The report highlights a rapidly evolving energy system, driven by rising electricity demand, continued reliance on natural gas, and the growing complexity of balancing affordability, reliability, and emissions reductions.

The CER’s Energy Futures analysis is not a prediction, but rather a series of scenarios exploring how Canada’s energy mix could evolve under different economic, technological, and policy conditions.

Still, one conclusion is clear: electricity demand is expected to surge, while natural gas remains a key part of the energy system—even as the country works toward lower emissions.

That finding aligns with a growing body of industry and policy analysis pointing to the same dual trend.

Electricity demand in Canada is rising quickly, driven by electrification of transportation, industry, and buildings. A recent industry report described the situation as requiring Canada to “build big again,” warning that the country may need to dramatically expand its grid to keep pace with demand growth.

At the same time, reliability concerns are emerging. A North American reliability assessment cited by Global News found Canada’s power grid is under increasing strain, with demand expected to outpace new supply in several regions later this decade.

Against that backdrop, natural gas is expected to continue playing a significant role, particularly as a flexible source of power generation that can support intermittent renewables like wind and solar.

Canada’s broader energy landscape is already moving in that direction. Federal data shows renewable electricity is growing, but oil and natural gas remain foundational to the economy and energy system.

The CER report suggests this dual-track evolution—more electricity, but continued natural gas use—will define Canada’s energy transition over the coming decades.

That reflects a broader shift in how policymakers and industry are framing the transition: not as a simple replacement of fossil fuels, but as a more complex transformation of the entire energy system.

Recent federal policy signals point the same way. Ottawa has emphasized the need to invest in grid infrastructure and energy systems to maintain affordability and reliability while transitioning to lower-carbon sources.

The challenge, analysts say, is scale.

Electrification alone could require doubling or even tripling parts of Canada’s electricity system, while maintaining reliability during extreme weather events and peak demand periods. At the same time, natural gas infrastructure continues to expand in some regions to meet growing demand and support economic activity.

This creates a tension at the heart of Canada’s energy future.

On one hand, electricity—particularly from low-emission sources—is expected to do much of the heavy lifting in reducing emissions. On the other, natural gas remains critical for reliability, industrial use, and export opportunities.

The CER’s outlook underscores that both trends are likely to unfold simultaneously.

It also reinforces a key message for policymakers: the transition will require significant investment, regulatory reform, and coordination across provinces and sectors.

Canada’s energy system is already diverse and regionally fragmented, with provinces relying on different mixes of hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels, and renewables. Integrating these systems—while expanding capacity and reducing emissions—will be a major undertaking.

The CER’s modelling highlights the uncertainty involved. Long-term energy forecasts depend on assumptions about technology costs, climate policy, global markets, and consumer behaviour, all of which can change rapidly.

Even so, the direction of travel is becoming clearer.

Electricity is poised to become the backbone of a lower-emissions economy. Natural gas, meanwhile, is expected to remain an important—if evolving—part of the mix.

For Canada, the question is no longer whether the energy system will change, but how quickly—and whether the country can build the infrastructure needed to support that transformation.

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By Normand Mousseau and Roberta Dagher

Record forest fires, under-utilized agricultural residues like straw and husks and struggling sawmills have left Canada with an abundance of undervalued biomass. If carefully and strategically managed, this resource could become a powerful ally in the fight against climate change.

Canada’s biomass sectors are facing significant uncertainty because of political and natural disruptions. The forestry sector was hit last year by new American tariffs announced by the Donald Trump administration on Canadian forest products, bringing the total duties imposed on Canadian lumber to 45 per cent.

The agricultural and agri-food sector is also particularly vulnerable, since it exports more than 70 per cent of its main crops.

In addition to facing these political uncertainties, biomass sectors are increasingly experiencing the effects of climate disasters. In 2025, fires had burned 8.3 million hectares of Canadian forests by Sept. 30, making it Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record. With climate change, extreme weather events like wildfires and droughts are likely to become more frequent and intense.

Change is accelerating and risks are mounting. For industries and communities that rely on biomass, this is the moment to define a long-term role in the climate transition.

Biomass resources

Canada needs to move towards a carbon-neutral economy, and the biomass sectors have a key role to play in this transition.

The availability of diverse biomass resources in Canada’s forests and agricultural lands, combined with new technologies to convert them into bioproducts and bioenergy, makes biomass a potential solution for reducing carbon emissions in several sectors, including industry, construction and all modes of transport (road, marine, rail and air).

Biomass can be part of climate change mitigation strategies. Used properly, it can replace fossil fuels and products, and help store carbon in different ways: in sustainable materials made from wood or agricultural residues, in the form of biochar that traps carbon in the soil or through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which prevents carbon released during energy production from entering the atmosphere.

Several recent projects have demonstrated that interest in biomass feedstocks is high in many industries. In 2025, Canada’s first industrial-scale biochar plant was inaugurated in Québec, while the Strathcona refinery in Alberta will become Canada’s largest facility for renewable diesel.

