OTTAWA –
The CEOs of some of Alberta’s biggest oil sands companies say transitioning their workforces toward a net-zero emissions future isn’t about cutting jobs, it’s about creating them.
“We estimated that we would spend about $70 billion over the next 30 years to decarbonize oil sands production,” Cenovus CEO Alex Purbe said in an interview with The Canadian Press this week.
“If we can do that, it will create a boom in the oil producing provinces that is equivalent to what happened in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Cenovus is one of six oil sands companies in the Pathways Alliance, a consortium formed to work together to fully decarbonize their production by 2050. Purbe said the companies believe that meeting their goal of net zero emissions by 2050 will created 35,000 jobs.
The “just transition” debate is raging in Canadian politics this week as Alberta politicians criticize a federal plan to introduce legislation designed to guide the adjustment to a clean energy economy.
The Liberals have promised such legislation since the 2019 election and are expected to introduce it to the House of Commons sometime this year.
Alberta Premier Daniel Smith jumped on reports that a federal memo suggested millions of jobs would be lost during the transition. The memo actually refers to the number of jobs that currently exist in industries that may be affected by decarbonisation.
Despite that clarification, Smith doubled down on his insistence that a “just transition” is a plan to shut down Alberta’s energy industry.
“I will fight this idea of ’Just Transition’ with every tool at Alberta’s disposal,” she said in a video posted to Twitter on Wednesday.
Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley added her voice to the fire, telling the Edmonton Journal in an interview that Ottawa should scrap plans for the legislation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that the transition to clean energy means creating good jobs for the middle class “in a changing world.”
“The energy workers we rely on, the natural resource workers, will continue to be essential parts of our economy moving forward,” he said.
Randy Boisson, the assistant finance minister, quickly published an op-ed in the Edmonton Journal on Tuesday, denouncing Smith’s allegations as fear-mongering.
“I can be unequivocal about this: With our sustainable jobs plan, your federal government is interested in creating and maintaining jobs, not eliminating them,” he wrote.
MEG Energy CEO Derek Evans told The Canadian Press in an interview that his concerns about the transition are not job cuts, but labor shortages.
“I’m pretty worried, let me put it this way, that we don’t have enough people in Canada to do the job,” he said.
Pathways companies aim to spend $24 billion by 2030 to reduce emissions, two-thirds of it on carbon capture and storage systems. After 2030, they expect to turn to hydrogen plants and small nuclear reactors as their energy sources.
All of this will require additional workers to build, install and operate.
Demand for fossil fuels will not be zero until 2050, but most projections point to a significant decline as electrification takes hold, especially in transportation. Canada and its producers want Canadian products to be the cleanest produced to keep demand high.
That’s why Pathways was created, said Kendall Dilling, president of the alliance.
“The energy transition, or decarbonization, or whatever you want to call it, that’s probably the defining challenge of the next few decades,” he said.
A decent portion of the debate can be a battle over semantics.
“Just Transition” was coined by the labor movement in the United States in the 1990s to help workers in industries beset by toxic waste problems. It now plays a role in global climate agreements aimed at helping both fossil fuel workers and the people most affected by climate change.
Canada is already using the same language in efforts to help workers in the shrinking coal industry.
But the term “just transition” has become politically charged and despised even by some supporters.
“Labor hates it, I hate it,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus, who worked with the Liberals to develop the legislation as part of the NDP-Liberal supply-and-confidence deal.
“In my community, when they talk about transition, we knew what it meant: they turn off the lights. It’s not great language, and I can see why people balk. I have my back.’
The Liberals seem to agree, although it’s still the term used in both their 2019 and 2021 platforms, as well as their months of consultations to develop the legislation.
Both Boissonault and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson have indicated a preference for calling it a “sustainable jobs plan.”
Whatever it’s called, Pourbaix said a successful net-zero plan would make the whole debate somewhat irrelevant.
“In fact, I think this idea of a just transition resolves itself if we succeed in our quest to decarbonize our manufacturing,” he said. “We guarantee the maintenance and steady growth of the industry in the country.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on January 18, 2023.
— With files from Mickey Jurich.
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