TIME FOR A NORTH AMERICAN ENERGY REVOLUTION.

Here's another brilliant idea that would create jobs and economic development that Canada's hapless Liberal government should have raised with the new Biden administration in the United States: Create a binational initiative to restructure the energy sector that would make North America more self-sufficient, reduce costs, accelerate the transition to renewables and eliminate the supply chain dangers of relying on energy from Russia, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members.

I've written about this before, but now is the time to transform the system to combat the negative impacts caused by the cancellation of Keystone XL, the Texas deregulation debacle, anti-pipeline militancy and the Trudeau government's anti-enterprise incompetence.

The United States and Canada should establish a joint fossil fuel market, with independent oversight, that would ban all oil imports from OPEC, in order to establish a stable and fair domestic oil price for consumers and producers. By removing the risk of OPEC's boom-and-bust pricing, the development of alternative energy projects and conservation initiatives would accelerate because they require long-term financing and price certainty.

This binational market would operate similar to the electrical system. There are no tankers delivering electricity to our shores and no destructive price shenanigans, such as those that OPEC has undertaken for decades. The electricity market, and the grid that distributes it, is the cornerstone of North American prosperity. A similarly managed fossil fuel market would be another. By combining forces, the U.S. and Canada could become self-sufficient overnight.

In 2019, the two countries produced a combined total of 16 million barrels of oil a day and imported a combined 2.5 million barrels a day. These imports were not necessary because we already have the capacity to produce all the oil that our two countries consume on a daily basis.

But that didn't happen because of side deals with other regimes, insufficient pipelines in place to reach all regions (like Eastern Canada) and because OPEC ratchets prices up and down in order to drive some producers out of business and undermine the development of renewables. Ironically, the creation of an OPECfree market, which would include building more pipelines, is the key to greening the economy.

Environmentalists may respond by saying that the solution to OPEC is simply to ban oil and gas altogether, subsidize renewables and mandate the use of electricity in all vehicles and industries. But Germany, with the world's most ambitious green master plan to eliminate nuclear and fossil fuels at the same time, is still massively reliant on burning coal to produce power, after a decade of green energy policies. (It uses coal because it has no oil or natural gas. It is phasing out nuclear and buys gas from Russia.)

The reality of renewables is that they must be supplemented with fossil fuels because the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine and their surpluses cannot be stored efficiently. Fossil fuels will be around for decades because electrifying public transportation, agriculture, industrial operations, housing and the armed forces is staggeringly expensive. Fossil fuels are also essential to the production of petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

Reflecting this reality is the 2020 report by the International Energy Agency, which estimates that, even if aggressive policies were put in place, oil consumption in North America (U.S., Canada and Mexico) would still be at least 12 million barrels a day by 2040.

It's time that Canadians and Americans realize that the only sensible way forward is to lobby U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to get her onside for an energy revolution that will benefit consumers, producers and the environment.

AN OPEC-FREE MARKET ... IS THE

KEY TO GREENING THE

ECONOMY.

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TODD KOROL / REUTERS FILES Renewables must be supplemented with fossil fuels because the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine and surpluses cannot be stored efficiently.