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Canadian Energy Centre

COP28 should be the last COP

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18 minute read

From Energy Talking Points

CIP By Alex Epstein

COPs are immoral because they deprive billions of the energy they need to prosper. They should be replaced by energy freedom conferences.

Myth: UN COP climate conferences have been a force for good, but COP 28 must lead to far more “climate action.”

Truth: These conferences are immoral because they deprive billions of the energy they need to prosper.

They should be replaced by energy freedom conferences.

Introduction

  • The leadup to the COP 28 climate conference has had a consistent theme: previous COPs have done an okay job of restricting fossil fuels in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but this one needs to restrict fossil fuel use far faster so as to reach net-zero by 2050.

    This is 180° wrong.1 COP quotes

  • COP 28’s net-zero agenda—i.e., rapid elimination of fossil fuels—is unnecessary, and pursuing it faster would be catastrophic because
    1. Fossil fuels are making us far safer from climate.
    2. Even barely implementing COP’s net-zero agenda has been disastrous.

Fossil fuels are making us far safer from climate

The justification of COP 28’s net-zero agenda is that fossil fuel use is causing an escalating “climate crisis.”

But if we factor in fossil fuels’ many climate benefits and carefully weigh fossil fuels’ climate side-effects, the opposite is true.

  • Factoring in fossil fuels’ “climate mastery benefits”

    One huge benefit we get from fossil fuels is the ability to master climate danger—e.g., fossil-fueled cooling, heating, irrigation—which can potentially neutralize fossil fuels’ negative climate impacts.

  • Example of fossil-fueled climate mastery overwhelming negative impacts: Drought.

    Any contribution of rising CO2 to drought has been overwhelmed by fossil-fueled irrigation and crop transport, which have helped reduce drought deaths by more than 100 times over 100 years as CO2 levels have risen.2 Drought deaths

  • Even though we obviously need to factor in fossil fuels’ climate mastery benefits, our designated experts totally fail to do this.

    E.g., the UN IPCC’s multi-thousand-page reports totally omit fossil-fueled climate mastery! That’s like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine.

  • Carefully weighing fossil fuels’ climate side-effects

    With rising greenhouse gasses we must be even-handed, considering both negatives (more heatwaves) and positives (fewer cold deaths). And we must be precise, not equating some impact with huge impact.

  • Even though we obviously need to factor in both negative and positive impacts of rising CO2 with precision, most designated experts ignore big positives (e.g., global greening) while catastrophizing negatives (e.g., Gore portrays 20 feet sea level rise as imminent when extreme UN projections are 3 feet/100years).3
  • Every report you hear about fossil fuels having made climate more dangerous commits at least one of 2 fallacies: ignoring the enormous climate mastery benefits of fossil fuels or wildly exaggerating negative climate side-effects of fossil fuels. Here’s how the prestigious IPCC does both.4

    Alex Epstein – The IPCC’s perversion of science

    The IPCC's perversion of science

  • If we do factor in fossil fuels’ enormous climate mastery benefits and carefully weigh their climate side-effects, we find that fossil fuels are a tremendous climate net-positive and will remain so in the future.
  • Myth: We are more endangered than ever by climate because of fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions.

    Truth: We have a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths due to our enormous fossil-fueled climate mastery abilities: heating and cooling, infrastructure-building, irrigation, crop transport.5 Climate deaths

  • Myth: Climate-related disaster X shows that fossil fuels are making climate unlivable.

    Truth: If we look at trends, not anecdotes, the drastic decline in extreme weather deaths shows that fossil fuels have made our naturally dangerous climate more livable than ever.6 Storm deaths

  • Myth: Even if climate-related disaster deaths are down, climate-related damages are way up, pointing to a bankrupting climate future.

    Truth: Even though there are many incentives for climate damages to go up—prefs for riskier areas, government bailouts—GDP-adjusted damages are flat.7 Weather disaster losses

  • Myth: Even if we’re safe from climate now, we can expect future emissions to lead to disaster.

    Truth: Since today’s unprecedented safety exists after over 100 years of rising CO2, and with ~1° C warming, we should be skeptical that further CO2 rises will somehow overwhelm us.

  • Myth: Mainstream science shows that rising CO2 is an “existential threat” that will soon cause global catastrophe and then apocalypse.

    Truth: Mainstream science shows that rising CO2 levels will lead to levels of warming and other changes that we can master and flourish with.

  • Myth: Future warming is ominous because heat-related death is already such a catastrophic problem.

    Truth: Even though Earth has gotten 1°C warmer, far more people still die from cold than heat (even in India)! Near-term warming is expected to decrease temperature-related mortality.8 Heat and cold deaths

  • Myth: Future warming is ominous because it will be worst in hot areas.

