Much has been made of the Ontario Liberals’ alleged plan to “ban” natural gas heating in homes as part of a yet-to-be released climate change strategy.
Environment minister Glen Murray refused to confirm a Globe and Mail report indicating the province would spend $7 billion over four years to reduce its carbon footprint, partly by phasing out residential natural gas heating and greatly increasing the number of electric vehicles on the road.
The Newspaper said it obtained a copy of a 57-page Climate Change Action Plan that calls on the province to phase out natural gas for heating, currently used in 76 per cent of Ontario homes. The plan is said to require that all new homes built in Ontario in 2030 or later be heated without the use of fossil fuels.
But Murray said this year’s budget committed the government to extending natural gas to rural Ontario, and insisted it would still be an option for home heating. Premier Kathleen Wynne went further, flat out denying the report and calling it false.
Regardless of the denials, critics ranging from natural gas producers to political opponents and municipal politicians have been quick to denounce the very idea of scaling back on gas as a heating source. Such a move would drastically increase the cost of electricity to unaffordable levels, they contend.
While it would be no surprise to learn the denials are standard political backpedaling, a couple of since-released studies suggest the Liberals might have no need for such drastic measures anyway. The supply-and-demand economy, combined with a wider understanding of climate realities, should eventually take over as the driving forces behind a move away from fossil fuels.
According to a draft report from a federal government think-tank obtained by CBC News (perhaps the obvious security issues surrounding the government policy-drafting process should be the subject of a future editorial), “It is increasingly plausible to foresee a future in which cheap renewable electricity becomes the world’s primary power source and fossil fuels are relegated to a minority status.”
This document was produced by Policy Horizons Canada, a little-known government organization which provides medium-term policy advice to the federal bureaucracy.
The reports urges caution on long-term investments in pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure. Such investments “could be at high risk of becoming economically inviable as prices in renewable electricity further decline,” it warns.
“At a minimum, this plausible future would suggest that governments ensure that the risks of further investments in oil and gas infrastructure be borne by private interests rather than taxpayers,” the report states. The report also forecasts growth in the world’s demand for electricity – particularly renewable-based electricity – will outpace other energy types, while the costs of its production and storage fall faster than previously believed.
Combine this with revelations in a new report published (apparently intentionally this time) in the journal Nature Climate Change on May 30 projecting that burning up all remaining fossil fuels would “scorch” the Earth and render parts of it “unlivable,” and perhaps we can make a case to at least not dismiss in a huff of indignation all alternatives to the status quo. The study suggests burning the last drop of oil would lead to a world on average 9.5 degrees Celsius hotter than today. That’s a frightening scenario given current international efforts aimed at limiting the increase to two degrees are widely considered inadequate.
So, assuming that by 2030 natural gas won’t even be the most affordable option, and burning it all up may kill off more people than not burning it will allegedly impoverish, its hard to argue that refusing to look at the wider picture doesn’t make us, at least figuratively, “dinosaurs.” And we know how things turned out for them.
