The ever slippery Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources – who never misses a chance to put a positive spin on Canada’s horrendous energy track record – is happily trumpeting the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) alleged recognition of Canada “as a world leader in energy efficiency”.
Says Joe, “The IEA’s Energy Efficiency Market Report 2013 ranks Canada second, along with the United Kingdom, for its rate of energy efficiency improvement between 1990 and 2010. It also highlights Canada’s successful energy efficiency programs, which provide consumers with greater market choices and help industry reduce costs and improve the bottom line.”
The efficiency improvement being bandied about is 23.5%, which sounds impressive but clearly isn’t producing results in carbon emissions reductions, proving once again that you can’t always rely on the numbers, particularly those emanating from the PMO.
Moreover, whatever gains Canada has made in terms of energy efficiency to this point, our future potential in this area is severely undermined by the Harper Government’s recent decision to cut all innovation funding for 2013-14. Compared with other nations like China, the US and Germany, Canada is falling far behind on the development of renewable energy and green jobs.
Top per capita energy consuming countries 1990 to 2010 with projections to 2015 Canada versus the rest of the world.
Check out these graphs from the IEA’s “Economist Intelligence Unit” which will give you a sense of Canada’s place in the world in terms of per capita energy consumption. For 25 years we’ve consistently been the bottom of the barrel, with virtually no improvement from 1990 to 2015.
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If “Energy Efficiency” isn’t the answer then what is?
What Joe also neglects to point out is that the IEA, in its Worldwide Trends in Energy Use and Efficiency Report, promises that “the overall message from the indicators is clear; the current rate of energy efficiency improvement is not nearly enough to overcome the other factors driving up energy consumption. As a result we are heading for an unsustainable energy future. We must find new ways to accelerate the decoupling of energy use and CO2 emissions from economic growth.”
Using the PMO’s office as tar sands bully pulpit hardly helps with said decoupling – in fact, it is quite the opposite.
the most lied about topic Canada is Good at if they keep saying it they start to believe there lies. It’s Not the Environment That They Are Concerned About It’s The Lining of There Pockets That They Are Most Concerned About. Stop The Lies Canada You Are The Worst So Called Free World Country. You Are Try & Make It That The Natives Are The Cause Of Canada’s Problems, I would Have You Know We Are The Least Of Your Problems If Nothing Is Going To Stop Them, Well In 50 Years From Now I Hate To See The Prairie Provinces It Will No Longer Be Called The Flat Lands It will Be the Desolate Lands, Nothing Grow There and You Water Will Not Be Drinkable And Your Air Will Be Un Breathable And The Rich Will Invent A Mask And Charge YOu More Then You Can afford So Stop Canada Before It’s To Late. Stop The Lies
If Canada forced these large oil cartels to put a fraction of that $9 billion to build the Ambridge pipeline into the science of clean renewable energy Canada would be a lot further a head. you can clearly see our conservative government is owned by big oil. all the new Hydro projects that are currently proposed and being built and expanded upon is slated to pump dirty Betjeman and natural gas. so it does not take a genius to figure out that these large oil cartels are being subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer.
How he looks now, is how people look like after they have had a taste of oil in their systems.
Oil is destroying our poor country, only the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Oil destroy life in its path. The owners of mines should be punished, and stoped in their tracks. What they leave behind is destruction of lives.
Bullshit, Canada is fucking up the whole planet right now with all these bullshit pipelines and tar sands exports. Stop ruining our planet, fucking assholes!