Canada’s support for liquefied natural gas (LNG) development threatens to jeopardize the country’s positioning as a climate leader and drive up domestic energy costs, amid mounting concerns that international demand for LNG exports will soon evaporate, the UK’s Ember think tank concludes in an analysis issued this morning.

With the International Energy Agency projecting that global gas demand could begin declining before 2030, and global supply expected to exceed demand by the time Canada’s first export terminals go online in 2025/2026, the country’s LNG strategy “is a threat to its credibility as a climate leader, and its gas dependency exposes households and industry to surges in energy costs,” said Ember’s Europe program director, Sarah Brown. “It is time for Canada to move away from wasting money on expensive and vulnerable gas projects and instead solidify its reputation as a progressive player in the clean energy transition.”

Ember notes that Canada “is pushing ahead with new gas extraction and LNG export terminals,” even though the country’s 2030 emission reduction target and the decarbonization targets in the federal government’s Clean Electricity Regulations will depend on reducing fossil fuel production and consumption. The report also summarizes a small mountain of recent research and analysis, much of it pointing to the risk that Canada will be caught in a global gas glut just as it works to expand its LNG export capacity.

• With imports totalling 134 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2023, the European Union is currently the biggest global market for LNG. But rapid decarbonization strategies are already putting a dent in the continent’s gas consumption, and the EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators expects demand to peak this year. Ember sees European gas consumption falling by nearly half by decade’s end.

• LNG proponents in Canada have long been gambling on a sustained boom in LNG demand in Asia. But Malaysia is getting nervous about increasing its dependency on gas imports, Ember writes, and “both Bangladesh and Pakistan have already learnt lessons from the supply risks that come with dependence on imported LNG.”

Meanwhile, at least 200 bcm of new capacity will be coming online around the world as of 2025. The U.S. will nearly double its export capacity by 2028, despite President Joe Biden’s suspension of new LNG export approvals in January, and Qatar is planning a similar near-doubling by 2027.

With so much gas available, Ember says buyers will be shopping around for the best price—and Canadian producers won’t fare well when that happens. The report cites recent price estimates of US$3,400 and $2,400 per tonne for exports from the LNG Canada and Woodfibre LNG projects in Kitimat and Squamish, British Columbia, compared to just $700 from an offshore terminal on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

With those price challenges to contend with, “the risks that new LNG infrastructure in Canada will become stranded assets are tangible and increasing,” Ember warns. And “cost overruns at LNG pipelines and export terminals that are currently under construction have the potential to further undermine their economic viability and competitiveness.”

Yet B.C. still has seven LNG terminals at various stages of development, enough to produce 50 million tonnes (or just under 75 bcm) of LNG per year and soaking up $109 billion in capital investment. If those projects are all run on electricity to reduce their production emissions, Ember says they’ll consume about 43 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, more than two-thirds of the province’s total demand in 2022 and the equivalent of more than eight Site C hydropower dams.

Importing the equivalent of just one Site C project “could cost around $600 million annually,” the report warns, and “if fossil fuels are used to meet this increase in power consumption rather than renewables, then electricity prices will be higher—not only for these facilities, but also for households and other industries.”

Ember adds that the B.C. LNG terminals will be supplied by gas from the fracking fields in the northeastern part of the province, even though the methane intensity of those operations is twice the limit set by regulations in both the EU and the U.S. With Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson ruling out subsidies to help gas producers reduce their emissions, all of that new LNG infrastructure could soon become “economically non-viable”.

If that happens, Canada could be faced with “costly stranded assets and a waste of both public and private funds that could instead be invested in cleaner, cheaper, and faster-to-deliver energy solutions such as increased wind and solar deployment,” the report says.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reached a similar conclusion in March, warning that “Canadian LNG projects face an unstable future with increasing market risk” due to the global gas glut.

But in spite of the risks, climate finance analysts are concerned that Canada’s long-awaited sustainable finance taxonomy will label fossil gas a clean fuel.

“Including fossil fuels like ‘natural’ gas under a Canadian sustainable finance taxonomy would confuse green investing and damage the label’s credibility internationally,” said Julie Segal, senior program manager, climate finance at Environmental Defence Canada, in a preface to the Ember report. “Incorrectly labelling ‘natural’ gas as sustainable would invalidate the entire taxonomy effort, and get in the way of the real climate transition.”

In April, two separate letters—one coordinated by Environmental Defence, the other by Canada’s Clean50—urged Ottawa to pick up the pace on a taxonomy to align investments with a 1.5°C climate target.

The taxonomy has been under development since 2019, and delays in getting it done are “already holding Canadian companies back from taking urgently needed climate action,” 230 Clean50 members told Wilkinson, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault in one of the two letters. The slow pace is “putting our emerging cleantech and transitioning carbon-intensive sectors at increasing competitive disadvantage.”

“We encourage the government to quickly deliver a taxonomy to define sustainable investments,” wrote 55 climate groups, in an eight-page submission to the same three ministers. “But not if it includes fossil fuel-related investments as eligible for the sustainability label.”