    Truth: The mainstream view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) and at colder times (nighttime) and during colder seasons (winter). Good news.9 Temperature projections

  • Myth: Future warming will accelerate as CO2 levels rise.

    Truth: Mainstream science is unanimous that the “greenhouse effect” is a diminishing effect, with additional CO2 leading to less warning.

    Even IPCC’s most extreme, far-fetched scenarios show warming leveling off.10

  • Myth: We face catastrophically rapid sea level rises, which will destroy and submerge coastal cities.

    Truth: Extreme UN sea level rise projections are just 3 feet in 100 years. Future generations can master that. (We already have 100 million people living below high-tide sea level.)11 Sea level projections

  • Myth: Hurricane intensity is expected to get catastrophically higher as temperatures rise.

    Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense at 2° C warming. This is not at all catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.12 Warming and hurricanes

  • Myth: Science says that if we hit 1.5 or 2° C warming since the 1800s we face catastrophe followed by apocalypse.

    Truth: The 1.5-2° C number is activist fiction. The mastery abilities that have made life far better through 1° C warming will continue to keep us safe.13

Even barely implementing the net-zero agenda has been disastrous.

While COP 28 leaders bemoan how slow their restriction of fossil fuel use in pursuit of net-zero has been, even “slow” restriction has caused a global energy crisis. “Aggressive climate action” = global catastrophe.

  • Myth: Net-zero policies are new and exciting.

    Truth: Net-zero policies have caused catastrophic energy shortages even with minuscule implementation. Just by slowing the growth of fossil fuel use, not even reducing it, they have caused global energy shortages advocates didn’t warn us of.

  • Minuscule net-zero policies causing huge problems:
    • US: frequent power shortages (and some disastrous blackouts) after shutting down fossil fuel power plants. E.g., CA
    • EU: deadly fossil fuel dependence after restricting domestic fossil fuel industry
    • Poor nations: can’t afford fuel due to global restrictions14 Bangladesh blackout
  • The “net-zero” movement, led by UN COPs, is the root cause of today’s energy crisis because it has restricted
    1. fossil fuel investment
    2. fossil fuel production
    3. fossil fuel transport

    This has artificially suppressed fossil fuel supply, leading to high prices and shortages.

  • Suppressing fossil fuel investment

    For fossil fuel energy to remain low-cost requires sufficient investment. But the COP-led net-zero movement has used government and private entities, often under the banner of “ESG,” to punish and suppress it—meaning less fossil fuel supply.15

  • Suppressing fossil fuel production

    For fossil fuel energy to remain low-cost for billions of people requires that producers be free to produce it all around the world.

    The COP-led net-zero movement has opposed it throughout the world, often successfully, increasing prices.16

  • Suppressing fossil fuel transport

    For fossil fuels to remain low-cost for billions of people we need to be able to easily transport them from where they are produced to where they are used. But the COP-led net-zero movement has opposed transportation around the world.17

  • The “net-zero” movement has rationalized its opposition to fossil fuel investment, production, and transport with claims that solar and wind could rapidly replace fossil fuels.

    This has obviously not happened. Despite huge solar and wind subsidies fossil fuel demand has increased.

  • Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that’s low-cost, reliable, versatile, and scalable to billions of people.

    That’s why overall fossil fuel use is growing. E.g., China, despite its “net-zero” pledges, has 300 new coal plants in the pipeline.18 

  • There was never any reason to expect solar and wind to replace fossil fuels. The world needs far more energy—3 billion people still use less electricity than a US refrigerator—so there’s no reason to expect lower demand for any form of cost-effective energy, let alone ultra-versatile fossil fuels.19
  • Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants.20
  • Solar and wind’s basic problem is unreliability, to the point they can go near zero at any time. Thus they don’t replace reliable power, they parasitize it. This is why they need huge subsidies and why no grid is near 50% solar and wind without parasitism on reliable neighbors.21
  • The popular idea that we can use mostly or only solar and wind with sufficient battery backup is not being tried anywhere because it’s absurd. Batteries are so expensive that just 3 days of global backup using Elon Musk’s Megapacks would cost $570 trillion, about 6X global GDP!22 Tesla megapack costs
  • Scary fact: the “net-zero” movement has caused an energy crisis just by achieving a tiny fraction of its goals. While it has advocated rapidly reducing fossil fuel use, it has only succeeded globally at slowing the growth of fossil fuel use. And even that is catastrophic.
  • If just restricting the growth of fossil fuels in a world that needs far more energy is catastrophic, what would it mean to reduce CO2 emissions by the 50% many “climate emergency” advocates want by 2030 and the 100% they want by 2050?

    Global misery and premature death.

  • The net-zero movement led by COP is particularly dangerous to Africa and other poor regions.

    Consider: ⅓ of the world uses wood and animal dung for heating and cooking. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.

