Clean Energy

Chignecto at a Crossroads: Conscience or Catastrophe?

Date: August 20, 2025
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Landscape impacts, LNG
by Deborah Carr, 
I want to share the letter I submitted on Aug 15, 2025 to federal and provincial governments on NB Power’s gas plant proposed for Centre-Village, NB on the Chignecto Isthmus. In this time of wildfires and heat, drought and dangerous air quality, political strife and polarization, wars and genocides, it’s easy to overlook projects that do not seem to affect us directly. We’re all carrying a lot of weight these days.
But, as I point out in my letter, we are all connected and our actions have long-lasting impacts. People can enjoy watching the miracle of the shorebirds at Dorchester and Mary’s Point now because protective measures were taken long ago to secure a critical stop along the route of travel for millions of these species. They are a perfect example of how local actions matter on a global scale.

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Comments on Proposed Centre Village Gas/Diesel Generating Station

Date: August 10, 2025
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, NBASGA, Sustainable Energy Solutions

These are the comments of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance, a collection of groups from across the province that, since 2010, have acted to prevent the extraction and use of unconventional fossil fuels in the province, and have promoted the transition to a clean, renewables based economy. Using public education and litigation as our tools, we have helped obtain and maintain a moratorium on hydrofracking for ten years, intervened on the side of the federal government at the Supreme Court of Canada to validate the Carbon Pricing legislation, and been co-plaintiffs in a case in the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal that challenged an EIA, which helped defeat a planned LNG facility in Goldboro.

Our approach in all cases is to use the best science available, and apply it to the latest legal standards.

Following those two principles, as detailed below, brings us to the following conclusion.  Any act that increases the extraction or use for burning new fossil fuels must, by any scientific standard, be opposed, and that national and international jurists increasingly view limiting climate change and the ghgs that cause it, as issues that require legally binding responsibilities and  agreements within and between nation states.

Therefore, our primary position on the Centre Village gas/diesel turbine is that we oppose its construction. If there is any case to be made supporting it, it would require, at the very least, a comprehensive federal Impact Assessment (IA), to provide details that the current EIA plan lacks.

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Don’t backslide on fossil fuel projects

Date: February 20, 2025
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking and Economics

By Jim Emberger – Special to Brunswick News – Published February 20, 2025

Threatening times, with rapidly changing events, inevitably produce two things. Public and media attention becomes focused on the turmoil and pace of immediate concerns, and longstanding issues, regardless of importance, are set aside.

Secondly, some corporate or financial interests will attempt to use the distraction to push profiteering schemes, especially unpopular ones.  This is sometimes known as “disaster capitalism.”

We see this today as Canada’s fossil fuel producers, and their political and media allies, respond to Donald Trump’s tariff threats by re-introducing the ideas of the Energy East bitumen pipeline and various shale gas/LNG projects.

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Comments on the Energy Transition Roadmap

Date: June 4, 2024
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, NBASGA, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, Sustainable Energy Solutions

Context

The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance is a coalition of Anglophone and francophone groups from across the province that has since 2010 pursued two mandates – promoting the transition to a clean energy economy, and stopping the development of unconventional fossil fuels in New Brunswick.

We have done so via public education, formal testimony to government, legal actions, and media advocacy, all based on a foundation of scientific, public health, and economic facts and research.  We certainly consider ourselves major stakeholders in the Energy Transition.

The context surrounding all of our comments is the rapidly increasing harms brought by climate change – the underlying reason for this energy transition.

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Premier’s pursuit of shale gas is perverse

Date: February 2, 2024
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, LNG

[February 2, 2024, NB Media Co-op Commentary by Jim Emberger]

Premier Blaine Higgs’ continuing desire to exploit shale gas and LNG can only be described as “perverse,” which the dictionary defines as “showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences.” Higgs referenced LNG development during his State of the Province address on Jan. 25.

“We have so many advantages with our direct access to the U.S. and international markets along with our rich natural resources including wind, minerals, water, forestry, and natural gas,” he said. “That’s where I believe we have a tremendous opportunity to punch above our weight and really impact global emissions.”

His obstinate, decade-long pursuit of shale gas, can reasonably be called obsessive. It begins with his continuing promotion of gas even after citizens voted out the Alward government, which ran on the issue.

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Time for realistic N.B. plans for economic, environmental benefits

Date: March 17, 2023
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, LNG, Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[Le français suit]

Traditional territory of the Wabanaki Peoples/Fredericton — The Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB) and the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance issued the following statement with respect to Repsol SA’s announcement that there is no business case for building an export liquefied natural gas plant at the Saint John LNG location.

Premier Blaine Higgs pushed a private-sector company, Repsol, to convert its Saint John LNG (liquefied natural gas) import terminal into an export terminal for energy security, economic development and energy transition. The company now says, after completing a feasibility study, that there is no business case.

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COP27 shows Higgs is out of touch with reality

Date: November 20, 2022
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph-Journal, Nov. 19, 2022

New reports from COP27 are useful tools to assess whether Premier Higgs’ natural gas policies reflect current reality.

  • The Premier calls for a new shale gas industry.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), and the UN Environmental Program issued separate reports with a common conclusion: limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires an immediate halt to new fossil fuel development.

The IISD tested 97 possible pathways to stay under 1.5°C.  None succeeded if new fossil fuel development was allowed. The IEA said new development should have ended in 2021.

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LNG export terminal would carry great risks

Date: August 13, 2022
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking News, LNG
Saint John LNG Jetty, photo Kâté Braydon, Environmental Defense Canada

Opinion by Jim Emberger | Telegraph Journal, August 13, 2022

Editor’s Note: As part of our In-Depth series, we invited a proponent and an opponent of the LNG export terminal in Saint John to make their case. Below is Jim Emberger’s argument against the project. Read Michelle Robichaud’s piece here.

The economic and climate costs of developing an LNG export facility in Saint John are real and significant. Benefits, if any, will come at great risk.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently stated, “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

He was summing up the warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, and climate scientists everywhere. Developing new fossil fuel projects will hinder any chance of meeting the climate targets necessary to save the world from dire consequences.

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Stoppons le Gaz

Date: August 4, 2022
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking News, LNG

Des organismes environnementaux demandent au gouvernement fédéral de rejeter les projets d’installations d’exportation de GNL sur la côte Est

[English version here]

Montréal (Québec) — À l’approche de la visite du chancelier allemand Olaf Scholz au Canada en août pour discuter d’un accord potentiel sur le gaz naturel liquéfié (GNL), des organismes environnementaux représentant des millions de Canadien(ne)s lancent l’initiative Stoppons le Gaz (https://www.stopthegas.ca/fr) dans laquelle ils demandent au gouvernement fédéral de rejeter tout projet d’exportation de gaz sur la côte Est en raison des risques climatiques et économiques.

« En dépit de ce que veut faire croire l’industrie des énergies fossiles, les projets d’exportation de gaz ne représentent absolument pas une solution à la situation énergétique en Europe causée par la guerre en Ukraine, puisque les besoins énergétiques de l’Europe seront en grande partie résolus des années avant que toute nouvelle infrastructure canadienne de GNL soit opérationnelle », déclare le porte-parole d’Équiterre, Émile Boisseau-Bouvier.

Plusieurs projets sont envisagés dont deux, le projet Goldboro LNG de Pieridae Energy et le projet Saint John LNG de Repsol, qui pourraient entraîner une augmentation des volumes de gaz transitant dans le réseau de Gazoduc TQM qui traverse le sud du Québec.

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