Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it — or live in a rural area and have to rely on it.
That seems to be the message from propane industry advocates, who were miffed earlier this month when the federal government appeared to discount the “expensive” fuel’s widespread use by farmers, rural homeowners, businesses and municipalities.
Neebing’s municipal office, for example, “is heated with propane, and now so is the Blake Hall (recreation centre) and two of our fire halls,” Neebing clerk-treasurer Erika Kromm said on Monday.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Mark Carney touted an expanded electrical grid as the best way to secure Canada’s energy needs.
“This plan will double the capacity of our grid by 2050 and supply clean, reliable, affordable power across the country for decades to come,” Carney said in a news release.
“Canada already has an 80-per-cent clean (electrical power) grid and some of the lowest electricity costs in the G7,” the news release said.
Though Carney referenced natural gas as one of the fuels Canadians will rely on while the country “transforms” to a more electric-based future, propane — a byproduct of natural gas — didn’t receive a similar positive mention.
That didn’t sit well with the propane association that represents 400 members.
The federal government’s plan “missed the mark in meeting the needs of rural and Northern Canadians, and the vital role Canada’s propane industry has in supporting reliable and affordable energy as part of the federal government’s electrification policy,” a separate Canadian Propane Association news release said.
“It is striking,” it added, “that natural gas receives its own dedicated subsection acknowledging its ‘strategic role,’ while propane, which serves many of Canada’s most vulnerable and remote populations, is reduced to a line item for displacement.”
In the federal government backgrounder about its electric-grid expansion plan, it notes that propane is an “expensive” heating fuel, along with oil and electric-baseboard heaters.
The government’s plan “could deliver up to $15 billion in total energy savings by 2050, and lower total energy costs for seven in 10 Canadian households.”
According to the propane association, which notes the higher cost of electricity in northern parts of Canada, “asking these communities to electrify without viable alternatives is not a transition – it is a burden.”
