By Bob Weber

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Major Projects Office is now six months old, just a baby in government years. But those gathered around the newborn’s crib already have plenty of ideas on how they’d like the infant to grow up.

Some look for an umpire—a neutral agency that simply evaluates big proposals and advises cabinet. “I hope they want someone who’s there to call balls and strikes,” Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta, told The Energy Mix. He said the MPO’s role should be to advance such projects, but also to ensure proponents have covered the environmental and consultation bases.

“You want someone in the room that when a company comes in and says, ‘Our project’s just not moving forward,’ (asks) ‘Have you done the work right?’”   Others want something more activist, pushing projects that further decarbonization, such as linking interprovincial electricity grids. “It needs to be a ramp up for renewable energy projects,” said Mark Kalegha, energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Interconnectedness seems to be on their priority list and the MPO is able to help with the regulatory hurdles.”

A giant lab on regulatory reform would be welcome, say some. “What we’re hoping comes out of the Major Projects Office is learnings on how to accelerate reviews and processes without denuding them or making them any less stringent,” said Fernando Melo, public affairs director with the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA). “I’ve been out to many a project site where you ask, ‘How many permits are you filing?’ and the answer comes ‘Oh, five or ten’ … And I go, ‘One field.’”

Others expect it to serve an overall policy goal. “They’ve been focused on resources and infrastructure, in particular, trade facilitating infrastructure,” said University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe. “That, to me, really speaks to the priority on trade diversification that the government has laid out.”

And some will be grateful if the whole thing doesn’t just turn into another deadening layer of lobbyist-ridden government bureaucracy. “

It does signal to investors that (their proposal) won’t be one of those Canadian proposals that takes 12 years. That’s the generous side of it,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. But she asks, if excessive regulation is the problem, why not just reduce regulation?

“They’ve listed all these regulations that the MPO can bypass—why don’t they work on fixing those if they can be bypassed safely?”

But all say that attempts to assess the MPO’s direction need context. The office is just one part of a policy package aiming to reduce Canada’s dependence on increasingly unreliable United States trade, boost the country’s economic self-reliance, and move its economy toward a low-carbon future—all at once.

“Just as important, if not more important than the major projects themselves, is the policy,” said Janetta McKenzie, oil and gas director at the Calgary-based Pembina Institute. She said industrial carbon pricing, methane regulations, clean electricity regulations, and federal investment tax credits are just as big an influence on where investment goes as anything the MPO does. “

If the goal is to build a future-proofed Canadian economy that is more resilient to ongoing geopolitical shocks and volatility, then the investment signals need to be strong,” McKenzie said.

The Signals So Far

The signals, so far, haven’t been encouraging for climate goals. The federal government has junked consumer carbon pricing, tossed oil sands emissions caps, and weakened EV sales mandates. Tough economic times have proved tough for environmental policy, too, said Leach.

“Once people became convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Canadian environmental policy was the source of all their woes, there wasn’t much ground there left for the PM. “Voters are very keen on environmental policy as long as it doesn’t cost them anything.”

For example, the memorandum of understanding now being finalized between Alberta and Ottawa includes a promise of industrial carbon pricing—but also support for a new pipeline, which a Pembina analysis concluded would increase Alberta’s carbon emissions even if that oil was “decarbonized” through capture and storage.

Leach said national security concerns may now support the project. “All our pipelines in the U.S. are subject to a presidential permit the president can revoke at any time at our expense,” he said. “It’s still a conversation that’s in a dark corner, so to speak, but it’s a conversation we should be having.”

A Pipeline Full of Obstacles

But any new line faces considerable obstacles.

There’s neither a route nor a proponent, and the increased production needed to fill one would require massive upstream investment.

The MOU signed between Alberta and the feds rules out public financing, but former Alberta energy minister Sonya Savage recently told a CBC podcast that without public support a private proponent is, at best, highly unlikely.

Still, there may be a financial case to be made, suggested Leach, pointing to 2010, when pipeline bottlenecks forced producers to discount Canadian oil. If that happened again, the discount would now be on roughly twice as much oil.

“This is the math that people miss,” he told The Mix. “Even if you said this (pipeline) would reduce the differential by a buck, that’s four million barrels a day, 365 days a year times 15 years. (The investment) doesn’t look terrible.” Price, he said, is far more important than sheer volume.

But Canada will likely need to reduce that discount and squeeze out every petrodollar it can, and sustain it over a longer haul that may not be realistic. Before the current war launched the price of oil, it was languishing around $60 a barrel, with most experts predicting further falls. That market is likely to eventually return once the U.S.-Iran conflict ends. When the missiles stop flying, so will the value of oil.

Diversified Trade Could Boost Climate Goals

But the Carney objective of diversifying Canada’s trading partners could also advance climate goals. The projects currently before the MPO suggest at least some emphasis on clean energy, with wind power and minerals critical to electrification in the mix.

There’s also a proposal to link electricity gids in northern British Columbia and the Yukon.Climate and energy transition advocates say that is exactly the sort of thing the MPO should be doing to move Canada towards electrons and away from molecules.

