Harvard expert backs natural gas
N. America should export ‘as much LNG as possible,’ conference told
In a call that is sure to be music to the ears of B.C. premier Christy Clark and those in the energy industry, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter on Thursday said it’s time to get on with LNG exports to help combat climate change.
“It’s good for the world. It’s good for China. It’s good for lots of other people in the world who really care about climate. We should be exporting as much LNG as possible,” Porter told the Globe conference in Vancouver.
Porter, an economist at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard, made a case that natural gas is a crucial bridge to getting to a world fuelled by renewable energy such as wind and solar.
Porter, author of 18 books, is considered a leading authority on competitiveness and economic development, and has been an adviser to the U.S. government on economic policy and also an adviser in the business sector.
He argued Thursday that natural gas provides a way to replace higher-intensity-carbon energy such as that produced by coal plants and to meet increasing global demand for energy, which is necessary because it’s going to take decades to transition to a world in which renewable energy replaces fossil fuels.
It’s an argument that has been front and centre for the B.C. Liberal government as it promotes its plans for a new liquefied natural gas export industry and, at the same time, works on a new plan to reduce the province’s carbon emissions.
On Wednesday at the conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added support to the idea, saying Canada must continue to generate wealth from its abundant natural resources to fund this transition to a lowcarbon economy.
The Canadian energy industry has also argued natural gas is part of the solution to reduce emissions, an idea backed by Enbridge CEO Al Monaco and Suncor CEO Steve Williams on the panel on Thursday. “If you look at the impact we can make on (greenhouse gas) emissions, natural gas is a huge source of opportunity,” Monaco said in an interview.
He noted there are not only opportunities in conservation but in capturing natural gas from areas such as landfills and wastewater treatment plants.
The political stakes are high for the Clark government, which has pegged its economic growth plan on building a nascent LNG export industry to Asia.
There are more than a dozen proposed LNG projects on the B.C. coast — and a handful of projects in a position to go ahead, including Shell’s LNG Canada project in Kitimat. But no company has made a final investment decision in the face of plunging revenues from collapsed oil prices, a jittery global economy and uncertainty over long-term natural gas prices.
B.C.’s position that it should get credit for selling LNG to countries like China has been contentious among environmental groups, climate scientists and other governments.
B.C. has also faced concerns over the environmental effects of extracting gas through the use of fracking.
Porter urged B.C. and Canada to avoid the U.S. approach, which has amounted to a polarized “religious” war over fracking and threatens to derail its potential to spark the economy with investment in its new-found gas and oil energy supplies.
However, during a panel discussion that followed Porter’s hour-long speech, Tzeporah Berman, a longtime B.C. environmentalist and member of Clark’s climate leadership team, challenged Porter’s assertion that natural gas is needed for a decades-long transition to renewables.
She said regulations in the U.S that have provided extensions to wind and solar credits have driven the ability for a much quicker transition to renewable power.
A blanket statement that extracting more natural gas through fracking will help transition to renewable energy is a premise that is “a little bit dangerous,” Berman told the conference.
In an interview, she noted that British Columbia already gets 93 per cent of its electrical power from renewables, largely through Hydro.
The question for B.C. is how much natural gas does it want to produce for export, said Berman.