The potential role of biomass becomes clear in the pathways now being modelled to achieve Canada’s climate goals. These analyses show that if a significant portion of available biomass were used differently, it would be possible to sequester up to 94 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year through BECCS and biochar.

These results underscore the need for Canada to carefully plan new project developments and judiciously allocate biomass between its traditional and emerging uses.

Best uses for biomass

As we explain in a recent study, several factors influence the potential of biomass to reduce emissions, including the type of ecosystem where it’s harvested, the efficiency of its conversion, the fuels used and the products it replaces in the sectors concerned.

In other words, the climate benefits of biomass are not automatic: they depend on the choices that are made at each stage of the value chain. For example, if the processing or transport of resources requires a lot of fossil energy, or if the final product displaces a low-emission alternative, the climate benefit may be marginal or even negative.

Using biomass effectively requires understanding what resources will be available under climate change and their true potential to cut emissions. That potential depends not only on technological efficiency, but also on the cultural, environmental and economic realities of communities.

Still no long-term vision

Decision-makers must avoid working in isolation and take into account the collateral effects of resource allocation. Practices in biomass sectors, whether in forestry or agriculture, evolve slowly. Forests, in particular, follow long growth and harvesting cycles, so the choices made today will influence emissions for decades to come.

Yet, despite the importance of its resources, Canada has no strategy or vision for the role biomass will play in the transition to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Canada has developed several bioeconomy frameworks, including the Renewed Forest Bioeconomy Framework (2022) and the Canadian Bioeconomy Strategy (2019). However, there is still no comprehensive strategy that defines the role biomass will play in achieving a carbon-neutral future, either in energy-related or non-energy-related sectors.

Read more: Océans : les poissons, un puits de carbone invisible menacé par la pêche et le changement climatique

Canada can draw inspiration from its own Canadian Hydrogen Strategy to develop a similar strategy for biomass, based on integrated modelling of its potential in different sectors of the Canadian economy. There is an urgent need to adopt a realistic approach based on analyses at multiple scales — from regional to national — rather than on isolated sectoral targets.

Many players in the sector are stressing the urgent need to adopt a clear national strategy for the bioeconomy in order to provide more predictability to biomass industries in Canada. In an article in Canadian Biomass Magazine, Jeff Passmore (founder and president of Scaling Up) says he’s been waiting for Canada to develop a concrete national strategy for the bioeconomy.

Another article in Bioenterprise in 2023 argued that “one of the key areas needed to build the future of biomass in Canada is a solid, long-term national bioeconomy strategy, supported by industry and governments.”

Finally, a call to action from Bioindustrial Innovation Canada recommends revising the national bioeconomy strategy by setting measurable targets for interdepartmental and intersectoral co-ordination, with a clear road map for collaboration between industry and the public sector.

Biomass cannot be managed blindly. Its impacts vary depending on the region and uses. For future projects to truly contribute to Canada’s climate goals, a coherent national vision is needed now.

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By Jody MacPherson

This story is part of The Energy Mix ongoing investigative series, Hidden Wonder Valley.

Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s proposed $70-billion data centre, designed to run on 7.5 gigawatts of gas-fired power, could raise Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions to levels not seen since the coal era, according to estimates obtained by The Energy Mix.

Planned in an area battling drought, the project’s water needs would also be vast, rivalling the annual use of hundreds of thousands of Alberta households.

Wonder Valley is still nowhere near getting off the ground. But if it ever gets built as planned, it could pump out 25.7 to 30.5 megatonnes of emissions a year, depending on what turbines and gas are used, and whether or not it includes carbon capture, found [pdf] Pembina Institute Senior Analyst Jason Wang, who crunched the numbers for The Mix.

“It would be the equivalent of a return to the era of mostly coal-fired electricity,” said Wang.

The reversal would set the province and Canada back about 20 years, matching the 27 megatonnes of coal emissions Alberta phased out between 2005 and 2023.

The data centre complex, which O’Leary claims will be the “largest on Earth,” would require the equivalent of about 10 per cent of all gas supply in Alberta once fully operational.

It’s still just a concept, but in the Municipal District of Greenview where it’s planned, local officials are confident it will be built.

“We’re about to pull off the largest project in Canadian history in this sector and I think Greenview should be really proud of that,” Chief Administrative Officer Stacey Wabick told council members at a budget review meeting in November.

Wonder Valley was announced with great fanfare last December, a few days after the Alberta government unveiled a new data centre strategy designed to attract $100 billion in investments.

At the time, Innovation and Technology Minister Nate Glubish said data centres would play a “significant role” in Premier Danielle Smith’s plan to double oil and gas production by increasing domestic demand for gas.

The land designated for Wonder Valley is south of Grande Prairie, about 460 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. It’s located on the massive Montney Formation, one of North America’s, and perhaps one of the world’s, largest gas reservoirs.

