Ottawa officially designated a proposed West Coast pipeline as a project of national interest on Thursday. During the announcement in Fort McMurray, Prime Minister Mark Carney cited the pipeline’s economic value.
But the government’s huge subsidization of this project – up to 90 per cent of a $40-billion pipeline with ownership split evenly between Ottawa and Edmonton – lays bare a reality unfolding across the world economy: Fossil fuels aren’t just losing to clean energy. They’ve lost.
In fact, the difference is now a trillion-dollar one.
While global energy investment is on track to reach US$3.4-trillion in 2026, around US$2.2-trillion of that amount is set to go toward clean energy: power grids, energy storage, low-emission fuels, nuclear, renewables, energy efficiency and electrification. According to the International Energy Agency, US$1.2-trillion will go to oil, natural gas and coal – and the future will increasingly favour clean energy.
Keep reading this story in the Globe and Mail.
