Four years ago, Canada crafted a plan to capitalize on a global hydrogen market the government expected to be worth up to $11.7 trillion by mid-century. Billions of dollars of public money has been provided to seize the country’s share of the pie.
But there’s a problem: the global market is shrinking before their eyes.
There is no path to a renewable future which leaves American hegemony in place
The United States has a material, vested interest in obstructing progress on climate change. This argument, laid out by Amitav Ghosh in his 2021 book The Nutmeg’s Curse, is crucial for understanding the politics not just of climate change, but of the world: everything from the American trade war against Chinese renewable technologies to the ongoing genocide in Gaza can be linked to it.
For months, Canada's natural gas utilities have mustered lobbying efforts and funded online misinformation campaigns to fight efforts by municipalities to phase out the climate-warming fuel. And now they have a new ally with deep ties to the province's NDP to push the pro-gas message in the province's lefty media.
Nova Scotia has announced its green hydrogen action plan, calling it an “alternative clean energy source” and adding that we’re emerging as a region with “ample opportunity” to produce the product — in part because of our potential offshore wind resource.
The government wants to help create a green hydrogen sector in Nova Scotia that “produces local benefits from both domestic and export opportunities.” There currently is no hydrogen-producing industry in the province.
If Canada is going to meet its climate targets, virtually everything will need to be electrified. Gas guzzlers swapped for electric vehicles and public transportation; heat pumps put in place of gas furnaces; and renewable energy moving to centre stage as coal, oil and gas power plants are phased out.
Affordable, reliable electricity grids are essential to modern life and form the backbone of Canada’s economy. Without abundant power, energy-intensive sectors like auto manufacturing or steel production fall by the wayside.
Oil in the North Sea is expected to be net-energy negative by 2031. This means that in 2031, it’ll cost more energy to extract the fossil fuels than we would gain by using them, rendering extraction unfeasibly expensive. Yet, rather than use our remaining years of access to these fuels to turbo-charge new energy infrastructure, fossil fuels are being extracted and burned for business as usual: quick cash. Around the world, the lights will go off in nations that don’t have back-up renewables. That’s most of them.