Wang said the first phase of the project, requiring 1,400 megawatts (MW) of power, would generate about 4.7 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year using shale gas to run a combined-cycle gas turbine, the most efficient type of gas power. That would make it one of the largest industrial facilities in the province, he said.

Carbon capture and storage has been promised for Wonder Valley, but not necessarily at startup. Wang said a carbon pipeline would need to be built between the facility and an injection site.

“With carbon capture efficacy at about 80 per cent, it would still mean the first phase of Wonder Valley would be 1.3 Mt/year of greenhouse gas emissions,” Wang said.

Huge Water Demand, No Consultation

Another requirement for data centres is the large amount of water they use for cooling. But water is also needed to run gas power plants. Even though the Grande Prairie area is known for longer, colder winters, Wang estimated the water needed for the fully completed data centre, including both cooling and for the power plant, would be between 112 and 195 billion litres per year. That is roughly one-third to two-thirds of the total annual water consumption of all the households in Alberta.

Multiple communities in the region are struggling with drought and water supply issues. Greenview itself declared an agricultural disaster due to drought this past summer, and that same day, its council approved adding more land to the purchase agreement being negotiated with O’Leary.

The nearby Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation (SLCN) received public assurances from the province that it would be consulted before water permits were issued. But records show that Greenview was granted Water Act licences for withdrawals from two locations on the Smoky River at the proposed Wonder Valley site before the First Nation’s input was sought.

“To this day, we have heard nothing from O’Leary other than generic statements, and Greenview has not said a word to us since the spring of 2024,” SLCN Chief Sheldon Sunshine told The Mix in a Dec. 1 email, adding that there has been “no meaningful consultation.”

“In fact, they claim there is no project, so we are completely in the dark.”

Jonathan Gauthier, press secretary to Glubish’s ministry, told The Mix in January that Environment and Protected Areas (EPA) had issued Greenview a “preliminary certificate which will allow a Water Act licence to be issued in future, provided various mandatory conditions are met,” emphasizing that the conditions included “appropriate consultation with First Nations.”

According to court-filed documents [pdf] provided to The Mix, SLCN requested a copy of the preliminary certificate, but never received it. When they met with then-Indigenous relations minister Rick Wilson, Glubish, and officials from the province’s Aboriginal Consultation Office (ACO) in April, they say they discovered that on top of the preliminary certificate, a full water permit had been granted without their knowledge. The full permit was dated one day before the meeting.

SLCN filed an appeal of the water licence to the environmental appeal board, which according to documents viewed by The Mix, Greenview has applied to strike, saying the board cannot consider Treaty and Aboriginal rights. Alberta has supported Greenview’s position.

In the public filing, SLCN said ACO officials told them they did an assessment and decided there was no duty to consult because “the issuance of the licence would have no impacts on SLCN’s Treaty and Aboriginal rights.” The Nation is asserting the land is part of their traditional territory, that members have registered traplines throughout the area, and that they should have been consulted.

“We knew AI data centres were water guzzlers. We didn’t know it was that bad,” Sunshine wrote to The Mix. “We also know that taking this much fresh water and then releasing it causes increased toxins, which is detrimental for us as well as those that farm, but where is the opposition?”

Putting Gas First

Many data centre developers around the world are looking to clean, cost-effective renewable energy to power their projects because “it’s cheaper to get electricity from wind and solar than it is from gas,” Pembina’s Wang said. Clean technology industrial areas are springing up in the United States, where renewable energy and data centres are located together, using “green” steel and cement.

“Renewable energy can be built faster right now than gas turbines can be procured and installed,” he added. And there could be an opportunity for wind and solar if Alberta loosened up some of its renewables restrictions, noting that the government had promised to open up an engagement process on the possibility of solar and wind development on Crown land.

Greenview has seen past plans fall through for the site they’ve dubbed the “Greenview Industrial Gateway.” In 2021, then-premier Jason Kenney said a planned $2.5-billion petrochemical plant to produce ammonia and methanol from gas was a “sign of hope in the province’s recovery.”

Northern Petrochemical Corporation’s website is still under construction four years later. CEO Geoff Bury did not respond to The Mix’s request for an update. In 2023, The Progress Report wrote that Bury expected to reach a final investment decision in 2024.

A combined geothermal and carbon sequestration project was also announced for the site by Alberta No. 1 Geothermal Energy, but the company’s website hasn’t been updated with any progress since July 2023.

“There definitely are opportunities for exploring other types of energy in my view,” Wang said, adding that Alberta is upgrading [pdf] the electricity line to Grande Prairie and most data centre projects see more benefits from being grid-connected due to the very high standard for power availability.

“And that might not mean the specific area where Wonder Valley is proposed, but maybe just a few kilometres away there’s really good potential that could be tapped into.”

Alberta’s “gas-centric” data centre strategy has also raised questions from energy experts who say the province may be sabotaging its own aspirations by discouraging wind and solar power.

