As energy demand rises, world’s nations can no longer wish away climate reality—energy security is national security, and that means fossil fuels
By Stuart Muir, National Post, Sept. 23, 2025
We’re entering what has become an annual fall ritual: the rush of national governments to shape the promises they’ll carry to the UN’s COP (Conference of the Parties) climate summit, being held this year in Brazil in mid-November.
For Canada, this ritual has taken on a strangely self-defeating quality. Year after year, Ottawa bureaucrats produce the policies most ardently demanded by the climate lobby. Whether these measures actually reduce emissions is beside the point. The ceremony is about pledging allegiance to “net zero” — a term that grows vaguer and less credible with every passing year.
There is much nervous pacing as the big-emitting industries wonder who will be in the spotlight this sacrifice season. But the real question this year is not what clever new restriction Ottawa will announce, but whether our leaders are willing to read the room: Away from the theatre of climate summits, the world is confronting energy realities that can’t be wished away.
Consider the United States. From 2005 to 2023 its per capita energy-related CO₂ emissions fell nearly a third. The driver wasn’t lofty pledges but the replacement of coal with natural gas, supplemented by renewables. In Maryland, for instance, coal plunged from more than half the power mix to just five per cent, while gas surged. The result was lower emissions but still-reliable electricity.
AI data centres fuel demand for energy
Canada should take note. We enjoy hydro and nuclear advantages in some regions but electricity demand is rising quickly. Population growth and the explosion of artificial intelligence computing are stretching supply. In Britain, Nvidia’s CEO warned that the country’s AI ambitions will require gas turbines alongside nuclear and renewables. Green aspiration won’t power data centres.
The International Energy Agency underscores another reality: oil and gas companies spend about half a trillion dollars annually simply to maintain output. Without this investment, U.S. shale production would fall more than a third in a single year. These fuels aren’t fading out. They remain the backbone of the global system. For Canada, that should spell opportunity.
Geopolitics drive the point home. J.P. Morgan calls this moment the “new energy security age.” Europe is accelerating its exit from Russian liquefied natural gas. Japan is boosting its LNG tanker fleet by 50 per cent. Mexico is signing billion-dollar LNG supply deals. Each move reflects a basic calculation: energy security is national security.
Natural gas is fuel of immediate future
Canada’s allies are asking us to contribute. Our federal energy minister now concedes the obvious: for the next few years, at least, natural gas is the most economic and reliable fuel for baseload. Meeting the demand for it would mean high-paying jobs at home and stronger alliances abroad. The consequences of suppressing it are on display in California, where climate absolutism has driven out refineries, leaving policy-makers scrambling to stave off fuel shortages. Affordability, not ideals, sets the limits of public tolerance.
Globally, too, peak climate enthusiasm has given way to pragmatism. The United States is now the world’s largest exporter of refined oil and LNG. Nations have dropped “climate solidarity” in favour of self-interest. Even progressives salt their speeches with words like “realism” and “pragmatism.” The age of wishful climate thinking is over.
British Columbia sits atop the Montney gas basin, possesses the shortest route to Asia and is home to Indigenous nations pursuing equity stakes in LNG projects. These projects embody reconciliation, create prosperity and displace coal abroad — cutting emissions more effectively than many of Ottawa’s more headline-grabbing gestures.
The right approach isn’t “all of the above” but “best of the above.” That means hydro, nuclear and renewables where they fit best, natural gas as the bridge, and infrastructure that works in both the depths of winter freeze and the heights of summer heat.
We should be unleashing energy, not ‘capping’ it
At COP 28 in Dubai then-environment minister Steven Guilbeault wore a baseball cap emblazoned with the word “emissions.” Emissions cap … get it? Those present got it though most weren’t laughing. The policy proposal has outlived its biggest booster, who is rumoured to be eyeing the exit. And now nearly 100 Canadian oil and gas CEOs have sent an open letter — twice already — to the new PM, explaining why the emissions cap will keep at bay the very investors he says he wants to attract.
Energy abundance, properly managed, is not a burden but Canada’s strategic advantage. As allies look to us and rivals move ahead, we face a choice: Do we continue the annual ritual of self-imposed constraint? Or do we step forward as a serious player in the new age of energy security?
If the latter, any new policies should be ones that unleash, not suppress, our energy potential. We should encourage new investment that boosts the economy while using the latest technologies, allowing our energy abundance to be shared with the world.
This year’s COP30 summit will provide the stage. Ottawa should use it to make clear it has finally read the room.
Stewart Muir heads the think-tank Resource Works.