NB government’s energy plan is ignoring reality.
Rothesay, New Brunswick, December 13, 2023 – The Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) is astounded that the NB government would produce an energy plan that ignores the reality of where energy systems and the global energy economy are headed.
Tom McLean, of CRED-NB, said “Today, at the conclusion of the UN climate change conference, COP28, the global community committed to triple the use of renewables and transition away from fossil fuels. It makes no sense for New Brunswick to plan to frack fossil gas when the world is deploying wind turbines and solar panels.”
The government’s plan is also based on a nuclear technology that may never exist. In the presentation in February by CRED-NB to the NB Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship, we quoted the authoritative U.S. National Academies’ of Sciences 2023 report. It states that the advanced reactors planned for New Brunswick, molten salt and sodium-cooled, will have difficulty achieving commercial operations even by 2050.
“Premier Higgs’ energy plan is not sensible, sustainable or just,” said Ann McAllister, Chair of CRED-NB. “Fracking for fossil gas has no social license in NB due to its health and pollution risks. Hydrogen production is so expensive and inefficient that it makes more economic sense to use the electricity directly.
The SMRs proposed for New Brunswick will come too late to reduce carbon emissions now, when we need them. To export them would provide client countries who don’t yet have nuclear weapons with the plutonium to produce them. This is not the plan we need in these times of climate change and escalating global conflict.”
Meanwhile, the planet is burning, and the clock is ticking. While we’re waiting for these nuclear SMR experiments to fail, the government is wasting time that we must spend urgently on genuine climate action.