The controversy concerning the purchasing of diesel generators needs addressing. There is a climate reality about P.E.I.’s electricity system that deserves far more honesty. While we pride ourselves on clean energy leadership, our heavy reliance on imported electricity ties us directly to New Brunswick’s fossil-heavy generation mix.

Because of quirks in greenhouse gas accounting, most of those emissions appear on New Brunswick’s books, not ours. Islanders should not be fooled. As consumers, we are responsible for the pollution our electricity creates. Emissions don’t disappear just because they’re recorded elsewhere.

That’s why the Minister’s Report on Climate Change 2024–2025 rings hollow. It highlights a paltry 0.9 per cent drop in emissions in 2023, while nearly all electricity-related pollution is booked out of province. In real terms, PEI may be contributing to rising emissions — an unacceptable outcome during a climate emergency and under our own legally binding climate commitments.

This matters because Maritime Electric wants to spend billions of Islanders’ dollars on refurbished diesel generators. Those “investments” would come with rate hikes locking up ratepayer capacity for decades, choking off our ability to invest in the infrastructure we actually need for energy security and responsible climate leadership.

Every dollar sunk into diesel generators and fuel is a dollar leaving P.E.I. for U.S. suppliers and multinational corporations like Fortis and Irving — money that is then not available for battery storage, smart grid upgrades or local renewable integration. Batteries paired with wind and solar cut imports, create local jobs and reduce emissions every day. Diesel generators, by contrast, would sit idle most of the time, pollute when they run, and deepen our dependence on outdated technology and foreign corporate interests.

True leadership means rejecting the fiction that twentieth-century diesel is a prudent response to a twenty-first-century challenge. We can lock ourselves into decades of diesel dependence — or invest now in a cleaner, more resilient future. That choice is ours, and it’s urgent.