“The more we integrate provinces and (make them) able to call on each other’s resources, it’s going to be better,” said CanREA’s Melo. “Having more connectivity will help enable greater decarbonization of the grid.”

In fact, grid ties are probably the only electricity-related projects big enough to appear on the MPO’s “nation-building” agenda. Solar panels and wind farms are also regulated provincially, putting them outside the MPO’s purview.

“The barriers to renewable penetration of electricity generation are provincial policies,” said the University of Calgary’s Tombe.

Trade diversification could provide another decarbonization prod. Canada will have to meet the environmental standards of those it seeks to trade with. Europe, for example, implemented its carbon border adjustment program in January. The policy imposes a tariff on imports of carbon-intensive products such as steel, cement, and energy that don’t meet EU standards. Melo said if Canada wants to play in those markets, it will have to comply.

“With the Canadian government’s stated goal of 50% of exports reaching alternative markets— the European Union, Japan, and China, which everyone forgets has an industrial carbon price— there’ll be more and more demand that the goods they import have low-carbon attributes built in.”

Weighing the Consequences

It’s unlikely that Mark Carney, once the UN’s special envoy on climate action, has forgotten the need to reduce carbon emissions. But he’s a central banker, too, used to weighing consequences of action against each other.

“The end game is going to be overall policies on consumption and overall policies on production,” Leach said. This may mean a little water in the wine of carbon cuts. Rather than absolute targets—the meeting of which has failed dismally—Canada may instead focus on simply being better than our competitors, some analysts say.

“Sustainability includes financial sustainability,” said Exner-Pirot. “The goal is not to kill Canadian production, but to make it better. Trying to square the circle involves making Canadian products competitive on carbon intensity, aiming for the good rather than the perfect.”

The Carney government must now make tough choices in the face of a new world order different than the one we were told to expect, Tombe said. “Reality has just thrown a few curve balls at Canada.”

“I do not see the government having abandoned any consideration at all about climate objectives,” he added. “But it also keeps in mind other criteria like trade diversification, economic and productivity growth … (Government) could achieve a lot more if it was singularly focused on climate goals. But it is not. It is balancing lots of objectives.”

The MPO itself has offered few clues as to its direction and intent. Although CEO Dawn Farrell is a longtime fossil energy executive who shepherded the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, she has a non-partisan and even-handed reputation. Still, in testimony last fall before a Senate committee, she spoke approvingly of the carbon intensity of Canadian LNG. She also suggested a new oil pipeline to the west coast would have climate benefits, since much if that oil is used to make components for electric vehicles.

Some other senior staff bring past background in renewable energy and in reconciliation with Indigenous communities, but staffers have provided little information about where the office is going. Federal officials have told The Mix that Farrell maintains close contact with Carney and his senior staff, and that “all the major calls” will be made by the Prime Minister’s Office.

It’s early days for the MPO and the baby is barely walking. Where its first steps take it will be determined as much by the paths other policies have opened for it as its own inclinations.

But like any infant, observers broadly agree that it will take a while to mature. A $3.3-trillion economy does not turn around overnight.

“This process of diversifying trade, of boosting investment and growth, is going to be a multi-year, potentially multi-decade road that we’re on,” Tombe said. “We’re only at the very, very beginning. There’s so much left to do and so many unanswered questions still that need resolving.”

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By Samuel Buckstein

Nuclear power is experiencing a resurgence worldwide and Ontario is no exception. The province has a long history with this awesome and terrifying energy technology, and it is once again turning to nuclear power in response to concerns over national sovereignty, economic growth, electrification and decarbonization.

The persistent shortcomings of nuclear power

Finding pathways out of Ontario’s hydro and climate mess

Looking back over Ontario’s troubled history with nuclear energy, it is concerning to see the Ford government stumbling back to the bar for another round of nuclear cool-aid. Yet Ontario’s plan shows little evidence of having done its homework. Contrary to the government’s claims, it is fiscally irresponsible, incapable of delivering the energy the province needs in the time required, and compromises Ontario’s energy security.

When it should be investing in much cheaper and more easily deployed renewables, the province is recklessly doubling down on nuclear despite the evidence against it.

A legacy mired in debt

To understand Ontario’s nuclear trajectory, it is helpful to reflect on its origins. When civilian nuclear power was commercialized after the Second World War, its advocates promised it would be “too cheap to meter.” Buoyed by encouragement and financing from both provincial and federal governments, Ontario Hydro duly invested in a fleet of 20 CANDU reactors at three nuclear power stations over the course of 30 years.

By the turn of the millennium, Ontario Hydro’s nuclear obsession had saddled it with $38.1 billion in debt — $20.9 billion of it stranded (unsupported by assets). This burden was so immense that it toppled the once proud flagship Crown corporation. Ontarians continue to pay for this nuclear hangover today. As of March 2023, ratepayers were still on the hook for $13.8 billion.

