This is Part 2 of our series, Unpacking Climate Solutions: False, Real, Or Unjust?
Read Part 1 and Part 3.
We’ve all heard the saying, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it.”
In the first instalment of our series, we looked at some of the most popular false solutions that the oil and gas industry, as well as our government, promote to stall getting off fossil fuels. In this piece, we consider proposed solutions for transitioning off fossil fuels that are nevertheless unjust to people and damaging to the planet.
We show that climate solutions motivated by private profit, unlimited economic growth, and disregard for ecosystems and communities only uphold the status quo and stand in the way of a just transition away from fossil fuels. Instead, we need to be considering solutions that fundamentally shift our relationship with the land and each other.
Public-Private Partnerships
Governments have long heralded Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) as a solution to the climate crisis. P3s are collaborations between governments and the private sector around financing, designing, building, operating, or owning facilities or infrastructure that are otherwise designed to be public services.
In 2016, the Trudeau government established the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) and mandated the arms’ length crown corporation with promoting P3s. In the most recent federal budget, the government hails the CIB as its “primary financing tool” for $20 billion worth of clean electricity and green infrastructure projects in the form of P3s.
However, we know that using the P3 funding model can’t address the structural problems that underpin the climate crisis, mainly corporations’ pursuit of profit at all costs. P3s inevitably shift the purpose of infrastructure, from serving as a public good to generating profits for the corporations responsible for these projects. When profit is the motive, private companies tend to cut corners. This can result in higher user fees, more unreliable service provision and maintenance, poor staffing, lower wages and reduced benefits. These consequences make people less likely to use services like transit and they can make utilities like electricity less reliable at critical times. Ottawa and Edmonton’s recent attempts to expand their light trail transit systems are clear examples of how P3s cost more, deliver less, and lack accountability, on top of actually delaying climate action.
P3 projects also lack accountability to the communities they are meant to serve. P3s are negotiated behind closed doors and generally lock municipalities or other bodies into decades-long agreements. This means that our democratic institutions have no control over the project once the contract is signed, even if there are long delays in service, cost-overruns, or significant climate impacts.
The root cause of the climate and ecological crises is, and always has been, greed. Prioritizing P3s and profit in what should be publicly-accountable, rapid, and accessible climate solutions is not addressing the problem.
Wind and solar projects
Wind and solar are the backbone of the world’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy production. But despite their potential, we need to also consider where these technologies are not appropriate, particularly when it comes to large-scale projects with serious impacts on local communities and ecosystems.
Wind power is one of the cheapest means of producing electricity. It has strong public support, a low carbon footprint, and a small environmental impact. In 2022, it accounted for 7 per cent of the world’s electricity, growing at a rate of 1 per cent a year. China and the USA account for most of the world’s wind power production. Because of the variability of the wind, it requires large-scale grid integration and backup electricity storage such as batteries, pumped storage, and hydro. It pairs nicely with solar photovoltaic electricity production.
Solar power, like wind, is equally cheap and by far the fastest growing means of producing electricity worldwide. It can produce electricity through either photovoltaic panels, which are very portable and versatile, or concentrated solar power stations, which concentrate the sun’s rays and use that heat to produce steam, in order to drive a turbine that then generates electricity.
The job-creation and renewable energy generation opportunities presented by wind and solar projects cannot be overstated. However, these energy projects can be unjust climate solutions if they do not take into account the concerns of local communities or the projects’ impact on the environment, especially large projects. Large-scale wind and solar projects are often unduly rushed through by governments, with little to no transparency or consultation in the process, breeding serious mistrust among affected local communities. Larger projects also often prioritize export, converting the energy produced into less climate-friendly formats for ease of transport, such as hydrogen or ammonia. Small-scale and community-based schemes have been found to be much more acceptable.
