The cancellation of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline in early October had major consequences for a rather unexpected player: Manitoba Hydro.

The company had been counting on the energy demand from the pipeline, and now the cancellation is putting extra strain on a company already plagued by debt and in the middle of building an $8.7 billion dam.

Back in 2014, the provincial utility company anticipated that almost 40 per cent of electricity generated by its proposed 695-megawatt Keeyask dam in northern Manitoba would be allocated to “pipeline load” for the Alberta Clipper, Line 3 and Energy East pipelines.

Specifically, the electricity would be used to run pumping stations, which force crude oil through pipelines via a series of pumps and motors. Among those pumping stations were those that would move bitumen from the oilsands to New Brunswick through the Energy East pipeline.

But Energy East is now officially dead.

A recent document filed by Manitoba Hydro to the province’s public utilities board estimated that will result in a loss of 534 gigawatt-hours in annual demand, equivalent to 12 per cent of the dam’s production — which comes at an awfully bad time given the utility’s ongoing debt issues, proposed rate hikes and cost overruns, which have resulted in the utility laying off  900 staff.

Building Renewables for the Fossil Fuel Industry

The connection between the Keeyask Dam and the Energy East pipeline raises important questions about renewable energy projects that are built, at least in part, to meet the demands of the fossil fuel industry.

On the one hand, powering the industry with cleaner electricity is a step in the right direction. But on the other hand, building new electricity, even when it is renewable, has serious impacts, and hydro is no exception.

It’s not the first time a hydro dam has been proposed to meet the electricity demands of the fossil fuel industry. In British Columbia, the rationale given for the controversial $10.7 billion Site C dam has at times included powering the liquefied natural gas export industry and Alberta’s oilsands.

What has been talked about a lot less in B.C. is that the new Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline would use 1,046 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year (PDF, page 64), or the equivalent of about 20 per cent of the production of the Site C dam (about half of that power will be consumed in B.C. with the other half being consumed in Alberta).

In B.C. that power will be sold at a subsidized rate and is expected to result in a cost to BC Hydro of $27 million a year. In Alberta, the Trans Mountain pipeline will use nearly a quarter of the new generating capacity created by the newly announced wind contracts.

Shifting Justifications for New Dams

Manitoba Hydro’s game plan for the Keeyask dam became clear during two sets of hearings during late 2013 and early 2014.

Peter Kulchyski, professor of Native studies at the University of Manitoba and long-time critic of impacts of hydroelectric projects on northern Indigenous communities, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that Manitoba Hydro presented two very different narratives.

The first presentations — made to the Clean Environment Commission, which explores social and environmental impacts — saw the energy utility boast about the potential for new hydro projects to help fight climate change by exporting electricity to other jurisdictions and displacing the use of coal and natural gas.

In 2016-17, Manitoba Hydro exported $460 million of electricity to other jurisdictions. But that number has effectively flatlined due to the shale gas boom in the United States. In its most recent annual report, Manitoba Hydro listed “loss of export market access” as one of its most significant risks, alongside “catastrophic infrastructure failure” and “extreme drought.”

Kulchyski said the review of the project then moved on to the Public Utilities Board, which looks at economic modelling. At that point, some of the early financials from the newly built and way over budget 211-megawatt Wuskwatim Dam were emerging. They weren’t good.

At the time, Kulchyski said the Wuskwatim Dam was selling power at four cents per kilowatt-hour while it was costing seven cents per kilowatt-hour to actually produce power. The dam hadn’t ever been profitable (and still hasn’t been to this day, resulting in a restructuring of the agreement with local First Nations).

That’s when the “pipeline load” first entered the picture, Kulchyski said.

“As they were scrambling for where they would sell the power, they publicly came out saying they could sell power to the pipelines that are being built,” he said. “On one hand they’re fighting climate change, on the other hand they’re quite willing to sell to the pipelines.”

The connection between the Keeyask Dam and the Energy East pipeline raises important questions about renewable energy projects that are built, at least in part, to meet the demands of the fossil fuel industry. https://t.co/zn9yyRNL9w

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 10, 2018

Manitoba Could Sell Excess Power to Saskatchewan

Despite these concerns, Keeyask is still being constructed, anticipated to be in operation by late 2021. A $5 billion transmission line, Bipole III, is also being built to transport electricity from the dam to the south of the province.

Enbridge — which owns both the Alberta Clipper and Line 3 pipelines — didn’t respond to a request for comment by DeSmog Canada.

Manitoba Hydro still expects Keeyask to have a “pipeline load” of more than 1,000 gigawatt-hours, meaning that one-quarter of the dam’s capacity (4,400 gigawatt-hours) will go to helping pump Alberta bitumen through Line 3 and Alberta Clipper.

That leaves a lot of excess electricity without a clear market though, which could require future ratepayers to cover the difference. Manitoba Hydro is already requesting significant hikes in rates — currently pushing for 7.9 per cent increases per year until 2023-24.

Electrification Will Bring New Demand: Clean Energy Analyst

But there are plenty of opportunities for Manitoba to use the excess electricity from Keeyask in positive ways, Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada. That includes moving to electric vehicles (including freight trucks and buses) and heating buildings with electricity instead of with natural gas.

“In a hydro-dominated system like Manitoba where you’ve got plentiful, affordable, clean power, the emissions benefit of applying that to transportation is particularly significant,” Woynillowicz said. “We certainly need to be capitalizing on that from a climate change perspective.”

He added there’s also the potential for increased exports to the U.S. and other Canadian provinces —especially Saskatchewan, given that it’s right next door and “still has one of the dirtiest electricity grids in Canada.”

“There’s still a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of cleaning up Saskatchewan’s system,” he said. “Definitely one element of that could be increased imports of hydro from Manitoba.”

Canada May Need 150 More Keeyasks to Meet 2050 Climate Targets

Canada’s mid-century long-term low-greenhouse gas development strategy reported that over 100,000 megawatts of additional hydro capacity will be required by 2050 to reach greenhouse gas reduction targets.

That’s equivalent to almost 150 Keeyask dams in capacity.

Canada is the third-largest hydro producer in the world, with over 80,000 megawatts of capacity already in place. One of the benefits of large quantities of hydropower is its ‘dispatchable’ nature, meaning reservoirs essentially act as giant batteries that can be drawn from when needed.

ICYMI: What’s the Future of Hydroelectric Power in Canada?

Yet often left unaddressed by proponents of additional hydroelectric power are the devastating impacts that dams can have on local and Indigenous communities, especially the ability to hunt, fish, trap and gather on traditional lands and waters.

Opponents of hydro dams also point out the high costs of building large dams crowd out small-scale and more localized sources of energy like wind, solar and geothermal.

And Manitoba, a hydro-heavy province, hasn’t seriously explored renewable electricity sources other than hydro. In 2014, a former NDP energy minister accused the utility of making it “virtually impossible to build wind [power] here.” The province has just 260 MW of installed wind energy capacity, less than New Brunswick.

But outside of rapid innovations in battery storage, transmission lines and the emergence  of alternative low-carbon baseload power (such as geothermal), it’s unclear how Canada will dodge the conflict over hydro.

There are some obvious options to help reduce demand, such as energy efficiency retrofits for existing buildings and reducing industrial load.