Even as late as 1989, with Ontario Hydro already buckling under its crushing debt, the utility was forecasting the need for 10 to 15 new reactors by 2014. Reality proved otherwise, with peak electricity demand in 2014 lower than it had been 25 years earlier.

After a generation of staggering cost overruns and catastrophic international incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power fell out of favour in much of the developed world. Cheaper, more flexible and faster-to-deploy alternatives took its place, first gas and then renewables.

Today, China is the only country in the world that can bring three to four new reactors online every year while steadily improving cost efficiency and construction timelines. China is also installing nearly 100 times more renewable capacity annually, accounting for more than half the world’s newly added generation.

Lessons from the U.K. and Ukraine

However, Ontario should learn from the United Kingdom, not authoritarian China. The experience of Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power plant to be built in the U.K. in more than 20 years, should be a cautionary tale.

At least five years behind schedule and two times over budget, Hinkley Point C will likely be the most expensive nuclear power plant yet. The electricity generated by this colossal waste of rate-payer dollars will cost between two to four times more than renewable energy, which can be brought online in half the time. This is what the provincial government has in store for Ontario.

The scale of Ontario’s plan is immense. In addition to the CANDU refurbishments at Darlington and Bruce, Ontario has announced the refurbishment of Pickering B, one of the oldest and most urban nuclear power stations in the world.

Canada needs to accelerate its transition to renewable energy

Focus on renewables, not nuclear, to fuel Canada’s electric needs

Sovereignty concerns

Ontario has also contracted with GE Vernova Hitachi to build up to four small modular reactors (SMRs) at the Darlington site. It is unclear why the government has committed to building four SMRs before even the first is constructed. The greater concern with this arrangement is GE Vernova Hitachi is a U.S.-controlled company and the fuel supply chain is in the U.S. and France, not Canada.

To understand how fragile such a dependency can become, consider the situation facing Ukraine and its Soviet-built RMBK reactors. After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014, Ukraine found itself dependent on its aggressor to fuel the reactors. At the time, nuclear power generated approximately half of Ukraine’s pre-war electricity, similar to the proportion of Ontario’s reliance on nuclear energy. Ukrainians are now facing severe energy insecurity, with freezing temperatures and blackouts.

As if this were not concerning enough, Ontarians are subsidizing the first commercial demonstration of an unproven foreign nuclear technology while the government continues to naively claim Ontario will remain the industrial base from which the U.S.-controlled company will scale. Given the trade policies of the current U.S. government, not least of all its efforts to gut Ontario’s auto sector, it is hard not to see this belief as a fool’s hope.

No price tag and no certainty it will pay

Despite these red flags, Ontario’s nuclear ambitions do not stop there. The government is also considering building two new large nuclear power stations at the Bruce site and at a new location near Port Hope. This despite the fact that, like the U.K., the domestic nuclear supply chain has all but vanished. This is precisely the kind of multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade infrastructure lock-in that bankrupted Ontario Hydro.

The government has been silent on how much this plan will cost. No one can predict whether demand will materialize to justify this massive supply expansion, or what electricity prices will be when these reactors finally come online. Committing to decades of investment in such an uncertain environment is sheer folly.

To top it all off, nuclear power is not even operationally flexible. Generation cannot be adjusted rapidly enough to follow demand, and the reactors can only be quickly turned off, but not back on again (it took Ontario more than a day to restore power after the 2003 Great Northeastern Blackout due to neutron poisoning in the reactors).

Renewable options

It does not have to be this way. Much has changed since the last wave of nuclear infatuation. Renewables are now the cheapest source of energy on a levelized basis. While renewables may be intermittent, they are reasonably predictable, and for the first time since the inception of the electricity industry, generation no longer needs to coincide perfectly with consumption. Rapidly falling battery costs have made energy storage a commercially viable reality.

It is true that China currently dominates the supply chains for solar, wind and batteries, but once the equipment is installed it is virtually impervious to foreign interference. Unlike the supply of nuclear fuel, the sun shines everywhere.

Ontario and Canada should be collaborating with other democratic allies to reduce dependence on Chinese suppliers. In the meantime, the fact remains that unsubsidized renewables and batteries outperform nuclear and gas on cost and deployment time. Sadly, instead of embracing this more affordable and distributed future, the provincial government remains stuck in an inflexible and fiscally reckless past.

Nuclear power can provide energy security, but only if it is supported and fuelled by a domestic supply chain, like the original CANDUs. Its unmatched energy density makes sense where land is scarce, but that is hardly the case in Ontario. It may even be a defensible form of industrial policy if you believe in that kind of state interventionism. But above all else, nuclear power is neither nimble nor affordable (outside China) and it’s about time the Ontario government stopped posturing otherwise.

