Do you guys know the reason China's taken a huge lead in EV tech which obviously is all about Li ion battery tech & battery chemistry in spite of this tech being innovated in the west ?
It's coz the green lobby is so strong there that activities like Fracking , Mining etc are not just frowned upon there're actually laws in place to make it as difficult as possible . This is more true of places like Canada than it is in the US though the latter faced huge issues from the environment lobby on the issue of Fracking too.
Check out for how much crude oil & natural gas Canada's churning out in spite of huge reserves. Pierre Poilievre has gone on record to criticise Turdeau's policies in this matter rendering Canadian oil sales hostage to the US in his own words instead of exploiting it to meet the global demand & satisfy European needs.
Bottom line - for Canada to get into that shape of mind they'd have to severely damage their economy leaving them with no option but explore exploitation of natural resources in a big way which is more likely the scenario Germany would find itself in by the end of this decade .
Right now Canada's no way close to that scenario though admittedly Turdeau's badly damaged the Canadian economy.
Canadian oil will remain hostage to US in the immediate futue due to geography and demographics.
Most of Canada's oil = Alberta.
easiest outlet for Canadian oil is port of Vancouver, bound for Asia, but entire vancouver-seattle-vancouver island is the nexus central of hyper hippie liberal westerners and they killed the transmountain pipeline.
So that leaves 3 options-
a)go north east to Churchill for export there- but Churchill is not ice free all year round ( its in freaking arctic ocean)
b) go south to TAYXUS and export it from there
c) build pipeline across directly to ontario and ship from there via st Laurent estuary.
Problem with c) is that the great Canadian shield is a very very desolate place with hard granite crust with little to no soil and no inhabitation. Infact if you drive across Canada, you com to a region in Ontario(if driving west like i did), where it warns u to fill up your gas tank coz there is no town/pump etc for another 400km on the transcanada highway.
So it becomes hugely expensive to fix pipelines and stuff in middle of this huge uninhabited stretch of western ontario. Infact this may not seem obvious on the map or google earth but it is a serious problem in Canadian connectivity. This is why Canada imports saudi crude for its own consumption : because Canadian refineries are out in ontario mostly, they put in a few pipelines via detroit and south of great lakes to get to ontario and it met canadian demand till the 90s, when Alberta discovered oil sands and canadian population grew from like 18-19 million in 1990 to 40 million today, increasing canadian oil consumption to beyond what alberta sweet crude can support. Plus alberta sweet crude is mostly tapped out and its at less than 40% production of peak value.
But since crossing the canadian shield is so expensive and routing pipeline to ontario via southern route of great lakes is so circuitious ( it also has a lot of built up area and built up areas dont like huge pipelines going through them so lots of snaking around required), Canada just imports Saudi crude via tankers to keep powering its refineries in ontario and makes up shortfall by re-importing refined oil back from texas.
This is why Canadian oil goes south, not west or east. The terrain from Alberta to Texas is also quite forgiving, not requiring any tough mountain or complicated river crossings ( there are several small river crossings but nothing like 'cross the Fraser or Columbia or Mississippi which are like ganga sized rivers for width/depth).
A lot of Canadian political friction, the entire base of conservatives vs base of liberals etc. is driven by this oil geography/geopolitics within Canada. Vancouverites basically wont let u sell oil through BC. its like you are better off trying to sell little children via vancouver than oil is the woke mentality there. ontarians are basically too far, churchill is basically too impractical. Albertans seethe and cope, pay extra and get scammed by murrica ( coz well murricans arent stupid, they know we wanna pump oil to huston, put it in boat and send it to others- that which American doesnt buy that is).
They also know the problem of going via michigan or via canadian sield and how much arseholes the entire pacific north west is, from basically california to mid BC for anything that isnt tree-hugger friendly. So they scam us for premium transit rates.
Albertans seethee, cope, pay,still end up as richest canadians and wanna KO the libbus of Vancouver-BC but cannot because its too far to exert influence over the rockies directly. This drives a lot of the political dynamics of Canada that only Canadians/americans/chinese are aware of.