    Only fossil fuels can provide the energy they need to develop.23 Use of primitive biomass

  • Every prosperous country has developed using fossil fuels.

    No poor country has been able to develop to the point of prosperity without massive fossil fuel use.

    The reason is that development requires energy, and fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective, including scalable, source of energy.

  • Africa is the world’s poorest region. Most Africans want rapid development and with it, prosperity.

    This is absolutely achievable. But only by using the proven practices every once-poor place has used to develop and prosper.

    One such practice is large-scale fossil fuel use.

  • In recent decades China and India have used large amounts of low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels to rapidly develop.

    Since 1980, India’s fossil fuel use has increased by >700% and China’s by >600%.

    India’s life expectancy increased by 17 years and China’s by 14!24 Development China & India

  • Fossil fuels are so uniquely good at providing low-cost, reliable energy for developing nations that even nations with little or no fossil fuel resources have used fossil fuels to develop and prosper. E.g. South Korea (83% fossil fuels), Japan (85% fossil fuels), Singapore (99% fossil fuels).25 Global FF use
  • The obvious path for African development and prosperity is to use fossil fuel whenever it’s the most cost-effective option, which is most of the time, and certainly to responsibly produce the significant fossil fuel resources that exist in Africa.

    Yet COP tells Africa to forego fossil fuels.

  • Given that every prosperous place on Earth has depended on and continues to depend on massive fossil fuel use, and that attempts to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind are failing, the push for Africa to adopt net-zero—aka fossil fuel elimination—is a death sentence for African development.

The alternative to the unnecessary and destructive COPs: energy freedom conferences

Instead of focusing on rapidly eliminating fossil fuel use, we should focus on rapidly liberating energy production and use of all kinds of energy via energy freedom policies.

  • What are “energy freedom policies”?

    Government actions to protect the ability of producers to produce all forms of energy and consumers to use all forms of energy, so long as they don’t engage in reasonably preventable pollution or endangerment of others.

  • Energy freedom policies include:
    • Protecting the freedom to develop fossil fuels and other forms of energy. E.g., deep geothermal development.
    • Protecting the freedom to use fossil fuels and all other forms of energy. E.g., decriminalizing nuclear.
  • Energy freedom policies are more likely to lead to long-term emissions reductions, because they accelerate the rate at which nuclear and other alternatives become globally cost-competitive. (The only moral and practical way to reduce global emissions.)26 China & India using coal
  • Fact: the 2 biggest instances of CO2 reduction have come from energy freedom policies:
    • Nuclear: Freedom led to cost-effective and scalable nuclear power until the “green” movement virtually criminalized it.
    • Gas: Freedom led to significant substitution of gas vs. coal.
  • Alternative energy policy has been dominated by the “green energy” movement, which is an outgrowth of the anti-development green movement. This movement is hostile to all development because of development’s impact on nature, and therefore is hostile to every form of cost-effective energy.
  • COP’ leaders’ enthusiastic support for solar and wind is phony. Just as they oppose fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro for their impact, in practice they oppose the massive mining, construction, and transmission-line-building “green energy” requires.27
  • The obvious path forward for the world is energy freedom: the freedom to produce and use all cost-effective sources of energy—including, essentially, fossil fuels—which means rejecting all net-zero targets.

    We need courageous leaders who will withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

PS Here’s my friend Jusper Machogu’s message to COP.

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2025 Federal Election

Canada’s pipeline builders ready to get to work

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation”

It was not a call he wanted to make.

In October 2017, Kevin O’Donnell, then chief financial officer of Nisku, Alta.-based Banister Pipelines, got final word that the $16-billion Energy East pipeline was cancelled.

It was his job to pass the news down the line to reach workers who were already in the field.

“We had a crew that was working along the current TC Energy line that was ready for conversion up in Thunder Bay,” said O’Donnell, who is now executive director of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Pipe Line Contractors Association of Canada (PLCAC).

“I took the call, and they said abandon right now. Button up and abandon right now.

“It was truly surreal. It’s tough to tell your foreman, who then tells their lead hands and then you inform the unions that those three or four or five million man-hours that you expected are not going to come to fruition,” he said.

Workers guide a piece of pipe along the Trans Mountain expansion route. Photograph courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

“They’ve got to find lesser-paying jobs where they’re not honing their craft in the pipeline sector. You’re not making the money; you’re not getting the health and dental coverage that you were getting before.”

O’Donnell estimates that PLCAC represents about 500,000 workers across Canada through the unions it works with.

With the recent completion of the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink pipelines – and no big projects like them coming on the books – many are once again out of a job, he said.

It’s frustrating given that this could be what he called a “golden age” for building major energy infrastructure in Canada.

