The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) may be on the verge of a breakthrough as it nears the end of a high-stakes, 18-month effort to map a net-zero pathway for the country’s energy sector.
The next edition of Canada’s Energy Future, the regulator’s flagship energy modelling report, is due next month. If it successfully models a realistic route to cutting the country’s energy-related emissions to net-zero, it will represent a major challenge to the conventional wisdom that Canada can meet its 2030 climate commitments while continuing to expand an oil and gas sector whose emissions have skyrocketed 85% [pdf] since 1990.
“A lot of work has been happening,” Nichole Dusyk, senior policy advisor at the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development, told The Energy Mix. “We don’t have a lot of insight into what the results are.”
But the CER’s public pronouncements so far indicate it has taken onboard its mandate from Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to align its modelling with international work on net-zero emissions, and the 1.5°C target in the Paris climate agreement.
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