More Policy Options articles on nuclear power:

• Ontario’s nuclear option is the wrong path to meet green energy targets
• Canada’s newest nuclear industry dream is a potential nightmare

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By Ian Munroe, Anna Berka and Christina E. Hoicka

The number of renewable energy projects that are fully or partly Indigenous-owned is growing quickly in Canada, and our new research suggests that their benefits reach far beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The number of such projects on traditional Indigenous territories and reserve lands jumped by more than 300 per cent between 2009 and 2020. Nearly one-fifth of the country’s electricity-generating infrastructure involved First Nations, Métis and Inuit partners or beneficiaries as of 2022.

Yet little is known about the impacts of these renewable-energy projects within the participating communities beyond the physical footprint of the construction.

We aimed to fill this information policy gap in response to a request from two organizations that work extensively with First Nations, the Clean Energy Association of British Columbia and the New Relationship Trust, which obtained funding from Natural Resources Canada to conduct research.

Together we conducted a study to paint a more complete picture of these broader impacts, interviewing knowledge-holders in 14 First Nations in British Columbia involved with 36 planned or operational Indigenous-led renewable energy projects.

We found that these projects employ “placed-based” approaches, often with a high degree of community engagement early on, and revenues often allocated to support their own culture, governance, ecology, support services and economy.

Transformational change

We found that when First Nations’ worldviews are centred and community control is enabled, broad social and cultural benefits result, providing greater self-determination.

As part of our research, we interviewed knowledge-holders from the West Moberly First Nations near Peace River, B.C. The nation has used wind-project revenues to support cultural camps and youth programs. As one knowledge-holder there told us:

“We are involved in it, and we are engaged in it. We are co-owners. And I know our Elders feel really good about hearing that. Knowing that we are not just sitting on the sidelines, while other people fill their pockets in our territory. And our community is doing that kind of stuff more and more. There is a connection there, right, because you are involved. More money is flowing to the community.”

In the Fraser Canyon region, the T’eqt’aqtn’mux (Kanaka Bar Indian Band), which has been affected by wildfires in recent years, has used proceeds from solar projects to reduce fire hazards and protect homes.

In the case of the Skidegate Band Council, we heard that revenues from a two-megawatt microgrid solar project would go toward funding Tll Yahda Energy, a partnership with the Old Massett Village Council to develop renewable energy projects in Haida Gwaii.

While these results demonstrate that a broad range of positive outcomes can flow from Indigenous-led renewable energy projects, the social and cultural impacts remain neglected in conventional energy practice.

An alternative to traditional energy planning

The Indigenous-led projects we heard about stand in contrast to typically used top-down decision-making, favoured by governments.

This approach is often characterized by public consultation that occurs after the decision of where to site the project has been made, often leading to local rejection of the project, and sometimes cancellation.

The bottom-up nature of the approaches we heard about hold important lessons that can enable widespread acceptance of energy transitions.

This is particularly relevant in B.C., where the provincial government is encouraging renewable energy projects to create economic opportunity and counter external economic shocks, including tariffs from the United States.

This policy push extends to the province’s more than 200 First Nations, with a 2025 procurement call that requires at least 25 per cent First Nations ownership of a project.

The B.C. government must also meet its obligations under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which aims to bring provincial legislation into agreement with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The UN treaty requires that state parties enable self-determination and obtain free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous Peoples for projects that impact their lands or resources. Indigenous-led renewable electricity projects in B.C. could help meet requirements under DRIPA to provide pathways for First Nations to improve their economic and social conditions without discrimination.

The Indigenous-led approaches we studied provide a vehicle to support Indigenous communities and make progress toward the province’s decarbonization goals. They also hold valuable lessons for developing policy in other jurisdictions like Ontario, where the provincial government has pledged to boost support for the growing number of Indigenous energy projects.

The world is entering a new era in which energy independence will be more important. Our findings about Indigenous-led projects illustrate a radically different approach to growing the Canada’s renewables industry in a way that can provide energy and facilitate transformational social and cultural change.

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Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is open to acquiring a competing manufacturer and setting up shop to produce cars in Canada—but not if it means entering a joint venture with another company.

“The Shenzhen-based automaker is studying the Canadian market for a potential manufacturing facility, although no decision has been made,” Bloomberg News reports, citing an interview with BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li.

“Perhaps more striking than the Canada factory talk is Li’s candid acknowledgment that BYD is evaluating potential acquisitions of established automakers,” Electrek writes. “Several American, European, and Japanese manufacturers are struggling under the financial strain of maintaining both combustion and electric vehicle product lines simultaneously.”

But while “we’re open to every opportunity we have,” Li said, “I don’t think a JV [joint venture] will work.”

In mid-January, Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to sharply reduce tariffs on electric vehicle imports from China, while China offered up tariff relief for Canadian canola, peas, pork, and seafood. At the time, Canadian observers predicted lower EV prices and possible long-term advantages for the country’s automotive industrial base.

Canada agreed to slash duties on up to 49,000 Chinese EVs per year to a “most-favoured-nation tariff rate” of 6.1 per cent, Carney’s office said in a release. The imports will amount to less than 3 per cent of annual new vehicle sales in Canada, but “will drive considerable new Chinese joint-venture investment in Canada with trusted partners to protect and create new auto manufacturing careers for Canadian workers, and ensure a robust buildout of Canada’s EV supply chain,” the PMO said.

