From Resource Works

By Geoff Russ

The EU-US trade deal includes provisions for American energy exports, including LNG that Canada could have supplied. Canada must not make the same mistakes in the Pacific.

The trade deal signed between the European Union and the United States is a slap in the face for Canadian energy. American oil, natural gas, and even nuclear fuel, are now slated to flow across the Atlantic to European buyers, as the bloc pushes to fully wean itself off Russian energy.

It should have been Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Atlantic coast.

Canada had every chance to build a thriving LNG industry on its East Coast. But short-sighted, hesitant government policy has consistently dismissed what has now proven to be a strong and viable business case.

The $750 billion energy trade deal between the EU and the US shows how costly that’s been.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly said Atlantic LNG was never economically viable. He famously told a 2022 press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that there’s “never been a strong business case” for exporting Canadian LNG from the East Coast.

Trudeau cited distance and infrastructure challenges, saying Canadian gas was uneconomic for direct export to Europe. Trudeau’s dismissal led to Germany signing a 15-year LNG deal with Qatar later that same year, in the first reminder of what Canada missed out on.

Reality contradicts the former Prime Minister’s pessimism. European leaders, desperate for energy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, repeatedly approached Canada with LNG requests. Chancellor Scholz came to Canada, followed by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in 2023, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Polish President Andrzej Duda in 2024.

Each time they received vague assurances and non-commitments from Trudeau’s government. Europe’s need was real, urgent, and sustained, but Canada’s response was inadequate.

As the Fraser Institute pointed out in May 2024, transitioning coal-dependent countries like India to natural gas would achieve four times more global emission reductions than shutting down Canada’s entire economy. Furthermore, Resource Works CEO Stewart Muir said natural gas isn’t just a “bridge fuel,” but a destination fuel for global energy stability.

But Canada chose domestic political caution and lofty green ideals, and ignored the broader global emission reduction opportunities. The results are clear.

The new US-EU trade deal, which guarantees $250 billion a year in American LNG purchases for the next three years, is exactly the kind of long-term market Canada could have had years ago. US LNG developers like NextDecade, Venture Global, and Cheniere Energy are already riding high on market confidence, and US natural gas producers are cashing in on the growing transatlantic demand.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Atlantic provinces are missing out on the jobs and prosperity that would have come with robust LNG development.

Trudeau’s own Energy Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, said last March that Canada wouldn’t subsidize future LNG projects, calling them “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

The regulatory framework, Bill C-69, and BC’s CleanBC plan further added to investor uncertainty, with long approval timelines and strict emission caps. As a result, Canada has seen $670 billion in resource projects cancelled since 2015, including critical Atlantic LNG projects.

Ironically, Canada’s hesitation has inadvertently increased global emissions, as Europe and Asia revert to coal due to the lack of reliable gas supplies. That’s the opposite of Trudeau’s climate goals, proving that Canada’s cautious approach to LNG was not only economically short-sighted but environmentally counterproductive.

Today, as US LNG terminals thrive and European reliance on American energy deepens, Canada must recognize that what our leaders said did not exist was always real. The “business case” Trudeau dismissed as weak was strong enough for our southern neighbours to jump at.

Canada’s indecision has left it on the sidelines, as the economic and strategic benefits flow to those who had the will to build.

All is not yet lost. Canada is still ahead of the US on supplying LNG to the Asia-Pacific, with LNG Canada in the first year of operation. Cedar LNG and Ksi Lisims LNG will soon join them in supplying Canadian LNG to Japan, South Korea, and others.

If the Atlantic opportunity has passed, ensuring that a Pacific LNG export industry can thrive is a necessity for Canada’s energy future.

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

Following last month’s European Union-Canada 2025 Summit, Prime Minister Carney and his EU counterparts issued a joint statement reaffirming their shared commitments, which include reaching “net-zero” by 2050 and transitioning away from fossil fuels. This confirms the Carney government intends to stay the course set by the Trudeau government. However, despite these commitments and the trillions invested toward this goal, the timeline to phase out fossil fuels and achieve a zero-carbon economy by 2050 remains disconnected from reality.

Building a “net-zero” economy by 2050 requires phasing out fossil fuels—such as oil, natural gas, and coal—as primary energy sources, or offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions with other activities such as tree planting. Governments and firms worldwide have devoted a massive amount of resources to achieve this goal. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), between 2015 and 2025 alone, public and private investment in “clean energy” totalled approximately US$16.7 trillion (inflation-adjusted). That’s equivalent to China’s total economic output in 2022.

And yet, according to new data released by the Energy Institute, from 1997 (when the Kyoto Protocol set binding international decarbonization targets) to 2024, global use of oil, natural gas and coal increased by 58 per cent. Specifically, oil consumption grew by 33 per cent, natural gas by 87 per cent and coal by 73 per cent. In 2024, fossil fuels still provided 80.6 per cent of global energy consumption—a slight decline from 85.7 per cent in 1997.

Canada has followed a similar pattern despite the billions spent by Ottawa and various provinces. Between 1997 and 2024, our country’s use of fossil fuels as a primary energy source actually grew by 17 per cent. And the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy consumption rose from 63.1 per cent in 1997 to 66.3 per cent in 2024. Simply put, despite a cascade of regulations, taxes and multibillion-dollar subsidies, the country is becoming more—not less—reliant on fossil fuels.

So, why hasn’t this costly push to transition away from fossil fuels played out the way Ottawa and the provinces intended?

Because major energy transitions are inherently slow and take centuries, not a couple of decades. As noted by scholar Vaclav Smil, the first energy transition—from biomass fuels such as wood and charcoal toward fossil-based energy—unfolded over more than two centuries. And that transition is still underway. As of 2020, close to three billion people in developing countries still relied on charcoal, straw and dried dung for cooking and heating. These energy sources still accounted for roughly 7 per cent of global energy consumption at the beginning of this decade.

Biomass (wood, charcoal, etc.) powered human civilization for millennia, and only around 1900 did coal became a predominant global energy source. Moreover, it wasn’t until the 1950s that oil accounted for one-quarter of global fossil fuel consumption, reaching that milestone roughly 150 years after it was first introduced into the energy market. And it wasn’t until the end of the 20th century, after about 130 years of development, that natural gas reached 25 per cent of all fossil fuels consumed worldwide.

World leaders, including Prime Minister Carney, should acknowledge reality and be transparent about the commitments they make on behalf of their citizens. Despite decades of international pledges, costly policies and trillions spent, fossil fuel use keeps growing, making net-zero by 2050 a wholly unrealistic goal.