WATCH: Kenney destroys reporter who asks why Alberta doesn’t phase out fossil fuels

A reporter on Thursday cited the recent UN report on climate change, and asked Alberta Premier Jason Kenney why his government continued to support the development of fossil fuels.

The report, titled AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that recent extreme weather patterns globally were likely to continue and possibly worsen in the coming decades.

The report's 4,000 pages cited 14,000-plus studies conducted worldwide and indicate that we are at the border of an average 1.5 degrees centigrade increase in the Earth's surface temperature.

According to the report, the threshold could be passed as soon as in the early 2030s. It also indicated that if the world managed to halt the warming at the 1.5-degree Celsius mark, we would still see the sea rise to "dangerous levels."

Kenney responded, "The vast majority of energy consumed around the world is derived from fossil fuels. There is no credible way to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel energy anytime in the foreseeable future."

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global oil demand is likely to remain stable or increase over the next 20 years, he added. Oil demand recovered from its historic drop in 2020, reported the IEA, edging ahead of pre-crisis levels by 2023.

"While road transport accounted for 60 percent of oil demand growth in the last decade, petrochemicals accounted for 60 percent in the next decade, largely as a result of rising demand for plastics, notably for packaging materials," wrote the IEA.

They also noted the dramatic changes in consumer behaviour in 2020 had a limited overall effect on oil demand long-term.

"Unless you’re prepared to stop heating your homes in the winter," said Kenney, "unless people decide they’re going to stop boarding aircraft to travel, we basically shut down the entire industrialized economy."

If that were to happen, he said we would need to "return to living, metaphorically, in mud huts" and "burning wood for our fuel." Kenney added, "there is no credible alternative for complex industrialized economies."

"We have to continue to strive to reduce emissions," he said. "It’s exactly what we are doing."

Alberta’s government invested $750 million to support projects that help industries reduce carbon emissions through the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) Program.

Funded mainly through industry, the province's $750 million investment supplemented funds from other sectors, totalling $1.9 billion. Larger facilities account for almost two-thirds of Alberta's carbon emissions, according to the province, creating 3,400 jobs with its portion of the funding and up to 8,700 jobs when accounting for other investments.

The investment will primarily focus on advancing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology that catches and carbon dioxide to reduce carbon emissions. "But the notion that we can somehow flick a switch," said Kenney, "especially in a big cold northern country, and permanently park every car and every truck, and permanently disassemble every gas heater, is a utopian notion."

"It is a utopian notion that we can suddenly end the use of hydrocarbon-based energy," he said. "The challenge is to shrink carbon dioxide output, and Alberta is increasingly a world leader in that respect."

A $1.3 billion investment was announced in early June for the first phase of a blue hydrogen project from Air Products that aims to capture 95 percent of its carbon emissions, reducing carbon intensity to a level the company says is "close to zero." The product, blue hydrogen, will be used for the electricity grid and truck transportation by 2024.

Alberta’s government contributed $15 million from TIER to the facility that is expected to create 2,500 construction and engineering jobs and eventually provide enough liquid hydrogen to fuel every transit agency across the province.

Kenney told the Edmonton Journal it’s well-suited to take advantage of Alberta’s massive supply of natural gas and "is just the beginning… [to] securing our future as a powerhouse in clean energy production."

An example of a smaller-scale project is the $28.6 million Lethbridge facility that will turn farm waste, inedible fat and used cooking oil into renewable fuel, such as biodiesel fuel and glycerine.

According to the Calgary Herald, the province funded $4.7 million from TIER to the facility that will purchase$375 million worth of local feedstock over the next five years. It is expected to create 130 jobs in the area and generate $500 million in revenues.

The biodiesel created will have one-third the "carbon intensity" of petroleum diesel and, compared to diesel, could reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent, according to Natural Resources Canada.