Why Renewables, Not Oil and Gas, are the Way Forward
Renewables are a solution for jobs, energy, and strengthening Canadian independence, NOT costly & divisive oil pipelines nor LNG. Energy workers – especially in Alberta, SK and NL – deserve real renewable solutions…
The toxicity at the heart of our ‘energy conversation’ is a disproportionate focus on imagined future oil and gas development – even as global exploration budgets shrink and oil and gas investment shifts to short term gains. It is a focus that does nothing to help oil and gas dependent communities find real solutions or to lessen polarization and only locks us into a self-reinforcing spiral of climate and energy inaction.
Oil and gas corporations’ proposed projects are ‘backed by billionaires and Wall Street investment firms who are close allies of Trump, eager to embrace Canada as the 51st state and prioritize the interests of their majority-US financiers and shareholders.’
Renewable energy solutions are already becoming the default for energy development in much of the world especially in the Global South – because renewables are better options (see resources below). An inevitable peak this decade and then decline of oil and gas demand is coming, and the world already has enough oil and gas projects to meet that demand. A proactive focus on how and where renewable energy can work would allow the public to make informed decisions about real solutions.
Related: Read more about how misinformation about renewable energy was spread by oil and gas interests.
For example, the Bay du Nord oil project is such an economically uncertain project that Equinor’s continued interest in it actually led in part to the company’s stock being downgraded in March 2024. In April 2024 the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), a leading research and shareholder advocacy organization, cast doubt on the cost competitiveness of all of Equinor’s unapproved international oil and gas projects including Bay du Nord.
According to a survey by Leger 65% of people want renewable energy development investment – instead of oil and gas development – as of March 2025. April 2025 polling from EKOS also shows a majority of people are specifically against subsidies to oil and gas development and a majority want oil and gas corporations held accountable for their pollution – making renewable energy a far less divisive issue than oil and gas.
Fewer than 2 in 10 people across the country want their tax dollars going to largely foreign-owned companies to build more LNG projects – let alone oil projects. Exporting LNG can actually raise domestic natural gas prices and 81% of renewables offer cheaper energy than fossil fuels.
We have now spent an inordinate amount of time talking about an oil pipelines despite the fact that no pipelines have been proposed by private sector developers. This dogmatic focus on a singular issue has done nothing to ease inter-provincial tensions or to minimize concerns about the future of energy.
This is precisely because there is no business case for a new pipeline and so hyping it up as an issue is inherently a dead end – even according to oil and gas friendly think tanks – that can only fuel more division. Indeed we can only assume advocacy for pipelines has more to do with oil and gas corporations’ antipathy towards climate policies – and Alberta separatists’ desire to create wedge issues – than it has to do with the actual building of pipelines.
Pipelines, and large scale oil and gas projects, are also inherently divisive since, by their very nature, they must cross multiple jurisdictions. Unlike localized renewables they are harder to build according to community wishes and are inherently less safe. Fossil fuel companies frequently make this division worse by engaging in underhanded anti-democratic activities to push forward projects locally and suing locations that choose not to comply.
Oil and gas development has taken the lion’s share of attention when it comes to energy progress for many years. This special attention has done nothing to diminish polarization on energy and climate issues – it has only made the situation worse.
A proactive – balanced – discussion that better includes renewables as subject matter could provide people with real hope for the future and real chances at finding ways forward for everyone.
This toxicity of our energy conversation has other impacts too:
- Entire provinces are cast as pro-fossil fuels with little representation of the nuance of voices on energy issues within those provinces: There are climate-concerned citizens in Alberta and large numbers of people deeply concerned about the expansion of coal mining. Newfoundland and Labrador was the site of one of the most successful community-led campaigns against fracking in the country. But we rarely, if ever, hear from voices like these in national coverage. We almost exclusively hear from voices that reinforce a narrative of an east-west divide which leaves little room for nuanced conversations and does not only depict polarization but also reinforces it. The identities of people in oil and gas reliant provinces consist of more than just oil and gas, but coverage tends to accept that stereotypical framing by oil and gas advocates.
- Climate policies are continuously cast as inherently bad for the economy, often without any legitimate evidence to that effect being provided (there are also are many climate policy researchers, who have already refuted such claims but they are rarely cited as counterpoints). The result is that the real reasons for the instability of the oil and gas sector and jobs – factors like automation, international price fluctuations, and overly-hyped oil and gas projects without real business cases – go largely unmentioned in the context of why oil and gas dependent regions are facing prolonged economic uncertainty. The impact of oil and gas profits on inflation, which is far above any impact from climate policy, likewise goes unmentioned. The benefits of climate policies to the economy, the fact that effective regulation can actually spur innovation – even the potential benefits to the existing oil and gas sector itself – are almost non-existent in coverage.
In the podcasts below we discuss the numerous benefits of a shift away from oil and gas and to renewables, like giving communities more power over their energy systems and localizing employment so energy workers don’t need to leave their families for weeks at a time. Renewables create far more jobs than oil and gas projects can while also bringing down energy costs for consumers – which is why renewables should power data centres.
Thirteen oil and gas companies ‘based in Canada’, 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.
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 to regulate these companies here.
And the effects of oil and gas pollution are also immediate and local:
- A fair cap on emissions from oil and gas, at the same level as Canada’s national climate target (45% below 2005 levels by 2030), would avoid the premature deaths of approximately 4,860 people nation-wide over a decade, and come with economic benefit of CAD $45.1 billion, according to a new analysis from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), this is before considering the climate change and non-fatal impacts of the air pollution prevented by a strong cap.
- According to CBC News: “A new peer-reviewed study on the health impacts of pollution from Alberta’s oil and gas sector has found 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.”
Podcast 1: Why Renewable Energy IS Reliable and Something We Can Deploy Now
You can find this episode on the Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and on our Youtube Channel.
Podcast 2: How Renewables Can Create Jobs and Localize Benefits in Communities
You can also find this episode on the Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, our Youtube Channel, and on our website.
Podcast 3: On the Need for Strong Climate Policies and Why Oil & Gas Development and Dependency only Hold us Back
You can also find this episode on the Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, our Youtube Channel, and on our website.
Podcast 4: On AI and Data Centres and Why These Must be Developed in a Renewable Way
You can also find this episode on the Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, our Youtube Channel, and on our website,
Podcast 5: Renewable Energy was Bringing Jobs Back to the U.S., ‘Drill Baby Drill’ Will Not
You can also listen to the episode on the IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or our website.
Podcast 6: 65% of Canadians Want Renewables INSTEAD of Oil & Gas Development as of March 2025
You can also listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, YouTube, or our website.