Today, the leaders of Canada’s provincial and territorial governments finalized and released a Canadian Energy Strategy that seeks to guide development of Canada’s energy resources.
The premiers have worked on the strategy since 2012, when they agreed to revisit a 2007 vision document called A Shared Vision for Energy in Canada.
That same year Clean Energy Canada released Towards a Clean Energy Accord: How and Why a Canadian Energy Strategy can Accelerate the Nation’s Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy. More than 700 organizations, governments, labour unions, and companies endorsed that document.
The following comments may be attributed to Sarah Petrevan, Senior Policy Advisor, Clean Energy Canada:
“Our work has shown that Canadians want an energy strategy that reduces carbon pollution and accelerates the transition to a lower carbon economy. Today’s strategy recognizes the role that renewable electricity and pricing carbon will play in this shift, but still leans heavily on traditional fossil-based energy sources.”
“In the absence of federal leadership, it’s encouraging that provincial premiers have acknowledged the imperative for comprehensive and quantifiable greenhouse gas reductions. However, this is 2015, and we need to do better. We need deeper reductions, and a clear plan to deliver them, we hope their work over the next year will yield that.”
“If the global economy were a baseball game, a home run would be heading straight for the clean-energy industry—but Canada hasn’t even left the dugout. We’ve lost out on nearly $9 billion in clean-energy export opportunities in 2013 alone. We need a plan to transition our economy and reap the benefits of the growth and jobs that come with it.”
“As the provinces move forward to implement this strategy, we hope that the climate leadership shown to date by British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario inspires other provinces to prioritize clean-energy solutions.”
