Oil-rich Alberta seeks ways to go green

A YEAR AGO, when Canada’s government promised to end net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, Jason Kenney, Alberta’s Conservative premier, erupted. The government’s ideas were a “fantasy plan for a mythical country”, he said. He scoffed at the “California-style pieties” of the Liberals who govern Canada. They imagine that people in poor countries like India “are all going to be driving Teslas 15 years from now”, Mr Kenney said. In fact, “they want to stop burning cow dung”.

The premier’s fusillade was in defence of Alberta’s oil industry, which has made the province’s residents Canada’s richest citizens. But it has lately suffered setbacks, most of which are more damaging than the Liberals’ nefarious net-zero plans. Oil prices have yet to recover from a slump that began in 2014. Environmental activists have singled out Alberta’s oil sands as an especially dirty source of crude. The thick bitumen they contain requires more energy, and money, to extract and refine than lighter oils do. Investment in the province’s oil and gas sector plunged between 2014 and 2019 to C$26bn ($19bn), around 6% of GDP (see chart). The covid-19 pandemic has made matters worse. The provincial unemployment rate of 10.7% is now among the highest in Canada.