Let’s begin this week with some promising climate news. It’s tough stuff to find in Canada these days, and it will need some contextualizing, but let’s head to Nova Scotia where the customary grouping of federal and provincial politicos gathered for an energy announcement.

Refreshingly, the federal energy minister and premier were on a wharf in Halifax to talk up wind power. And the wind was most definitely on site as well, howling across the harbour, all but drowning out the feds’ announcement that they would be dropping $100 million toward Wind West — a proposed offshore wind project that could become a truly massive source of clean energy.

Wind West is one of more than 100 clean energy projects identified in the Yes Agenda, an initiative launched by Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac) to map what the country’s energy future could look like. It’s a not-so-subtle riposte to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s dismissive attitude toward opponents of new fossil fuel projects: “We don’t want to hear what people are against,” Carney tells Canadians in public. He reportedly gives even stricter instructions to his caucus and cabinet members, according to MPs too cowed to speak on the record.

CAN-Rac picked up that gauntlet, mapping out 110 projects across Canada, ranging from solar and wind to geothermal and hydro, along with battery storage and transmission projects. All told, they’d produce almost 100 GW of electricity, according to the research conducted by Dunsky Energy and maps by Adamant.

“Prime Minister Carney said that he wanted to hear ‘what people are for,’”........

© National Observer