So far this year the federal government has provided the oil and gas sector with $18.4 billion. And the year isn’t over yet.

It’s a staggering amount of taxpayer money that is being used to prop up the very companies most responsible for fueling the climate crisis as well as polluting our land and water.

What is Canada subsidizing?

• Public finance  through Export Development Canada: $5.96 billion
  • Export Development Canada is Canada’’s export credit agency. It provides corporations with financial support through government-backed loans, guarantees and insurance.
  • This figure includes a $500 million loan to the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, a fracked gas pipeline in northeastern BC that is opposed by the Hereditary Chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, whose territory the pipeline crosses.
  • This also includes a loan of up to $75 million for Parex, a Canadian company involved in fracking operations in Colombia and implicated in human rights violations.
  • The numbers here are for the first three quarters of 2022. We won’t know the full amount for 2022 for another few months.
• TransMountain Pipeline expansion: $12 billion
  • This includes a $10 billion loan guarantee and other loans/financial support for the TransMountain pipeline expansion project. This funding comes through the Canada Account, which is administered by Export Development Canada, but decisions are made by Minister Freeland. (The projected total cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project have skyrocketed – estimates now top $26 billion. That amount of money could have funded every major wind and solar project in Canada from 2019-2021 five times over.)
• Fossil hydrogen: $300 million
  • Fossil (or “blue”) hydrogen helps oil and gas companies greenwash themselves, but it’s just another fossil fuel.
• Paying polluters to reduce their emissions and clean up their mess: $170 million
  • The government has created a variety of programs designed to clean up the mess left behind by oil and gas companies as well as fund emissions reductions in the sector. Rather than adopting a polluter pays’ approach which forces those who cause the damage to bear these costs, these subsidies put taxpayers on the hook and let oil and gas companies off the hook.
  • This includes $50 million for  carbon capture technologies. Oil and gas companies know these are dead-end technologies which won’t make a dent in emissions, but are using them as tactics to delay the energy transition.

(This is only what we have been able to track – a lot of data is not publicly available, like tax breaks.)

Meanwhile, real climate solutions have received limited government support. Tackling the climate crisis will require significant investments into renewable energy, electrification and energy efficiency. Providing federal support to fossil fuels diverts government resources away from climate solutions and a just transition to a clean energy future.

What should the government do?

Because of pressure from Canadians, the federal government has made some important promises: to eliminate some subsidies by 2023, to end public finance for overseas oil and gas projects by the end of 2022 and to develop a plan to end domestic public financing. But these promises just don’t go far enough.

There’s no two ways about it: the Canadian government has to stand up to the oil and gas industry and end all fossil fuel subsidies immediately – without any loopholes.

Oil and gas companies have profited immensely for decades from activities that are fueling the climate crisis, and polluting our land and water. These rich companies are using their influence to extract tax breaks and handouts from the Canadian government.

Take action today and tell the federal government to stop using our tax dollars to finance pollution, environmental destruction, and injustice.

Our new tool

Each year, Environmental Defence produces a tally of how much financial support has been provided to fossil fuels by the federal government. This summer, we launched an online tracker to update the tally as new numbers come in. That way you don’t need to wait for the yearly report to know just how much public money is being handed over to oil and gas companies.

The post 2022 fossil fuel subsidies are skyrocketing – and the year isn’t quite over appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.