Days later, Carney said he saw the deal as an opportunity for Ontario’s automaking heartland. “We’ve had direct conversations directly from the Chinese companies… with explicit interest and intention to partner with Canadian companies,” he told media during a stopover in Doha, Qatar. “We’ll see what comes to pass. This is an opportunity for Ontario. It’s an opportunity for Ontario workers, opportunity for Canada, done in a controlled way with a modest start.”

Now, Bloomberg says BYD is looking at expanding its reach in overseas markets where it can repeat the “Brazil model”, a marketing and sales approach that has worked well for it in South America and Europe. “Buying existing production capacity with trained work forces is faster and cheaper than building greenfield—and BYD appears to be applying the same logic globally,” Electrek explains.

One place the company isn’t considering an expansion is the United States, a “complicated environment” where tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles exceed 100 per cent and connected car technology is banned.

BYD’s sales fell 36 per cent, to 400,241 vehicles, in the first two months of this year, both news outlets say. “But exports gained momentum, and the company is targeting 1.3 million overseas vehicle sales for the full year,” Electrek reports. “Li said BYD’s recently launched next-generation Blade Battery and ultra-fast flash charging architecture, capable of delivering up to 1,500 kW, will help reverse the domestic sales dip.”

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Canada and Luxembourg have maintained diplomatic relations since 1945 and share membership in key multilateral institutions such as NATO, the United Nations and the Organization internationale de la Francophonie. Luxembourg also opened its embassy in Ottawa in 2025 — a symbolic step in strengthening bilateral engagement.

Economic Partnerships and Investment Dialogue

At the centre of discussions was the launch of the 2026 Canada-Luxembourg Financial Sector Policy Dialogue, a new forum to bring together finance officials on issues including financial stability, sustainable finance, fintech innovation, and capital markets development. Carney and Frieden said the initiative will help align policy approaches in an era of complex global finance.

Luxembourg is one of Canada’s most significant European sources of foreign direct investment (FDI). In 2024, Luxembourg’s FDI stock in Canada was valued at approximately $22.3 billion, while merchandise trade between the two countries totalled about $249.8 million. Luxembourg also ranks among the top European investors in Canada, reflecting strong financial and commercial links.

Both leaders emphasised efforts to expand bilateral trade and investment in advanced sectors such as advanced manufacturing, infrastructure, aerospace, space technology and related technologies. The discussions also touched on opportunities to boost Canadian exports into European markets by leveraging Luxembourg’s position as a global financial hub.

Talent and Academic Collaboration

A significant educational partnership announced during the visit was the establishment of the McGill Luxembourg Centre for Finance and McGill University’s Master of Management in Finance program. The initiative aims to boost academic collaboration and broaden student and talent exchanges between the two countries — a move seen as supporting the development of a globally competitive financial workforce. Prior partnerships underpinning the Centre were established with Luxembourg’s institutional and industry partners, strengthening ties between academic research and financial market practice.

Security, NATO and Ukraine Support

As NATO allies, Canada and Luxembourg also reiterated strong support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. Carney and Frieden discussed reinforcing transatlantic security and bolstering defence supply chains, including in the Arctic, where climate change and geopolitical competition have elevated strategic importance.

Both prime ministers reiterated the need for a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine backed by robust security guarantees. They also signalled support for the proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSR Bank), a concept intended to provide multi-year, low-cost financing for defence, security and resilience initiatives. The instrument — still in discussion — is seen by proponents as a way to strengthen defence industrial cooperation beyond traditional government procurement.

Broader Context: Canada’s Global Strategy

The Ottawa visit comes as Carney pursues an active global agenda aimed at diversifying Canada’s economic partnerships beyond traditional markets. In recent months, his government has been involved in diplomatic engagements in China, where agreements were reached on tariff reductions for key exports including canola oil and electric vehicles, and in other regions focused on investment and trade promotion.

Carney’s emphasis on reliable international partnerships reflects a broader strategy shaped by global economic uncertainty, strained supply chains and geopolitical tensions. As Canada seeks to balance economic growth with security concerns, the Luxembourg visit underscores a pragmatic approach to forging partnerships that integrate investment, talent development and defence cooperation.

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By Gavin Pitchford

I was absolutely gobsmacked earlier this week by just how pervasive certain myths are, and realizing how much work we in the clean economy have to do before Canadians will believe we can make the transition.

And before a critical mass of Canadians see the clean economy as a real option that can displace the fossil fuel industry as an engine for prosperity, employment, improved health, a better environment, and also, a little climate action.

At the invitation of greenwashing expert Dr. Wren Montgomery (Clean50 2026), I took the clean economy show down Highway 401 to London, Ontario and Western University, my alma mater. I was addressing two fourth year Honours Business Administration (HBA) classes at Ivey, arguably Canada’s top business school.

Before I began my description of Canada’s clean economy, I asked both classes a lead-off question: What percentage does Canada’s oil and gas business contribute to our GDP?

