Varcoe: Interest in nuclear rises as oil and gas attitudes split

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The world is enduring “the primary really world power disaster,” the top of the Worldwide Power Company mentioned lately, as oil, fuel and electrical energy costs soared increased previously yr.

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Power safety has additionally made its method again into the general public consciousness.

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Nonetheless, attitudes in Canada stay decidedly divided, and even perhaps ambivalent, towards the enlargement of power growth.

A brand new ballot by the Angus Reid Institute provides an attention-grabbing window into what Canadians take into consideration their numerous power sources and what the longer term might maintain.

Nationwide help for extracting extra power from renewable developments is powerful, whereas public help for nuclear energy is on the rise.

“There may be definitely some openness and urge for food potential for increasing nuclear power growth,” institute president Shachi Kurl mentioned Wednesday.

“It’s not one which has been examined on the group stage.”

Views on expanded oil and fuel growth are extra combined throughout the nation, although in majority territory — and far increased in producing provinces comparable to Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

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Other than nuclear energy, different power sources noticed little change within the stage of public help from the same ballot in 2021.

After a interval of upheaval, together with rising pump costs and energy payments, this can be a curious pattern.

“Canadians dwell in a land of loads,” power economist Peter Tertzakian mentioned Wednesday.

“Whether or not it is Quebec with their hydro or the western provinces with their hydrocarbons, we’re comparatively protected against what is going on on in the remainder of the world, which ends up in a sure sense of false safety.”

Probably the most provocative findings within the survey was elevated help for nuclear energy, which got here as a number of provinces had been working collectively to check the potential of small modular reactors, or SMRs.

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The web survey of 5,030 Canadians, performed in late November and early December, discovered 57 % of Canadians surveyed say they’d help efforts to increase nuclear energy era, whereas 30 % had been opposed.

Help for nuclear energy, a non-emitting power supply that historically comes with an costly price ticket for large-scale tasks, has climbed six share factors since June 2021.

Not surprisingly, help for nuclear energy is powerful in provinces that have already got working amenities – New Brunswick and Ontario – though help was even increased in Alberta and Saskatchewan, greater than 70 %.

In Quebec, solely 30 % are in favor.

“As the general public learns extra about nuclear energy and its advantages, not solely by way of CO2 emissions, but in addition power safety, financial progress and land use, they acknowledge that it will possibly play a big and constructive position,” Christopher Gully of the Canadian Nuclear Affiliation mentioned in a press release.

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How shut you reside to a nuclear energy station additionally impacts the angle of Canadians.

Whereas 59 % of respondents mentioned they’d be snug with a plant working of their province, that quantity dropped to half if the power was positioned inside 100 kilometers of their residence.

The trade additionally faces hurdles to beat, such because the low value of renewable energy in comparison with the upper value of nuclear energy era, mentioned Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada.

“There may be at all times a nuclear renaissance within the offing; there was for the final 20 years, and it continues to take a seat on the basis of the economic system,” he mentioned.

And what about views on fossil fuels?

Canada stays the world’s fourth largest oil producing nation and fifth largest pure fuel producer. With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the world’s largest power exporter, safety of provide has turn into an pressing concern, even in a interval of decarbonization.

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As Canada strikes towards a net-zero goal by 2050 and Ottawa presses forward with an emissions cap for the oil spill, an intense political debate is now brewing over what the longer term holds for rising oil and pure fuel manufacturing.

The ballot discovered that help for increasing oil and fuel operations has remained comparatively flat since mid-2021, with half of Canadians in favor and 41 per cent opposed.

“Canadians see that there aren’t any silver bullets with regards to power and with regards to lowering emissions and that it is actually going to take all totally different types of power,” says Monica Gattinger, a political scientist and chair of the College from Ottawa’s Constructive Power Analysis Program.

“One of many issues that basically stood out to me was that extra Canadians help rising oil and fuel in our power consumption than rising it.”

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In Alberta, totally three-quarters of respondents help the enlargement of oil and fuel as a supply of provide; solely 20 % are opposed. And 72 % of respondents from Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador and in addition in favor.

These numbers drop to about half in Ontario, British Columbia and New Brunswick, and 34 % in Quebec.

“It isn’t an excellent factor to have this type of polarization, it is nothing new and it isn’t stunning,” mentioned Tertzakian, deputy director of the ARC Power Analysis Institute.

Whereas a number of the dividing traces are geographic, they’re additionally political.

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The ballot signifies that 86 % of federal Conservative voters within the final election say they help the enlargement of oil and fuel operations, however that quantity drops to one-third for Liberals and two in 10 for NDP voters.

Nationally, the ballot signifies that 74 % of Canadians help extra wind farms, whereas photo voltaic farms acquired 81 % help, each barely down from 2021.

Help for hydraulic fracturing rose three share factors to 31 %, whereas coal mining help was flat at 19 %.

In Alberta, which has rapidly turn into a scorching spot for each wind and photo voltaic growth — greater than $4.3 billion in renewable tasks have been unveiled since 2019 — the ballot signifies robust curiosity in numerous power sources.

The survey discovered 75 per cent of Albertans are OK with nuclear era, two-thirds again extra photo voltaic farms, and 6 in 10 help extra wind farms. Solely 37 % say they help the enlargement of coal mining.

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.

cvarcoe@postmedia.com