Canada’s energy sector deserves more credit for its innovation, new research suggests

All in, fossil fuel research, according to Statistics Canada, accounted for $622 million in 2019, or about 37% of Canada’s entire energy-focused R&D spend, although the amount spent by the petroleum industry has been declining since oil and gas prices peaked earlier in the decade.

At a time when science has become so politically polarized, the question orbiting the debate over fossil fuel research is whether all the funding is delivering an ecological benefit or merely propping up an industry in decline.

Dig a little deeper, and there are also questions about the nature of fossil fuel R&D.

When governments move the goalposts—by setting tougher emission caps, for example—the producers have no choice but to figure out how to meet the new standards, and that’s the step that drives innovation activity, as has happened in the auto industry, when governments tightened fuel-efficiency standards.

“We thought this curse was a real problem,” says Saunders, “because we had that very sort of limited view of innovation.” In fact, the findings suggest the oil and gas industry has attracted plenty of technical and scientific expertise, even if it doesn’t keep pumping out patents.

Which is what needs to happen, according to one of the co-authors of the Parkland study, Laurie Adkin, a University of Alberta political scientist.

Saunders, however, points out that many of the oil patch giants are already trying to unlock the riddle of the energy transition, and that process will benefit from the fact that a majority of these firms can leverage their capacity to solve gnarly engineering problems. He explains that countries like the Netherlands and Norway transitioned away from their economic dependence on fossil fuel for the same reason.

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