The Port au Port wind megaproject proposed for the west coast of Newfoundland is a typical example of how an otherwise sustainable climate solution can be unjust: all energy produced at this facility will be exported to Europe to profit a billionaire businessman while local citizens were barely consulted and their concerns about irreversible damage to the ecologically fragile peninsula were ignored. Concerned with the handling of this project, the Council of Canadians Avalon Chapter participated in demanding that the federal government conduct its own environmental impact assessment. Minister Steven Guilbeault declined this demand, and the project continues to move through the provincial impact assessment process, where another opportunity for public feedback is upcoming. The upcoming public consultation period will be contentious as community members continue to have concerns about the ecological impact and lack of consultation and community benefit of this project.
Our increasing requirement for low-impact renewable energy needs to be balanced by thoughtfulness for those who live in affected communities and regions, as well as providing energy for that local community (as opposed to export) and caring for the ecosystems in which they are proposed.
Hydro/megadams
On the surface, energy production that harnesses the power of natural features on our planet sounds like a good idea. However, in practice, hydroelectricity generated by megadams is a lot more complicated. Namely, megadams have a track record of trampling over Indigenous rights and are also a significant source of GHGs.
Megadams like Site C in Northern BC and Muskrat Falls in Labrador have significantly undermined and attacked Indigenous sovereignty. Megaprojects like these have destroyed land that Indigenous communities depend upon for life, livelihoods, and cultural and spiritual practices. We know that Indigenous sovereignty is a climate solution (which we’ll get into in the next part of this series and you can read more about here)—and megadam projects rarely, if ever, obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of the Indigenous communities they impact.
Additionally, megadams have been found to produce significant GHG emissions, specifically due to their construction emissions and rotting vegetation in dam reservoirs. They also often provide energy for further fossil fuel extraction, rather than for public and other industrial use.
Hydroelectricity accounts for nearly 60 per cent of electricity generation in Canada—but new megaprojects are not a just climate solution. Hydroelectricity can certainly be a solution to our current dependence on fossil fuels, but it needs to be generated in a way that does not undermine Indigenous rights, reduce biodiversity, or produce further GHG emissions.
Electric vehicles
According to the most recent data, transport in Canada contributes 25 per cent of our GHG emissions. More than half of these emissions come from passenger transport, the vast majority of which is from personal cars and light trucks. This is an important sector and its GHG emissions must be reduced rapidly as part of a just transition.
The federal government’s transport strategy, as part of its 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, focuses almost entirely on electric vehicles (EVs) by encouraging people to purchase them, mandating sales targets, and supporting manufacturers. EVs made up 5 per cent of all vehicles sold in Canada in 2021, a rate that is predicted to increase rapidly as more people opt for them. But purchasing an EV is an expensive option that is beyond the scope of most people. EV charging infrastructure is also costly to install, for both individuals and public use.
A far better climate strategy is to invest in public transit, not private vehicle ownership, prioritizing affordable, low-carbon, accessible, rapid public transit systems, within and between communities. The Council of Canadians is proud to be a part of the Keep Transit Moving Coalition and to advocate for publicly owned, well-funded, just, and accessible transit – you can read more about the coalition here.
If transit is well-funded and affordable, fewer people will require cars, which would significantly reduce the materials and manufacturing necessary to keep people moving. Additionally, Public transit systems on the whole have lower life cycle GHG emissions than private vehicles, even personal EVs. And public transit has broader, shared benefits which provide good opportunities to take further climate action. For instance, cities can upgrade their train systems and bus fleets to run on clean electricity instead of fossil fuels. But benefits also include better air quality, less space given over to cars, and fewer traffic accidents. There are many social benefits to a reduction in car use, especially in cities.
Carbon markets, offsetting, and cap and trade systems
Carbon markets put a price on carbon emissions. The intention of charging for carbon emissions is to incentivize profit-driven industries to reduce their emissions to maintain competitiveness and spur innovation.
Carbon offsetting is slightly different. It allows companies to compensate for their carbon emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove an equivalent amount of emissions from the atmosphere – such as planting trees, saving rainforests, or renewable energy development.
