FOR OVER A CENTURY, energy defined Canada’s role in the world – not by accident, but by design. Oil, gas, uranium, and hydropower were not simply exports; they were instruments of policy, wealth creation, and national leverage. They enabled Canada to occupy a paradoxical position in the global order: a resource-rich nation with post-industrial ambitions; a climate-conscious state with extractive dependencies; a G7 economy that acts like a supply chain.
But the age of linear energy logic is over. Supply is no longer sovereignty. The next energy order will not be won by nations that simply own resources – it will be shaped by those who can integrate, institutionalize, and influence. Canada is no longer competing to power the world; it is competing to shape the architecture through which the world powers itself.
This is the inflection point.
We are not transitioning from oil and gas to wind and solar – we are transitioning from an energy industry to an energy system: distributed, digitized, decarbonized, and, above all, geopolitical. Every molecule, every megawatt, every data point will carry embedded trade-offs – environmental, technological, financial, and ideological.
The nations that master these market tensions – not just technically, but strategically – will define the tempo of global capital, security, and sustainability. Those that don’t will become infrastructure for someone else’s vision.
Canada must decide whether to be the architect or the asphalt.
FROM COMMODITY TO CODE
The fundamental unit of energy power is no longer the barrel or the BTU – it is the platform. The countries gaining strategic ground in today’s energy landscape are not necessarily those with the deepest reserves, but those building interoperable ecosystems across technology, regulation, and finance.
Look at the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM): not just a policy, but a geopolitical operating system that externalizes European climate standards globally. Look at the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.: not just a subsidy regime, but a magnet for clean capital formation and industrial renaissance. These moves aren’t about decarbonization alone—they are about norm-setting at scale.
Canada cannot afford to be a fast follower. It must become a norm entrepreneur in its own right, exporting systems, not just substances. That requires rethinking our posture – from resource provider to institutional innovator.
We must ask: What protocols, metrics, legal frameworks, and financial instruments can Canada lead on? Can we become the global benchmark for hydrogen certification? For indigenous equity participation? For AI-integrated grid governance? These are the new dimensions of energy power—and they are still up for grabs.
CLIMATE REALISM ≠ CLIMATE DELAY
To many observers, Canada’s current stance on energy appears riddled with contradiction. We are a nation that signs global climate agreements while approving new oil developments. A country that funds cleantech while underinvesting in transmission. A society that valorizes environmental justice while depending on royalty revenues to fund public services.
But contradiction is not failure. In a polycrisis world, contradiction is a feature of leadership. The challenge is not to eliminate paradox – it is to manage it with coherence.
That is the essence of climate realism: refusing both the utopianism of overnight decarbonization and the complacency of gradual decline. It is a path that requires uncomfortable decisions, sophisticated trade-offs, and a governing class that can hold complexity without collapsing into paralysis.
The real risk is not contradiction – it is strategic incoherence: a failure to link climate ambition with credible pathways, to connect industrial policy with social license, to align capital markets with long-term public interest.
Canada still has the capacity to lead – but only if it can narrate its contradictions as choices, not confessions.
ENERGY AS FOREIGN POLICY
The 21st century’s energy flashpoints are no longer confined to pipelines and straits. They now manifest in trade disputes over critical minerals, in cyberattacks on smart grids, in algorithmic control of energy markets, in rare earth processing bottlenecks, and in green tech supply chain nationalization.
Energy is now fully fused with foreign policy – and yet Canada continues to treat it as a domestic issue with international consequences, rather than a foreign policy instrument with domestic implications.
We need a new diplomatic playbook—one that places energy and climate strategy at the heart of Canada’s global engagement. That includes aligning with NATO energy resilience mandates, deepening cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies on clean tech supply chains and leveraging our ESG credibility as a tool of climate diplomacy.
The future of Canadian influence may not lie in Ottawa or Alberta—but in our ability to build strategic energy partnerships that reshape the global commons.
A CALL FOR SYSTEMS LEADERSHIP
The coming energy order will not be built by engineers or economists alone. It will be shaped by systems leaders: those capable of navigating across silos, sectors, and sovereignties; those who understand that power is no longer derived from control, but from coordination.
Canada’s opportunity is to cultivate this systems leadership at scale—through policy, education, corporate governance, and institutional design. This is not simply about decarbonization targets. It is about creating a cadre of public and private leaders who can operate at the intersection of science, capital, and statecraft.
And it is about owning our complexity—not as a liability, but as our comparative advantage. We are one of the few nations that can genuinely speak to both the industrial world and the ecological world, to capital markets and First Nations, to the Global North and the Global South.
This is our unique voice. It’s time we used it with precision.
CANADA WILL NOT COMPETE in the future by outproducing others – but by outthinking, outbuilding, and out-connecting them. The question is not whether we can lead the next energy era. The question is whether we’re prepared to lead at the level it now demands.
The last dominion is not energy. It is agency. And we have one final chance to claim it.
