Today we released the first assessment of the jobs toll of our federal government’s failure to invest in clean energy. You can download the report and read the summary here.
We keep hearing from Minister Prentice that Canada will follow in America’s footsteps on climate and energy policy. We decided to test that claim by comparing the level of investment in clean energy of the two countries since President Obama came to power last January.
As it turns out, we’re nowhere close. The U.S. has invested heavily in clean energy – energy efficiency, greener transportation and renewable energy – over the past 18 months, while Canada has gone in the opposite direction and cut key programs. If Canada were matching the U.S. on a per person basis, an extra $11.5 billion would have been earmarked for clean energy. We're falling far behind the U.S.
This skewed level of support is now taking its toll on Canadian jobs. We used the ‘investment gap’, the difference between Canadian and U.S. spending on renewable energy, to estimate the number of new jobs that could have been created if we had actually matched our southern neighbour. So far, it has cost Canadians an estimated 66,000 jobs in renewable energy alone. We did not estimate the lost energy efficiency and transportation jobs, so the actual number of lost jobs is much higher.
Over the next two days, I’ll be at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington DC, listening to labour, business, politicians and environmentalists discuss how to make the U.S. a leader in the clean energy boom. As a sign of just how seriously they’re taking this issue, the conference draws thousands of people from across North America and will be addressed by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, U.S. House of Representatives majority leader Nancy Pelosi, and U.S. Senator John Kerry, among others.
And where’s Canada?
Gillian McEachern
Program Manager, Climate and Energy
Environmental Defence
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