Together, more than 62,000 people were hired to build the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink projects, according to company reports.

O’Donnell is particularly interested in a project like Energy East, which would link oil produced in Alberta to consumers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, then international markets in the offshore beyond.

“I think Energy East or something similar has to happen for millions of reasons,” he said.

“The world’s demanding it. We’ve got the craft [workers], we’ve got the iron ore and we’ve got the steel. We’re talking about a nation where the workers in every province could benefit. They’re ready to build it.”

The “Golden Weld” marked mechanical completion of construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project on April 11, 2024. Photo courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

That eagerness is shared by the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA), which represents about 170 construction and maintenance employers across the country.

The PCA’s newly launched “Let’s Get Building” advocacy campaign urges all parties in the Canadian federal election run to focus on getting major projects built.

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation,” said PCA chief executive Paul de Jong.

“Most of the companies are quite busy irrespective of the pipeline issue right now. But looking at the long term, there’s predictability and long-term strategy that they see missing.”

Top of mind is Ottawa’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), he said, the federal law that assesses major national projects like pipelines and highways.

In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the IAA broke the rules of the Canadian constitution.

Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Photograph courtesy Coastal GasLink

The court found unconstitutional components including federal overreach into the decision of whether a project requires an impact assessment and whether a project gets final approval to proceed.

Ottawa amended the act in the spring of 2024, but Alberta’s government found the changes didn’t fix the issues and in November launched a new legal challenge against it.

“We’d like to see the next federal administration substantially revisit the Impact Assessment Act,” de Jong said.

“The sooner these nation-building projects get underway, the sooner Canadians reap the rewards through new trading partnerships, good jobs and a more stable economy.”

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Canadian Energy Centre

First Nations in Manitoba pushing for LNG exports from Hudson’s Bay

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

NeeStaNan project would use port location selected by Canadian government more than 100 years ago

Building a port on Hudson’s Bay to ship natural resources harvested across Western Canada to the world has been a long-held dream of Canadian politicians, starting with Sir Wilfred Laurier.

Since 1931, a small deepwater port has operated at Churchill, Manitoba, primarily shipping grain but more recently expanding handling of critical minerals and fertilizers.

A group of 11 First Nations in Manitoba plans to build an additional industrial terminal nearby at Port Nelson to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and potash to Brazil.

Courtesy NeeStaNan

Robyn Lore, a director with project backer NeeStaNan, which is Cree for “all of us,” said it makes more sense to ship Canadian LNG to Europe from an Arctic port than it does to send Canadian natural gas all the way to the U.S. Gulf Coast to be exported as LNG to the same place – which is happening today.

“There is absolutely a business case for sending our LNG directly to European markets rather than sending our natural gas down to the Gulf Coast and having them liquefy it and ship it over,” Lore said. “It’s in Canada’s interest to do this.”

Over 100 years ago, the Port Nelson location at the south end of Hudson’s Bay on the Nelson River was the first to be considered for a Canadian Arctic port.

In 1912, a Port Nelson project was selected to proceed rather than a port at Churchill, about 280 kilometres north.

The Port Nelson site was earmarked by federal government engineers as the most cost-effective location for a terminal to ship Canadian resources overseas.

Construction started but was marred by building challenges due to violent winter storms that beached supply ships and badly damaged the dredge used to deepen the waters around the port.

By 1918, the project was abandoned.

In the 1920s, Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King chose Churchill as the new location for a port on Hudson’s Bay, where it was built and continues to operate today between late July and early November when it is not iced in.

Lore sees using modern technology at Port Nelson including dredging or extending a floating wharf to overcome the challenges that stopped the project from proceeding more than a century ago.

Port Nelson, Manitoba in 1918. Photo courtesy NeeStaNan

He said natural gas could travel to the terminal through a 1,000-kilometre spur line off TC Energy’s Canadian Mainline by using Manitoba Hydro’s existing right of way.

A second option proposes shipping natural gas through Pembina Pipeline’s Alliance system to Regina, where it could be liquefied and shipped by rail to Port Nelson.

The original rail bed to Port Nelson still exists, and about 150 kilometers of track would have to be laid to reach the proposed site, Lore said.

“Our vision is for a rail line that can handle 150-car trains with loads of 120 tonnes per car running at 80 kilometers per hour. That’s doable on the line from Amery to Port Nelson. It makes the economics work for shippers,” said Lore.

Port Nelson could be used around the year because saltwater ice is easier to break through using modern icebreakers than freshwater ice that impacts Churchill between November and May.

Lore, however, is quick to quell the notion NeeStaNan is competing against the existing port.

“We want our project to proceed on its merits and collaborate with other ports for greater efficiency,” he said.

“It makes sense for Manitoba, and it makes sense for Canada, even more than it did for Laurier more than 100 years ago.”

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