LNG Is the ‘Elephant in the Room’ at BC Climate Plan Update

Nov. 26, 2025

The province’s plan to reduce emissions can be salvaged. But expansion of gas exports needs scrutiny, reviewers say.

B.C.’s road map to lower carbon emissions and reduce global warming is working, but it needs adjusting to account for economic shifts, the affordability crisis and regional differences, says a team tasked with reviewing B.C.’s CleanBC climate plan.

The road map also exists alongside a massive “elephant in the room” — the province’s burgeoning liquefied natural gas industry and the potential it will undermine emissions reduction efforts, climate policy experts Merran Smith and Dan Woynillowicz told reporters today.

Those challenges signal a need for a broader discussion about how the LNG industry fits into B.C.’s energy transition plans, they said.

But such a discussion was beyond the scope of the duo’s recent review of the CleanBC plan.

“Our advice to the government is that they need to actually create some system, something like a citizens’ assembly on a sustainable economy in British Columbia,” Smith said. “We encourage them to dig into that, and a lot of those issues could be addressed there.”

Although the LNG industry is creating jobs, Smith said the scale of proposed development brings economic risks and could potentially divert a portion of the province’s labour force and supply of renewable energy. Demand for B.C.’s LNG in the decade to come is uncertain, she added.

“The math of emissions associated with new LNG is inescapable,” Woynillowicz said.

But the two experts hired to review the province’s energy plan weren’t able to go deeper than that. While the review makes recommendations on minimizing emissions from LNG — such as tightening methane regulations, continuing industrial carbon pricing and net-zero emissions requirements for new projects — a more comprehensive look at LNG and the economic forces surrounding it was beyond the review team’s mandate.

“We’ve recommended that there needs to be a broader discussion about: What does the province’s economic future look like?” Woynillowicz said.

Adrian Dix, minister of energy and climate solutions, said the government will consider the review’s findings. The review was a condition of the agreement that ensured the BC Green Party would support the government following the NDP’s narrow majority win in last fall’s election.

“This is an independent review,” said Dix in a media scrum after the announcement. “We accept the criticism,” he added, saying his government has made progress but that it has “work to do.”

The review recommended the province pull back on a number of commitments, including the upcoming cap on oil and gas emissions, sector-specific emissions targets for industries including oil and gas production and the province’s 2030 climate target — the review instead called on the province to set a new emissions target for 2035.

“There’s been a lot of focus on targets,” said Woynillowicz. “There has been, in our view, too much emphasis on that target and on modelling.” He said targets should be “ground-truthed with a bottom-up analysis” of the actions B.C. is taking, adding that these indicators will be “far more tangible for British Columbians.”

“Targets need to be calibrated to be true accountability measures where they are tied to what we are actually doing on the ground,” he said.

The recommendations lean heavily on moving parts of B.C.’s economy from fossil fuels and to electricity “as the foundation of energy security and economic growth,” a feat that will require more power from BC Hydro. But the utility tends to be conservative in its energy planning, said Woynillowicz, noting that they are calling for regulatory reforms to “move forward more confidently and more proactively.”

The review began in July, a year before it was scheduled.

The reviewers sought public feedback on emissions-cutting programs and assessed how well the CleanBC plan is working. Representatives from industry, environmental groups, Indigenous groups and labour, as well as members of the public, were asked to provide comments.

The review comes as B.C. is set to fall far short of its climate targets for this year. The province now expects to achieve only half the reductions it previously committed to achieve by 2030. In announcing the review earlier this year, the province blamed B.C.’s population and economic growth for putting “upward pressure on emissions.”

In their review, Smith and Woynillowicz found some emission-cutting efforts to celebrate.

While gas production has increased, methane emissions have decreased over the past decade. The use of biofuels has increased, more people are choosing electric heat pumps over gas furnaces, and B.C. hit its target to have 220,000 electric vehicles on the road earlier this year.

“These policies are working,” Smith said, adding that B.C. should look to improve upon those successes.

But the plan is not reaching its full potential, according to the report.

The CleanBC initiative, which began in 2018, lays out a plan for reducing B.C.’s carbon emissions from 2007 levels. By this year, the province committed to reducing its emissions by 16 per cent. Further targets sought to reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 and 60 per cent by 2040. By 2050, the province had hoped to cut emissions by 80 per cent.

But emissions are increasing, rather than declining. Earlier this year, the province acknowledged that it was unlikely to meet its near-term goals after reporting one of the largest annual emissions increases in decades.