Their answers blew me (and Wren) away.

The students came back with a wide range of responses. The closest, from just one of the ~20 students who answered, suggested 35%. Most of the others? Between 50 and 65%. One said 40% and a couple came in at 70%, with one outlier suggesting 90%.

It was literally breathtaking.

Murmurs of ‘Wow’

These are very sharp students. Some of them have already spent summers working for banks and consulting firms. And from all the attention we pay to the fossil fuel industry, the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) the industry spreads, and the amount politicians talk about it, students assumed its importance to Canada was literally 10 times bigger than it actually is.

Also of note, it’s only ~20% of Alberta’s GDP. Of course, if Premier Danielle Smith stopped making it impossible to roll out new wind and solar projects, that number would decrease quite rapidly.

My lecture then tabulated the clean economy numbers—clean/climate tech, renewable energy, green building, green fuels, biotech, venture investment, responsible investing, sustainability consulting. Counting only the numbers I could get with any accuracy, with lots of holes still to fill, the total for the clean economy was actually higher.

And so I was blessed to actually watch world views changing –and in real time!

We talked about where the fossil fuel industry is headed over the next 10 years (flat to down) vs. the clean economy (300% growth over next 10 years, if we keep pace with the rest of the world).

We talked about the incredible impact and massive risk of abandoned oil wells and the oil sands ($260 billion in estimated cleanup costs, with less than $2 billion held in reserve to do the job). How Big Oil offloads liabilities for cleanup by selling almost-depleted wells for pennies on the dollar to smaller companies that strip as much oil as possible—then abandon the business, the cleanup, and the liability, leaving taxpayers on the hook for yet one last VERY big subsidy.

To put this in perspective, the cleanup bill will get bigger, as 50% of existing wells are expected to become non-profitable/non-productive by 2030. And yet the cleanup tab is already half –HALF—of our federal budget for one year.

Solutions That Are Saleable World-Wide

They were dumbfounded all this information was not already well understood by Canadians. That no one had ever shared it with them. One perceptively compared the fossil industry’s misinformation to that previously spread by the tobacco industry.

And they wanted this information spread widely!

We had a couple of dissenting voices in the crowd. “I don’t want government support going to the oil companies—but I don’t want it going to clean tech, either,” said one. Several nods from the free market bros around the room.

So we talked about why clean tech companies should get government support and why oil companies should not: Because clean tech is in a start-up phase, because it’s where the jobs are and where many more will come from, and mostly because intellectual property is highly portable. Other countries want ours, and our best are being pursued with significant government support, matching and top-ups for building facilities, easier access to capital—the list goes on. It means tomorrow’s Canadian business leaders can be lured south to the United States, to Europe, and even to China. taking the jobs with them. And so Canada needs to keep pace with investment, or lose them.

Nods from the free market types. They got it now…

After a lot of further conversation, the students expressed genuine frustration that no one had ever shared these facts with them before, then asked what they could do.

And then they committed to calling their MPs. And I’m holding them to it!

If you want to add your comments, there’s a shorter version of this story posted on LinkedIn.

Gavin Pitchford is founder and executive director of the Canada’s Clean50 sustainability leadership award program and CEO of Delta Management. This post originally appeared in the weekly Clean50 newsletter, and has been edited to match Energy Mix style.

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By Milosz Karpinski, Energy Analyst
Eléonore Carré, Junior Energy Security Analyst

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By Mitchell Beer

An updated industrial carbon pricing system must deliver outcomes as well as optics, the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) concludes this week, based on a review of 57 possible future scenarios for how Alberta’s emission pricing system can deliver on a target price of $130 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

The $130 target under Alberta’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) regulation is built into last November’s controversial memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Canadian and Alberta governments. But the climate institute warns there’s a difference between the advertised price per tonne in a carbon regulation and the effective marginal credit price (EMCP)—the real-world price a carbon polluter actually has to pay, and therefore the strength of the incentive they receive to reduce their emissions.

The institute released its analysis [pdf] this week as Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) looks into whether the federal government’s current benchmarks for industrial carbon pricing “can distinguish systems that merely function from those that deliver outcomes of equivalent stringency,” the CCI paper states. Most of the 57 scenarios could meet the 2030 benchmark on paper, “yet fail[ed] to deliver stringency equivalent to $130-per-tonne EMCP.”

The analysis by CCI Chief Economist Dave Sawyer and Executive Vice President Dale Beugin found that:

• 84% of the scenarios met the federal government’s design criteria for a provincial pricing system;

• But of those apparently successful design options, 77%  failed to deliver the equivalent of a $130-per-tonne EMCP by 2030, meaning that only 11 of the original 57 succeeded.

A High-Stakes Review

The stakes for the ECCC review are high, the paper states, since this year’s decisions on system design and stringency will shape Canada’s industrial carbon pricing market into the 2030s.

