Carney government relies on energy ‘transition’ myth at our peril  

Canadian discourse on all things energy is locked into a false narrative, about how this country has been and will be powered. Canada, we often hear, is “transitioning” from a past where most energy was generated by combusting fossil fuels to a future where most energy will come from non-fossil-fuel sources such as wind and solar power. And according to Prime Minister Mark Carney, his government will “lead the energy transition while ensuring affordable energy at home and building the strongest economy in the G7.” 

Carney’s been pushing the transition for some time. As governor of the Bank of England, as far back as 2015, he warned audiences about a “potentially huge” risk to investors from stranded energy assets because vast reserves of coal, oil, and gas could become “literally unburnable” because we “need to mainstream this transition to net zero if we are going to get to where the world needs.” But what if there’s no “energy transition” happening. What if it’s a false narrative?

From 2000 to 2024 (the latest year of available data), oil’s share of energy production in Canada increased by 18.2 points (from 34.4 per cent to 52.6 per cent) while lower-carbon-emitting natural gas declined as a share of production by 8.9 points and coal fell by 4.7 points. And overall, the weight of fossil fuels in the country’s energy mix actually rose from 83.3 per cent to 88.0 per cent. 

Meanwhile, during the same period, among non-fossil energy sources (the kind the narrative says are in the ascendant), nuclear energy’s share declined by 1.2 points and hydro fell by 3.2 points. Wind, solar, and other renewables—predicted as the future of energy—did increase, but trivially, gaining 0.8 points. Biofuels, an environmentally ruinous contender as a future carbon-neutral fuel, decreased by 1.1 points.

Energy consumption has followed the same anti-narrative trajectory. Rather than declining, fossil fuels still accounted for 76.3 per cent of Canada's domestic energy consumption in 2024, down only slightly from 76.8 per cent in 1995.

In other words, energy reality in Canada is, and has been, wildly off of the narrative.

So who cares about the false narrative? You should, if you want a future nation of abundant, reliable, and affordable energy powering a flourishing economy while governments make grand plans based on an assumed energy transition. Indeed, if there’s no transition, well, those consequential plans are likely to fail. New abundant, reliable, and affordable low-carbon energy sources may fail to appear, and the older fossil-fuel sources will likely have been neglected and atrophied, perhaps unable to meet future demand reliably and affordably.

Here's the bottom line. When governments make plans to manage Canada’s energy systems based on false narratives, they’re unlikely to improve those systems—production, transportation, or use. But they may usher in a future energy system of insufficiency, unreliability and less affordability while leaving the energy systems that powered us along for decades to languish, backwatered by political fiat.

The Carney government should look at existing energy trends with eyes unclouded by the transition narrative, protect and promote the production and use of our dominant sources of abundant, reliable and affordable energy (i.e. fossil fuels, with which we are luxuriously blessed), and leave the “transition” to lower-carbon power—if there’s to be one—to scientific and technological advancement, and the economic forces of energy production. 

Kenneth Green is a senior fellow with the Mathison Energy Research Initiative at the Fraser Institute.

The Hill Times