Energy winners are more plentiful than fossil fuels, cheaper than fossil fuels, available longer than the fossil fuel era, emit no greenhouse gas emissions, cool the surface, advance as many of the 17 sustainable development goals as possible, and advance the uptake of innovation.
An energy loser encompasses the least number of these things.
Michael Barnard’s CleanTechnica article says, Canada Pays $85 Billion Higher Social Carbon Price Than Oil & Gas Revenues.
“Our children and their children and their children’s children will be paying that price,” he warns.
Fossil fuel consumption makes up 5% to 7% of the Canadian GDP of about two trillion US dollars, which is between $100-$140 billion USD or roughly C$165 billion.
The recently released Canadian government update of the social cost of carbon (SCC) is C$261 for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted burning fossil fuels.  In 2019 about 950 million tons of CO2 were emitted by Canada’s oil, gas, and coal industry, so the social cost of these emissions amounts to about $250 billion.
Or as Mr. Barnard points out, a quarter of a trillion in social damage is being done in one year by one industry, in one country.
According to the IMF, globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $5.9 trillion or 6.8 percent of GDP in 2020 and are expected to increase to 7.4 percent, to $6.4 trillion, of GDP by 2025. Eight percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs and 92 percent for undercharging for environmental costs and foregone consumption taxes.
The Government of Canada claims the countries emissions in 2019 were 737 Mt CO2 or 1.5% of the global total of 48 megatons, whereas Barnard claims they were 950 Mt CO2.
In 2020, the world used, or consumed, approximately 92.2 million barrels per day or about 3.4 billion barrels a year at an average price of USD 100.93/barrel which equals USD 3.4 trillion.
According to Highlights From The BP Statistical Review Of World Energy 2021 in Forbes Magazine, oil accounted for 31.2% of the Primary Global Energy Consumption in 2020 so, the total cost of primary energy would have been the equivalent of USD 10.9 trillion not counting the $5.9 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies.
This is in line with Bloomberg’s analysis that energy costs were set to reach a record 13% of the projected  $104 trillion global GDP for 2022, or about $13.4 trillion, per the following graphic.
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Climate change is the kind of problem that requires an active role by governments to remedy and Canada has chosen to put a price on carbon as its response to the problem. Currently that price is C$65 per ton, which is expected to peak at $170 by 2030 at which time the SCC says the social cost will be $294 per ton. A difference of $124 per ton.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers projects that between 2019 to 2035 Canadian oil production will increase from 2.9 million barrels/day in 2018 to 4.25 million barrels/day by 2035.
Extrapolating from 2019’s 950 million tons of  emissions, this would be 1392 million tonnes, times the shortfall of $124 per ton, leaving an annual burden of $172 billion for the Canadian energy consumer.
In a recent interview, Â former Bank of Canada and Bank of England, governor Mark Carney claims fossil fuel investment will still be necessary during the clean energy transition.
SERIOUSLY?
“There still does need to be some investment in fossil fuels,” he said. “If you look at our economy, look at the oil sands, and at other aspects of our fossil fuel economy, we need to make that competitive.”
“Competitive is not just about cost, is it relatively low cost, and it's not just about risk, it's the lowest risk in the world, that's clear,” he added. “But we also need to make it low carbon, and that's going to take very large investment.”
Like $172 billion a year’s worth or about double the current cost of energy and the parasitic loss of about 30% of our energy?
Experts are predicting 2023 will be one of the hottest years on record, and a new report from the United Nations concludes there is little chance of keeping the planet from warming by more than 1.5 C, the ceiling set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The Healthy Planet Action Coalition Petition to World Leaders: The Case for Urgent Direct Climate Cooling points out Thermodynamic Geoengineering (TG) would utilize the temperature difference between surface and deeper ocean waters to cool the planet while generating baseload energy and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Deployment of 31,000 one gigawatt TG plants has been estimated to: a)  displace 0.8 W/m2 of average global surface heat from the surface of the ocean to deeper water for 200 years; b) produce 31 terawatts of electricity per year (67% more than total world use), and c) absorb about 4.3 GtCO2 per year from the atmosphere by cooling ocean surface waters. At an estimated cost of $2.9 trillion per year (22 percent of the 2022 cost of energy). It would take 30 years to ramp up to 31,000 plants whose economies of scale would reduce the cost of electricity to about 1.1 cents per KWh.
To produce hydrogen rather than electricity, the annual cost would be $3.7 trillion, and the equivalent cost would be 1.45 cents per KWh.
The lowest price of energy to date is  1.7 cents per kilowatt hour as part of a contract between the Italian multinational ENEL Green Power and the Mexican government agency that administers the country's electricity wholesale market.
But more importantly, Dr. Tom Goreau, one of the world’s leading biogeochemist and marine biologists, President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance and Director of Remineralize The Earth, says (TG) “is the only reasonable hope we have of slowing ocean warming and saving coral reef ecosystems from heat shock and extinction, and low islands and coasts from drowning.”
Mr. Carney says, “One of the main drivers of competitiveness—in other words, of exports and jobs, higher wages for Canadians in the future—is going to be whether or not we can produce things with lower carbon, produce things in a more sustainable way.”
Unfortunately though Canada has a track record of backing losers and turning its back on its nascent winners.