The Energy Transition

I just read Shankar Narayan’s piece about “the Energy Transition”. He’s writing about Britain but the argument applies equally to Canada!

How Britain Can Win the Energy Transition

Here is the hard sell:

There will be no clean, painless transition into a clean-energy world. It will take time. That transition period will be uneven, expensive and vulnerable to disruption. And that is precisely the period the gang (the international/US oligarchs - my emphasis and explanation) intends to exploit.

• They will exploit shortages.

• They will exploit price spikes.

• They will exploit industrial bottlenecks.

• They will exploit every dependency democratic countries leave exposed.

The mistake is to think of this as an either-or choice.

• Oil and gas, or renewables.

• Nuclear, or wind and solar.

• Domestic production, or the clean transition.

It cannot be either-or. It has to be both until we limp into safety.

Every country inside the alliance should produce the oil and gas resources available to it. Every country should continue expanding its renewable-energy mix. Every country with an existing nuclear base should strengthen it rather than allowing it to decay. And every country should be investing heavily in grids, storage and charging infrastructure.

This is the message people in Canada don’t get. It’s the path the Carney government is in the process of strengthening - using oil and gas sales to build ties with other middle nations while trying to build out renewables here at home.

The problem? The concrete plans for development of renewables isn’t clear to me. Yes there are the new Canadian government ads in support of renewables but are there projects on the ground? Projects already in the works? New projects being proposed?

I don’t see news headlines making the renewable development obvious. I think Canadians would be more understanding / accepting of these new fossil fuels agreements were we aware of the build-out in renewables currently happening. If we understood the transition better.

Yes, a quick google search brings up Government of Canada policy announcements and papers describing the plans, and even links to announcements of recent funding to projects now underway, but I doubt many Canadians are remotely aware of how these projects are ramping up.

The media gatekeepers are part of the problem - the projects that have happened and those getting underway aren’t getting much, if any, national attention. We’re not getting much explanation of how we’re handling the transition.

Carney needs to do more sharing of what’s going on, explaining how he’s working to navigate the energy transition so more of us can stand behind him.

It’s the idea of TRANSITION most of us aren’t getting. It needs to made much more obvious!