But a new 2 per cent levy on data centres requiring grid connection favours projects that “bring their own power.” That makes the province’s ubiquitous gas more of an option as long as renewables are bogged down by Alberta’s strict regulations.

The Globe and Mail reports that around 29 data centre projects have requested connection to the grid for access to 16,000 MW, but the provincial grid operator has put a cap on the amount of electricity available to data centres.

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By Mitchell Beer

Prime Minister Mark Carney is preparing to release a new carbon competitiveness strategy that promises real-world outcomes over aspirational goals, but relies heavily on still-evolving carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to deliver those results, the PM’s recent media statements suggest.

The strategy is expected to be released this month, and possibly in the next few days. The latest speculation on timing follows a sudden flurry of anticipation late last week, with climate policy groups sending reporters their contact information for responses over the weekend.

The strategy will be released as questions swirl about whether Carney is abandoning the climate priorities he famously emphasized as a central banker, high-profile author, United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance, and vice-chair of a major renewable energy investment firm.

“I’m the same me. I’m focused on the same issues,” Carney told the Bloomberg Weekend podcast with Mishal Husain. “The question is: how do you make progress toward those issues? And particularly, how do you make progress in a way that is most effective?”

All signs points to a strategy that will “deprioritize Canada’s commitments to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions, in favour of focusing on ways to reap economic advantage from the global transition toward low-carbon energy,” writes Globe and Mail policy columnist Adam Radwanski.

“By all accounts, Ottawa is unlikely to officially change national emissions targets—which currently involve a reduction of at least 40% from 2005 levels by 2030—because it’s too difficult legislatively and as a matter of international process,” Radwanski reports, citing interviews with nearly a dozen sources familiar with the emerging policy. “Instead, the strategy is expected to play them down and perhaps tacitly acknowledge they won’t be reached. To the extent that it mentions those sorts of goals, it will likely be through an emphasis on net-zero emissions by 2050, not nearer-term landmarks.”

But “a subtext will be that despite the United States retreating from climate action, the energy transition is continuing apace globally, and Canada needs to embrace related economic opportunity,” he adds. That will lead into a strategy of decarbonizing existing industries and bolstering the country’s ability “to compete in growing low-carbon sectors, such as the electric vehicle battery supply chain, non-emitting electricity, mass timber, and early-stage clean technologies.”

Ottawa will attempt that manoeuvre while navigating a global trade war, seeking to “appease” Alberta and other fossil-dependent provinces, and “reassuring people—including Liberal caucus members—disconcerted by his deprioritization of climate policy since taking office despite championing it before,” the columnist writes.

Radwanski lists industrial carbon pricing, support for clean electricity, EV battery supply chains, and a focus on early-stage cleantech innovation as likely pillars of the strategy, while citing affordability as a priority the PM should connect to his climate strategy at every opportunity. “It’s in Mr. Carney’s interest to draw the connection wherever possible, if he wants to bring people along,” he writes.

Radwanski echoed continuing signals that Carney might trade away the federal government’s hard-fought, watered-down cap on oil and gas emissions, which will not take effect until 2030-32, in exchange for a stronger industrial carbon pricing system with enough heft to have an impact on emissions—a goal the Alberta government was undercutting as recently as last month. Carney didn’t dispel concerns about the fate of the emissions cap, telling Bloomberg Weekend that “a desired outcome is not a policy.”

Instead, “what makes those emissions go down will be carbon capture and storage,” he declared, while specifically name-checking the Pathways Alliance project, a $16.5-billion carbon capture hub and pipeline network that six major oil sands companies have been promoting for years, but refusing to launch without massive taxpayer support. Independent analysts have warned the project could be “scuppered” without permanent subsidies and won’t break even without efficiency gains and steadier revenue.

After multiple high-profile failures, the technology’s biggest boosters admit it won’t be ready for prime time before 2035—long after global climate agreements, and the urgency of the climate crisis itself, will dictate steep reductions in the oil sands’ massive climate footprint. Last month, a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Nature concluded that global carbon storage capacity is 10 times less than previous estimates after ruling out geological formations where the gas could leak, trigger earthquakes, contaminate groundwater, or had other limitations.

Carney previously suggested a “grand bargain” in which the massive Pathways project would enable the new oil pipeline the Alberta government has been demanding, despite a “flashing red warning light” that such a project would also need massive taxpayer subsidies in an era of low oil prices.

“All of the indicators are that he’s doubling down on fossil fuels, which is bad for the climate, it’s bad for the Canadian economy, and he should know better because he knows the climate science,” University of Toronto political scientist Jessica Green told Bloomberg. While acknowledging that Donald Trump’s trade wars have put Canada in a difficult position, she said Carney would gain credibility by showing how the country can decarbonize over the longer term.

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By Chris Bonasia

Most environmental assessments ignore start-up flaring at LNG export facilities, but the waste gas emissions in this phase emit far more pollution than reported and threaten nearby communities, a new study concludes.

