LNG is Not in Canada’s National Interest. Renewables are Best for Jobs, Health, & the Economy.

As of June 2025 fewer than 1 in 5 Canadians want their tax dollars going to largely foreign-owned companies to build more LNG projects and 72% of Albertans wish to maintain or increase federal climate action and action to transition the country to clean energy. In March polling showed ​​65% of Canadians want renewables instead of oil & gas development and polling in June confirms 67% now prefer renewables and clean energy generally to oil and gas development (it’s 77% in BC).

“LNG Canada” is actually a foreign-owned joint venture of Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corporation, and Korea Gas. Meanwhile other LNG projects also backed by U.S. interests tied to the current U.S. Administration. In B.C. the Ksi Lisims LNG project is being incorrectly referred to by the premier as Indigenous-owned project when the entity that will construct, own and operate the assets of the project is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Texas-based Western LNG, funded by U.S. private equity firms with ties to the U.S. Administration. LNG (liquefied natural gas) is NOT a good solution for the Canadian economy and risks Canadians’ health and our climate future. It’s also not a good solution for local economies in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Atlantic Canada.

LNG is Not a Good Plan for Jobs or Local Economies

Global demand for oil and gas is set to peak this decade and then decline, and there are enough projects already underway to meet that demand. Plastics alone would never sustain the oil and gas industry in terms of anything close to current demand. Claims that gas demand will expand ignore the most recent research from the authoritative voice on energy, the IEA. Forecasts that predict a shallow decline in oil and gas demand are based on unrealistic scenarios and even a shallow decline spells trouble for global markets (even a shallow decline can dump prices).

As a result of the coming decline in demand, global oil and gas corporate exploration budgets are already shrinking and oil and gas investment is shifting to short term gains.

Demand for LNG in emerging markets is contingent on price, and LNG is expensive to produce in Canada. LNG is a risky bet as renewables are rapidly becoming the default for energy development especially across the ‘Global South.’ Low-cost renewable energy is soaring in China and Vietnam: Vietnam’s wind and solar generation exceeds gas-fired power generation. Demand is estimated to have already peaked in Europe and South Korea. China has already surpassed its 2030 renewable energy ambitions. In fact, China installed more wind and solar power in a single year than the total amount of renewable energy currently operating in the United States. Canada actually risks losing out on the renewable future of energy and ending up reliant on China if we don’t build our own independent renewable supply chains.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), an authoritative voice on energy, says in its World Energy Outlook for 2024 anticipates a surplus of LNG supply in the coming years, and that “we estimate that the sponsors of around 70% of LNG export projects currently under construction would struggle to recover their invested capital.”

Exporting LNG will likely raise the cost of gas in Canada and BC households are going to experience much higher gas bills when BC starts exporting LNG this summer because they’ll be paying global gas prices. This despite the fact that 77% of British Columbians favour renewable and clean-energy projects instead of LNG. In Australia, wholesale gas prices tripled, and U.S. households were paying 50 per cent more for their gas as LNG exports began. 

By contrast 81% of renewables offer cheaper energy than fossil fuels. Renewables also create far more jobs than oil and gas projects, it’s easier to localize renewable jobs in communities in places like Alberta and NL, and renewables are more reliable than oil and gas.

But all of this hasn’t stopped the Federal and Provincial Governments from wasting taxpayer money on dead-end LNG projects. LNG Canada received a precedent-setting incentive package, a policy framework from the BC government that includes corporate tax breaks, reduced rates for electricity consumption and interest-free deferral of provincial sales tax on construction, each valued at tens of millions of dollars every year. It also received $275 million in direct federal subsidies, and a federal exemption on steel tariffs, which cost taxpayers as much as $1 billion. Canada is spending three times more backing oil and gas than renewables, even though renewables are a better investment.

The Nova Scotia Provincial Government has also attempted to implement a series of U.S.-Style authoritarian measures in favour of fracking and lifted a ban on fracking without consulting the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs. It was a protection adopted after consultation and engagement with Nova Scotians and backed by health and economic research.

Many First Nations have spoken out against fracking and LNG development because infrastructure for these massive industrial projects, such as pipelines, crosses their territories. For example, the Wet’suwet’en never gave consent for the Coastal Gas Link pipeline that was built to supply an LNG export terminal in Kitimat and several First Nations have not given consent to the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission that would supply the Ksi Lisims LNG project, also in Northern BC.

LNG interests, as with all fossil fuel interests, now rely heavily on maintaining the false appearance that there will be continued oil and gas expansion – an appearance propped up by Canadian taxpayer support. Because if people see the evidence beyond the spin investors will quickly realize reserves of oil and gas are overvalued. As a key energy journalist wrote recently:

“Every fossil company everywhere wants investors, governments, and citizens to think, even against the thinnest of evidence, it will be the last one standing as its business steadily crashes. But times are already tough, and the tell comes from two of the industry’s biggest voices…. The problem is that citizens, rather than fossil companies and their shareholders, might be stuck picking up the tab.”

