Power for the Public with Edgardo Sepulveda
Regulatory economist and consultant Edgardo Sepulveda joins the Perspectives Journal Podcast to explain what it will take to bring power back into the public interest in Alberta.
Regulatory economist and consultant Edgardo Sepulveda joins the Perspectives Journal Podcast to explain what it will take to bring power back into the public interest in Alberta.
In moving away from coal, Alberta would be in the mainstream of a trend that’s now picking up speed around the world.
Perversely, governments get captured by the staple industry and lock the country in. Our currency becomes a petro-dollar, our state a petro-state.
Energy efficiency is an obvious solution because it is quick, portable, abundant, and cheap. Unlike pipelines that take years to build, energy efficiency efforts can be ramped up within months.
Canada’s brand of the resource curse is called the “staples trap”. The pattern was articulated by celebrated Canadian economic historian Harold Innis in his studies of Canadian staple resource economies.
Even though Canada has an abundance of clean energy resources and the potential to find the innovative capacity to take advantage of them, the staples mentality informs the federal government’s policy and politics.