“Our real-world analysis shows that start-up flaring is among the highest-emission phases of an LNG plant’s life cycle and can last for up to two years,” Dr. Laura Minet, the study’s lead researcher and head of the Clean Air Lab at the University of Victoria, told the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

“There is a false assumption that the commissioning phase is short, with regulators in Canada, and beyond, satisfied with relying on industry-provided flaring assumptions for environmental permitting that do not include modelling for the start-up phase.”

The LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, British Columbia—which was still under construction during the study period and so excluded from the analysis—“has been flaring in its commissioning phase for more than a full year,” Tracey Saxby, executive director of the environmental organization My Sea to Sky, said in a media release emailed to The Energy Mix.

Saxby called the overlooking of start-up flaring emissions “a glaring loophole” that has direct impacts on B.C. communities. “We’re calling on the BC government to immediately require full modelling and accounting of flaring emissions in the LNG commissioning phase, including for projects that have already been approved.”

The Narwhal has a deep dive into the health impacts of LNG expansion in Kitimat.

The recent study offers a first-of-its-kind global analysis of flaring, combining satellite observations with data from 48 LNG export terminals identified by the World Bank and the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund. Roughly half of the facilities began operations before satellite flaring data was available in 2012, so only newer plants could be analyzed for start-up conditions.

Researchers recorded flaring events under start-up and normal operating conditions and compared their observations against industry-reported datasets. They found major discrepancies: reported data underestimated flared gas volumes at two-thirds of the facilities, while others required further investigation. None of the environmental assessments the researchers reviewed quantified start-up flaring or modelled its impact on local air quality.

The start-up period is often portrayed as “a short phase with negligible air pollution emissions,” write the researchers. But the study shows that start-up can last up to two years, with high flaring activity persisting well beyond the first year. For a 30-year facility, start-up flaring could account for 1 to 16% of total lifetime flared gas.

“While these percentages may appear low, flaring emits pollutants, such as benzene, that can cause acute health effects even over short exposure periods,” the researchers write. They say the proximity of many LNG projects to residential areas make it essential to include start-up flaring in environmental assessments.

CAPE writes that start-up flaring is not “truly modelled” in environmental assessments for Canada’s LNG export facilities, including the planned Woodfibre LNG, Cedar LNG, and Ksi Lisims LNG projects.

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By Joseph Winters

Drawing down carbon from the air and stashing it in underground rock formations has been framed as an essential way to slow and reverse global warming. But new research published Wednesday in the journal Nature finds there are far fewer suitable places to do this than previously thought.

After screening out “risky” areas, like those that are vulnerable to earthquakes, a team of researchers from Europe and the U.S. found that the Earth can only safely store about 1,460 gigatons of injected carbon in its sedimentary basins. This is an order of magnitude less than previous estimates, and — if you convert stored carbon to an estimated impact on the climate — only enough to cut global warming by about 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit), not the 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F) described in other research.

Carbon storage “can no longer be considered an unlimited solution to bring our climate back to a safe level,” one of the study’s co-authors, Joeri Rogelj, said in a statement. “Geological storage space needs to be thought of as a scarce resource that should be managed responsibly to allow a safe climate future for humanity.” Rogelj is director of research at the Grantham Institute on climate change and the environment at Imperial College London.

Carbon storage, for the sake of the paper, refers to the injection of carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs where it theoretically can’t contribute to climate change. There are two broad ways to get this carbon: first, by capturing it at the point of emission — say, the smokestack of a fossil fuel-powered cement factory — and second, by sucking it out of the ambient atmosphere.

According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the world’s foremost authority on the topic, at least some carbon storage will be necessary to achieve international climate targets.

But the amount needed is dependent on a number of factors, including how much countries plan to slash emissions versus “offsetting” them, especially from hard-to-decarbonize sectors, and whether they intend to blow past 1.5 or 2 degrees C (2.7 or 3.5 degrees F) of global warming and then return to a more liveable temperature by removing carbon from the atmosphere. The latter is a contentious idea known as “overshoot,” and it would necessitate more carbon pulled out of the air and stored. Some IPCC scenarios involving substantial overshoot assume up to 2,000 gigatons of carbon storage by the year 2100.

According to the study’s authors, no previous global or regional estimate of the Earth’s technical carbon storage potential has taken into account key risk factors that would make some areas undesirable for storage. Starting from an estimate of all potentially available storage sites, their analysis cuts out areas that are too shallow, too deep, and too prone to earthquakes, as well as environmentally protected areas and areas near where people live. This reduces the total available capacity for carbon storage from 11,780 gigatons to just 1,460 gigatons of CO2, 70 percent of it on land and 30 percent on the seafloor.

The authors used an existing conversion rate from the IPCC to translate that gigaton number to about 0.4 to 0.7 degrees C (0.7 to 1.3 degrees F) of reduced global warming.

