Energy Probe is a non-governmental social, economic, and

environmental policy Environmental policy is the commitment of an organization or government to the laws, regulations, and other policy mechanisms concerning environmental issues. These issues generally include air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem ...

organization based in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Canada known recently for denying man-made climate change. It was founded in 1970 as a sister project of Pollution Probe. In this early period, the focus was on the publicly owned

Ontario Hydro Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity ge ...

's predictions of energy usage seeing continual growth and their demands to build a huge fleet of

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a Nuclear fission, fission nuclear chain reaction. They are used for Nuclear power, commercial electricity, nuclear marine propulsion, marine propulsion, Weapons-grade plutonium, weapons ...

s to service this demand. They published a number of reports in the late 1970s estimating usage in 2000 would be significantly below that predicted by Hydro, numbers that were matched by those of the Ontario Ministry of Energy's own calculations, and eventually, Hydro itself. The organization is well known for its anti-nuclear energy stance, opposing

nuclear energy Nuclear energy may refer to: *Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity *Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom *Nuclear potential energy, the pot ...

production in Canada, especially in the case of

nuclear plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power s ...

s in Ontario, on the grounds that nuclear power production is uneconomic. In 1980, the two organizations formally separated and the Energy Probe Research Foundation (EPRF) was created, describing itself as "one of Canada's largest independent think tanks, with 17 public policy researchers", focusing "on the economic, environmental, and social impacts of the use and production of energy." After its separation and incorporation, and led from then on by Lawrence Solomon, EPRF began to accept funding from the

oil and gas industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products ...

, and, in 1983, began a campaign "to educate Canadians to the social, environmental and economic benefits of less regulation in the petroleum field." In the 1980s, the organization was also responsible for a proposal to dismantle Hydro in favour of

privatization Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation w ...

. Additional divisions within Energy Probe are the Urban Renaissance Institute, Probe International, Environment Probe, the Environmental Bureau of Investigation, and the Consumer Policy Institute.

Views on global warming and climate change

EPRF argues that "the science behind competing theories of global warming is not yet settled", stating that "global cooling" is on the rise, that climate change is surrounded by "clouds of conspiracy", and that climate science is "corrupt" and the "greatest scientific fraud of the century". EPRF also argues that fossil fuels, especially gasoline, shale oil, natural gas, and coal, are clean and environmentally beneficial choices, putting it at odds with expected notions of

environmental organization An environmental organization is an organization coming out of the conservation or environmental movements that seeks to protect, analyse or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation from human forces. In this sense the environme ...

s. Founder (and

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper and the flagship publication of the American-owned Postmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.

columnist) Lawrence Solomon published a series of columns and a book in 2008 titled "''The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud"'' naming 37 climate scientists and authors as " climate change skeptics" or "climate deniers". Several of these scientists and authors published their rejection of this characterization of their views, among them Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute, Nigel Weiss of the University of Cambridge, and Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The National Post, on the urging of Professor Nigel Weiss, later issued a retraction and apology for the allegations made in the column. Founder Lawrence Solomon was a speaker at the conservative and libertarian public policy think tank The

Heartland Institute The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking. Founded ...

's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. The Heartland Institute holds similarly skeptical views about man-made climate change and related global warming, stating that the claims that global warming is a crisis are unscientific and delusional. Solomon remains on the rolls of the Heartland Institute as a policy expert. EPRF has also been critical of the

Kyoto Protocol The was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is oc ...

as well as of the Paris Accords.

Funding

The EPRF is a registered Canadian

charity Charity may refer to: Common meanings * Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons * Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sha ...

. Apart from donated income, it receives all of the profits of its "non-profit" organic coffee company and cafe in Toronto, Green Beanery. The cafe opened in 2008 and closed in March 2020; the online business is to continue. In 2012, the EPRF brought in $1.3 million in non-donation revenue.

References

External links

Official website

Energy Probe Blog
{{Global warming, state= Environmental organizations based in Ontario Climate change denial Organizations based in Toronto

Views on global warming and climate change

Funding

See also

References

External links