Foreshadowed for years, French Canada said it plans to ban fossil fuel production by rejecting exploration and production development and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

“The government of Quebec has taken a decision to renounce, definitively, extraction of hydrocarbons in its territory,” said Premier Fancois Legault. He announced the move in an annual State of the Province address to the province’s National Assembly.

Legault described the planned production prohibition as a recipe for prosperity in an emerging age of international consensus on preventing drastic climate change by cutting fossil fuel carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

The premier predicted energy transition to electricity would grow government-owned Hydro Quebec’s zero-emission power...