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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
A recent Globe investigation looks back at how an explosion in Wheatley, Ont. highlighted a widespread and potentially deadly problem in Southwestern Ontario, home to Canada’s oldest oil and gas industry.
It’s suspected that a mix of hydrogen sulfide and methane escaping from one or more old wells adjacent to the blast site was the likely cause. Now, alarm bells ring from experts who had been warning about thousands of abandoned wells, many of them leaking toxic gases.
We’ve talked about the environmental reasons to look at abandoned wells, now we are urgently need to address the safety reasons. Read more following the investigation today.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Drought: U.S. drought gives an Arizona dam’s critics a new argument for having it demolished.
- Wildfires: B.C. crews battling Keremeos blaze are using fire to fight fire.
- Ocean harvest: On Grand Manan, dulsers endure, despite warming ocean waters. Hand-picked purple seaweed is now a staple of health stores.
- Agriculture: Federal minister says Ottawa has no plan to cap fertilizer use as issue feeds federal and Alberta conservative races.
- Film: Fierce new documentary The Territory goes deep into the battle over the Amazon rainforest.
- From The Narwhal: Wet’suwet’en celebrate return of salmon amidst threats to keystone species.
A deeper dive
Hydrogen is the energy opportunity Canada needs to take seriously
Adam Radwanski is a climate reporter and columnist for The Globe. For this week’s deeper dive, he talks all about hydrogen.
The spotlight this week is on Canada’s potential emergence as a major exporter of hydrogen, courtesy of a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during which he’ll sign an agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to develop trade of that fuel source.
It’s an opportunity that this country has to take seriously. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hydrogen was in recognized as a potential emissions-reducing solutions for sectors that can’t easily be electrified. Now countries are urgently looking to hydrogen as a long-term replacement for Russian natural gas.
But it remains a tricky landscape to navigate, because the production of non-emitting (so-called green) hydrogen hasn’t been scaled anywhere, yet all kinds of ambitious plans are being made by companies without much way to know who can deliver, and it’s hard to get a sense of Canada’s competition for attracting investment.
So it seemed like a good time to take a look at one of the more interesting and controversial people trying to shape this market, as I did in a feature for the Globe this weekend.
In recent months, the Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest started to come up in nearly every hydrogen-related conversation I was having. His clean-energy company, Fortescue Future Industries, has an office in Canada and is exploring potential hydrogen projects in virtually every province. It’s gotten a reputation in Ottawa for unusually aggressive lobbying and has targets that could make it the world’s biggest hydrogen producer, – with preliminary plans to be a huge supplier of hydrogen to Germany and others.
Forrest is a mining baron who made his fortune by placing a huge gamble on a particular version of iron ore, and as he now tries to reinvent himself as an environmentalist, he’s approaching hydrogen with the same willingness to take risks.
I had a chance to sit down with him this summer, on a New York patio, to talk about what he’s seeing from his vantage point at the centre of the hydrogen action globally, and why he thinks we should put faith in this product and his ability to make it.
I can’t say that the impressions I got are easy to summarize in a sentence or two. He seemed both authentic in his passion for this product, deep into details of the science and economics, and rather cagey when it came to how he’s making decisions and what he’s demanding of others.
Charismatic and gregarious, he came off as someone who could be fun to work with; there were also occasional flashes of an edge, including on the subject of a legal fight with an Indigenous group in his home country, that made me wonder how quickly things could get contentious with him if projects didn’t go according to plan.
It’s important to stress that Forrest is far from the only entrepreneur pushing hydrogen plans in Canada at the moment. Some others will be in Newfoundland this week for a hydrogen-focused event with Scholz and Trudeau.
But Fortescue will be one of the companies on hand there. And its founder and CEO represents as well as anyone the challenge for governments and others, in figuring out how to place their hydrogen bets, and on whom.
- Adam
Also read:
- Konrad Yakabuski: Trudeau and Scholz need to face up to hard truths on energy security
What else you missed
- Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs rally in Vancouver against B.C. natural gas pipeline
- EU greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, but still below prepandemic level
- B.C. Liberals remove MLA John Rustad after ‘Celebrate CO2′ tweet
- UNESCO team in Alberta to determine if Wood Buffalo National Park should go on endangered list
- First drought, now downpours as storms slam France and England
- Hurricane-force winds, fierce storms leave at least eight people dead in France and Italy
- China scrambles to alleviate drought, power cuts amid record heat wave
- Federal, Nova Scotia governments commit to creating new parks and conserving coastal lands
- African migratory birds threatened by hot, dry weather
Opinion and analysis
Pamela Fergusson and Jessica Scott-Reid: Why it may be a good time to ditch dairy
Edward Greenspon, Kim Henderson, and Dave Nikolejsin: The world needs Canada’s energy. Does Canada want to help?
Kelly Cryderman: Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. embraces Alberta’s energy role at the right time
Kendall Dilling: Ottawa’s unrealistic emissions plan could drive away investment
Green Investing
Alberta’s business community worries UCP sovereignty talk will put off investment in energy transition
The most contentious idea among front-running candidates in the United Conservative Party leadership is a plan to bestow the provincial government with power to supersede the federal legal system. Many in business, say Alberta needs to collaborate with the rest of the country and the world to develop and share technology and talent. However, Alberta business leaders are not all on board with the energy transition either.
Alberta’s business and political worlds need to find common ground to maintain access to the funding necessary to make the shift to lower-carbon energy, said Ryan Mooney, an investment banker with Echelon Wealth Partners who works with both traditional oil and gas and cleantech companies. Read the full story.
- Also read: Prince William charity invests with bank tied to dirty fuels
Making waves
We will be taking a break from publishing profiles this summer! But we’re still looking for great people to feature. Get in touch with us to have someone included in our “making waves” section for after Labour Day.
Do you know an engaged individual? Someone who represents the real engines pursuing change in the country? Email us at GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com to tell us about them.
Photo of the week
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We've rounded up our reporters' content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP 26, and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Is the U.S. climate bill great news for Canada?
- These drones are helping plant trees
- The simmering feud over an Alberta town’s possible return to coal mining
- Climate-related migration in Peru’s Amazonas region leads to community upheaval
We want to hear from you. Email us: GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com. Do you know someone who needs this newsletter? Send them to our Newsletters page.