Canada’s national energy regulator has postponed its report outlining future demand for fossil fuels, citing an “evolving energy and policy landscape.”
The move comes as both Ottawa and Washington have recently scrapped numerous climate rules while Prime Minister Mark Carney has promoted oil and gas projects as “nation-building” endeavours.
The regulator had expected to issue updated projections for “early in 2025,” but it’s been more than a year since it released the results of its public consultations for that report. Now it has decided to hold off publishing for the time being, communications officer Amanda Fedorchuk told The Narwhal.
“With the recent significant shifts in North American energy markets and policy context, we decided to defer the release of the next [Canada’s Energy Future]. The report was delayed to allow for a comprehensive assessment of the evolving energy and policy landscape, ensuring our analysis is relevant, fact-based and timely,” she said.
The Canada Energy Regulator oversees pipelines and powerlines that cross national or provincial borders, as well as offshore drilling and some exploration in the North. When the regulator put out the most recent version of its “energy future” report in 2023, it caused a major stir. It found that, in a world aiming for net-zero carbon emissions and easing away from fossil fuel dependency, oil production in Canada would begin to decline as early as next year and drop off a cliff over the next three decades.
“Canada’s energy landscape would look dramatically different than it does today in a net-zero world,” the regulator said in June 2023. It noted the push for emissions reductions would mean Canadians and others around the world switch to electric vehicles and heat pumps, actions that would leave countries oversupplied with petroleum and lower demand for Canadian fossil fuels.
The shift to clean energy is meant to combat a rapidly heating planet caused by the emissions from burning fossil fuels, as well as the extraction, refining and transporting necessary to produce gasoline, diesel and natural gas.
The federal government noted the urgency of this shift in a report released last week examining Canada’s progress on climate goals.
“Canada is facing more frequent and severe weather events that affect the daily lives of Canadians —damaging homes, increasing cost of living, affecting health and raising insurance costs,” reads the report from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The federal government previously put in place an emissions reduction plan that called for more electric vehicle adoption and a cap on oil and gas emissions. Photo: Sid Naidu / The Narwhal
“In recent years, Canadians have seen firsthand the devastating impact of wildfires, floods, drought and melting permafrost on communities across the country. These impacts are not abstract — entire communities have been displaced and livelihoods upended by disasters.”
In a statement responding to the report, Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, said it showed the country is “significantly off track” from meeting its emissions targets and the federal government needs to take greater action over the next six months to correct course.
Meanwhile the oil and gas industry in Canada has been setting records for production, driven by the oilsands expansion and the government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, and Canadian oil producers are posting billions of dollars in profits.
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Last energy forecast was during the Trudeau and Biden era
At the time the last energy forecast was released, the federal government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau had put in place its Emissions Reduction Plan, which called for Canadians to switch to electric vehicles and green their homes, while the government also planned to clean up electricity grids and cap oil and gas emissions. In the United States, then-president Joe Biden was spearheading what was called the Inflation Reduction Act, effectively the country’s national climate plan.
The International Energy Agency, too, had by that time offered up a scenario where global oil consumption nosedived from 94 million barrels per day to 22 million barrels per day in 2050, as much of the world put strong climate policies in place. The Canadian regulator’s findings prompted questions about whether Canada’s bet on fossil fuels in a net-zero future was too risky, and whether the country should be investing more in renewables.
Then came the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president in early 2025. His administration immediately launched a campaign to embrace fossil fuels, wipe away emissions rules and dismantle scientific research into climate change, among other changes.
The Trump administration also pressured the International Energy Agency to change its forecasts to show a brighter future for fossil fuel demand, according to Bloomberg News. The organization’s World Energy Outlook, published last month, shifted away from its previous expectations for a quicker clean energy transition, instead saying global oil and gas demand looks like it could keep growing for decades.
Fedorchuk said the Canada Energy Regulator had not faced any similar political pressure and that the scenarios it prepares are “based on what is relevant to the Canadian energy dialogue.”
Carney, elected this spring, has rolled back some of Canada’s climate policies and promoted new fossil fuel projects. He’s backing the idea of a new oil pipeline and new natural gas facilities, ditched both the consumer carbon tax and the proposed emissions cap on the oil and gas sector, froze a policy requiring electric vehicle sales targets, moved to weaken a federal law against greenwashing and proposed looser restrictions in Alberta for electricity generation and methane gas.
Some provincial governments have also cut back on their own climate commitments, while financial regulators halted work earlier this year on mandatory rules requiring corporations to disclose how climate change will disrupt their business.
At the same time, the Carney government says it’s committed to keeping industrial carbon pricing in place, is relying on tax incentives to promote clean technology use, has recently introduced new methane restrictions and released a “climate competitiveness strategy” as an “update” to the Emissions Reduction Plan.
“The world economy is undergoing a historic transformation towards low-carbon energy and clean technology,” the strategy stated. “Lowering our emissions is critical to protecting the competitiveness of Canada’s oil and gas and steel sectors.”