In short, if Canada does not go renewable soon we risk being left behind to carry the weight of a lot of very unpopular and uneconomical gas projects. Because renewables create more jobs, and localize jobs, while helping protect the climate, it’s also best to power any data centres with renewables not gas. We already have renewable solutions for when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow like interconnected grids, energy efficiency, and energy storage, but LNG prices are inherently volatile due to international factors beyond our control.

LNG Harms Our Health

We have an overburdened healthcare system but the federal government is handing over hundreds of millions of public dollars to the largely foreign-owned LNG projects that harm Canadians’ health. Pollution from gas extraction particularly affects the health of Albertans: 

“[For Albertans] the odds of having negative respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes increase by nine to 21 per cent, depending on the number of oil and gas wells a person lives near.” – CBC News, January 2025.

LNG is also often produced through fracking to extract gas from deep beneath the ground. Fracking is extremely water-intensive and requires massive amounts of toxic chemicals, many of which cause cancer and:

“Recent studies have shown strong correlations between proximity to fracking sites and increased rates of preterm births, low birth weight, congenital defects, childhood asthma, and leukemia.” – Nova Scotia Doctors Warn of Health Risks from Fracking, CAPE.

Doctors are also warning that B.C.’s fracking and LNG export industry is linked with serious health harms including cancer, respiratory disease, abnormal pregnancy outcomes and premature death. Worsening human health puts pressure on an already-struggling healthcare system and increases healthcare costs for everyone. Gas appliances create indoor air pollution which has been linked to asthma, particularly in kids.

These chemicals are also injected deep underground with such force that it can cause earthquakes. Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Germany, France, Spain, the U.K. and Italy, among others, have banned or put moratoriums on fracking because of health and environmental impacts.

LNG Harms Our Climate

We’re likely in the worst-ever wildfire season in Canada yet our governments are planning to make the climate crisis worse. LNG is unlikely to replace coal overseas; analysts confirm that renewable energy – not LNG – is the biggest competitor to coal in both China and India. Methane is the main component of LNG and it’s 80 times more powerful at warming the climate than carbon pollution. Indeed, LNG can emit about as much greenhouse gas (GHG) as coal.

LNG Canada will release 4 mega tonnes (Mt) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per year for at least 25 years. This is equivalent to adding one million vehicles to Canadian streets every year for 25 years. Based on GHG emission estimates, at least 38 Mt of CO2e per year will be released if all of the exported gas is burned.

Fossil fuels, including fracked British Columbian gas, are among the biggest drivers of climate change. Fossil fuels account for over 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Fossil fuel production and burning are drivers of climate-related events such as wildfires, heatwaves, and severe storms.

Thirteen ‘Canadian’ oil and gas companies, including five of the six that make up the Pathways Alliance oil sands lobby group, are on the list of 88 big carbon polluters called out for a major share of the forested lands lost to wildfires in North America between 1986 and 2021.

With climate change, BC is experiencing unprecedented droughts and climate change. Expanding LNG will require massive amounts of water, competing with needs including hydro, agriculture and fighting fires. Our water resources can’t be taken for granted. In 2023, the province became a net energy importer, importing a fifth of the energy needed, costing more than $450 trillion with energy bills rising in 2024 as a result.

Canada has very high per capita emissions relative to other countries, and historical emissions, but our country’s failure to meet emissions targets is not individuals’ fault, this failure is the fault of large oil and gas companies which fail to act. We can’t ask other people with much lower per capita emissions to act on climate change if we don’t act now to go renewable here in Canada as they are already.

Workers are NOT to blame, but the executives and lobbyists at the top of oil and gas companies are definitely to blame. Being dependent upon oil and gas does not mean you can’t call for systemic changes to end that dependence and hold the oil & gas industry responsible for decades of lies that made things much worse.

Other Questions and Answers:

1. Which jurisdictions produce LNG?
   British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in Canada where LNG export projects are underway. There are six projects in various stages of permitting or construction. The first project – LNG Canada – begins operations in July 2025 in Kitimat, BC. It is a foreign-owned joint venture of Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corporation, and Korea Gas.
2. What is the connection between LNG and pipelines?

Pipelines are a ground transportation system for gas. Pipelines for LNG are very long because they are the ground transportation that moves gas fracked in northeastern BC’s Montney Formation to LNG facilities for export.

1. Are there buyers for BC’s LNG?
   See above for why the demand for LNG is going to decline and why new LNG projects are not needed. The reality for BC LNG is that the majority of the contracted buyers are portfolio players. These are trading houses that buy and then resell the LNG they purchase. Because portfolio players have no fixed destination for the LNG they purchase, they are motivated to resell the product to the highest bidders.

Photos below of a 2025 protest against fracking in Nova Scotia with over 500 people in attendance.