Ontario’s battery plants aren't as green as they seem

As usual, the recent UN climate talks produced wonderful words from Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, Steven Guilbeault. “COP28 calls for groundbreaking goals to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, and, for the first time ever, we reached a historic consensus to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems,” he said, as the talks wound down in early December. Guilbeault played a key role in producing that successful final communique.

We’ve been hearing how great Canada is at every one of these conferences since the Liberals took office in 2015. Our own Catherine McKenna, who also served as environment minister, was instrumental at COP21 in Paris and helped establish the aspirational goal to limit the end of the century temperature rise to 1.5C. McKenna said back then “Canada is ready to do its part.”

But we haven’t delivered on that promise. Canada recently was rated as being in the G20’s next to worst group for having “highly insufficient” greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction plans for 2030. We share that spot with China and India. McKenna now has a job at the UN calling out entities who claim to be doing their part but aren’t and Canada should be on her list.

The basics of the UN process is that each country tracks its own emissions and reduces them based on committed targets. The idea of the target is to actually reduce our own emissions, not just say we are going to it and then do the opposite. Key phrases to remember are “reduce” and “own emissions”. The Trudeau government seems confused about that.

For example, they approved liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals that greatly increased BC emissions using an argument that exporting the fossil fuel to China would help the Chinese stop using coal. While getting China off coal could be seen as commendable, that action moved us further away from our UN commitment to reduce our own emissions. Our prime minister’s twisted logic also led to Canada approving and eventually buying the Trans Mountain Pipeline. The justification was selling more bitumen via the pipeline would help fund the green economy. In reality, the project became a massive money pit sucking up tens of billions of dollars that could have funded the green shift in Canada. Long term, that money pit will require ongoing subsidies to enable fossil fuel producers to afford to ship on that pipeline.

Now, the prime minister and his people are back at it again. Their most recent expenditure is tens of billions to subsidize profitable global corporations to build battery plants in Canada. That sounds green on the surface but in actual fact battery plants themselves are large GHG emitters, requiring fossil fuel burning and large amounts of electricity. The batteries produced will mostly be for export, meaning they will be placed in foreign cars and the resulting emissions reductions will benefit countries other than ours. Canada, in effect, is taking on increased GHG emissions to help other countries meet their goals and paying tens of billions for the privilege.

The government knows this. But it doesn't talk directly about how bad these plants can be for Canada’s climate goals. They talk about how a Quebec battery plant is perhaps the world’s most environmentally friendly because of Quebec’s green electricity supply but there is silence on the Ontario plants’ emissions. That’s because Ontario is probably one of the last places battery plants should be built from a climate action perspective based on recent behaviour.

Let’s look at some battery plant company material that attempts to reduce that GHG concern. Stellantis/LG says about their $5 billion dollar plant, the one our governments are giving $15 billion to in Windsor, Ont. “Canada is committed to establishing a broad, local battery ecosystem by leveraging, among other things, its leadership in the generation of electricity from renewable sources,” the site boasts. To believe that, you’d have to believe Windsor hasn’t been in Ontario.

The current leadership of Ontario in 2018, their first year in office, canceled hundreds of green energy projects at a cost of hundreds of millions dollars and has not been encouraging any new renewable solar or wind development. Let’s look at the record on that. According to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association in 2022 1.8 GW of wind and solar energy was added in Canada. Impressive. How much of that was in Ontario? A mere .01 GW. Essentially nothing.

Ontario’s Independent Energy System Operator (IESO) pivoted somewhat in December of last year, with a plan to add 5 GW of renewables in the 2030’s. Stellantis has a global goal of being carbon neutral by 2038 which may have helped inch the Ford government towards the green side of things. We should celebrate that. But keep in mind that the Trudeau government has committed to a goal of a 40-45 per cent reduction in Canada’s emissions by 2030. These plants go the opposite way with significant emissions starting very soon.

Enbridge has applied to dramatically increase natural gas supply in Southwestern Ontario for the new battery plant among other users, forecasting a 50 per cent increase in demand in the area by 2030. Ontario’s IESO is also installing major new electricity infrastructure in the area, and much of the region’s incremental load will be met with natural gas fired electricity for the next several years at least, according to the City of Windsor. Does any of this sound like Guilbeault’s upbeat take away from COP28?

If your answer is yes, then you aren’t watching what the Trudeau and Ford governments are doing. Our UN commitment calls on Canada to reduce emissions and, by extension, our own use of fossil fuels. We are moving in the wrong direction for a variety of reasons – economic as well as political. Our primary goal must be our UN commitment because, as we keep saying, climate change is an existential threat. Perhaps Catherine McKenna can call us out on that.