this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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The World Is Moving Away from Fossil Fuels. Canada Is Holding On for Dear Life | The Walrus (thewalrus.ca)
submitted 4 months ago by streetfestival@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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Last month, Alberta didn’t just announce it had transitioned entirely off coal as an energy source; the province kicked the fossil fuel six years ahead of a wildly ambitious schedule. The scale of achievement this represents defies exaggeration—and contains a warning for oil fans everywhere. [...] what happened to coal is coming for oil next.

Virtually every major analyst that isn’t an oil company (and even some of them, like BP) now expects global demand for oil to peak around 2030, if not sooner; McKinsey, Rystad Energy, DNV, and the International Energy Agency all agree. This places Canada in a uniquely vulnerable position. Oil is Canada’s biggest export by a mile, a vital organ of our economy: we sold $123 billion worth of it in 2022 (cars came in second, at just under $30 billion). Three quarters of that oil is exported as bitumen—the most expensive, emissions-heavy form of petroleum in the market and therefore the hardest to sell. That makes us incredibly sensitive to fluctuations in global demand. Think of coal as the canary in our oil patch.

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[–] psvrh@lemmy.ca 42 points 4 months ago (22 children)

Other than selling mediocre coffee and McMansions to each other, Canada has precious little else. That's why we cling like limpets to extractive industry: without it, we've got nothing because our governments have comprehensively failed to develop much of an industry, preferring to give tax breaks to oil barons and house traders.

[–] northmaple1984@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Extractive industry is heavily required if we're going to get off fossil fuels, we have tons of metals that are pretty damn important for building nuclear and various renewable energy sources.

But in the meantime, the world was clamouring for natural gas because of sudden restrictions due to the war in Ukraine and it was pants-on-head retarded to turn that down.

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Uhm, natural gas is not an alternative to oil. Has the same problems.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

They were saying we should have taken advantage of the short-term opportunity.

The problem is that Natural Gas is not portable and the plants required to ship it overseas take time and investment to build.

So, the situation was not so “pants on head” obvious really. That said, I agree with them that we should have done it. I say that as somebody that would like the fossil fuel industry to go away.

Canada would probably be a major LNG provider to Europe at this point if we had done it. However, they are trying to transition away from it as well so the clock is ticking. And, of course, if the war ends, some will go back to buying from Russia. So it was only ever a short-term opportunity for Canada ( though longer than many believed at the time ).

Natural Gas is still a fossil fuel so your main argument is correct. However, it is a lot better than oil or coal. It makes sense to move to natural gas over coal to generate electricity and the world is doing that. It also would have made sense to move vehicles, especially larger trucks, to Natural Gas. Even if the end-goal is electric, NG would have been a great first step ( especially in paces where the electricity is coal or natural gas anyway ).

[–] northmaple1984@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fossil fuels aren't a yes/no thing, we aren't getting off them cold turkey and neither is any other country. Part of the process is substituting higher emitting fossil fuels with lower emitting ones while we work towards the goal.

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

For the 25½ years we have left? Better subsidize research on alternatives to plastic and kerosine. Oil getting more expensive in the process would even be helpful.

Should have, yes. But time is short now.

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