Many Canadians are shocked these days by the decision of the federal government to spend public money in a deal with Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. to purchase the existing Trans Mountain pipeline (that carries diluted bitumen between Alberta's oil patch and British Columbia Pacific coast near Vancouver), as well as the expansion project to twin the pipeline. The numbers are staggering: $4.5 billion for the existing pipeline and, if Ottawa does not find a buyer, it could end up spending an additional $6.3 billion (a conservative estimate experts say) to get the expansion project built.
In the strange logic of the finance minister Bill Morneau, this purchase creates value for Canadians and, it is in the "best national interest” (!?). To highlight the "best national interest" argument, recently, the Federal Court of Appeal (where the project was challenged by the government of British Columbia and a few BC First Nations), dropped a bombshell decision to quash the cabinet approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project, which was immediately followed by the Alberta Premier Rachel Notley pulling her province out of the National Climate-Change Plan (quote "...let's be clear, without Alberta that plan isn't worth the paper it's written on").
Now, the Canadian government is the proud owner of a proposed dirty oil pipeline project that could be subject to years of further review, delays and cost over-runs. This will certainly have damaging consequences for Canada's reputation, both as a reliable investment place for energy projects, and as a leader in promoting the new green economy that our planet so badly needs.
We have to wonder (and demand to know) why the government has ignored for many years the information and advice on new and advanced clean energy science and technologies provided by specialized organizations such as, for example, the Planetary Association for Clean Energy (PACE), who is actually struggling to survive these days. With probably less that 1/1000 of the public funds spent on the Kinder Morgan's pipeline, Canada could have been in the envious position to have had already evaluated at least one of the potentially revolutionary clean energy technologies that PACE has identified and submitted to the government officials for urgent investigation since 2016.
Below are some extracts from PACE's submission to Hon. Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Hon. Navdeep Singh Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development in Feb 2016. This entire document and other more recent submissions are available in our
Downloads section (PACE.zip).
...
As President of the Planetary Association for Clean Energy (PACE), I [Dr. Andrew Michrowski] wish to bring to your attention several decades of independent scientific research and of peer review into advanced clean technology. The objective of such analysis was to determine efficiency, universality, sustainability, ethics and affordability. Our independent, collective data show that emerging technologies are maturing into valid options for improved transportation, heating and other human needs, and that their introduction will benefit the economy, the environment and also public well-being.
A Short Introduction about PACE
Recognized as a NGO in special consultative status with the United Nations, the Planetary Association for Clean Energy (PACE) Inc. is an independent international collaborative network of advanced scientific thinking. It was conceived by Parliament’s first woman Speaker, Senator Muriel M. Fergusson, and co-founded by scientist Senator Chesley W. Carter, M.Sc. while chair of 2 Senate standing committees on Science and Health in the early 1970s. With his stewardship, the PACE network confirmed the phenomena of acid rain and of ozone layer depletion for Canadian policy decision-makers, resulting in international treaties. It also facilitated the world’s 1st “blue-bin” recycling initiative, in Ottawa.
With the National Research Council of Canada, and the personal intercession of the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Pierre E. Trudeau, by July 1976 PACE founders gave the highest priority to identifying and reviewing advanced clean energy technologies – not only how they perform but also why they do so. The founders included Dr. Marcel Vogel, chief scientist at IBM (developed memory systems for computers) and Dr. Henry K. Puharich (MD, physicist, micro-electronics for hearing aids and water-as-a-fuel-on-demand, and advancement analyses for Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and Senator Carter and Prime Minister Trudeau on worldwide, lossless transmission of electrical energy).
Furtherance of this long-term peer examination was made under contract to the Division of Energy, NRC of Canada in 1985 and involved 330 individuals in the PACE worldwide network, published as The emerging energy science. These findings were echoed and confirmed by a multi-agency multi-million dollar initiative by the US government that was to identify which technologies would be required by America for world leadership into the next century, 2000 onwards.
We, therefore, have significant technologies to recommend.