Woynillowicz noted that the biggest chunks of new demand come from large industrial projects. For instance, in B.C., a single large LNG plant could consume the equivalent of all of the power created by the Site C dam.

Ultimately, the public needs to know the planned end use of new electricity projects before being able to form an educated opinion on them.

With files from Emma Gilchrist.

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It just might be the best climate policy you’ve never heard of.

It’s called the Clean Fuel Standard. Proposed back in December 2016 when the landmark Pan-Canadian Framework was signed by most provinces and territories, it’s since been vastly overshadowed by other, splashier policies, such as carbon pricing, the federal coal phase-out and methane regulations.

But as outlined in a brand new report by Clean Energy Canada — a think tank based at Simon Fraser University — the policy has incredible potential to cut Canada’s annual greenhouse emissions: upward of 30 megatonnes per year, compared to 18 megatonnes from the carbon price.

So why hasn’t anyone heard of it? DeSmog Canada took a look at the details to help you make sense of the situation.

What is the Clean Fuel Standard?

Simply put, it’s a federal requirement for fuel suppliers to cut their annual emissions by a certain percentage every year. It’s a way of accelerating the switch to cleaner fuels and technologies such as biofuel, clean electricity, carbon capture and storage and “renewable natural gas.”

By fuel suppliers, we mean mostly oil refineries and natural gas suppliers.

With that said, the policy will impact every producer and consumer of fuels, which include gasoline, diesel, natural gas, heating oil, coal and petcoke.

The key thing about this particular policy is that it won’t just include transportation. A fair few other jurisdictions have crafted clean fuel standards for transportation, including B.C. and California. But if unveiled as expected, Canada’s policy will include fuel used in buildings and industry, two considerable sources of emissions not dealt with by the current B.C. standards

“If implemented the way that the federal government says they would implement it, it would be the first of its kind in the world,” Dianne Zimmerman, director of the Pembina Institute’s transportation and urban solutions program in Ontario, told DeSmog Canada.

How much emissions reduction are we talking here?

The equivalent to removing seven million cars from the road.

Overall lifecycle carbon intensity is expected to drop by 10 to 15 per cent by 2030. That means removing upward of 30 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, according to modelling by Clean Energy Canada. In a webinar hosted by Clean Energy Canada on Tuesday, senior analyst Jeremy Moorhouse indicated that could come from 19 megatonnes from transportation reductions and another 15 million tonnes from buildings and industry.

It’s still not enough for Canada to actually meet its Paris climate targets. In fact, Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand recently calculated that Canada is expected to miss its 2030 market by 44 megatonnes, even if all policies from the Pan-Canadian Framework are fully implemented.

Wait, wasn’t this what the carbon tax was for?

Yes and no.

Warren Mabee, geography professor and Canada Research Chair in Renewable Energy Development and Implementation at Queen’s University, noted in an interview with DeSmog Canada that he sees the carbon price as setting a floor. A minimum price of sorts.

But he says the Clean Fuel Standard will accelerate emissions reductions in certain sectors, especially where there are cleaner technologies and fuels already available. Mabee actually described the standard as essentially “setting an alternative price for carbon.”

It’s similar to what Simon Fraser University economist Mark Jaccard was getting at in his 2016 paper about ‘politically viable’ solutions to emissions reductions. In it, he argued that flexible regulations “approximate the incentives and flexibility of emissions pricing, but comparative surveys of climate policy acceptability… indicate that they are likely to be less politically difficult.”

That approach also helps explain how a Clean Fuel Standard can potentially interact with existing policies known as “renewable fuel mandates” in provinces like Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.

While the jargon might seem a bit redundant, the latter requires fuel producers to integrate a certain percentage of renewable fuel — mostly biofuels — into their product.

The Clean Fuel Standard on the other hand is concerned specifically with the actual carbon intensity of the fuel right at the source.

The two policies work best together in tandem, according to Mabee.

“Honestly, there is no one policy that’s going to solve these problems,” he said. “If there’s going to be a real solution, we’re going to need multiple policies to help push us there. This is one way we can differentiate those.”

The Best Canadian #Climate Policy You’ve Probably Never Heard Of https://t.co/EL9wAhGoLb #cleanfuelstandard @Pembina @cleanenergycan

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2017

What will the standard actually look like?

That’s entirely up to the federal government.

One thing that’s often overlooked is just how customizable climate policies — like carbon pricing or zero-emission vehicle mandates — really are.

Sure, there’s a basic framework required. But governments can handpick prices, exemptions, incentives and penalties.

For that reason, it’s tough to say at this point how new rules will roll out. The federal government has been delaying the release of key parts of the framework and final regulations aren’t due until 2019. But a good place to look for clues is a similar existing policy in B.C.

The B.C. Low Carbon Fuel Standard was adopted back in 2008, requiring carbon intensity of transportation fuels to be cut by 10 per cent by 2020. According to the province, that cut 6.4 megatonnes of emissions between 2010 and 2016.

The controversial 2016 Climate Leadership Plan raised the standard, requiring a carbon intensity cut of 15 per cent be implemented by 2030.

Fuel suppliers have three ways of doing that. They can just cut emissions intensity during production. Or they can buy credits from another fuel supplier: think of a carbon trading system of sorts.

The third option includes entering into a “Part 3 Agreement” with the province, in which a fuel supplier has to take certain actions, which are deemed to be equivalent to actually cutting fuel intensity. That can include building a new pump station that sells gasoline with biofuels mixed in, or testing certain additive formulas for cold weather operability of biodiesel-blended diesel.

This is what’s known as a “flexible” regulatory approach. That’s opposed to a more prescriptive policy, in which emitters clean up or pay (think the carbon price). As a result, fuel suppliers are expected to find the most cost-effective and technologically innovative solutions that work for them.

If things go as planned, Canada could implement a 10 per cent reduction of transportation fuels by 2030 from 2015 levels like B.C. has already done. Then, throw in a 3.5 per cent cut in fuels for buildings and industry, or a five per cent renewable natural gas mandate.

According to Clean Energy Canada, that would result in the 30 megatonnes in reductions.

Hold up…renewable natural gas?

It’s natural gas that comes from landfills and water treatment plants! Pretty neat, actually. It currently escapes and adds to fugitive methane emissions in the atmosphere — but could be captured.

In fact, Moorhouse said in the webinar that if you had a renewable natural gas station at every landfill across Canada, we could meet a good portion of the Clean Fuel Standard using waste.

What would this new standard mean for jobs and fuel prices?

It could be a net plus!

According to Clean Energy Canada, it’ll generate a net growth of 11,100 jobs and $4.1 billion in economic activity.

Indeed, growth would slow in some sectors such as refining and service stations, but would increase in building new biofuel facilities and cleantech investments: between $200 million to $2 billion a year between 2020 and 2030.

As for impacts on fuel prices: it’ll be minimal, between $2 and $5 per month in direct household energy bills including cars, furnaces and electricity by 2030. The important thing to keep in mind is that energy efficiency measures between now and then will greatly cut costs for households.

In the end, Canadians will end up saving between $17 and $82 a month by 2030, depending on things like how efficient your furnace and cars are.

