Governments and the energy industry should prepare for oil demand to plateau - Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Remember when some concerned energy analysts predicted there was an imminent limit to global oil supply? It’s now obvious there was no “peak oil” on the supply side; the world has hundreds of years of available oil supply. However, a peak in global oil demand is within sight and could be reached by the mid-2030s, if not sooner.
The supply-side analysis of peak oil was wrong-headed for two key reasons. First, it did not reflect the massive stocks of non-conventional oil, such as that embedded in porous rock and in Canada’s oil sands. Second, and more importantly, supply-side analysis severely underestimated the capacity of the oil industry to innovate and find ways to access these non-conventional sources of oil by developing new…
Uncertainty dominates today’s policy landscape. Just last week it figured prominently and explicitly in the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee’s news release and press conference announcing its controversial interest rate cut.
Recognizing the nature and extent of the uncertainty facing us today is not hard. We have trade war uncertainty and associated uncertainty about the future of the global trading system, uncertainty about a changing world order, uncertainty about global governance and rules of the game, uncertainty related to technological disruptions, and climate change uncertainty.
But what exactly do we mean by uncertainty? How is it different from risk? And what does the rise in uncertainty mean from a monetary…
Earlier in July, Alberta’s government released its proposal for a new framework for output-based pricing of greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial emitters. The Technology Innovation and Emission Reduction (TIER) would replace the current Carbon Competitiveness Incentive Regulation (CCIR), introduced by the previous government in 2018.
The central difference is a move from a “one product, one benchmark” approach under CCIR for setting the thresholds above which facilities would face a carbon price and below which facilities would earn credits. In contrast with CCIR, for all sectors outside power generation, the TIER will move to a facility-specific benchmark equal to 90 per cent of a facility’s average emission intensity…
