Sustainable Energy Transitions In Canada

Canadian energy systems need to evolve. Beyond providing essential energy services, they must respond to climate change, enhance social justice, and remain sensitive to local cultures and traditions. Can they do this and still make financial sense? Sustainable Energy Transitions in Canada gathers experts from across the country to share perspectives on leading theories and practices. Contributors first deal with the conceptual aspects of energy transitions, investigating such topics as energy justice and poverty, the decolonization of energy, community energy planning, the role of energy systems modelling, and links between energy and climate change policy. Building on this foundation, they offer case studies that cover the North, the Atlantic region, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, along with crucial but difficult to decarbonize sectors like transportation and space heating. Running throughout this comprehensive discussion is a common thread: the importance of paying attention to wider sustainability goals and distributional justice in the process of decarbonizing the Canadian economy.

Canada is a well-endowed country that serves as an ideal model to lead the reader through the development of energy, resources, and society historically and into a post-carbon future. The book provides an historical perspective and describes the physical resource limitations, energy budgets, and climate realities that will determine the potential for any transition to renewable energy. Political and social realities, including jurisdiction and energy equality issues, are addressed. However, we cannot simply mandate or legislate policies according to social and political aspirations. Policies must comply with the realities of physical laws, such as the energy return on investment (EROI) for fossil-fuel based and renewable energy systems. EROI is discussed in both historical terms and in reference to the greater efficiencies inherent in a distributed generation, mainly electric, post-carbon society. Meyer explores the often misleading concepts and terms that have become embedded in society and tend to dictate our policy making, as well as the language, social and personal goals, and metrics that need to change before the physical transition can begin at the required scale. This book also reviews what nations have been doing thus far in terms of renewables, including the successes and failures in Canada and across the globe. Ontario’s green energy fiasco, and a comparison of the different circumstances of Norway and Alberta, for example, are covered as part of the author’s comparison of a wide range of countries. What are the achievements, plans, and problems that determine how well different countries are positioned to make “the transition”? The transition path is complex, and the tools we need to develop and the physical infrastructure investments we need to make, are daunting. At some point in time, Canada and Canadians, like all nations, will be living on 100% renewable energy. Whether the social and technological level that endures sees us travelling to the stars, or subsisting at a standard of living more similar to the pre-fossil fuel era, is far from certain.

In Blue-Green Province, Mark Winfield takes a long overdue look at the crucial relationship between Ontario’s environmental policy and its politics and economy. Covering the period from the Progressive Conservative "dynasty" that dominated Ontario politics from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, through the subsequent Peterson, Rae, Harris, Eves, and McGuinty governments, Winfield offers a trenchant analysis of the effects on Ontario’s environment and politics of these administrations’ dramatically different ideologies. Timely and original, Blue-Green Province is the first comprehensive study of environmental policy in Ontario. It will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in Ontario’s environmental and economic future.

Since the 1990s, there has been an upsurge in renewable electricity co-operatives across Canada as hundreds of community organizations have turned to the sun, wind, and rivers as sources of local power generation. Empowering Electricity offers an illuminating analysis of these co-operatives within the context of larger debates over climate change, renewable electricity policy, sustainable community development, and provincial power-sector ownership. It looks at the conditions that led to this new wave of co-operative development, examines their form and location, and shines a light on the promises and challenges accompanying their development.

The work demonstrates a techno-economic model of power generation for the cost-effective integration of renewable energy sources, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. The methodological approach outlined by the author is based on periodic simulation of price variations. The result demonstrates that a 10% transition to renewable energy generation is possible, practical and affordable when supported by an effective policy framework that does not need to introduce a feed-in tariff or loan-based financial mode.

Thanks to increasingly extreme forms of oil extraction, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador underwent exceptional economic growth from 2005 to 2015. Fossilized investigates the environmental policy trends that supported this development trajectory, such as institutional restructuring that prioritizes extraction over environmental protection, alongside inadequate environmental assessment, land-use planning, and emissions controls. Angela Carter’s detailed analysis situates the policy dynamics of Canada’s largest oil-producing provinces within the historical and global context of late-stage petro-capitalism and deepening neoliberalization. As the global community moves toward decarbonization, Canada's petro-provinces are instead doubling down on oil – to their ecological and economic peril.

At a time when climate-change deniers hold the reins of power in the United States and international greenhouse gas negotiations continue at a slow crawl, what options are available to cities, companies, and consumers around the world who seek a cleaner future? Scott Victor Valentine, Marilyn A. Brown, and Benjamin K. Sovacool explore developments and strategies that will help fast-track the transition to renewable energy. They provide an expert analysis of the achievable steps that citizens, organizational leaders, and policy makers can take to put their commitments to sustainability into practice. Empowering the Great Energy Transition examines trends that suggest a transition away from carbon-intensive energy sources is inevitable—there are too many forces for change at work to stop a shift to clean energy. Yet under the status quo, change will be too slow to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Humanity is on a path to incur avoidable social, environmental, and economic costs. Valentine, Brown, and Sovacool argue that new policies and business models are needed to surmount the hurdles separating the current consumption model from a sustainable energy future. Empowering the Great Energy Transition shows that with well-placed efforts, we can set humanity on a course that supports entrepreneurs and communities in mitigating the environmental harm caused by technologies whose time has come and gone.

The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries. This open access book, written by leading energy scholars, examines the economic and geopolitical implications of the global energy transition, from both regional and thematic perspectives. The first part of the book addresses the geopolitical implications in the world’s main energy-producing and energy-consuming regions, while the second presents in-depth case studies on selected issues, ranging from the geopolitics of renewable energy, to the mineral foundations of the global energy transformation, to governance issues in connection with the changing global energy order. Given its scope, the book will appeal to researchers in energy, climate change and international relations, as well as to professionals working in the energy industry.