Minister vows Canada is ready to become ‘reliable’ critical minerals provider – National | 24CA News
Canada is able to develop into a dependable supplier of important minerals to its worldwide allies together with Japan, a senior official stated, because the Group of Seven (G7) nations deem such minerals important for local weather targets and power safety.
Canada has signed a joint motion plan with the United States to advance safe provide chains for important minerals and has related important minerals cooperation agreements with Japan and the European Union.
“We view this resource has been very strategic, not only from an economic point of view, but also from a security point of view,” Canada’s minister of surroundings and local weather change Steven Guilbeault informed Reuters in Japan the place he’ll participate in a G7 ministerial assembly on local weather, power and surroundings.
The April 15-16 assembly in Sapporo, a part of Japan’s G7 presidency this 12 months, will focus on the rising significance of important minerals for the clear power transition and the necessity to forestall financial and safety dangers attributable to weak provide chains and monopolization, amongst different subjects, the newest draft communique seen by Reuters confirmed.
China dominates the marketplace for important minerals used to make electrical automobile batteries, central to developed nation targets to decarbonise, and Russia – which invaded Ukraine final 12 months – can also be a significant participant.
Last 12 months, Canada requested three Chinese corporations to promote their stakes in Toronto-listed lithium explorers following a nationwide safety evaluate.
Guilbeault stated this was for “strategic security reasons.”
“We have a lot of those critical minerals, we have almost all of them in Canada with a few exceptions. We can become a reliable provider of these resources or products for our international allies like Japan, for example,” he stated.
FOSSIL FUELS AND COAL POWER PLANTS
The fundamental battle amongst G7 surroundings and power ministers this 12 months is concentrated on whether or not investments in fossil fuels, particularly liquefied pure gasoline (LNG), can proceed and the way lengthy coal-fired energy vegetation ought to proceed to function.
Energy-poor Japan desires to maintain LNG as a transition gasoline to cleaner power for at the very least 10-15 years and to co-fire ammonia with coal at its thermal energy vegetation.
Climate activists content material that method helps lengthen the lifetime of coal energy vegetation and helps massive companies quite than decarbonization.
Canada’s place is that phasing out coal is without doubt one of the simplest methods to combat local weather change and there are quite a lot of alternate options to coal-fired electrical energy, Guilbeault stated.
“So it’s a message that we are conveying to all of our peers whether it’s Japan, China or India… We are very much aware that any new large investment in fossil fuels infrastructure will be with us for many, many years,” he stated.
“It doesn’t mean that there won’t be any more fossil fuel investment. But they have to be very limited and we have to make sure they are in line with our climate change commitment, not just for 2030, but for 2050 to be net zero.”