Alright, what’s the catch?

There are certainly challenges.

Zimmerman of the Pembina Institute notes that one of their concerns is that the new fuel standard could be delayed and not be implemented. She calls the schedule by which they’re attempting to get it regulated under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act as “very aggressive.” But we’re already seeing the government fall behind. They also delayed implementing methane regulations on oil and gas producers until well after the next election.

Those delays have consequences.

“Every year there’s a delay of climate policy has implications to further decades,” she said.

There’s also the big question mark about counting reductions, especially related to credit trading. Mabee of Queen’s University noted it’s still unclear how reductions will actually be verified: whether it will be a government agency or something more independent.

“That’s your danger,” he said. “You get a powerful industry lobbying group that says ‘I’m buying so many litres of this biofuel or this low-carbon oil source and therefore I should be getting this benefit.’ But if there’s no proof that it’s actually doing that, and if there’s disputes, who do you go to to resolve the dispute? That isn’t clear yet.”

Now, we just have to hold our breath and wait for the actual policy.

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After weeks of delay, the B.C. NDP has finally been asked to form government, thanks to a co-operation agreement with the Green Party.

A key component of that now-famous NDP-Green “confidence and supply agreement” signed in late May is its commitment to “immediately refer the Site C dam construction project to the B.C. Utilities Commission.”

While premier-delegate John Horgan hasn’t confirmed whether he will cancel the $9-billion project — it will take around six weeks for the utility commission to actually provide a preliminary report — previous statements suggest he’s certainly sympathetic to the idea.

Conflicts over hydroelectric dams aren’t confined to British Columbia: think of Labrador’s Muskrat Falls or Manitoba’s Keeyask dam. In fact, alongside oil and gas extraction projects, hydroelectric dams arguably serve as some of the most contentious projects in Canada, largely due to detrimental impacts on Indigenous lands, territories and resources and skyrocketing costs.

But hydroelectric projects are also projected to serve as fundamental components in Canada’s transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a tension that only grows by the day.

DeSmog Canada took a deep dive into some of the politics of hydro.

Hydro Expected To Increase Up to 295 Per Cent by 2050

Firstly, it’s clear that Canada needs to rapidly transition off coal, oil and gas to meet its climate change commitments. It’s also clear that shift will require a great deal more low-carbon electricity to power everything from electric cars, to public transit, to residential and commercial building heating, to industrial processes.

Dan Woynillowicz of Clean Energy Canada says in an interview with DeSmog Canada that even with very aggressive energy efficiency measures, most estimates he’s seen suggest full decarbonization will essentially double the country’s demand for electricity.

The Government of Canada’s “Mid-Century Long-Term Low-Greenhouse Gas Development Strategy,” published in 2016, cited projections of an increase between 113 per cent and 295 per cent in total generation between 2013 and 2050.

The obvious follow-up question is how will Canada do that?

Each of the three sources cited in the report — Trottier Energy Futures Project, the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project and Environment and Climate Change Canada — anticipate a significant increase in hydro capacity, anywhere between 36,000 megawatts of capacity in a “high nuclear scenario” up to 130,000 megawatts in a “high hydro scenario.”

Canada currently has close to 80,000 megawatts in generating capacity from hydro, making it the third largest hydro producer in the world. Woynillowicz says that, as a result, Canada has a much cleaner grid than most other countries, with 59 per cent of the country’s electricity supply already coming from hydro.

“Most of the scenarios that I’ve looked at looking out to 2050 or beyond project that there would be a need for additional large hydro capacity, sometimes quite significantly and up to a doubling of current hydro capacity,” Woynillowicz says.

“That said, energy analysts have had a challenge in projecting the rate of growth of wind and solar and the rate at which those technologies would actually become cost competitive or cheaper than other sources of renewable power.”

UBC Expert Argues Hydro is No Longer ‘Cleanest, Greenest’ Option

Hydro is often advertised as “clean, renewable power.”

But critics suggest there are a host of major problems with the technology, including catastrophic impacts on ancestral Indigenous practices (such as hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering), the release of toxic methylmercury that can bioaccumulate in the food chain and the flooding of productive agricultural land.

That’s not to mention growing concerns about greenhouse gases emitted from dams themselves. A UBC report found even using BC Hydro’s own greenhouse gas estimates for the Site C dam,  “Site C is not cleaner or greener than other renewables.” A study by a Washington State University researcher published in BioScience last year found the rate of methane emissions from hydro reservoirs was 25 per cent higher than previously estimated. The emissions come from decomposing plant material under the water.*

Karen Bakker, founding director of the water governance program at the University of British Columbia, says in an interview with DeSmog Canada that her team’s analysis of Site C that was published in five distinct reports showed that hydropower is “no longer the cleanest, or greenest, or cheapest way of meeting our future energy and capacity needs.”

“It’s not that hydropower is competing against coal,” Bakker says. “It’s that it’s competing against 21st century renewables such as wind and solar.

“These new technologies are the focus of rapid innovation and coming down in price and increasing in efficiency with much lower environmental impacts than hydropower. The question before us is not ‘do we build new dams to get off of fossil fuels?’ The question is, rather, ‘as we move off fossil fuels, which renewables do we pick?’ ”

Bakker says there are numerous options in B.C. for increasing generating capacity, especially in wind and geothermal. Yet she says that beyond proposed projects such as Site C and Muskrat Falls, it’s difficult to tell what the federal government’s plan is as the “mid-century plan” isn’t a legislated strategy.”

“I’m not sure the government is actually planning new [hydro] capacity,” she says. “When you talk to them, they say it’s just a discussion document, although it’s called a strategy not a white paper.”

What’s the Future of #Hydroelectric Power in Canada? #climate #renewables #cdnpoli https://t.co/wbMTY0OykC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 5, 2017

Hydro Offers ‘Dispatchable’ Power, Complementing Other Renewables

One of the major upsides of hydro is its “dispatchable” nature, meaning it can effectively be turned on or off at any point. As Woynillowicz says, this means dams can “serve as a really significant asset by playing the role of giant batteries.”

Such a trait, which can also be provided by power plants fueled by gas, nuclear and geothermal, serves as extremely complementary to “variable renewables” like wind and solar, which only produce electricity when the wind is blowing and sun shining.

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity — spinning turbines in periods of high demand and using low-cost electricity to refill the reservoir in times of low demand — can also help with that, but requires very particular conditions to work and operates with a net generation loss, costing more electricity to run than it actually produces.

Natural gas power stations have serious flaws from a greenhouse gas emissions point of view, especially given recent reports that suggest there is far more significant methane leakage from the wellhead than previously assumed. Nuclear isn’t a politically viable option in most of the country, although it produces between 50 and 60 per cent of Ontario’s electricity. Geothermal has massive potential in both B.C. and the Yukon, although neither jurisdiction has signed a power purchase agreement with a producer to date.

That effectively leaves hydro to provide the “dispatchable” power in provinces and territories that don’t have significant geothermal potential or the political capital for nuclear.

Climate Change May Impact Flows That Hydro Relies On

But hydropower has an added and somewhat ironic complication: climate change.

