China is making strong strategic moves to secure its future oil needs
China – the world’s largest crude oil importer, second-largest oil consumer after the United States and the world's number 1 polluter – is increasingly leveraging its position of influence on the global energy chessboard. In a bid to tame rising oil prices last November, the United States spearheaded a co-ordinated release by major oil-consuming nations…
World leaders are doing everything Thunberg and people like her say, without batting an eye
It seems everything is about justice these days. As I drove home from the store recently, I saw a sign for the elections here in New York from the local Democratic Party, promising “equity, equality, and justice for all.” Beyond the obvious concerns any sane person should have about a promise of “equity,” the sign…
Dreams of a hydrogen future just another energy scheme to extract money from gullible governments
Once again, the world staged ClimateFest 26, aka the United Nations Conference of the Parties, where peddlers of alternative energy schemes try to plunge their dippers into the river of climate change funding that flows around the world. This funding is generated by governmental pledges cadged out of economically developed countries at prior COPs. One…
Offers an efficient way to pull carbon dioxide out of industrial emissions
Alberta’s world renown in carbon capture and sequestration is set to receive another lift thanks to the promise of a material invented and tested in the province that offers an efficient way to pull carbon dioxide out of industrial emissions. A team from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Engineering characterized a CO2-capturing microporous material…
Will significantly improve estimates of current and future methane emissions
Researchers have developed new tools that will better track methane emissions from northern permafrost ecosystems, ultimately allowing for more accurate global predictions of future greenhouse gas emissions. The new emission dataset and map of northern wetlands and lakes the new tools will yield will significantly improve estimates of current and future methane emissions, said McKenzie…
The world is learning the hard way that the global economy still relies on fossil fuels
With the UN-sponsored Climate Change Conference (COP26) climate talks in Glasgow over, it is important to review some of the agreements and implications that have resulted from this process and assess the impact on Canada’s energy resources sector. Putting the rhetoric in context One can take seriously the undeniable threat posed by climate change while…
Policies should be fair for all Canadians, regardless of where they happen to live
By Miguel Ouellette Olivier Rancourt and Krystle Wittevrongel Montreal Economic Institute Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is one of the big concerns of our age. The numerous diverging interests pitted against each other on this issue make it a real puzzler for policy-makers, though. After many years of public policies aimed at reducing GHGs, layered…
Canada’s 2050 goal to achieve net-zero emissions might look good on paper, but it will harm investors, companies, employees and households
Canada’s policy to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 necessitates divesting from fossil fuels. There’s just one problem: massive outstanding loans from banks to the oil and gas industries. The oil and gas sector makes up more than 10 per cent of the Canadian economy, and abolishing it, gradually or otherwise, would take its toll. Canadian…
Speed and efficiency are not things that Canada’s lumbering and increasingly dysfunctional regulatory systems are known for
By Jock Finlayson and Denise Mullen Business Council of B.C. Building back ‘clean’ and ‘green’ means trillions of dollars of investment, and the electrification of many machines and activities that presently rely on fossil fuels – from personal vehicles and freight transportation to industrial processes. It’s not hard to understand the growing interest in electricity.…
By Mark Milke and Ven Venkatachalam Canadian Energy Centre There’s a dearth of sensible analysis when it comes to reasonable ways to decrease carbon emissions. Some point fingers at Canada’s oil sands, or oil and gas more generally. They imagine if that industry disappeared, somehow carbon emissions would magically evaporate as well. The reality is…