New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs was in the Netherlands in mid-May for the World Hydrogen Summit, an international gathering of hydrogen industry players, politicians, potential investors, chief executives and entrepreneurs.

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The conference in the port city of Rotterdam attracted nearly 12,000 people, double the number from the prior year, and proof, perhaps, that adopting hydrogen as an alternative fuel to coal and oil is gaining momentum as governments around the world make commitments to achieve net-zero emissions at some far-off date.

McKinsey & Co. projects that “hydrogen could contribute more than 20 per cent of annual global emissions” reductions by 2050. Higgs hopes his province can get a piece of the hydrogen action.

Green energy plans are afoot in Belledune, a port town in northeast New Brunswick, that is currently home to a coal-burning power plant, but hopes to develop into a green energy hub capable of producing hydrogen that could be sold and shipped to European markets.

It is potentially breathtaking stuff, but what struck Higgs most as he mixed with the hydrogen wheeler-dealers was a comment someone made about Rotterdam being a two-hour flight from the war in Ukraine. That conflict has radically altered the global energy picture, leaving European countries scrambling to replace Russian oil and natural gas, and consumers dealing with energy price spikes — although those have significantly eased in recent months.

What hasn’t gone away, Higgs said, is Europe’s demand for energy, a near-term need the hydrogen plants of tomorrow aren’t meeting. He has a solution, though, and it involves ramping up New Brunswick’s dormant shale gas industry. In other words — fracking — which just so happens to be a dirty word in the premier’s neck of the woods, where a prior government slapped a moratorium on the industry more than a decade ago following violent protests.

On a recent break from the legislature, Higgs spoke of hydrogen, fracking and the potential role Canadian energy can play in the fight against Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

FP: The war in Ukraine has caused energy havoc overseas. Where does Canada fit in?

Blaine Higgs: Europe is in crisis. The war today is probably fifth or sixth on the news cycle in New Brunswick, and in Canada, and we have such an opportunity as a nation, not to mention as a province, to be a major energy supplier for Europe, and to do it in a timely fashion. When I talk about that, in relation to New Brunswick, it is our natural gas development. We have huge resources of natural gas, very clean natural gas, we can shut down four coal plants in Atlantic Canada with our natural gas.

Energy companies in Europe are asking: where can we get a supply of energy that can help us shut down coal plants? And some energy companies are saying, “That is our goal right now,” securing a transition fuel. And yet here in Canada, we have kind of taken a position where it is hydrogen or bust.

FP: Hydrogen may be the future, but what we tend to overlook in the push to net zero is that we also need to live in the present.

Europe is in crisis

Blaine Higgs

BH: Think back 10 years ago, when the whole Energy East pipeline was being contemplated. Well, what we wouldn’t give for that right now. We would be shipping Canadian oil directly to offset Russian imports into Europe, and the gas side is another opportunity. I know they are developing gas and liquefied natural gas out West, but in New Brunswick, we could have a major impact in helping our allies and securing their future and ours.

FP: What do you say to the critic who says, “Well, Mr. Premier, isn’t that just going back to the dirty old energy ways?”

BH: I would say look at the timelines, look at the options. I can tell you where the gaps are, so you tell me what is going to fill them? It is simple, really, and it is a transition from oil to gas to nuclear to hydrogen, and any facilities that we would expand for liquefied natural gas would be used for green hydrogen down the road, and so it is building for the future.

FP: Let’s say all the wished-fors and hoped-fors in the energy transition come true, who is paying for it, the taxpayer, a public-private combination?

BH: Today, our national policy would be the taxpayer pays for it. The energy transition is downloaded onto taxpayers. The idea being, if we make energy more expensive, you’ll find a way to do without it. Well, if we don’t have something else to replace it with, you are going to do without a lot of things, but energy won’t be one of them. Food prices will go up, everything will go up, because of the high cost of energy, and that today is our policy in Canada. But I think the projects I am talking about, like the development of our gas fields, would be totally private-sector funded.

FP: You are referring to shale gas fracking, a hotly debated topic in New Brunswick.

BH: Yes, in a certain segment of New Brunswick, where we lifted the moratorium a couple years ago, there is a natural gas field area that we could open up. The idea being, what is going on now in Saskatchewan and B.C. and Alberta, and what is going on in the Midwest of the U.S. — which is now the No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas — has been done in the last 10 years. And they have done it by saying this is a time when we can not only utilize the resources we have while they are still needed, but we can offset Russian supplies, and we can shut down coal plants and convert them to a much cleaner fuel, and it would reduce emissions.

FP: You’re in Rotterdam, at a hydrogen conference — a two-hour flight from the war in Ukraine — what’s the appetite there for Canadian energy?

BH: It is huge, and I feel as though we are not living up to doing what we could for our allies.

• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites