Why Nova Scotia's fossil fuel energy megaprojects are going bust

Several of Nova Scotia's energy megaprojects have fizzled in recent months and years, and some say the societal shift toward renewables is the reason.

AltaGas, the company with a plan to store up to 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas in underground caverns alongside the Shubenacadie River, announced in October it was pulling the plug on the project due to the "repositioning of the business and the challenging nature of the storage project economics."

In July, Pieridae Energy announced it would not proceed with its proposal to build a processing plant and export facility for liquefied natural gas in Goldboro, Guysborough County, citing cost pressures and time constraints.

The future of the Bear Head LNG project, a proposal to bring in natural gas to Port Hawkesbury from Western Canada or the U.S., and then import it to Europe, is uncertain after the company behind the project tried to sell it last year.

The province's offshore oil and gas future looks less than rosy after a call for exploration bids this year yielded no interest.

Last year, the Donkin coal mine — which produced both thermal coal for electricity generation and metallurgical coal for steelmaking — closed permanently, with the company blaming geological conditions in the underground mine.

Jennifer Tuck, the CEO of the Maritimes Energy Association, said the industry's transition away from fossil fuels is affecting the energy landscape in Nova Scotia.

"Focus on climate change, achieving global emissions reductions targets, all of those things, I think, make it challenging in the fossil fuel sector," she said.

Tuck said investment funds have been pulling out of funding oil and gas projects, and federal policy changes are focusing more on clean energies and technologies. 

Pieridae Energy had requested nearly $1 billion from the federal government to support its plan to send liquefied natural gas to Europe, but the funding failed to materialize.

Community and global resistance to fossil fuels also likely played a role in the demise of some of Nova Scotia's energy megaprojects, said Noreen Mabiza, an energy co-ordinator at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax.

"It is definitely a factor, not a factor to be ignored," said Mabiza. "People have been on the ground for years saying they don't want these sorts of projects."

When AltaGas announced it was abandoning its natural gas storage plan, it said the project had received "mixed support, challenges and experienced delay." Mi'kmaw protestors and other opponents have long spoken out against the project, setting up a camp next to the river and launching court challenges.

"It takes years. It wasn't an overnight effort to get these projects to leave, but it's just that continued fight of people who want to fight and protect our land, and people who do recognize we are in a climate emergency and just certain things won't pass anymore," Mabiza said.