Any “energy transition” strategy, if applied too quickly, is obviously going to cost way more than what the Feds would like anyone to believe. I am extremely doubtful that the costs are going to be what the Feds are purporting here.
Look at any energy transition scheme worldwide in any jurisdictions, it is not cheap and it will cost a lot. Pretty confident in that.
Now that all said, to stunt or prevent or stop or delay or whatever, any new investments into renewables or any technology or not support businesses or fledgling investments in these fields- is idiotic. Full stop. Alberta has the potential to be an energy superpower and a logical place to be the technological and investment hotbed of such research and development and head offices for these types of companies. I see no reason whatsoever why Alberta wouldn’t want this. It doesn’t even stop, prevent or delay oil and gas investment because anyone who has a read on energy use and oil and gas demand knows oil and gas is going to still be around and active for decades- even with the development of renewables and transition energies. To attempt to curate policy or political rhetoric to try and pit renewables vs. Oil and gas shows just how ideological and short-sighted Smith is.
Yoho you say Smith is fighting for her constituents. I disagree, because what she is doing is actually not in their best interests for the long term. As has been mentioned, carbon hubs and many other carbon reduction projects are key investment portfolios of almost every major oil and gas company in Canada today. CNRL, Strathcona, Tourmaline, Suncor, (all Pathways partners), Wolf, AltaGas, Pembina, Keyera, etc. etc. on and on- all have carbon reduction projects, carbon capture projects, projects that hinge on the carbon tax and current plan to escalate to $170/T that the feds put out a few years ago. Why on earth would you scrap or reverse that after all of your industry is already moving in lockstep with the policy and which doubles with being able to boast that the industry truly IS world class and frontier burning in applying new oil and gas technologies that are better for the environment. If this is the Canadian oil and gas brand, saying that we’re the best and brightest and should be given social license for these projects, why would you stunt it by reversing the policies that enabled companies to economically enable these long-term projects?
Alberta can be an energy superpower, not just an oil and gas superpower. It provides long-term investment, jobs, and regional growth and we have the engineering and technical talent to do it, as well as access to reliable capital markets. It makes so much sense, so I just don’t understand where the UCP is coming from other than- the only thing I think they’re right about- that a transition plan that is overly aggressive WILL be overly burdensome on average Albertans. But that’s really just a matter of negotiation with the feds.
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