Markus Schnorbus, lead hydrologist at the University of Victoria-based Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, says in an interview with DeSmog Canada that projections indicate that as the climate continues to get warmer, interior B.C. watersheds including the Fraser, Peace and  Columbia will likely see earlier freshet (or snowmelt) and lower flows in the summer than have been historically observed.

Meanwhile, precipitation levels are expected to increase in other seasons, especially during winter and spring.

Both increase and decreased water levels can impact hydroelectric production in different ways, with too little water reducing potential generation and too much damaging facilities. Record low snowpack due to drought in California led to poor hydroelectric performance in 2015. The state spent over $1.4 billion purchasing power from natural gas-fired plants to make up the difference.

While Schnorbus emphasizes that he doesn’t study the potential impacts of climate change on hydropower, he notes the severity of impacts will vary greatly depending on “the actual trajectory of emissions that will or were to take place.”

“Suffice it to say that the more intensely we emit, the sooner we’ll notice it,” he adds.

Experts Unanimous in Call for More Planning

Regardless of the percentage that hydro makes up of Canada’s energy mix in the future, it seems clear there needs to be more planning.

As noted previously, Bakker suggests there is little clarity from the federal government as to its actual plan for new capacity. Woynillowicz also notes we still haven’t seen a good analysis that would outline how to optimize the country’s electricity system looking at all different sources of supply.

“Frankly, that’s been one of the big challenges we’ve had in Canada: our electricity systems have largely been isolated from one another because they’re under provincial jurisdiction,” Woynillowicz says.

“We don’t have nearly as much exchange of electricity across provincial boundaries as would be optimal both from a cost perspective and from a carbon emissions perspective.”

Ideally, the country’s future grid will include more diversity of supply — with far more generation from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass — and more integration across provincial boundaries via new transmission lines. The federal Liberals have committed $22 billion over 11 years into “green infrastructure,” which could ostensibly include transmission lines. The new infrastructure bank — intended to “leverage” private investments into large capital projects — may also serve a role.

And while Woynillowicz supports future expansion of hydro, he notes that such projects often cost more and take longer to build. Comparatively, smaller scale renewables can be built as needed to meet demand.

That’s a big part of why Bakker’s team ultimately concluded that Site C should either be cancelled or suspended: “Dealing with what is now outdated ideas is really necessary before we can have a healthy debate,” she says.

*Update Notice July 7th: A paragraph on growing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions from hydro reservoirs was added to provide further context.

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Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has repeatedly argued that putting a price on carbon would be bad for the economy — but experts say Wall’s own climate change strategy will end up costing the province more per tonne than the federal government’s plan, while failing to be nearly as fair or effective as a carbon tax.   

Much of Saskatchewan’s climate strategy centres around the SaskPower Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which cost $1.5 billion to build (funded mostly by SaskPower ratepayers and a $240 million investment from the federal government).

“When we think about how we can reduce emissions most cost-effectively, [Boundary Dam] probably stands out as an example of how not to do it,” says Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada.

Choosing a preferential technology and using public dollars to subsidize it is “quite inconsistent with the approach that most conservative politicians and economists would take,” Woynillowicz added.

Indeed, even as oil companies and conservative politicians — such as Preston Manning, Jean Charest and Jim Dinning — have spoken in favour of putting a price on carbon, Wall has worked hard to establish himself as the major voice of opposition to a federal carbon tax.

Enter Saskatchewan’s 53-page “Climate Change White Paper,” released on October 18. Carbon nerds eagerly jumped into the paper head first, anxious to learn how Canada’s highest greenhouse gas emitter per capita planned to help Canada meet its climate commitments.  

Disappointingly, the paper essentially packaged up the policy actions Saskatchewan has already taken to date.

Off the Wall: #Saskatchewan @PremierBradWall's Bizarre, Contradictory #ClimatePlan https://t.co/sWJXdJzEFd #cdnpoli #skpoli #carbontax

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 25, 2016

Carbon Capture and Storage Far More Expensive Than Carbon Tax

The Boundary Dam CCS project is intended to reduce emissions from SaskPower’s largest coal-fired power plant by capturing smokestack emissions (in the range of one million tonnes of carbon per year).

However, because one-third of those captured emissions will be sold for use in oil extraction at Cenovus’ Weyburn site, the current estimate is that Boundary Dam will remove more like 600,000 tonnes per year from the atmosphere — if it can even manage that.

With that level of emissions recovery, the cost of CCS works out to about $100 or $110 per tonne, according to Trevor Tombe, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary.

Only four days prior to the release of Saskatchewan's plan, on the same day as Wall argued in the Globe and Mail that “carbon-capture technology works,” a report in Science concluded that negative-emission technologies such as carbon capture storage are an “unjust and high-stakes gamble” that “should not form the basis of the mitigation agenda.”

One of the reasons carbon pricing has attracted support from across the political spectrum is because it doesn’t pick winners and losers. It puts a price on pollution and then lets the market determine the best ways to reduce carbon emissions. The bizarre thing is that Saskatchewan’s gamble on CCS is the exact opposite of that.

Woynillowicz adds there’s little evidence that SaskPower has developed any plans for monetizing their experience and technology to sell it to other jurisdictions, or securing investments from the federal government for future projects.

The One New Thing In Saskatchewan’s Climate White Paper

The only major new announcement in those riveting 53 pages was the call to redeploy $2.65 billion in foreign aid to technology subsidies within Canada.

Tombe says that recommendation mixes two separate conversations —there’s no need to tie a case for additional government investment in research with foreign aid funding.

Experts Suggest Carbon Tax Required to Spark Investments in Renewables

A more consistent approach would be the establishment of a broad-based carbon price.

Such a mechanism — which will take the form of either a $50/tonne carbon tax or cap-and-trade system by 2022 due to the recent federal decision — would address the “market failure” of unpriced pollution, something that Tombe pointed out isn’t solved by providing subsidies for R&D.

It would also incentivize investments in renewable power sources, energy efficiency measures and perhaps even carbon capture and storage (although given the current price tag of the technology — between $75 and $100/tonne just for the “capture” part of it — such a carbon price would have to be significantly higher than currently proposed to justify it).

Yet Wall completely rules out the role of taxation: he argues British Columbia’s emissions are rising despite having a carbon tax, even though many acknowledge emissions are rising precisely because Premier Christy Clark has put a freeze on the tax, preventing its increase from $30/tonne since 2012.

In the White Paper, Wall strangely suggested that “we should be focusing our efforts on innovation and adaptation” and that “a carbon tax will harm Saskatchewan.”

But Woynillowicz says suggested innovations like “new crop varieties that are better able to withstand climate change and that effectively fix GHGs to the soil” would be incentivized in part via a price on carbon.

“You need either dollars to do that if it’s going to be the government making those strategic investments in R&D, or you need to send a price signal that creates the incentive for private sector actors to invest in R&D,” Woynillowicz says.

“You can do that through a price on carbon pollution.”

Climate Plan Quietly Recommits to Carbon Tax on Large Emitters Despite Premier’s Apparent Opposition

Even odder is the fact that Saskatchewan’s White Paper includes a commitment to “[move] ahead with plans for a fund supported by a levy on large emitters, with the fund’s expenditures limited to new technologies and innovation to reduce GHGs and not for general revenue” when the resource economy rebounds.

