Canada, the EU and energy security: a historical perspective

ABSTRACT

Canada’s energy relations with the EC/EU have historically been driven by hopes for complementary trade and like-minded international positions, especially once international energy governance took on urgency in the 1970s. Since the early 2000s these two objectives have become less compatible as they pit transatlantic energy trade against the global climate change agenda. Not only does Ottawa have to reconcile hydrocarbon energy production and pledges to net zero carbon emissions, but it also has to balance short and long-term time horizons as the world embarks on its decarbonizing journey. Current Canadian plans for LNG and hydrogen facilities in the eastern part of the country illustrate the difficulty of navigating between immediate responses to a crisis – providing LNG to Europe to make up for deliveries from Russia – and longer-term plans to become an exporter of cleaner energy such as hydrogen to foster the next energy transition and help address climate change. Leaning on historical institutionalism and constructivism, the following analysis will show that Canada’s present and future energy relations with the EU are best understood as the outcome of decades of transatlantic energy diplomacy, institutionalized understandings of energy security and global frameworks which link energy and climate matters.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy security
• energy diplomacy
• transatlantic relations
• international energy history
• Canada-EU relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Google Books Ngram Viewer: energy security, 1965–2019, American English, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22energy+security%22&year_start=1965&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=0.

2 Google Books Ngram Viewer: Energiesicherheit, 1965–2019, German, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Energiesicherheit&year_start=1965&year_end=2019&corpus=31&smoothing=0.

3 Google Books Ngram Viewer: sécurité énergétique, 1965–2019, French, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sécurité+énergétique&year_start=1965&year_end=2019&corpus=30&smoothing=0.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Petra Dolata

Petra Dolata is the former Canada Research Chair in the History of Energy at the University of Calgary. She is the Scholar in Residence at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, where she co-convenes the Energy In Society working group. She has published on the history of energy, Canada’s natural resources, foreign and Arctic policies, and the concept of energy security. This article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.