Canada Restricts Oil and Gas Subsidies, Leaves Open Door for Indigenous Projects, CCS

Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault has unveiled detailed plans to phase out “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies, based on guidelines released this morning that take effect immediately and are meant to fulfill a 14-year-old pledge by G20 countries.

“The simple reality is that it’s no longer free to pollute in Canada,” Guilbeault told media Monday morning. “We are bending the curve on Canada’s fight on pollution.”

With the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and environmental groups all in agreement, he added, “getting rid of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies is now a common sense bottom line.”

In background briefings, officials said the announcement makes Canada the first of the world’s wealthiest countries to publish a detailed implementation plan for a pledge that was first announced at the G20 leaders’ summit in Pittsburgh in 2009.

But the new federal guidelines may still leave the door open to prop up liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports with international carbon credits, Indigenous fossil fuel projects with federal dollars, and fossil fuel installations that “abate” a small share of their emissions by capturing carbon from their operations.

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