Tombe says that whether or not Wall likes to admit it, the notion of a “levy on large emitters” is indeed a tax, similar to what Alberta implemented with the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) in 2007.

“Roughly speaking, that places that Saskatchewan carbon tax on about 50 per cent of what could be subject to a carbon tax,” he says. “It’s roughly the equivalent of half the coverage of Alberta and B.C.”

Carbon pricing can be designed in many different ways; Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan offers up a recent example of how to insulate low-income residents and “energy-intensive, trade-exposed” sectors from the economically damaging byproducts of a tax.

“That’s more what I’m disappointed with: that [Wall] sets up straw men and then knocks them down on the carbon tax front,” Tombe says.

“It’s fine: if he wants to have more costly action through the CCS or through the large-emitter levy and leave a lot of low-hanging fruit unpicked, that’s something that will be up to the Saskatchewan people to decide.”

Saskatchewan Has ‘Excellent Renewable Resources’  

Woynillowicz says the one bright spot of the White Paper was the re-commitment to double SaskPower’s generation capacity of renewables by 2030, although that announcement was already made in November 2015.

However, he emphasizes it’s a pledge for 50 per cent generation capacity, not actual generation, meaning it’s more in line with Alberta’s target of 30 per cent renewable generation by 2030 (for contrast, Iowa generated 31 per cent of its electricity from wind power in 2015).

Saskatchewan has “really excellent renewable resources,” Woynillowicz says.

As part of its plan, SaskPower intends to develop 1,600 megawatts of power between 2019 and 2030. But as mentioned, such a transition would be greatly accelerated by a commitment to a broad-based carbon price.

“Really, I’m just left scratching my head, wondering why Premier Wall has made this decision to oppose [carbon pricing] so vocally and aggressively,” Woynillowicz concludes.

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The federal government has issued an approval for the $36-billion Pacific Northwest liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal on Lelu Island on the B.C. coast, undermining its commitments to take action on climate change.

Tuesday’s decision — announced an hour behind schedule in Richmond, B.C., by a trio of ministers including Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna — means it will be virtually impossible for B.C. to meet its climate targets.

The announcement was seen as the litmus test on whether the Liberals would live up to its climate promises.

“With today’s decision on the Pacific NorthWest LNG project, Minister McKenna made it much more difficult for Canada to meet its climate targets and signaled that it’s OK for provinces to miss their own emissions targets," said Matt Horne of the Pembina Institute.

"If built, Pacific NorthWest LNG will be one of the largest carbon polluters in the country and a serious obstacle to Canada living up to its climate commitments."

Pacific Northwest LNG — wholly owned by the Malaysian government and boasting a questionable human rights record — lobbied the federal government 22 times between February 1 and April 21 this year, including meetings with McKenna and her chief of staff Marlo Raynolds.

The project will involve scaling up fracking in northeastern B.C., building a pipeline to the West Coast and constructing an export terminal on Lelu Island, near a crucial area for juvenile salmon.

The Pacific Northwest LNG project is expected to emit 9.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually — equal to 1.9 million cars.

By 2050, the entire province of B.C. is supposed to emit 13 million tonnes of carbon pollution. With this approval, meeting the climate target becomes an impossibility.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark had already torpedoed any credibility she had on climate change when she announced her widely criticized “climate action plan” this summer.

On Tuesday she trotted out her go-to myth that exporting LNG will reduce emissions in other parts of the world — which was quickly shot down. 

“Despite claims to the contrary, the production and export of LNG from B.C. has not been demonstrated to help reduce global emissions. Stronger climate policies — not increased fossil fuel production — are what we need to position the British Columbian and Canadian economies to thrive in a low-carbon future," Horne said.

Honeymoon Over for Liberals

The federal Liberals were riding on the coattails of their election promises and climate commitments made in Paris

Now the honeymoon is over.

“For British Columbians and all Canadians concerned about salmon habitat, climate change and reconciliation with First Nations, today’s decision is profoundly troubling,” said Christina Smethurst of Dogwood, B.C.’s largest citizen group. 

“It does not restore public trust in the federal environmental review process.”

The announcement comes on the heels of the Liberals pledging to repair relations between Canada and First Nations, but then approving permits for the Site C Dam against their wishes (the dam has been pushed by Clark in part to power the fracking fields in northeastern B.C. that will feed the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal).

Adding to the heap of broken promises, the Liberals are also expected to approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver sometime before Christmas.

“Nation-to-nation” rhetoric is awfully convenient until you have to live up to it.

It’s also one thing to care about climate change as a concept and quite another to have the guts to turn down a project when you’re being barraged by lobbyists.

A refusal of Pacific Northwest LNG would have proven the federal government is one willing to make tough decisions to live up to its promises  — one that would refuse a project if it put climate targets out of reach. One that would invest in renewables, energy efficiency and public transit infrastructure.

Perhaps, one day, we’ll see some real change.

On the bright side, there are doubts Pacific NorthWest LNG will even be built.

“As the cost of renewable energy continues to fall, it is increasingly uncertain that LNG exports can compete in Asian markets,” Merran Smith of Clean Energy Canada said.

A new world is coming. Question is: will Canada compete in it?

Photo: Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, Premier Christy Clark and Fisheries Minister Dominic Leblanc. Photo by Province of British Columbia.

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Federal and provincial climate policies unveiled over the last year are paving the way for Canada to massively increase the amount of energy the country gets from renewable sources, according to a new analysis released today by Clean Energy Canada.

“For the first time the federal government and the provinces are working together to establish a national climate plan,” Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said. “A big piece of the puzzle is not just cleaning up the grid, but electrifying other parts of the economy reliant on fossil fuels.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is drafting a ‘pan-Canadian clean growth and climate change framework’ to be released this fall. Meantime, last year Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada’s main oil and gas producing provinces, set ambitious renewable energy targets. And Ontario recently announced one of the most cutting edge greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction plans in Canada to date.

All of that means things are finally looking up for clean energy in Canada. Federal and provincial politicians now need to make good on their climate pledges for the country to reap even bigger benefits from this $500 billion global industry.

“There’s never been a greater opportunity to move forward on this file for Canada. There is certainly reason for optimism,” Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, told DeSmog Canada.

“We are in a unique moment in time. Not just the federal government, but Ontario, B.C., Quebec, and Alberta have all expressed climate change as a priority,” Hornung said.

Clean Energy Canada says the renewable energy challenge facing Canada right now is different from other heavy greenhouse gas emitting countries like China or the U.S. Nearly 80 per cent of all Canadian electricity comes from non-GHG emitting sources (including nuclear power), three-quarters of which is hydroelectricity.

In the United States, on the other hand, fossil fuels produce close to 70 per cent of the country's electricity.

“We have a comparative advantage in Canada because our grid is already pretty clean,” Woynillowicz told DeSmog. “Canada is in an enviable position.”  

While other countries are focused on switching their electricity base from fossil fuels to clean energy, Canada has a different challenge. Sectors heavily dependent on fossil fuels  — oil and gas, transportation, and industrial processes — have hardly any renewable energy in the mix at the moment.