They also noted some geographical disparities in the potential for carbon storage: While some historical climate polluters such as the U.S. and Canada have lots of space to safely stash carbon, others in Europe don’t. If those countries intend to make carbon storage a significant piece of their climate mitigation plans, they will likely have to look for locations in countries that have done little to contribute to climate change, potentially in Africa.

Sally Benson, an energy science and engineering professor at Stanford University who was not involved in the new research, said its findings should not be seen as “alarming” or “dramatic.” As described in the paper, IPCC scenarios that give the world a 50 percent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century would require sequestering about 9 gigatons of carbon per year (assuming that net-zero emissions are achieved around 2050). That means it could be more than 160 years before the world reaches the safe carbon storage limit calculated in the study.

“What that tells me is that this is kind of good news,” Benson said. “Somebody has taken the most conservative of possible approaches to looking at this capacity and concluded, from my perspective, that there’s a lot of capacity relative to what we need.”

The study authors note that the need for storage could continue after their theoretical limit is reached, especially if countries keep needing to offset residual emissions from agriculture or the burning of fossil fuels in some sectors. Climate tipping points could also release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than anticipated, necessitating more carbon removal than expected.

But Benson said these risks are too far in the future and that “we need to use all of the technologies available as quickly as possible.”

Both Benson and another independent expert — Jennifer Wilcox, a professor of chemical engineering and energy policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy — said the paper’s central estimate for safe and prudent carbon storage is likely too conservative. Wilcox told Grist it “undercounts what carefully pressure-managed projects can safely deliver.”

But Naomi Oreskes, a professor in the history of science at Harvard University, held the opposite opinion. Oreskes said the paper fails to consider governmental, economic, and scientific challenges to actually deploying carbon storage at scale. “When you take those factors into account,” she said, “the potential for carbon storage, particularly in the crucial next decade, is even less.”

Despite significant hype around the technology, only about 0.05 gigatons of CO2 are currently stored via point-of-emission carbon capture each year. So far, most of these carbon capture projects inject carbon into the ground to aid the extraction of even more oil and gas, in a process known as “enhanced oil recovery.” And only 0.00001 gigatons of CO2 are removed from the ambient air each year. That’s less than the stated annual greenhouse gas emissions of Bowdoin College, a small liberal arts school in Maine.

“This new information is consistent with a broader pattern we have observed, of overstating the promise of ‘solutions’ that sidestep the central issue of reducing fossil fuel use,” Oreskes said.

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By Jody MacPherson

Saskatchewan is pressing ahead with its plan to keep burning coal for electricity, committing $900 million over four years to refurbish its coal-fired power plants in the face of a projected $349-million budget deficit.

The province considered energy security, reliability, and affordability before deciding to extend the life of its three coal-fired power plants, but energy security was the main driver, Minister Jeremy Harrison told the Globe and Mail. More than 90% of the province’s natural gas is imported from Alberta and the U.S., he said.

“We know where the coal is. We know that we have it and we own it.”

Saskatchewan’s plan to extend coal goes against regulations introduced in 2018 by the Trudeau government to phase out coal-fired electricity across Canada by 2030. In 2019, Saskatchewan negotiated an agreement with Ottawa to pause federal rules and gain latitude for achieving the same emissions outcomes in its own way. Now, the province says coal will serve as a bridge to nuclear generation, promising to bring its grid emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Other options, like building new gas-fired power plants, would cost about twice as much as coal refurbishment to produce the same amount of electricity, provincial utility SaskPower said.

But the $900-million coal expense comes amid a $349-million budget deficit, with the actual shortfall possibly twice as much, according to CKOM News. That’s because the province’s balance sheet includes $467 million in revenue from the “Output-Based Performance Standards,” its own industrial carbon tax as mandated by the federal government, which it no longer collects.

Premier Scott Moe announced in March that the province would stop collecting the levy, calling Saskatchewan the first province in Canada to be “carbon tax free.” Ratepayers had previously been charged the tax on their electricity bills.

Saskatchewan’s finance ministry told CKOM it continued to forecast revenue from the tax due to an accounting requirement till the program is formally repealed.

In its first-quarter statement, the province reported a $163-million decrease in SaskPower’s net income due to abandoning the carbon levy. CKOM reports the ministry said it was absorbing the cost of the industrial tax.

Saskatchewan had originally announced an expected $12-million surplus, but then revised to a $349-million deficit after the first-quarter numbers were crunched, reports to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Harrison said the budget of nearly a billion dollars would cover the “vast majority of the capital needed to keep the coal plants producing power.”

Clean energy advocates say the province lacks an estimate of the actual cost to refurbish the plants.

“These plants had been scheduled to shut down permanently for many years, which normally means that maintenance is allowed to drop off,” Glenn Wright, a lawyer representing three residents of Saskatchewan and Manitoba who’ve asked for a judicial review of the coal decision, told The Energy Mix. “I would not be surprised at all if there would be cost overruns on the refurbishment because the condition of the plants has been allowed to deteriorate, since they were planned to be permanently shuttered.”