A provincial climate change accountability report showed emissions spiking, in part due to increases in gas fracking and transportation. It projected that this year’s emissions would be just 2.6 per cent below 2007 levels. By 2030, emissions are expected to be 20 per cent below 2007 levels, far short of the 40 per cent target.

The LNG elephant

At the press conference to announce the review’s release, the authors expressed uncertainty about the long-term prognosis for efforts to reduce B.C.’s carbon emissions.

Smith and Woynillowicz said much has changed since the plan’s implementation in 2018, including costly climate events, global political upheaval and the acceleration of a worldwide transition to clean energy.

B.C. is “exceptionally well-positioned” to take advantage of the energy transition, the review said, with an abundance of critical minerals used in things like electric vehicles and wind turbines.

But the province will fall “well short” of its 2030 climate target for a variety of reasons, including B.C.’s current pursuit of increased gas production and LNG exports.

“Prospects for the sector also face significant uncertainty thanks to surging global supply and uncertain demand, while many of its anticipated customers pursue cleaner and more affordable options,” the reviewers wrote.

While expanding the industry could create jobs and provincial revenue, there are “opportunity costs” for other sectors that compete for clean electricity, labour and the province’s financial support. Competition for energy resources could also make it more difficult to electrify transportation and building heat, Smith and Woynillowicz wrote in their review.

“A dominant focus on LNG risks limiting their opportunities,” they said.

While the province is “well-endowed with clean-electricity resources,” stakeholders that provided feedback were concerned that government appears to be “tackling the associated trade-offs and opportunity costs on an ad hoc basis... rather than via a clear economic strategy.”

Following today’s announcement, Green MLA Jeremy Valeriote said the review did not go far enough.

“We are no longer climate leaders in B.C.,” he said. “We have a duty to take a leadership role.”

Valeriote supported the review’s recommendations to analyze the economic costs of climate change throughout government decisions. “If we don’t do this now, we will pay later,” he said, adding this approach will “make it a lot easier for people to get on board.”

The Greens criticized the review for recommending that B.C. remove its sector-specific emissions targets.

But it also applauded many of the reviewers’ suggestions, including aligning CleanBC with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

“If fully implemented, these recommendations would move B.C. closer to real climate action — but only if the government stops ignoring the LNG elephant in the room,” Valeriote said. “We can’t expand fossil fuel infrastructure and claim to meet climate commitments.”

B.C. Premier David Eby made similar comments in 2022, shortly after he was acclaimed as BC NDP leader. At the time he said B.C. “cannot continue to expand fossil fuel infrastructure and hit our climate goals.”

He later walked back that statement, telling Bloomberg News last year that the province was in discussions with the LNG industry about how to “achieve both our goals.”

While the province requires that new LNG developments be powered by renewable energy, Dix offered a “clarification” to B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office in March, saying projects must be “net-zero ready” by 2030.

The province is working to upgrade the power supply in northwest B.C. to facilitate the expansion of industrial activity.

The provincial government previously said it would streamline the North Coast Transmission Line, which will twin an existing power line between Prince George and Terrace to create redundancy and increase electricity supply to the region. It is expected to be operational by 2032.

The federal government also backed the project recently by referring the transmission line and 10 other projects to Canada’s newly formed Major Projects Office.

The move to expedite industrial projects deemed to be “in the national interest” is a response to the U.S. trade war. Critics say rushing regulatory requirements will steamroll environmental oversight and Indigenous rights.

Of the 11 projects currently identified by the Major Projects Office, four are in northern B.C. They include two gas export facilities, LNG Canada and Ksi Lisims LNG. While the projects are slated to initially use gas to power the energy-intensive liquefaction process, they plan to connect to the B.C. power grid once the North Coast Transmission Line is complete.

While using electricity to power the projects would reduce B.C.’s own carbon footprint, critics have argued it would have little benefit for global carbon emissions because the gas would eventually be burned in other jurisdictions.

Eby also announced this spring that B.C. would end the consumer carbon tax, a major revenue source for CleanBC and its energy efficiency programs, rebates and subsidies.

While the CleanBC review notes “public backlash” led to the demise of the carbon tax, it does not suggest reimplementing the policy. Instead, the reviewers suggested reinvesting revenues generated by climate taxes in climate solutions.

[Top photo: Having been recruited to evaluate BC’s climate plans, Merran Smith and Dan Woynillowicz pronounced them achievable — but at risk if the province’s LNG industry rapidly expands. Photo for The Tyee by Zoë Yunker.]