That means to reduce emissions Canada needs to do things like shift to electric vehicles and efficient electric-based home heating systems (like air and ground source heat pumps).

Has #CleanEnergy's Time Finally Come in #Canada? https://t.co/xncUcQSaPM @standearth @merransmith @SciPolEnv pic.twitter.com/9QMtSvt81X

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 16, 2016

“Clean electricity is one of the best tools to fight climate change,” Clean Energy Canada’s executive director Merran Smith told DeSmog Canada. “As we shift to power our economy by clean electricity there will be an increase in demand for electricity and we need that to be clean electricity.”

In B.C., that raises the specter of the controversial Site C dam, but even with an increased demand for electricity in the future (demand in B.C. has been flat for the past 10 years), Site C isn’t necessarily the best solution according to Smith.

“From an economic perspective, Site C is concerning because the cost of renewables like wind and solar power have been dropping dramatically,” she said.

“In the U.S. the price of solar has dropped 80 per cent over last six years and the price of wind has dropped 60 per cent over the last six years. As the cost of those keep going down, that makes them attractive — whereas eight of the last 10 hydro projects built globally have gone over budget.”

A new report released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week found that wind and solar will be the cheapest ways of producing electricity in many countries during the 2020s and in most of the world in the 2030s.

“The good news for B.C. is we already have so much large hydro, we really can add intermittent renewables on easily because we already have the large hydro that acts as a battery and acts as storage,” Smith said.

“We could build solar and wind in 100 megawatt units as we need it in rural communities. It could create work around the province. And we could bring it on line as we need it. So a decade from now when we need another 100 MW, it will be even cheaper.”

Woynillowicz sees the emerging national climate framework as the space to address how to power more of the Canadian economy with renewable energy.

“That’s the place to articulate a clear priority of electrification and establish renewable energy targets,” Woynillowicz said. “It will change the conversation around climate away from where jobs are going to be lost to what we are going to create and build.”

Studies have shown the two pillars to decarbonizing any industrialized economy are to first transition completely to non-GHG emitting electrical generation and then run the economy off this clean electricity.

Clean Energy Canada’s analysis highlights energy storage and electricity sharing between provinces as areas where Canada is starting to break ground in electrifying the economy. In regards to the latter, Hornung would like to see more happen politically.

“What the federal government could do is provide a platform for provinces and territories to talk about the shared challenges they face in optimizing their electricity systems and enable collaborative relationships,” Hornung told DeSmog Canada.

Hornung points out more renewable energy is sold to the United States than shared between provinces right now.

Ontario and Quebec, and Alberta and Manitoba have all signed separate memorandums of understanding to take steps toward integrating their electrical grids.

In a report released in February, Clean Energy Canada warned Canada was falling behind its peers on the international stage in terms of renewable energy investments. At the time, it was estimated clean energy investments in Canada had dropped by a whooping 46 per cent, while they increased in the U.S., China, India and the United Kingdom.

However, when analysts with Clean Energy Canada took a deeper dive into the numbers for this latest report, they uncovered the decrease in investments was only 15 per cent when accounting for all clean energy projects, making 2015 the second biggest year for renewable energy investments in Canada.

Meantime, the country’s installed clean energy capacity grew by four per cent last year despite that drop in investment dollars, which the think tank concludes was likely due to policy uncertainty.

Smith noted that an increased price on carbon is needed to level the playing field.

“Right now fossil fuels are getting a free ride for their pollution,” Smith said. “Clean energy is the future. This train is going in one direction and that’s off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy.”

— With files from Emma Gilchrist.

Image: 1010/Flickr

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All around the world, more people are working in the renewable energy industry than ever before due to more affordable clean energy and new policies, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Canada ranks eleventh globally, according to IRENA, with 36,000 renewable energy sector jobs.

Growth in the sector is impressive, but Canada isn’t keeping pace with the U.S., which has 769,000 renewable-related jobs, a much higher population percentage.

The report, released Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, found that more than 8.1 million people worldwide are employed in renewable energy, an increase of more than five per cent over the previous year.

The annual increase is down from the 18 per cent growth reported the previous year, but that is largely because of mechanization as industries grow, the report’s author Rabia Ferroukhi said, adding the fluctuating trends are difficult to analyze.

Slowing housing markets and the removal of subsidies also affected jobs in hydropower, liquid biofuels and solar.

“While the growth in jobs slowed compared to previous years, the total number of jobs in renewables worldwide continued to rise, in stark contrast with depressed labour markets in the broader energy sector,” the report says.

IRENA Director-General Adnan Z Amin said that contrast makes the continuing growth significant.

“This increase is being driven by declining renewable energy technology costs and enabling policy frameworks,” he said.

“We expect this trend to continue as the business case for renewable strengthens and as countries move to achieve their climate targets agreed in Paris.”

In the U.S., renewable energy jobs increased by six per cent while employment in oil and gas declined by 18 per cent and in China renewable energy now employs 3.5 million people while oil and gas employs 2.6 million.

IRENA’s research estimates that doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030, which would be sufficient to meet global climate and development targets, would result in more than 24-million jobs worldwide, Amin said.

Canada has 36,000 people working in renewable energy industries, with 10,000 in wind, 8,000 in solar photovoltaic and the remainder mainly in biofuels, Ferroukhi said.

A Clean Energy Canada report released in February shows Canada is falling behind its major trading partners in renewable energy investment, with spending declining by half last year while U.S. spending was up seven percent.

Yet Clean Energy Canada policy director Dan Woynillowicz said Canada’s numbers aren’t so bad considering the country’s high baseline renewable energy levels.

“Canada’s domestic market for clean energy is only so big — in part because we already have a significant amount of renewable energy on the grid— and it isn’t growing as quickly as elsewhere,” Woynillowicz told DeSmog Canada.

“Over the past five years the trend in Canada is steady growth in renewable energy investment and deployment, and the jobs that come with it.”

Woynillowicz added 2014 was a record year for renewable energy investment in Canada, and while 2015 was lower, it was the second best year ever.

He added Alberta and Saskatchewan clean energy targets will help drive a new wave of growth in renewables, following a trend started in Ontario, Quebec, B.C. and Atlantic Canada.

Canadian renewable energy companies are also playing a role in the clean energy revolution elsewhere, Woynillowicz said.

“Beyond our domestic market, Canadian companies are benefiting and growing as a result of the significant investment and development happening around the world,” he said.

“Companies like AMP Solar Group Inc. and SkyPower Global are Canadian renewable energy companies that grew up building projects in Canada, but are now investing in India, the Middle East and Africa.” 

A Clean Energy Canada report, Tracking the Energy Revolution—Global, profiles six companies taking advantage of international growth in clean energy markets.

According to the IRENA report, renewable spending in the U.K. and India increased by 23 per cent, China spent 17 per cent more on renewables and Mexico’s investment went up by 114 per cent.

One of the most important elements is for countries to enact enabling and supporting policies to create the right environment for renewable energy industries, Ferroukhi said, including skills training and education.

Image: A solar farm in Brockville, Ontario. Photo: Jonathan Potts/Flickr

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Seven members of Christy Clark’s hand-picked, blue-ribbon Climate Leadership Team are going public with their disappointment in the province’s lack of climate action in an open letter released Monday.

