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It’s not too late for the NDP to fix its incoherent energy and climate policy but the party already has strike one against it.
Rachel Notley’s NDP went into its weekend annual general meeting (AGM) with two excellent resolutions that would have polished up fine its dull and creaky energy and climate platform but it postponed and failed to advance either of them.
The NDP, a party leading in most political polls for more than a year now, is still forming its policy platform but it’s at a crossroads. The energy resolutions from the NDP’s AGM certainly gave mixed signals.
Two remarkable and surprising resolutions extolled the benefits of zero-carbon nuclear power, but an ill-advised one advocated against the sensible hydrogen policy supported by both the Trudeau Liberals and Danielle Smith’s UCP.
The UCP’s current plan envisions using Alberta’s abundant and reliable supply of natural gas to create hydrogen fuel. Instead, the NDP resolution calls for unreliable solar and wind to produce hydrogen.
The NDP never got around to voting on this hydrogen resolution, nor did they vote on the two nuclear power resolutions.
But the Alberta NDP’s two new resolutions make the case for the energy source, saying nuclear will help Canada get to net zero by 2050, noting there are already 19 commercial nuclear reactors in the country providing 17 per cent of all electricity generated in Canada with an excellent safety record, that the Alberta UCP government is already working with Ontario, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan to develop new small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), and that Alberta has large supplies of untapped uranium.
Most crucially, nuclear gives Alberta an opportunity solar and wind can never provide. Alberta oilsands executives and researchers are looking at using SMRs to produce the immense heat and energy needed in oilsands production to slash carbon emissions to near zero. With such SMRs, the Alberta oilsands could crush its “dirty oil” label.
Environmentally-friendly oilsands development
If Notley’s NDP fails to support nuclear pronto it could get in the way of the most significant and environmentally-friendly oilsands development in years.
Canadian nuclear energy isn’t only the best option for a prosperous and green world, the technology is also made here and its workforce is the most heavily unionized of any energy sector, all things that align with foundational NDP beliefs, said Dr. Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, in an interview.
Keefer, who is both non-partisan politically and dedicated to slashing emissions, said NDP leaders will tell him in private they support nuclear, but won’t say the same thing in public for fear of turning off the party’s anti-nuclear faction and risk their support going to the Green Party.
A big part of the NDP base grew out of the anti-war movement of the last century, Keefer said, folks who have a great and justified fear of nuclear war, but incorrectly conflate that threat with the Canadian nuclear power industry, which for five decades has safely driven down air pollution and emissions with its zero carbon and reliable power plants.
Blue collar union workers in Ontario strongly back Premier Doug Ford’s re-embrace of nuclear, Keefer said, but the NDP still is in the grips of its aging anti-nuclear faction and of big city environmentalists, who generally prefer solar and wind.
Nuclear resolutions will be polarizing
Keefer described the two Alberta NDP resolutions on nuclear as “awesome and amazing,” but suggested adopting them won’t be easy. “It’s going to split the party for sure and that’s the challenge of the NDP. They’re pursuing the politics or irrelevance because they’re just becoming a party of urban elites, divorced from the working class.”
The NDP’s energy resolutions will now be debated by the party’s council this winter. Strike two will be if that council rejects nuclear.
Strike three could well be at the polls this spring.
No party that says it wants to slash emissions in the name of climate change should be against nuclear power. No Alberta party that hopes to decarbonize oilsands production should oppose nuclear.
At the AGM, Notley promised party members the NDP would be a global leader on climate change and later added: “Albertans must be the grown-ups in the room so when we speak, all Canadians listen.”
To be the adult in the room on climate change and energy policy, you don’t throw out a proven solution in favour of old and irrational fears. If you do so, you will quite rightly be labelled as climate dinosaurs.
Source: EdmontonJournal