Wright also suggested the full cost of the project would only be understood if the province had a price on pollution. “Without making polluters pay, then the social costs of pollution are also ignored,” he said, calling for clean energy to replace fossil sources.

A group of atmospheric scientists is backing the legal action, warning in a formal statement that the decision to prolong coal in Saskatchewan could have dire economic and environmental consequences.

“We’re used to a fairly stable climate over the last hundred years or so and if we’re going to be wandering significantly away from that, that could have significant consequences for our ability to grow crops and to farm the types of crops that we’ve been used to doing here on the prairies,” Ron Hopkinson, a retired meteorologist with more than 50 years of experience, told Discover Weyburn.

Hopkinson spoke to the news outlet on behalf of the scientists, who are calling for increased use of solar and wind energy instead of spending money to keep coal plants running.

“This is not about being anti-development,” he told Discover Humboldt. “It’s about making development sustainable—because we’re all going to live with the consequences.”

Julie Dabrusin, the federal minister of environment and climate change, issued a statement on LinkedIn about Saskatchewan’s coal reversal, reiterating that “phasing out coal is essential” and a “key step in building a climate competitive economy.”

Warning that Saskatchewan’s equivalency agreement with Ottawa expires at the end of 2026, she said the federal government would continue to work with provinces and territories to ensure that all legal requirements and climate commitments are met.

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By Chris Bonasia

Methane emissions from Canada’s inactive oil and gas wells are up to seven times higher than government estimates, a new McGill study finds—with a relatively small number of high emitters responsible for most of the pollution.

The study analyzes the methane footprints of sites with non-producing wells across Canada, focusing on emissions from two sources: above-ground wellhead equipment, and surface casing vents (SVCs)—pipes designed to prevent the buildup of pressure within a wellbore. These sites emit an average of 230 kilotonnes of emissions each year, estimate the researchers, far more than the 34 kilotonnes reported in the federal government’s 2024 National Inventory Report (NIR). However, the study’s statistical uncertainty indicates that the actual number could be anywhere between 51 to 560 kilotonnes annually.

A few high-emitting wells dominate the emissions. “For example, one well can emit as much as 100 wells combined,” study co-author Jade Boutot, a PhD student in civil engineering, told CBC News, adding that those wells should be prioritized for remediation.

The McGill study’s wellhead emission estimate is about half the federal estimate, but estimates for SVC emissions are 16 times greater than NIR figures. It showed lower uncertainty than the NIR for wellhead emissions estimates, but comparatively higher uncertainty for SVC emissions.

Environment and Climate Change Canada said it is reviewing the research and may include it in a review of how it estimates methane emissions, reported CBC News.

Methane emissions from non-producing wells are difficult to estimate accurately in Canada and elsewhere due to limited direct measurements and uncertainty about the exact number of wells. In Canada, non-producing wells make up more than 70 per cent of the total number of oil and gas wells.

But Canada’s 2024 NIR—which covered data as recent as 2022—reports 409,319 inactive wells, 15 per cent fewer than the 471,276 wells the researchers counted. “Our well count is unlikely to be an overestimate, as it corresponds to the wells in government databases with unique identifiers,” write the researchers.

The most recent NIR released in 2025 using data from 2023, placed the total number of abandoned oil and gas wells at approximately 423,000.

The McGill study reassesses the scale of emissions from these non-producing wells based on a dataset of methane flow-rate measurements for 494 of them. The dataset covers five provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec—using publicly available provincial and territorial data that includes 105 previously unmeasured wells. The authors say the dataset is “the largest measurement database using a consistent methodology.”

Researchers collected data about well attributes that include geographic location, well status, and other specifications. They also took 678 measurements across the sites in the dataset to directly quantify flow rate with a static-chamber methodology, which measures gas accumulation in an enclosed area over time.

They acknowledge that, given the study’s small sample size, “emission estimates remain highly uncertain.”

Alberta had the highest methane flow rates for both wellheads and SVCs. Saskatchewan’s wellheads showed a comparable rate, but measurements for SVCs were markedly lower there. The distribution of both wellhead and SCV methane flow rates was skewed by large emitters, with 98 per cent of emissions coming from only the top 12 per cent of wellheads and the top 2.1 per cent of SVCs.

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By Ian Urquhart

“Alberta is a place soaked in self-deception.” Those words began Alberta-based journalist Mark Lisac’s 2004 book aimed at shattering the myths that have unhelpfully animated too much of Alberta’s politics over the past few decades.

Current and former Alberta politicians are once again embracing and treating separatist grievances seriously. That means it’s time once again to highlight and challenge political misconceptions that have the potential to destroy Canada.

