This week saw German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visit Canada to discuss things like energy, metals, and minerals. That’s per official agenda. Per actual agenda, Scholz was there for one thing, I believe: to secure more gas supply for Germany. Sadly, what he got was, and I really don’t mean to be offensively sarcastic, a cold shower.
For starters, Canada did not jump at the opportunity to become a major LNG supplier to Germany. The reason it didn’t are its net-zero ambitions, in which LNG can hardly find a place, being a fossil fuel.
Canadian companies will "explore ways to see if it makes sense to export LNG and if there's a business case for it to export LNG directly to Europe ... economic conversations are going on between businesses in Canada and in Germany," Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau told reporters.
Yet this was nothing compared to what Trudeau’s Natural Resources Minister said a couple of days earlier, ahead of the meeting. And what Trudeau’s Natural Resources Minister said a couple of days earlier was that hydrogen was a much better option for both Canada and Germany than LNG.
Canada, one of the biggest producers of natural gas in the world has misgivings about becoming an even bigger producer and a significant exporter, not to mention helping a supposed friend in need, because “the global shift away from fossil fuels means the terminal's lifetime would be too short to be profitable unless converted into a hydrogen terminal when gas demand declines,” per the Reuters report on the news.
But wait, there’s more, as there always tends to be in these somewhat comical situations. While Canada’s government men think that hydrogen has a much brighter future than natural gas, Scholz appears to be of the belief that gas is not exactly a fossil fuel.
"If Germany is one of the countries asking for natural gas, for LNG, it is also a country... that is on the direct way to transform its own economy" away from fossil fuels, the Germany Chancellor said, again per Reuters, which has really made my job easier with its abundant coverage of the meetings.
One might say that the above comment makes no sense and I would agree. It’s not within the party line, that’s clear. But it is a comment motivated by what I cannot see as anything other than sheer desperation as Germany risks not just a dip in GDP growth, not just a temporary recession but an actual deindustrialisation, which, in other words, is a total economic failure. And it has no one but itself to blame.
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