THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
Main wars are sometimes watershed moments in historical past. Their outcomes outline governance constructions, politics and coverage instructions for many years, even centuries, to come back. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine already appears sure to have these sorts of results on the nationwide, regional and international scales.
The invasion has shortly come to dominate political and coverage agendas, displacing the main target from the COVID-19 pandemic and local weather change. However the conflict in Ukraine may have main implications for these questions, significantly round power and local weather change, for Canada and the remainder of the world, far into the long run.
Past the quick horror of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, maybe its most evident results in local weather and power coverage phrases have been to supply Europe with a robust crucial to speed up the method of decarbonizing its economies.
The dangers related to European dependence on Russian oil and gasoline have at all times been an underlying rationale for power transitions in Europe. A ban on Russian oil and gasoline imports, a good portion of Europe’s power provides, could also be one of many few measures left, wanting direct army motion, that would trigger Putin to pause his assault.
Whereas Canada faces no quick menace to its power safety, it should seemingly face strain to increase its position as a geopolitically secure and safe supply of fossil fuels, strengthened by the financial alternatives provided by rising oil and pure gasoline costs. These developments might current vital challenges for Canada’s present efforts to scale back its greenhouse gasoline emissions by at the very least 40 per cent relative to 2005 by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
Undecided on nuclear
Europe stands to see additional will increase in power costs and potential shortages if it cuts off Russian oil and gasoline. However there’s already strengthened curiosity in renewables, power storage and different applied sciences that cut back Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels for area heating, transportation, business and electrical energy era.
There may also be renewed curiosity in nuclear power, however that path is much from sure. The economics of recent nuclear services stay profoundly unattractive even with large governmental help.
Learn extra:
Will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine push Europe in the direction of power independence and quicker decarbonisation?
As well as, Russia’s seizure of Chernobyl, its assault on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and President Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threats have supplied stark reminders of the safety, security and weapons proliferation dangers related to a nuclear-heavy pathway to decarbonization and power safety.
Stress at house and overseas
For Canada, the implications of those developments are fairly completely different. Costs for gasoline and different fuels have surged in response to considerations about international oil and gasoline provides. Russia is the world’s second-largest crude oil producer, contributing about 13 per cent of world oil manufacturing in 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Doug Ives
Governments must be vigilant across the potentialities of the outdated drawback for conflict profiteering. The gasoline now being bought at elevated costs was created from provides purchased and paid for lengthy earlier than Putin’s invasion. Russian oil is an totally marginal factor of Canada’s power provide, and must be terminated instantly, as america is contemplating.
Extra seemingly, Canada will face each home and worldwide pressures to increase its position as a safe supply of fossil fuels for Western Europe and different customers of Russian oil and gasoline. However strikes to extend the nation’s output of oil and pure gasoline will pose direct challenges to Canada’s current local weather change commitments and insurance policies.
Canada’s present oil reserves are overwhelmingly concentrated within the western Canadian oilsands. Their extraction is very power and carbon intensive, and the federal authorities’s present local weather coverage trajectory is to maneuver the upstream oil and gasoline sector in the direction of net-zero emissions by 2050.
New export infrastructure
On the identical time, there’s presently no direct route for a serious growth of exports of Canadian oil to Europe. Further exports must transfer by way of the U.S. Gulf Coast, however that possibility is now constrained by, amongst different issues, President Joe Biden’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The state of affairs might result in calls for brand new export infrastructure. There are already requires the revival of the Alberta to New Brunswick Vitality East pipeline — a pathway that would result in renewed battle between Québec and Alberta.
(AP Photograph)
Canada’s standard pure gasoline manufacturing has already been in decline, however the geopolitical state of affairs and rising world costs might renew curiosity in British Columbia’s largely stalled liquid pure gasoline export initiatives. Such developments would additional complicate the nationwide local weather coverage panorama, as accessing B.C.‘s gasoline sources can be extremely carbon-intensive. Proposals can also re-emerge for LNG export services in Canada’s East Coast.
None of this might occur shortly sufficient to have an effect on the quick international power safety state of affairs, and the financial viability of such initiatives would stay unsure in opposition to the continued backdrop of widespread decarbonization in response to local weather change.
Learn extra:
What China’s plans to decarbonize its financial system imply for Canada’s power exports
The trajectory of Canada’s current greenhouse gasoline emissions has already been drifting upwards, making the achievement of the federal authorities’s 2030 and 2050 targets more and more tough. The pressures to increase fossil gasoline exports will deepen these challenges, even because the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change has once more highlighted the rising impacts of a altering local weather.
One potential constructive facet at this stage could also be that the prospect of oil and gasoline costs remaining elevated for the long run will speed up public curiosity in Canada’s personal power transition, significantly round electrical automobiles.
The brand new relationships between power, geopolitical safety and local weather change coverage flowing from the invasion of Ukraine are solely starting to emerge. Their final instructions — together with the result of the conflict — stay unsure, however the implications for Canada, significantly when it comes to reconciling the targets of safety, power and local weather change coverage, could also be monumental.
Mark Winfield receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council of Canada.