Canada can rightfully claim to offer world’s cleanest LNG

Pity the poor politician or public servant who has to decide matters of great moment in important areas of public policy. Their inevitable critics are vociferous and often very loud. Often, groups of citizens organize specifically to frustrate the efforts of the policy-makers.

For example, the position of many groups concerned about climate change is that liquified natural gas should not be produced or sold because it is a hydrocarbon and therefore contributes to carbon pollution. Banning it outright, they argue, is necessary if we are to get to net-zero carbon pollution as quickly as possible and save the planet.

This argument assumes we should make banning LNG the short-term objective of public policy, regardless of the cost. There is, however, a problem in that the transition from an economy that relies upon hydrocarbons for a significant part of our energy supply to a net-zero carbon economy cannot be attained overnight in one fell swoop.

Canada can rightfully claim to offer the world’s cleanest LNG, owing to the fact that its transfer by pipeline and its liquification are accomplished using hydroelectricity generated by turbines in large dams. Thus, selling LNG to Japan or Germany (as they are begging us to do) or, indeed, any other nation will achieve a significant reduction in emissions as it replaces coal, the dirtiest fuel.

Thus, those who object to Canada selling LNG to friendly countries such as Japan or Germany are making the perfect enemy of the merely good. They are failing to consider that converting to gas away from coal brings about a net reduction in total carbon emissions while providing breathing space for economies to achieve the net-zero goal. If perfection is not immediately attainable, policies that bring about a significant improvement (even without attaining perfection) are good policies.

Consider another example: the gasoline-powered automobile. While electric cars are undoubtedly the future of the industry, what about the existing stock of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles? They will gradually be retired – but not by tomorrow. Owners of such vehicles have a significant investment in them and, unless the government can compensate owners for giving up their vehicles, and simultaneously replace said vehicles with EVs, banning all non-electric vehicles is just not on – at least not this year.

Setting a future target for eliminating non-electric vehicles from production, however, is possible. In other words, the solution requires a major effort to ensure the target can be reached by 2050 without introducing significant instability into the market in the meantime.

Sometimes, public policies designed to deal with an urgent problem, for example COVID-19, lead to a belief on the part of some members of the electorate that such actions constitute a major infringement on personal freedoms and are, therefore, unacceptable.

Government, in dealing with such public health problems, always has the option of doing nothing, of course – but that means ignoring the costs of inaction, in this case the possibility of unlimited infection of the population and very high death rates.

So, beginning three years ago, governments implemented constraints on behaviour such as mandatory masking, social distancing and forbidding gatherings of people until the epidemic was believed to be under control. Those who chose not to get vaccinated were not forced to, but they paid a price in the form of some consequential limits to their freedom in an effort to protect the general good.

The real question is whether Canadian policy makers hit a responsible balance.

Public policy formulation and application cannot be perfect. Trade-offs are necessary. Errors can and do happen. Expecting perfection is, however, just as unrealistic as making the assumption that government always acts in error.