In carbon cap and trade systems, governments set a cap on allowable emissions and then allow industry to pursue activities to that cap through allowance certificates. These certificates can be bought and sold between companies who emit more or less than their allowance to theoretically balance each other out.
Carbon markets, offsetting, and trading are exactly what they sound like: market-based solutions to the climate crisis. And, as we know, profit-based markets are what got us into this mess in the first place!
Putting a price on carbon and the trading of allowance certificates or offsets allows companies to greenwash their operations. Instead of investing in carbon reduction measures onsite, trading and offset programs see companies buying someone else’s emissions reduction work. And sometimes, that work isn’t actually happening – a recent report from the Guardian demonstrated that 90 per cent of carbon offsets offered by the world’s leading certifier did not actually represent carbon reduction.
Capping GHGs is a good idea, but allowing corporations to further profit off climate change while not making measurable changes in their operations renders these systems unjust.
Nature-based solutions
“Nature-based solutions” refer to the use of the natural world as a way to capture and sequester carbon. This includes landscapes like forests, wetlands, and specific types of soil and vegetation.
Using the natural world to address the climate crisis sounds like a good idea on paper. But Indigenous Climate Action sums up the problem with nature-based solutions very well: “For the last century, the colonial governments and industries have sought our lands to extract the oil, mine the minerals, and cut down trees. Now they seek our lands to store the carbon pollution these processes have created to address the climate crisis they are responsible for.”
Generally, “nature-based solutions” are framed as working with, not against, nature. However, these solutions are often working directly against Indigenous communities and the land. Indigenous people protect 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity. But as discussed by Indigenous Climate Action, many nature-based solutions arise from the Western conception of conservation that relies on the separation and exclusion of humans from natural spaces. Pushing the very people who understand and protect biodiversity off the land that they steward is not a climate solution – it is contributing to the climate and ecological crises.
One example of this, as discussed in Indigenous Climate Action’s new report on nature-based solutions’, is ‘green-grabbing – where conservation and planting programs have restricted Indigenous peoples’ access to their traditional lands and resources. In many other cases, some of which have been documented by the Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific, land grabs in the name of “nature-based solutions” have driven Indigenous and rural people off their land and resulted in arrests and deaths. A classic example of this has been the creation of National Parks that exclude Indigenous peoples from practicing their culture and stewarding the land in these areas.
“Nature-based solutions” also run into the same issue as carbon trading and offsetting: entrusting the same corporations who destroyed the land and water with addressing the climate crisis. Doing so only opens up more avenues for profit-making and land and resource theft by these same corporations. Take for example, the efforts by Syncrude, which has spent millions of dollars to create what it calls “the world’s largest protected boreal forest area”. A recent case study by Indigenous Climate Action shows that Syncrude used carbon offset credits from indirectly buying Tallcree First Nations’ timber extraction rights in the Birch River area to justify increasing industrial activities.
As Indigenous Climate Action lays out, addressing the climate crisis means healing our relationship with Mother Earth and the creatures and ecosystems we share this planet with. Addressing climate change is going to require a shift in mindset, towards taking leadership from and listening to the people who have stewarded this land since time immemorial. Further commodifying the natural world is not a just climate solution – rather, it’s what got us into this situation in the first place.
Summing Up
When we ask who these unjust solutions serve, the answer is clear: each of these solutions once again put profit over the needs of people, communities, and the planet. In order to have a truly just energy transition, we need to shift our underlying assumptions and prioritize solutions that are to the benefit of people and our relationship to each other and the planet.
So far in our series, we’ve explored false solutions and unjust solutions. In our next piece, we will look at the true solutions it will take to build a just and liveable future as we work to address the climate crisis.
This is Part 2 of our series, Unpacking Climate ‘Solutions’: False, Real, Or Unjust?
Read Part 1 and Part 3.
