Canada is missing out on its share of the surging multitrillion-dollar global clean energy market, which last year dropped by 5% compared to 24 of the largest exporting countries.
Lost opportunities cost us $8.7 billion in 2013 alone, according to a new report, Tracking the Energy Revolution: Global 2015, from Vancouver-based climate and energy think tank, Clean Energy Canada.
Government policies do not include any full-cost, accounted analysis of the cradle-to-grave environmental, health and economic consequences of producing and consuming energy.
Most governments ignore the real consequences of subsidies for both green and brown energy, while at the same time touting trade agreements that are billed as being about fairer trade and eliminating subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to market entry.
The World Bank has concluded any domestic economy is better off spending many times more for the cost of locally produced commodities, than it is to import them, especially for energy production.
At the two-day Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto this week, selected attendant beneficiaries were treated to a self-serving green masquerade of platitudes from Premier Kathleen Wynne and numerous celebrities, including a U.S. governor and former U.S. vice-president.
They talked about how we need to find answers on the issue of clean energy with few, if any, references to proven, viable, long-term solutions.
On the eve of the summit, acting Ontario Environment Commissioner Ellen Schwartzel reported the provincial government will most likely miss its “ambitious” 2020 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.
The Liberals gave $2 billion in 20-year green energy subsides to a few select technologies, some owned or promoted by companies with Liberal party insiders, and $6 billion to South Korea’s Samsung, all of which get preferential grid connections.
Wynne is privatizing Hydro One, our public power distribution utility, which will no longer face public scrutiny, and she plans to rebuild our 10 aging nuclear reactors, despite previous multi-billion dollar cost overruns and much cheaper options.
A recent Ontario Chamber of Commerce report, Empowering Ontario: Constraining Costs & Staying Competitive in the Electricity Sector, notes medium-sized businesses are “bearing the brunt of costs” of electricity increases.
As a result, business growth, improvements, investments, and hiring of new workers are all reduced. As many as one in five businesses is at risk of closing.
The government refuses to buy hydro power from Quebec, convert our expensive excess power into ammonia instead of paying others billions of dollars to take it, or eliminate subsidies by using the tax system to level the playing field for clean energy and emerging clean technologies.
This would save us tens of billions of dollars, lower energy prices substantially, and allow industry to value add, creating local investments and jobs replacing imported fuel and fertilizer.
Searching “ammonia fuel” reveals: ammonia engines patented by University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Toyota; NH3-fueled cars in Canada, the U.S., Italy and South Korea; wind-to-ammonia and $300 million waste-to-ammonia plants in the U.S., NH3 fuel cells powering remote cell towers in Africa and dozens of other applications.
Government should level the playing field for all clean-tech and new and emerging sustainable technologies, so we make a positive contribution to the global economy and thrive in our own communities.
[source: http://www.torontosun.com/2015/07/09/wynnes-climate-summit-a-green-masquerade]