Ottawa says it is pondering a wide range of options to meet its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, including hydrogen, geothermal and small modular nuclear reactors as future sources of energy and embracing carbon capture.
In an online interview with the ARC Energy Research Institute in Calgary, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan compared the net-zero goal to the late U.S. president John F. Kennedy’s vow in May 1961 to put a man on the moon.
“Net zero is a moon shot. A moon shot is a very specific goal – Kennedy said we’re going to get to the moon. And the teams at NASA had to figure out how to do it. By 1969, they had a man on the moon,” O’Regan, Member of Parliament for St. John’s South–Mount Pearl, was quoted as saying. “If we could do it in eight years that would be great.”
The goal inspired people to find ways to get it done, the minister said, and Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon in the summer of 1969.
The Trudeau government committed to the net-zero goal, which will mean that any greenhouse gases still emitted by 2050 have to be offset with credits, though it has yet to say how that might happen.