Building from a $15.2 million promise listed in Justin Trudeau's 2019 Speech from the Throne, the Canadian government has just launched a new website in support of building a “clean energy future” and designed for “use by governments, industry, stakeholders and consumers”.

The launch was announced by Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan, who was recently discovered to have cost taxpayers $213,500 pursuing the settlement of a suit characterized by alleged defamation of a veterans advocate.

The website, known as the Canadian Centre for Energy Information (CECI) is a joint project under Natural Resources Canada, Statistics Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canada Energy Regulator.

According to the news release promoting the launch, the website will:

• Serve as a single point of access for all energy-related information and data, such as production, consumption, international trade and much more
• Compile, reconcile and integrate energy data from various Canadian sources
• Make data from multiple providers available free of charge
• Harmonize energy definitions, measurements and standards
• Improve the completeness, coherence and timeliness of Canada’s energy information
• Provide new data products, visualization tools and expert analyses
• Support analysis, modelling and forecasting in the academic and research community

Last week, Rebel News reported that Natural Resources Canada was looking to hire two journalists to “supply stories on the energy efficiency achievements of the industrial, buildings, utilities and government sectors on an ongoing basis.”

You can watch the full report from Sheila Gunn Reid here:

While it is unclear that the journalists will be supplying stories for this website, the site has similar aims:

[The website is] a modernized, independent, energy information system by giving Canadians access to timely data on the use of energy in order to inform our transition to a low-carbon energy future.

The report does, however, note the economic importance of the energy industry, estimating its activity in 2019 to have been work $150 billion and employing more than 280,000 Canadians.