001-43_EJQR9_SUMMER26_PT - Flipbook - Page 39
WHEN I WAS A KID, the back seat of our family’s Pontiac station
wagon was where optimism went to die. Every summer on the
way to Nova Scotia, I’d glue my eyes to the passengerside window,
hypnotized by the blur of spruce trees and white line skimming the
asphalt. Hours later, my stomach would stage an insurrection. Mom
tried ginger ale, deep breaths, even a brown paper bag crumpled
down my shirt, but nothing worked until Dad 昀椀nally realized the
昀椀x: “Put the boy in the middle seat and point his eyes toward the
horizon.”
That middleseat lesson has been on my mind as New Brunswick
passes the twoyear mark of its Hydrogen Roadmap. The province
launched the roadmap with genuine optimism; con昀椀dent hydrogen
would become a pillar of its cleanenergy future. But somewhere
along the way, the province started focusing on the wrong things.
AERIAL VIEW OF
BELLEDUNE POWER
GENERATING STATION,
NEW-BRUNSWICK:
GETTY IMAGES
When the roadmap launched in 2024, it rested on widely shared
assumptions: rising global demand, strong European interest in
clean ammonia, expanding electricity supply, and a grid ready
to modernize. Two years later, the landscape shifted. Hydrogen
markets have cooled, export economics tightened, ports pivoted,
E N V I RON M E N T J OURN A L QUA RT E RLY RE PORT • S UM M ER 2 02 6 • P AGE 3 9