Oil is the root of one such myth. The misconception? That Ottawa perennially opposes the oil and gas sector and is determined to stop its continued growth. The National Energy Program (1980), the Northern Gateway pipeline project (2016), the Energy East Pipeline (2017) and the proposed greenhouse gas pollution cap allegedly prove Ottawa’s hostility.

Notably missing from these grievances is the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. Ottawa supported these projects aimed at transporting Alberta oil sands crude to foreign markets. The federal government even purchased the Trans Mountain project from Kinder Morgan in 2018 — not to kill it, but to build it.

Read more: Justin Trudeau’s risky gamble on the Trans Mountain pipeline

As for Keystone XL, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney thanked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for supporting the project. This doesn’t fit the separatist narrative, so it’s largely ignored.

Oil sands booster

No one should dispute the National Energy Program’s devastating impact on Alberta’s conventional oil and gas sector 40 years ago. But the oil sands, not conventional oil, propelled Canada to its position as the world’s fourth largest oil producer.

Has Ottawa facilitated or obstructed the spectacular post-1990 growth of oil sands production?

The record shows that, since the mid-1970s, Ottawa has facilitated and supported the oil sands sector. The federal government helped keep the Syncrude project alive in 1975 when it took a 15 per cent interest in Canada’s second oil sands operation.

Ironically, Ottawa’s enthusiasm for more, not less, petroleum from the oil sands also appeared in 1980 via the National Energy Program (NEP), the devil in Alberta’s conservative catechism. What most accounts of the NEP don’t mention is that Ottawa offered tax benefits to oil sands companies while stripping them from conventional oil producers.

Furthermore, the NEP’s “made-in-Canada” pricing effectively guaranteed Syncrude would receive the world price for its production. At $38 per barrel, Syncrude received more than double what conventional producers received. If the NEP was harsh on conventional oil producers, it helped create a golden future for the oil sands.

In the mid-1990s, Ottawa helped propel the post-1995 oil sands boom. The industry-dominated National Task Force on Oil Sands Strategies sought federal tax concessions to promote oil sands growth. The federal government delivered them in its 1996 budget, despite Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s general concern with cutting the deficit.

Again, these measures clearly contradict the myth of federal opposition to the oil industry.

Generous emissions caps

Ottawa’s policy favouritism towards the oil sands didn’t end there. It has consistently animated the federal government’s treatment of the oil sands in its climate change policies.

The federal Climate Change Plan for Canada (2002) treated oil and gas leniently. Its measures for large industrial emitters bore a striking resemblance to the climate change policy preferences of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Suncor and Syncrude, the two leading oil sands producers, estimated these federal proposals would add a pittance, between 20 and 30 cents, to their per barrel production costs.

Justin Trudeau’s response to Alberta’s 2015 oil sands emissions cap also underlined Ottawa’s favouritism, not hostility, to the dominant player in Canada’s oil patch.

Rachel Notley’s NDP government set this cap at 100 million tonnes of GHG per year, plus another 10 million tonnes allowed to new upgrading and co-generation facilities. This cap was a whopping 39 million tonnes or 55 per cent higher than what the oil sands emitted in 2014.

This generous cap contributed to a tremendous increase in oil sands production. Healthy profits became record profits in 2022. Ottawa embraced Alberta’s largesse, incorporating the province’s cap into its post-2015 climate policies.

Furthermore, Ottawa increased its leniency towards the oil sands by exempting new in-situ (non-mining) oil sands projects in Alberta from the federal Impact Assessment Act. This exemption applies until Alberta’s emissions cap is reached. Canada’s latest National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions reported record oil sands GHG emissions of 89 million tonnes in 2023, still 11 million tonnes shy of the 100 million tonne threshold.

Weaponizing myths

Finally, we have today’s proposed national cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta is apoplectic about the cap. But whether or not it’s intentional, Premier Danielle Smith’s outrage feeds into secessionist sentiment by seemingly misrepresenting the cap’s impact on oil and gas production.

Smith and her environment minister use the work of the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer (PBO) to nurture their “Ottawa hates oil” narrative. They claim the officer’s analysis of the cap’s economic impact showed it “will cut oil and gas production by five per cent, or more than 245,000 barrels per day.”

This is simply not true.

In fact, the PBO concluded that, with the cap, oil sands production “is projected to remain well above current levels” — 15 per cent higher than in 2022. The proposed federal emissions cap, like the Alberta NDP’s cap of a decade ago, is higher than current oil sands emissions levels. The PBO concluded the proposed ceiling for oil sands emissions would be six per cent higher than 2022 emissions.

Ottawa’s proposed cap, in fact, continues its decades-long support of the oil ands.

Myths are central to our being. When I tell my grandsons about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I hope to inspire curiosity, imagination and interest in their grandmother’s Irish heritage.

But in politics, fanciful stories can be dangerous. Some weaponize myths, using the fictions at their core to encourage followers to let falsehoods rule their behaviour. That seems to be playing out yet again in Alberta. We must demand better from the political class.

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