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Environmental and clean-technology industries account for a puny 3.1 per cent of GDP

StatCan’s accounting scheme is generous to the green-economy concept in accepting the definition provided by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that clean energy should include hydro-electricity. Mysteriously the IPCC decided that large dam reservoirs that flood millions of acres of trees and fauna are “green,” because they do not affect greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries around the world have decided that large hydro projects are damaging for the environment. Even B.C.’s NDP/Green government provided only grudging support for proceeding with the controversial Site C dam, implying it would not have kept it alive if construction were not already so far advanced.

Canada is actually unique in the world in proceeding to develop more large hydro projects on the shaky rationale that they represent “clean” energy. Even ignoring the environmental damage, the resulting high cost of electricity to pay for these mega-projects is passed on to ratepayers.

After Ontario’s disastrous experiment with green energy feeding into its electricity bills, Newfoundland now faces ruinous rate hikes due to the runaway cost of its Muskrat Falls project. Also on the chopping block are ratepayers in B.C., who must pay the cost of Site C even as the province enjoys a surplus of hydro power (it cannot find an export market in neighbouring Alberta, where electricity from natural gas costs half as much). Manitoba Hydro, meanwhile, is suppressing rate hikes for consumers by rapidly increasing the debt load to pay for new projects, an unsustainable process.

There are two lessons to be drawn from the tepid growth of Canada’s green sector. It will be a long time, if ever, before it makes a significant contribution to jobs and income in Canada. And in the meantime, even its marginal and largely meaningless existence will be expensive for both taxpayers and electricity customers — a reflection that putting the environment before the economy comes at a cost that many will object to paying. The green economy will not flourish until it makes economic as well as environmental sense.

Philip Cross is a Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.