lowering gasoline prices to expanding critical mineral mining — how it operates, when it convenes and even who its members are remain a mystery. Montana lawmakers blunt group's historic court winClimate activists scored a pair of landmark legal victories in Montana over the past two years, giving momentum to similar youth-led efforts across the globe, writes Lesley Clark. Now state lawmakers have responded by targeting the underlying law that helped propel the young activists to a courtroom win after they argued their constitutional right to a healthy environment had been violated. BLM official escorted out after dissentingA senior leader at the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management was escorted out its headquarters Tuesday after POLITICO reported that he opposed staffing directions from a former 'Department of Government Efficiency' appointee, writes Ben Lefebvre. The removal of Mike Nedd, BLM's deputy director for administration and programs, is the latest personnel upheaval at the bureau that oversees oil, natural gas and mineral production on federal land and is considered key for the Trump administration's goal of increasing fossil fuel production. In Other News Legal blow: A German court threw out a Peruvian farmer's climate lawsuit against one of the country's energy giants. Heat risk alert: Global temperatures could break heat records in the next five years. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Los Angeles residents whose homes were destroyed by wildfires in January have received hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid after a little-noticed federal policy shift in 2023. The EU is 'well on track' to reach its 2030 goal to cut 55 percent of planet-warming emissions, according to new findings released Wednesday. One of the largest casualties of Republicans' megabill may be the build-out of a U.S. 'green' hydrogen industry — killing the industry before it gets started. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
National Observer
25-04-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
Can we really reduce carbon emissions by sending LNG to India?
This article is part of the Reality Check series by Canada's National Observer. Have a question for us? Reach out at [email protected]. Claim: By sending our LNG to India, Canada could reduce emissions by 2.5 billion tonnes. This is a talking point that Pierre Poilievre has brought up several times over the campaign. His party's platform pledges a 'one and done' rule for new resource projects, and he's talked about approving 10 long-standing energy projects, including Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) expansion in British Columbia, uranium mining in Saskatchewan, and a nickel-cobalt mine in Ontario. During the English-language leaders debate last week, Poilievre was asked how he balances the priorities of fighting climate change and expanding energy projects. Poilievre said his government would 'bring home' jobs while also 'bringing down emissions around the world.' He explained that by approving natural gas liquefaction and export, and then sending Canadian gas to India, 'to displace half of their demand for electricity, we could reduce emissions by 2.5 billion tonnes, which is three times the total emissions of Canada.' The official party platform also mentions exporting LNG by utilizing Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. The party would 'Use Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to dramatically reduce global emissions and fight climate change by exporting cleaner Canadian resources and technologies' and 'Use Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to bring home jobs while exporting cleaner resources like Canadian liquified natural gas (LNG) and technologies to help lower global emissions.' Verdict: False Pierre Poilievre has made the claim several times during the campaign, so we looked into it in our latest fact check. There are a few aspects of this to debunk here. Let's start with Poilievre's promise to fast-track approvals on energy projects, like the LNG terminal in BC. As The Tyee reports, there's one major issue with that: It's already approved. It got the provincial permits stamped in 2015 and federal approval in 2016. What we're now waiting on is LNG Canada Phase 2. As we have reported, that would be an expansion to the already existing terminal. According to John Young, LNG senior strategist with Climate Action Network Canada, it's not federal approvals standing in the way of the terminal moving forward. It's money. 'It just doesn't add up very well for somebody who wants to be prime minister to be so factually incorrect,' Young said. Public funds were used to get the project past the first round of approvals. But in order to move forward, Young told The Tyee that further funds are needed from investors like Shell, Mitsubishi, and PetroChina. And they might need new assurances since the market is in a very different state than it was in 2016. (Girl, the tariffs.) After Poilievre announced he would approve the LNG terminal at a campaign stop in Terrace, B.C., Sven Biggs, oil and gas program director for an environmental group, released a statement, saying 'The fact is, Phase Two of LNG Canada has all the permits it needs. It isn't being built yet because Shell and the other big oil companies that own it need another handout from Ottawa to make this project viable.' But what about his claims that by shipping gas off to India, we could lower global emissions — and use the Paris Agreement to do it? That's not how any of that works. First, Poilievre is claiming that LNG is a better fuel to use over coal because it 'burns cleaner,' which is the ' bridge fuel ' argument put forward by the fossil fuel industry. But we now know better. It seems previous studies had not factored in the emissions produced during the liquefaction process. Rather than being better for the environment, LNG is actually significantly worse than coal. In 2023, 170 climate scientists signed a letter urging then-US President Joe Biden to reject plans for more LNG terminals. So, it's not true that if India swapped half of its coal for Canadian natural gas, global emissions would drop. But where does the Paris Agreement come into this? Article 6 of the Paris Agreement lays out how countries can cooperate with each other and transfer carbon credits, ostensibly in the name of meeting targets. For example, if Indonesia puts mechanisms in place that protect national forests, which absorb carbon emissions, they might be credited for those emissions. They could then sell those credits to Japan to meet its reduction targets. But to avoid double dipping, Indonesia would no longer be credited for those reductions if it sold the credit to another country. As Canada's National Observer's Natasha Bulowski reported this week, the Conservative goal seems to be to change the international framework for counting greenhouse gas emissions so that Canada can get credit for India reducing emissions by burning Canadian LNG instead of coal. That's not how the carbon credit system works. The country that makes the fuel swap — in this case, India — gets credit for lowering emissions, regardless of where that fuel was produced. And at the end of the day, carbon emissions are carbon emissions, no matter where they are released. India has committed to reach net-zero by 2070 and it's not going to achieve that goal if it gives other countries credit for its emission reductions. Using Article 6 in this way has been a dream of other Canadian politicians. In 2023, Canada's National Observer reported that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was advocating for the same goal in meetings with then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the time, one expert said that if Canada brought the idea up with other United Nations countries, they would be 'laughed out of the room.'