The review is also taking place in a deeply politicized atmosphere, with Canada facing a serious sovereignty threat from south of the border and a separation referendum likely to take place in Alberta this year. “Against this backdrop, the federal government has launched a process to modernize large-emitter trading systems,” CCI writes. “The first track is regulatory and technical,” while “the second track is political and bilateral, centred on negotiations between Canada and Alberta.” The paper says the Canada-Alberta MOU sets the $130-per-tonne benchmark, but contains no plan or deadline to meet the stringency target.

The weaknesses in the current system have been accumulating for some time, the institute says. Existing large-emitter trading systems (LETS) “are opaque, rely on outdated design choices, and have been systematically weakened by provinces over time.” The federal government, meanwhile, has been inconsistent in its oversight and “reluctant to impose the backstop where provincial systems fall short, most notably as Saskatchewan zeroed out its industrial carbon price in 2025.”

But improving the system wouldn’t just make it easier to link provincial carbon trading systems and reduce disparities between polluters operating in different jurisdictions: “It would also help shield Canadian exports from rising border carbon tariffs, including the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.”

Asked what it would take for the federal government to adopt a more consistent, evidence-based pricing strategy, Beugin replied that “grounding the benchmark in concrete, transparent metrics of stringency is the best way to shift the federal government’s approach to industrial carbon pricing. It’s currently too easy for provincial systems to comply with the federal benchmark without delivering robust carbon markets with strong incentives to invest in low-carbon projects.  That’s why we’ve proposed an approach that’s focused on market outcomes and ensuring a minimum effective carbon price in each system.”

In response to Trump’s annexation agenda and the separatist threat at home, the CCI’s plan would also “ensure provinces have plenty of flexibility in designing provincial carbon markets,” Beugin added in an email. “We’re suggesting that the federal benchmark makes provinces accountable for delivering an outcome (minimum effective carbon price) without being prescriptive as to how. Provinces can and should tailor their approach to their own context.”

An ‘Unresolved Tension’

However, in the consultation materials that ECCC released late last month, the climate institute said it detected an “unresolved tension” between the carbon pollution price signal the government wants to send and the tools it is proposing to assess polluters’ performance.

“By establishing minimum national stringency standards, the benchmark seeks to ensure that regulated facilities face comparable incentives to reduce emissions and invest in low-carbon technologies,” the CCI explains. But the gap is in the detailed factors ECCC is proposing to measure, including market balance, credit availability, and banking dynamics. “These considerations are necessary to ensure market operation and compliance feasibility,” the paper states, but they aren’t enough on their own to ensure that provincial pricing systems meet the federal target, and meet it on schedule.

“This distinction matters. The relevant question is not simply whether systems adopt the minimum national carbon price (MNCP) schedule, but whether the price signal delivered by the system achieves the intended outcome,” the CCI stresses. “Tests of net demand, market balance, and static banking metrics are useful for determining whether a market is operational. They are not sufficient for determining whether a system meets a given stringency requirement.”

The report identifies the size of the buffer—the extent to which a carbon pricing system adapts to keep the demand for carbon credits higher than the supply—as a key factor driving the stringency of the system. A 6% buffer, the level ECCC has proposed, is enough to keep a carbon market from failing. But carbon pricing systems only “begin to deliver stronger outcomes” with buffers of 10 to 305. They can only deliver reliable price signals, consistent with the federal targets, with buffers of more than 30%.

What Works, What Doesn’t

The CCI paper identifies tighter benchmarks over time as the single most important tool to create a scarcity of carbon credits and reduce emissions. By contrast, that stringency is severely diluted by direct investment credits that allow polluters to directly fund emission reduction projects instead and increase the number of carbon credits in the system while paying a lower carbon price.

“In the scenarios, introducing direct investment credits reduces costs by roughly two-thirds and cuts abatement by more than half,” the paper states. “The cost savings are therefore not a productivity improvement but rather a dilution of policy stringency.”

With a half-dozen policy options included in the analysis, the paper lays out a “clear hierarchy of levers,” Sawyer and Beugin write. “Benchmark tightening does the heavy lifting for equivalency attainment. Floor escalation and banking controls protect and stabilize the signal that benchmarks create. Credit and offset limits provide guardrails. Direct investment credits, by contrast, act as a dilution lever capable of neutralizing even aggressive benchmark tightening.”

The two authors recommend four steps to bolster the system:

• Strengthening the investment incentive for emission reductions—in an updated federal benchmark, and in the MOU—by basing it on what carbon polluters actually have to pay, rather than the average market price of the credits;

• Allowing Alberta and other provinces to find their own way to hit the $130 threshold “subject to a small set of non-negotiable conditions” to ensure their programs meet the test for stringency—including benchmarks that get progressively tighter, minimum and maximum prices that shift over time, and limits on compliance options that dilute the carbon price’s impact;

• Requiring data that is transparent and credible enough to verify compliance;

• Tracking performance over time.

“Taken together,” they write, “these recommendations support a benchmark framework that verifies equivalency based on outcomes rather than optics while maintaining flexibility in provincial system design and strengthening confidence that industrial carbon pricing delivers federal climate objectives.”

