Thoughts from a three-day immersion trip to Ottawa
I've just got back to London from a whirlwind few days in Ottawa, as guest of the Canadian Climate Institute. A few thoughts.
Last week I was in Ottawa as guest of Rick Smith and his team at the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI). The main event was a keynote at the National Arts Centre, right in front of the parliament building. That’s it in the background as I was chatting with CCI’s Head of Clean Growth, Marisa Beck (who began her career, as it happens, as a carbon market analyst with New Energy Finance just before I sold it to Bloomberg):
One of the privileges of visits like this is the opportunity to revisit some wonderful places (I first visited Ontario and Quebec as a World Cup moguls skier - happy memories of freezing my butt waiting in the start gate at Le Relais and Mont Gabriel), catch up with old friends and make new ones - and to burnish my understanding of local climate and energy issues. Every trip like this is an eye-opener.
The CCI had me on a gruelling three-day programme of visits to ministries, breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and media activities - for which I am enormously grateful. Canada is on the front line of the most wrenching changes of our our times, and my three days in Ottawa felt like compressed Masters course in geopolitics, Canadian politics and energy economics. Who needs sleep?
After such a whirlwind trip, there is a lot to process. I have no doubt what I learned will inform my thinking through the rest of the year and beyond. But I thought I might share three early observations here:
Canada has everything to gain from playing a leadership role in clean energy and climate action - as I laid out in the final slide from my remarks:
Opportunities for Canada - as summarised in the final slide of my presentation for the Canadian Climate Initiative in Ottawa on 25 February 2026. Source: Liebreich Associates. Leaning in to the transition (Pragmatic-Climate-Reset-style, of course) could help reinvigorate Canada’s economy, diversify Canada’s exports away from excessive dependence on a newly-unreliable Southern neighbour, make its energy system more resilient and burnish Canada’s international credentials. It could and should be a win-win-win-win.
That is not to say it’s going to be easy. The nature of Canada’s federal state requires consensus with each and every province, including oil and gas powerhouse Alberta. And while on average Canadians will benefit from a decisive shift of resources and emphasis into clean energy, there will be losers as well as winners. Alberta and other threatened constituencies will have to be lured into, if not loving, at least tolerating a shift to clean energy and transport. As the slide above shows, Alberta would have plenty to offer if it “faced the direction of travel” as I urged it at the Energy Distruptors conference in Calgary in 2019, but a new narrative is needed along with the Memorandum of Understanding between Alberta and Canada currently being fleshed out. It strikes me that a nation-building East-West grid to support electrification of the Canadian economy could help.
It’s all about the people. Over three days in Ottawa I must have spoken to over a hundred people working on squaring the circle between a better future for Canada and a pathway consistent with planetary boundaries. From civil servants to ministers, think tankers to entrepreneurs - as well as old friends like Paris Agreement stalwart (and Cleaning Up alumna) Catherine McKenna, former Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, who earned enormous respect for calling out Canadian conservative press and MPs for referring to her as Climate Barbie during her time in office.
Me and Catherine McKenna, former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister of Infrastructure and Communities. We first met at COP23 Bonn in 2017, at the launch of the Powering Past Coal initiative. Photo: Dave Chan Despite the hostility of much of the opposition to Mark Carney (another Cleaning Up alumnus) and his government, the venality of the incumbents, the showboating of opposition politicians at province and national level (I know, I’m a conservative, but I call bullshit where I see it), none of the people I met expressed hatred or anger. That is very much to their credit, and is also why I believe they will succeed.
So, once again, my thanks to Rick Smith and his whole team at the Canadian Climate Initiative for their hospitality and for giving me the stage. And thanks to the Canadian clean energy and climate community for listening and engaging with this great friend of Canada.
I hope you found my intervention helpful, and very much look forward to catching up with you in London, on my travels, or back in Canada. I wish you the very best of luck!
While in Ottawa, I recorded an episode of Hurle Burly, Canada’s leading political podcast, with the force of nature that is David Herle. It was… well… see what you think - we covered a lot of ground!
It's right there, tucked away in that slide - nuclear
But it seem that you choke on saying the word and can't bring yourself to write about it either.
It's interesting to ask AI:
is the canadian climate institute considering nuclear power
They most certainly are and regard SMRs as a 'wild card'; particularly the BWRX-300.
As the world's [self-designated] #1 Fan of the BWRX-300, with a facebook Group startedcway back in 2018 and now heading towards 800 unsolicited Members, maybe you ought to consider joining us to keep abreast of developments ahead of your next visit:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1032713003519847/?ref=share
Maybe those interested in the Canadian Climate Institute might benefit from Membership too 🤔
I don’t see the sources of clean energy to support the resource refining and manufacturing. More hydro destroys more land and creates methane from the submerged vegetation. Solar and wind can’t support large scale decarbonization in Canada. So what exactly are you suggesting Canadians use for heat light and industrial processing?