From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

Prime Minister Carney recently unveiled his new cabinet, and he made some changes in some key policy areas including Energy and Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, and Transport and Internal Trade. What do these cabinet picks tell us about the potential policy focus of Carney’s government moving forward?

At the helm of the Energy and Natural Resource portfolio, Carney appointed Timothy Hodgson, a former banker and chair of Ontario’s massive Hydro One electricity utility. A quick search of Hodgson’s previous experience and opinions on matters of energy and natural resource policy comes up rather dry—he is something of a cypher. Acquaintances are quoted in several articles suggesting he has a pragmatic, pro-business orientation, but that is about all we can glean.

Still, what we do know is that Hodgson is replacing Jonathan Wilkinson, previously a supporter of highly aggressive greenhouse gas emission reductions, and aggressive regulation in the energy and natural resource policy spaces when part of Trudeau’s cabinet. So, with a mostly blank slate to stand on, and an ostensibly pragmatic “banker” mentality, we can expect (hope?) that Minister Hodgson blazes a less extreme path forward on energy and natural resource issues, balancing in a more even-handed fashion protection of the environment and natural resources with Canada’s need for economic productivity.

Hodgson’s partner on the energy, natural resource environmental policy front will be Julie Dabrusin, new Minister of Environment and Climate Change, replacing Uber-environmentalist Steven Guilbeault. Dabrusin was previously Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources in the Trudeau government. The most logical expectation would be to expect she will continue to champion Trudeau-esque policies, tempering any hopes we might have for the potentially more moderate Minister Hodgson as bellwether of Canada’s energy, natural resource and environmental policies.

Finally, Carney appointed Chrystia Freeland as Minister of Transport and Internal Trade. Freeland is a strong believer in the climate crisis, an intense regulator thereof, and seems to believe that transportation must be electrified, pedalized and mass-transificated (okay, I made that last term up) to save the planet. So, anyone hoping for a move away from the green-transportation agenda, away from an all electric-car, mass-transit oriented future, and back to something favouring (or at least not-demonizing) an automobile-centric lifestyle might want to rein in their expectations.

Unfortunately, in Carney’s cavalcade of cabinet officials, he did not create a new Minister of Regulatory Reform and Right-Sizing (again, my term). One of Canada’s biggest public policy illnesses is its plague of regulations. Canada is drowning under a mountain of regulatory red-tape and badly needs a minister with scissors. Canada wants no part of a U.S.-style Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but a Minister of Regulatory Reform and Right-Sizing, akin to what British Columbia had briefly in 2001, would be a policy tonic Canada needs badly.

Little is known about exactly where the bulk of Prime Minister Carney’s new cabinet will take us, but the safe betting—in areas of environment, natural resources, climate change and transportation—is that we’re likely to see a continuance of Trudeau-era policies, though promulgated by somewhat more bland less-obviously-zealous eco-warriors. Time will tell.

Kenneth P. Green

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Canada has made a legal commitment to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Back in 2015, then-Prime Minister Trudeau promised that climate action will “create jobs and economic growth” and the federal government insists it will create a “strong economy.” The truth is that the net zero policy generates vast costs and very little benefit—and Canada would be better off changing direction.

Achieving net zero carbon emissions is far more daunting than politicians have ever admitted. Canada is nowhere near on track. Annual Canadian CO₂ emissions have increased 20 per cent since 1990. In the time that Trudeau was prime minister, fossil fuel energy supply actually increased over 11 per cent. Similarly, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy supply (not just electricity) increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to 77 per cent in 2023.

Over the same period, the switch from coal to gas, and a tiny 0.4 percentage point increase in the energy from solar and wind, has reduced annual CO₂ emissions by less than three per cent. On that trend, getting to zero won’t take 25 years as the Liberal government promised, but more than 160 years. One study shows that the government’s current plan which won’t even reach net-zero will cost Canada a quarter of a million jobs, seven per cent lower GDP and wages on average $8,000 lower.

Globally, achieving net-zero will be even harder. Remember, Canada makes up about 1.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions, and while Canada is already rich with plenty of energy, the world’s poor want much more energy.

In order to achieve global net-zero by 2050, by 2030 we would already need to achieve the equivalent of removing the combined emissions of China and the United States — every year. This is in the realm of science fiction.

The painful Covid lockdowns of 2020 only reduced global emissions by about six per cent. To achieve net zero, the UN points out that we would need to have doubled those reductions in 2021, tripled them in 2022, quadrupled them in 2023, and so on. This year they would need to be sextupled, and by 2030 increased 11-fold. So far, the world hasn’t even managed to start reducing global carbon emissions, which last year hit a new record.

Data from both the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration give added cause for skepticism. Both organizations foresee the world getting more energy from renewables: an increase from today’s 16 per cent to between one-quarter to one-third of all primary energy by 2050. But that is far from a transition. On an optimistically linear trend, this means we’re a century or two away from achieving 100 percent renewables.

Politicians like to blithely suggest the shift away from fossil fuels isn’t unprecedented, because in the past we transitioned from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to gas. The truth is, humanity hasn’t made a real energy transition even once. Coal didn’t replace wood but mostly added to global energy, just like oil and gas have added further additional energy. As in the past, solar and wind are now mostly adding to our global energy output, rather than replacing fossil fuels.

Indeed, it’s worth remembering that even after two centuries, humanity’s transition away from wood is not over. More than two billion mostly poor people still depend on wood for cooking and heating, and it still provides about 5 per cent of global energy.

Like Canada, the world remains fossil fuel-based, as it delivers more than four-fifths of energy. Over the last half century, our dependence has declined only slightly from 87 per cent to 82 per cent, but in absolute terms we have increased our fossil fuel use by more than 150 per cent. On the trajectory since 1971, we will reach zero fossil fuel use some nine centuries from now, and even the fastest period of recent decline from 2014 would see us taking over three centuries.

Global warming will create more problems than benefits, so achieving net-zero would see real benefits. Over the century, the average person would experience benefits worth $700 (CAD) each year.

But net zero policies will be much more expensive. The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Every year over the 21st century, costs would vastly outweigh benefits, and global costs would exceed benefits by over CAD 32 trillion each year.

We would see much higher transport costs, higher electricity costs, higher heating and cooling costs and — as businesses would also have to pay for all this — drastic increases in the price of food and all other necessities. Just one example: net-zero targets would likely increase gas costs some two-to-four times even by 2030, costing consumers up to $US52.6 trillion. All that makes it a policy that just doesn’t make sense—for Canada and for the world.

Bjørn Lomborg