Despite efforts to appear clean and green, Manitoba's emissions strategy remains hazy

Whenever Premier Heather Stefanson speaks about Manitoba's role in the global effort to control greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change, she is quick to point out how little this province relies on fossil fuels right now for its energy needs.

"Manitoba produces 97 per cent clean, green, hydroelectric power," Stefanson said Friday at a pre-election campaign news conference in Winnipeg.

That statement is accurate when it comes to energy production.

There are four Manitoba communities that rely primarily on petroleum products to generate electricity: Brochet, Lac Brochet, Tadoule Lake and Shamattawa, all of them Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba.

In addition, Manitoba Hydro operates a natural gas-fuelled station in Brandon used only on a supplemental or emergency basis. 

The province has decided it isn't feasible to eliminate this handful of dirty energy facilities. In an "energy roadmap" issued in July, the province declared it wouldn't be worth it to push the clean-power needle from 97 per cent green to 100 per cent.

"The cost to eliminate all GHG emissions in Manitoba is disproportionally expensive relative to the nominal GHG reductions," the roadmap stated.

This statement has spawned some ridicule, given Manitoba's immense head start over jurisdictions that still rely on coal or natural gas to generate electricity.

"The absence of ambition is staggering," Toronto's Globe & Mail declared in an editorial this week.

There is also, however, little ambition in Manitoba to reduce the demand for natural gas, diesel fuel and gasoline on the consumer side, let alone the actual use of petroleum products, and increase the use of cleaner energy.

This province may be 97 per cent clean when it comes to making energy, but we are far less clean when it comes to using it.

Simply put, Manitoba simply does not have a comprehensive plan to reduce emissions on the consumer side of the equation. This goes far beyond the PC government's decision under former premier Brian Pallister to abandon plans for a made-in-Manitoba carbon tax.

The 2023 provincial budget, which devotes nine paragraphs to climate change — they take up half of page 52, if you're inclined to look them up — does not lay out a strategy to curb emissions by consumers or businesses.

Manitoba also has no intention to offer drivers incentives to purchase electric vehicles, Environment and Climate Minister Kevin Klein said in July.

And despite the announcement by the same minister of a handful of new electric-vehicle charging stations, Manitoba also lags behind many other provinces and U.S. states when it comes to the establishment of EV-charging infrastructure.

"It's a desert in Manitoba compared to other jurisdictions," said Shaun Loney, an electric vehicle owner.

Loney is also a green-energy advocate who made replacing conventional home furnaces with heat pumps part of his campaign for mayor of Winnipeg last fall. He finished fourth, within a whisker of third-place-finisher Klein.

Loney, who has also worked with First Nations to replace diesel use with heat pumps, describes the coming transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy as an immense economic opportunity.

Manitoba Hydro envisions this as well, noting in its roadmap it may have to double or triple its energy capacity over the next two decades in order to meet industrial demand for clean energy.

That would require a massive private investment in wind farms — a form of energy production that seemed to disinterest Manitoba Hydro in the past — as well as battery storage, which would help the province balance out the peaks and valleys in consumer demand for energy.

The province is also trying to land what would be North America's largest solar panel production facility and is home to a handful of small hydrogen-production facilities that have yet to begin operations.

At the same time, the PC government just pledged to spend $6.7 million on a feasibility study to build a new bitumen or natural gas pipeline across northern Manitoba to a new port on Hudson Bay.

Stefanson was asked Friday how investing in the transhipment of fossil fuels squares up with her characterization of Manitoba as a green-energy paradise. She said the plan was about enriching northern First Nations that would benefit from the economic development.

"I think anything that brings economic reconciliation to northern First Nation communities is a good thing for those communities," Stefanson said Friday. "It's a good thing for our province and it's a great thing for our country."

Two Manitoba First Nations communities — Gambler in western Manitoba and Fox Lake in the northeast — have endorsed this idea, promoted by a Calgary-based company called NeeStaNan.

How many other First Nations would be on side remains to be seen.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents northern Manitoba First Nations, declined to take a position on the prospect of shipping bitumen and natural gas across the north.

That would be up to individual First Nations, Grand Chief Garrison Settee said in a statement.

"It is crucial that Indigenous communities have the autonomy to make decisions that will benefit their people and their future generations," he said.

Manitoba opposition parties are very cool to the idea. NDP Leader Wab Kinew suggested the province focus on shipping hydrogen by rail or pipeline to Churchill, something Chemawawin and Pimicikamak Cree Nations support doing in a project they call the Wáwátéwák Corridor.

"If we have a limited amount of space on a train or in a pipe, we should fill it with hydrogen. That creates jobs right here in Manitoba ahead of creating jobs in other jurisdictions," Kinew said this week.

"We've had enough of the PCs over the past seven years creating infrastructure investments that hire people from Alberta or other provinces."

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont expressed a similar sentiment.

"A strong and independent Manitoba needs to be more than a transfer station for other provinces to ship raw goods to be processed elsewhere," he said.

Actor and musician Tom Jackson, a strategic advisor for the Calgary-based entity promoting a fossil fuel corridor to Hudson Bay, suggested NeeStaNan and Wáwátéwák need not compete for support.

"There's probably a reasonable belief in my mind that there's an opportunity for a collaborative effort here," Jackson said in an interview from Halifax.

While NeeStaNan's website and Manitoba's government envision potential bitumen shipments to Hudson Bay, Jackson said no oil would flow across the north.

"That's not part of our agenda," he said.

The province's agenda on clean energy is equally unclear. Looking around the world right now, it would not be unreasonable to suggest the time is past due for a coherent strategy on emissions in Manitoba.