International Energy Agency predicts fossil fuel use will peak by 2030 – whatever will Alberta have to say?

Maybe Alberta Premier Danielle Smith can send an open letter to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, to accuse him of trying to frighten Alberta’s seniors. 

Or maybe she’ll say nothing at all about the World Energy Outlook report the IEA published yesterday, which concluded that our planet is hurtling toward a future in which clean energy will dominate and fossil fuel use will soon peak before starting to decline.

As Mr. Birol, the Turkish economist who heads the IEA, put it, “The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s just a matter of ‘how soon.’”

But don’t worry, even if Ms. Smith doesn’t say anything about the IEA’s conclusion that by 2030 nearly half of the planet’s supply of electricity will come from renewable energy, solar energy will generate more electricity than the entire U.S. power system does now, and the number of electric vehicles on the world’s roads will increase tenfold, her United Conservative Party’s supporters are sure to deny, deny, deny there’s anything to it.

They’re also bound to point out that Dr. Birol is chairman of the World Economic Forum’s energy advisory board – the WEF having become a bête noir to all right-thinking Canadian Conservatives, and I do mean right thinking. So I might was well point that out myself, deprive them of their meaningless scoop, and spoil their fun in the comments section. 

The New York Times may call the IEA, the Paris-based organization of the 44 countries that represent three quarters of the planet’s energy demand, “the world’s leading energy agency.” But Alberta, which as far as anybody knows is still the owner of the world’s leading “energy war room,” will almost certainly have something to say about that. 

It may be notoriously difficult to predict energy use trends, as the Times admitted in its news story yesterday, but this kind of talk by a respected organization really doesn’t bode well for a province whose government is increasingly dominated by climate change deniers and outright separatists, cheered on by scribblers for foreign-owned newspapers.

And while the IEA predicts global demand for natural gas, oil and coal will peak by 2030, Alberta’s government remains mired deep in denial, enamoured of belligerent conspiracy theories, convinced that if we pump it, they will come. 

That, alas, is unlikely to change even if it becomes more obvious that, almost everywhere else on the planet, things are indeed a-changin’.

The World Energy Outlook projections are based on government policies that are already in place around the world, the IEA’s energy outlook report noted. 

Including, I suppose, jurisdictions like California, where Governor Gavin Newsom wants to export the state’s climate laws to the world. Mr. Newsom, who is said to be pondering a run for the U.S. presidency, recently signed one statute banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state of 40 million people by 2035. So, as someone said in the CBC’s story on the IEA report, this kind of stuff really should serve as a “wake up call” for Canada.

In reality, it will probably only increase the enthusiasm of the UCP government for such schemes as the planned hijacking of the Canada Pension Plan’s funds, the better to prop up yesterday’s faltering industry. 

The thing is, predictions like the IEA’s tend to build momentum for a policy direction that already makes sense to many countries in the face of increasingly hard-to-deny climate change, as their governments’ policies show.

But who knows? Maybe the UCP will change everything by hiring diesel trucks to drive around Paris with signs saying, “Personne ne veut geler dans le noir!”

The truth? What the UCP says, thinks, or does will have little impact on anything outside Alberta. 

But it just might hurt those of us who live here, and eventually turn Canada’s richest province into a rust-belt backwater. 

Moratorium on renewable energy projects, anyone?