Is it hypocritical for the Liberals to put the brakes on coal but not on natural gas?
Climate-change policy is so often about grappling with hypocrisy  advocating for radical change in the future while depending on fossil fuels and their plentiful spinoffs for our own comfort right now. The federal government got rid of one such glaring environmental hypocrisy last week when it essentially put what amounts to a ban on new or expanding thermal coal mining. Coal has been mined in Canada since 1639. But now the federal government is signalling that if any coal-mining company comes forward looking for permission to expand its operations or start up new ones, the answer will be no. The announcement from Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson was a pleasant surprise to environmentalists. The writing has been on the proverbial wall for a long time when it comes to coal, but it was a surprise because it was unequivocal at a time when equivocating is so often the fallback policy position. Whats far less clear is how the federal government will apply such thinking to other fossil fuels. Canada has been pushing the world hard to eliminate coal from electricity production, even founding a formal alliance with the United Kingdom to pressure other countries to phase it out. Canada is committed phasing it out here too, but we have continued to produce it and sell it to the world  and that wasnt going over well on the global stage. Folks have raised questions  legitimately  about how Canada could look at allowing new thermal coal mines or expanding existing thermal coal mines at a time when we are actually trying to convince others not to use thermal coal. I think thats an absolutely legitimate question, Wilkinson told the Star in an interview this week. There are a few things the new directive doesnt do. It doesnt deal with metallurgical coal, which the world needs to produce steel and accounted for half of Canadas 57-million tonnes of coal production in 2019. It doesnt prevent exports of any surplus thermal coal that we already produce, nor does it stop Canadian ports from facilitating U.S. thermal coal exports. But its progress. Already, less than 10 per cent of Canadas electricity comes from coal-fired generators, and its set to be phased out completely by 2030. With the new directive, new capacity wont come on stream. The most immediate effect will be in Alberta. Coalspur Mines Ltd. has applied to expand its Vista Coal Mine operations near Hinton, and is already in court over the federal governments involvement in the expansion. The province is also battling the federal government in court for using its Impact Assessment powers to intervene. And the directive comes at the same time as Albertas hopes for the Keystone XL pipeline have been dashed once again  likely for good this time. But the political fallout in Alberta is minor compared to the broader implications of the federal reasoning behind the thermal coal directive. In its policy statement, the government explains that future thermal coal endeavours must be rejected because they dont contribute to a sustainable environment and they dont contribute to Canadas stated goals on climate change. OK, but now lets do natural gas. Environmentalists argue that the same logic that applies to coal should also apply to other fossil fuels, pointing to new modelling from the widely respected International Energy Agency. Its model shows that the only way the world can reach its goal of curtailing global warming and being carbon neutral by 2050 is by not just ending new investment in coal, but also ending new investment in all fossil fuels  right away. That includes natural gas, even if it has lower emissions than oil and gas. The reasoning is the same as Wilkinson gives for his coal directive: allowing new investment in fossil fuels is incompatible with net-zero polices, is not sustainable, and hampers efforts to control climate change. In other words, approving new natural gas interests or further development of the oilsands would be hypocritical. But Wilkinson is not exactly on the same page. For sure, he says more needs to be done to push Canada to meeting its new emissions reductions targets for 2030 and to get to net-zero by 2050. But hes not ready to condemn natural gas to the same future as thermal coal. Thermal coal, he says, required a strict and urgent crackdown right away because its the worlds largest contributor to climate change and responsible for 30 per cent of emissions. Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...  Natural gas, on the other hand, has more promise because technology has the potential to make production carbon neutral one day, he argues. There is almost no use of thermal coal without significant carbon emissions, he said. There are ways, potentially in the future, to use natural gas without carbon emissions  (for example) by extracting hydrogen and using the energy value of that without carbon pollution. And so theres lot of different work thats being done with respecting pathways. But the ultimate end goal is the pathway has to be net zero by 2050.  Thats placing a big bet on technology, hoping it can move faster than the planet is warming. Either that, or its embedding hypocrisy.