Canada and the Low Carbon Energy Revolution /

It will quite likely entail net economic costs: the stranding of Canadian resources and established infrastructure, the loss of Canada’s comparative advantage, higher end use energy costs to the economy and the Canada and the Low Carbon Energy Revolution Page 1 By Michael Cleland April, 2017 Canada and the Low Carbon Energy Revolution diminution of the fuel diversity which has underpinned the secu [...] The previous energy transformations resulted from a mix of factors: world economic forces, technology largely developed in other countries, the happy coincidence of energy needs with the emergence of means to exploit Canadian resources, and a great deal of private capital and entrepreneurial energy. [...] Meanwhile, public trust in government is in question and apparently declining, a reality underscored by recent research by the University of Ottawa’s Positive Energy Program One of the inevitable consequences of the low-carbon fuel transformation will be a large growth in new energy infrastructure. [...] However, to illustrate the point, according to recent work done by the Canadian Energy Research Institute, meeting a major electrification push in only the buildings (residential, commercial and institutional) and road passenger transport sectors (which alone would leave Canada far short of the requirements to support the pledge for 2050) would require power generation to more than triple from tod [...] Public policy-making mechanisms will need to be more inclusive and able to operate effectively at a regional scale to catch the land-use implications of the transformation.