Signatories include noted environmental leader Tzeporah Berman, hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation, Chief Ian Campbell, professor of oceanography at the University of Victoria, Tom Pederson, B.C. associate director of the Pembina Institute, Matt Horne, Cayoose Creek Band chief, Michelle Edwards, professor Nancy Olewiler and executive director of Clean Energy Canada, Merran Smith.

The letter, addressed to Clark, states B.C. is in no position to shrug off the 32 recommendations made by the team last November in advance of the UN Paris Climate Talks. At the talks, Clark used the Climate Leadership Team’s work to bolster the province’s environmental credibility.

But the team itself is saying the B.C. Liberals have failed to implement the recommendations made by the group of experts. B.C has consistently pushed back the release date of a provincial climate plan.

The province, once an international leader in carbon pricing, has stalled action on climate by imposing a restriction on carbon pricing, creating loopholes for large industrial emitters and agressively advancing the creation of an LNG export industry. Compared to provinces like Ontario, which just announced $7 billion in funding for an ambitious climate plan, and Alberta, which announced an ambitious plan to phase out all coal-fired power plants last fall, B.C. is quickly falling behind.

Between 2011 and 2013, B.C.'s emissions climbed by 1.7 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's the same as adding 440,000 cars to B.C. roads, according to Clean Energy Canada. According to Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change those emissions are forecast to grow by 32 per cent between 2013 and 2030.

“B.C. can’t be a climate leader if carbon pollution is rising,” the letter states.

Read the full text of the letter here:

Dear Premier,

One year ago, you asked us to serve on the Climate Leadership Team and provide your government with advice on how to advance B.C.’s climate change plan. The motivation for the new plan was clear: while B.C. had been a leader on developing climate policy in Canada, and in fact around the world, the province’s carbon pollution was rising and stronger policy would be needed to get the province on track to meet our legislated emissions reduction targets.

You asked us for recommendations that would enable the province to meet its 2020 and 2050 climate targets, maintain a strong economy, and provide support to the British Columbians most in need. You asked us to reach consensus across a group that included leaders from First Nations, business, academia, local government, the provincial government and environmental organizations.

The process we worked through last year was difficult, but it was also successful. We managed to deliver in six months. Our work resulted in 32 recommendations that we provided to your government last November. The package of recommendations represents a mix of innovative thinking and compromise that fulfills our mandate and respects the different perspectives represented on the team. The recommendations provide a blueprint to help get the province back on track for our climate targets, stimulate innovation, create jobs, protect B.C. businesses and support rural communities.

We advised your government to commit to the package of recommendations this year so that British Columbians and B.C. businesses have time to plan. This is particularly true of our recommendations to strengthen the carbon tax, which were central to the overall package. Committing to a next schedule of increases, closing gaps in its coverage and explaining how the revenue will be used will help reduce uncertainty, ease the transition to a low-carbon economy for emissions-intensive and trade-exposed sectors and families, and support investments in clean energy across the province.

The reasons to move forward with this plan are stronger than ever. Climate change threatens our economy, our communities and our environment. To confront those threats, we need to increase our efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and better prepare ourselves for a changing climate. And as the world increasingly begins to act, the demand for clean energy is accelerating. The actions we take to increasingly shift to clean energy in the province will also help position B.C. businesses to provide the solutions the world needs.

We want to see the province reach its climate targets; delay only increases the costs and makes it harder to succeed. We are thus concerned about the shifts in deadlines. You initially committed to having a draft plan in advance of the Paris climate talks last December and a final plan by this March. The draft plan was cancelled and the deadline for the final plan was pushed to June.

B.C. is in no position to delay or scale back its efforts. The rest of Canada and the rest of the world have been taking action since B.C.’s initial climate plan in 2008, and B.C.’s increasing carbon pollution is taking us in the wrong direction.

B.C. can’t be a climate leader if its carbon pollution is rising. As the federal government places a renewed emphasis on climate action, now is the time for B.C. to be articulating its next steps. The new federal-provincial relationship on climate change will be defined by the jurisdictions taking actions to significantly reduce their carbon pollution and B.C. should be among them.

The Climate Leadership Team recommendations, implemented in their entirety, provide the blueprint for a B.C. climate plan to put the province back on track for the 2050 and interim 2030 targets.

Anything less is not climate leadership.

Sincerely,

Chief Ian Campbell, hereditary chief, Squamish Nation Chief Michelle Edwards, Cayoose Creek Band Tom Pedersen, professor of oceanography, University of Victoria Matt Horne, B.C. associate director, Pembina Institute Merran Smith, executive director, Clean Energy Canada Tzeporah Berman, adjunct professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University Nancy Olewiler, professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University

CC:

Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Honourable James Carr, Minister of Natural Resources Mr. Jonathan Wilkinson, Parliamentary Secretary Honourable Mary Polak, Minister of Environment Honourable Bill Bennett, Minister of Energy and Mines Honourable Shirley Bond, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training Honourable Rich Coleman, Minister of Natural Gas Development Honourable Mike de Jong, Minister of Finance Honourable Peter Fassbender, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development Honourable Todd Stone, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Mr. Jordan Sturdy, Parliamentary Secretary

Image: Province of B.C.

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This is a guest post by Clare Demerse of Clean Energy Canada.

Canada’s premiers and prime minister headed home from Vancouver last week having launched a brand-new climate change negotiation process. Set against a backdrop of clean tech power brokers and pipeline skirmishes, the lead-up to last week’s meeting generated headlines mainly for the faultlines it brought to the surface.

No doubt about it: Tough conversations are coming, especially about the best way to price carbon pollution. But as the hot rhetoric cools down, here are four reasons for optimism based on the results of last week’s First Ministers’ meeting.

First, this initiative is unprecedented. The politicians who signed the declaration said they’ll try to craft something we’ve never had before: a national plan to hit a climate target.

Under Paul Martin, we saw a climate plan proposal from Ottawa — but it was federal rather than national, and most of it didn’t go into effect. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, of course, never offered a serious plan to cut greenhouse gas pollution in line with Canada’s targets. And during the long years when Ottawa was missing in action, some premiers raced ahead, while others barely got out of the starting gate.

So if last week's agreement works — which, of course, is still a very big “if” — the outcome will be a Canadian first.

Second, this process gets the right players involved.

Climate change is way too big to fit neatly into an environment minister’s portfolio. It’s also an energy issue, an infrastructure issue, a finance issue, a transportation issue, and so on. To really succeed in tackling climate change, you need leadership right from the top — the puzzle pieces just don’t line up without it. Premiers and prime ministers need to make climate action a priority, decide in broad strokes how to go about it, and then give their ministers marching orders to get it done.

Similarly, we need both Ottawa and the provinces at the table; climate change is an area of shared jurisdiction. The federal government can provide funding, set (some) national standards, and negotiate for Canada at global climate talks, but provinces make crucial decisions about electricity and energy development.

So federal, provincial and territorial First Ministers are the right cast of characters to get Canada on track. It won’t be easy, of course — regional tensions were already on full display in Vancouver — but this participant list opens up the possibility of success.

Third — as Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall reminded everyone more than once — this was always a discussion about the economy, not “just” the environment. And that’s a good thing.