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Contracted energy costs for wind and solar projects in Canada have fallen to half of what they were 10 years ago, new analysis shows.

“Now, they’re the lowest-cost form of new electricity generation,” write Pembina Institute electricity program manager David Pickup and senior analyst Will Noel, citing Ontario and Alberta grid operators and global analysts. The authors say the trend is expected to continue, with projections that wind and solar costs will fall another 25% to 50% over the next decade.

The cost decline comes at a good time, as demand for new electricity generation rises with the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other new technologies.

Plunging price trends make new wind and solar projects more affordable, and they can also be brought online faster than fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, Pickup and Noel add. “Getting more affordable electricity generation onto the grid— fast—underpins the competitiveness of the economy.”

Competitive procurement processes at the provincial level helped the wind and solar sectors expand by creating market certainty. The provinces that ran these procurements are now on track to bring online thousands of megawatts of renewable energy in the coming years. Quebec, for instance, has announced plans to develop 10,000 megawatts of wind and 3,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2035, and Manitoba is set to request proposals this March to procure 600 megawatts of wind. In Ontario, a technology-agnostic competitive bid process for up to 7,500 megawatts of new energy and capacity is under way, open to wind and solar developers, energy storage projects, and gas plants.

The Pembina analysts say provincial and territorial governments aiming to take advantage of low-cost electricity from wind and solar will need to plan their systems around a modernized grid.

“This means harnessing the latest technology—including interprovincial interties, demand-side measures, and long-duration energy

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The New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) line, a 1,200-megawatt high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission project, began delivering electricity on January 16, 2026, after nearly a decade of planning, regulatory reviews, legal challenges and construction delays. Designed to carry firm hydroelectricity from Hydro-Québec into the Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE) grid, the line is widely positioned as a key element in decarbonising the region’s power mix and lowering wholesale electricity prices.

Officials in Massachusetts and Maine welcomed the start of commercial operations with rhetoric emphasising affordability, reliability and climate benefits. In a press release celebrating the milestone, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said the project will deliver around 20 per cent of the state’s electricity needs and generate more than US$3.3 billion in net economic benefits through lower wholesale costs over the life of long-term contracts with Hydro-Québec.

“Today power is flowing to Massachusetts through the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line,” Healey said, noting that the project has been completed through “planning, partnerships and perseverance.”

But just days after NECEC began commercial operation, the region was hit by Winter Storm Fern — a blast of Arctic cold that pushed both Canadian and U.S. electricity systems to the brink of peak demand. During the cold snap, power flows on the NECEC link abruptly stopped on January 24 and remained offline until January 26 after Québec restricted exports to meet higher domestic electricity demand as temperatures plunged.

The interruption meant that rather than importing electricity from Hydro-Québec, the ISO-NE grid actually exported power back to Canada, a reversal that lasted from the afternoon of January 24 through the evening of January 25.

That reversal highlighted the very challenge NECEC is meant to address: tight energy markets during winter months when natural gas pipeline capacity is constrained and demand for power and heat surges. During the flow interruption, New England turned to petroleum-fired generation, producing more electricity from oil than natural gas — a less carbon-efficient outcome and a throwback to older fuel sources that clean energy advocates hoped to displace.

Industry observers have been quick to point out that extreme weather conditions — the same conditions that stress grid reliability — also stress water supplies behind major hydroelectric systems, potentially limiting Québec’s ability to export power precisely when it’s needed most. Reporting from Energywire noted that some analysts view the outage as a test of whether cross-border links like NECEC can deliver under peak stress, especially as New England faces growing electricity demand and a shifting generation mix.

Hydro-Québec has acknowledged the interruptions but framed them as a function of record cold and extremely high demand within Québec itself, where much of the population relies on electric heating. A spokesperson for the company told power sector outlets that deliveries were expected to resume and emphasised contractual protections that mitigate ratepayer exposure to shortfalls.

Still, critics argue the early weather test underscores the need for a diversified portfolio of generation resources. Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, told E&E News that while NECEC can help reduce gas burn and emissions under normal conditions, “there is no single answer that will stabilize the system” during peak stress without a mix that includes local generation, storage, renewables and fossil backstops.

Proponents counter that NECEC’s strengths are structural and long-term. Analyses from project backers like Avangrid and Iberdrola — which built the line — point to tens of millions in tax revenue for host communities and savings for ratepayers, who benefit from stable, long-term pricing tied to hydropower contracts.

The project’s ability to reduce New England’s reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets comes as natural gas prices and price volatility remain high, particularly in winter, and as regional policymakers pursue ambitious decarbonisation goals.

Despite the early operational hiccup, NECEC represents one of the largest pieces of cross-border energy infrastructure in North America and a model of regional cooperation between Québec’s hydro-abundant system and U.S. utilities seeking cleaner, more reliable power sources.

Whether it will deliver under peak stress conditions remains an evolving story — one that utilities, regulators and market observers will be watching closely as winter continues and as the region’s energy transition accelerates.

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