Natural Gas in Halifax

The Provincial Government has played a pivotal role in bringing Natural Gas to the Halifax peninsula, and helped the supplier, Heritage Gas secure an "anchor" client in Capital Health. This change will bring a reduction in GHG emissions, since natural gas does burn cleaner than the source it is replacing, heating oil, however, I would hardly agree with the statement from Heritage Gas that it is "environmentally friendly" nor do I think it is a wise investment for the future of Halifax.

Natural Gas gets off easy when it comes to fossil fuel's affect on the environment, even though it is a highly exhaustible source (just like oil) that still emits lots of GHG emissions. The Government press release noted that this conversion will reduce GHG Emissions by 20,000 tonnes, which is a good thing, but installing 4 utility scale wind turbines would have the same effect with much less cost.

The people of Halifax and Nova Scotia must also stop to think if this is a wise investment economically. The price of natural gas is still highly volatile, and most of the worlds reserves have been found and are being extracted. Even our own offshore reserves are in decline. NS has done well exporting natural gas to New England, and why have we mostly exported it?? because it is more expensive than our current sources. Rather than exclusively being a seller of a limited resource with large price fluctuations, our provincial government and Heritage Gas are spending millions of dollars making the people of Nova Scotia buyers of it has well. The price of natural gas has come down over the past two years, but it only takes a basic understanding of supply and demand to realize that when supply is limited, price will go up. Where does Premier MacDonald and Minister Dooks think the price of natural gas will be in 10 years? or 25 years? It is increasingly expensive to run our health care system due to shifting demographics, and yet our government is investing millions to guarantee that the costs of operating our health care facilities will continue to increase. Not only will the price continue to increase, but the price of natural gas is actually more volatile than the oil it is replacing. All it would take is one big storm or one terrorist attack, and it could mean drastic increases in the cost to Nova Scotians to run our hospitals overnight.

In order to be truly environmentally friendly, and economically wise, the government needs to support using renewable energy sources to power our businesses, institutions and residences. Energy Minister Bill Dooks said in the government's press release "Nova Scotia has tremendous natural-gas potential -- we've got it, let's use it". Why doesn't "we've got it, let's use it" apply to renewable sources?? Not only do we have a far greater resource potential than natural gas in both wind and tidal , it doesn't require millions of millions of dollars of government infrastructure subsidization to succeed. All it needs is the opportunity to compete.