OTTAWA – Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan is making a pitch to global energy investors that Canadian LNG is their best choice to invest in sustainable and competitive natural gas production.
His speech at the virtual Gastech 2020 conference today comes a little more than two weeks before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to unveil his promised “ambitious green agenda” in a throne speech laying out his government’s COVID-19 economic recovery plan.
In his speech, O’Regan hints at some of what may come in that plan, including promises of investments in the electrical grid and energy efficiency programs, a focus on workers and investing in technology to make fossil fuels cleaner.
O’Regan says the best path to a healthy, low-emission economy includes Canada making natural gas a greener product that can be sold overseas to replace coal as a source of electricity.
The speech however highlights the sharp divide between the federal government’s climate plan and environment advocates who say making fossil fuels greener is not going to solve either economic woes or the climate crisis.
Catherine Abreu, executive director of the Climate Action Network Canada says she is worried the throne speech is going to give “token acknowledgment” to clean economic investments without a full-scale pivot to only investing in renewable sources of energy going forward.