As the declaration puts it, the transition to a clean economy “is necessary to ensure the future prosperity of Canada and Canadians.”

Exactly. Our analysis, published last week, concluded that clean energy just had its best year ever globally, with US $367 billion invested — nearly 50 per cent more than new investment in fossil fuel power.

You don’t even have to take our word for it. The CEO of Enbridge, best known for its Northern Gateway oil pipeline proposal, said this week that power generation — particularly from renewables — is “going to be a significant element of growth both in North America and globally.”

But while the U.S., China, Japan, and Mexico (to name just a few) saw their clean energy investment grow in 2015, Canada’s dropped by 46 per cent relative to the year before.

We need to reverse that trend as soon as possible — our competitors certainly aren’t standing still. Which brings us to a final reason this meeting matters: the process that the leaders announced last week can deliver a plan to build Canada’s clean energy economy.

The traditional approach to climate negotiations has been to fight about the allocation of pain. Who will make the deepest cuts? Who will charge the highest prices? For obvious reasons, those are not easy political conversations — and the vastly different emission profiles of Canada’s provinces make them even trickier.

But with the global economy making a rapid shift from fossil to clean energy, there’s now a huge opportunity to talk about. Instead of arguing about what we’re going to cut, it’s time to figure out what we’re going to build.

We can’t tackle climate change without building a clean energy economy. At its core, the recipe for reducing greenhouse gas pollution in Canada (and anywhere else) is simple: invest in clean power and then electrify everything. Move away from using fossil fuels to drive our cars and heat our homes; use clean power instead.

In Canada, this means building far more clean power, along with a smarter grid and a new generation of cars, buildings and industrial processes. And there’s money to be made every step of the way.

First Ministers acknowledged that reality in their declaration, which mentions the economy nearly as often as it does the climate. One of the four working groups this meeting established has a mandate to “stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and drive innovation” — and will do its work under the direction of ministers of economic development.

To reap those economic benefits, leaders need to use the months ahead to set ambitious clean energy goals for Canada — and then commit to policies to meet them. How much new clean power will we bring onto the grid? How many more electric vehicles will be on the road by 2030? How many buildings will we retrofit with state-of-the-art technologies to cut energy waste? How much clean technology will we be selling to the world? And in the process, how many new jobs will we create?

Canada’s governments, and all of us, need to seize this opportunity. Last week's meeting moved us a step closer to doing so.

Clare Demerse is a senior policy advisor in Ottawa for Clean Energy Canada, a climate think tank that is a project of Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue. 

You can click here to read more about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and climate change.

Image: Prime Minister of Canada

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Clean energy investment surged to $497 billion worldwide in 2015 while in Canada investment in renewables experienced a massive 46 per cent plunge to around $5.4 billion, according to a new report released Monday by Clean Energy Canada.

Global investment is up from a total of $420 billion in 2014 with nearly one-third of of new investments occurring in China. Spending on renewables increased in the U.S. by seven per cent, in India by 23 per cent and in Mexico by 114 per cent.    “Canada’s performance was out of step with its peers in 2015,” Clare Demerse, senior policy adviser at Clean Energy Canada, told DeSmog Canada. "This should be a wakeup call, although we hope this is a one-off and not the start of a trend."

Cheaper technology can partially account for the drop in investments in Canada. In the U.S., for example, over the last six years the unsubsidized cost of wind energy went down 61 per cent and 82 per cent for utility-scale solar PV. 

The amount of money invested in Canadian clean energy may have been cut in half last year, but the construction of new renewable energy projects only slowed by 30 per cent, according to Clean Energy Canada.   “When you couple [clean energy's] declining costs with free fuel from the wind, sun, water, biomass and the earth’s heat, you have a formula for ever increasing competitiveness with fossil fuels,” the report states.

Source: Clean Energy Canada, 2016

Uncertain Clean Energy Policy in Canada Played a Role

Imprecise policies and a lack of clean energy regulation created uncertainty for investors in Canada, the report finds.   “Pipelines trumped power lines as a national priority,” it concludes.

Canada has no national climate framework or greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas sector. The bulk of Canada's climate action in recent years has emerged at the provincial level.   “In the longstanding absence of federal climate leadership, provinces led the charge," Demerse told DeSmog Canada. But, she added, "some of the provinces that are big players in clean energy were rethinking policies in 2015. Uncertainty is hard on investors.” 

British Columbia, a province praised in recent years for its world-class carbon tax, is investing heavily in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry as well as the major Site C hydrodam. A recent review of B.C.'s Climate Action Plan found the province is unlikely to meet its climate targets. 

Ontario, Canada’s leader in wind power, confirmed it will spend over $25 billion on refurbishing aging nuclear reactors to clean up the province’s electrical grid instead of doubling down on domestic renewable energy or importing relatively cheap water power from Quebec.   However, some progress on provincial climate policies was made at the end of 2015.   Ontario and Manitoba both announced they are joining North America’s largest carbon market by linking up with the Quebec-California cap-and-trade system. A new Alberta government unveiled plans to phase out coal, cap oilsands emissions and introduce a carbon tax. Saskatchewan also set admirable renewable energy targets, which aim to have half of the province's electricity coming from renewable sources by 2050.

According to Clean Energy Canada these provincial targets need to be translated into clear policy to boost investment in the sector. 

Canada’s Clean Energy Potential Barely Scratched 

“Canada is incredibly well positioned for clean energy success,” Demerse told DeSmog. "Yes, we may have the third largest oil reserve in the world, but we are also the third biggest producer of hydroelectricity. And we have the potential to do so much more with our clean energy resources."

Demerse believes this week’s national climate strategy meeting between the federal government, Indigenous leaders and the premiers is the perfect opportunity to lay the foundation for a clean energy plan for Canada. 

“The new federal government can do a lot to change this. Adopting real, meaningful clean energy targets would provide more certainty for investors,” Demerse said.   According to a groundbreaking study led by Stanford Engineering Professor Mark Jacobson that examines how countries can run off of 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050 , Canada has only begun to scratch the surface of its ‘clean energy superpower’ potential.

  Canada's energy mix in 2050 according to Jacobson's analysis. Source: The Solutions Project.

“The main barriers to getting to 100 per cent clean energy are social and political, not technical or economic,” Jacobson said during a climate and energy forum in Washington, D.C., last November.   Canada already generates roughly 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources and this is nearly all from hydroelectricity or waterpower. By comparison, Germany produced just over 30 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy in 2015, which was mostly from wind, solar and biomass. Canada has one of the world’s cleanest electrical grids.   But currently, non-water based renewables like wind and solar make up a mere three per cent of the electricity Canada generates.   The Stanford study projects solar and wind could make up 21 per cent and 58 per cent respectively of all of Canada’s required energy by 2050. Waterpower in Jacobson's 2050 scenario becomes the junior partner to wind and solar at 16.5 per cent of the total Canadian energy mix. The study's authors conclude there is no need to build additional hydro dams like the Site C dam in B.C. or continue with nuclear power generation.

Image Credit: NAIT via Flickr 

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Wednesday the federal government will meet with Indigenous leaders and premiers in Vancouver in early March in the hopes of laying out the framework for a national climate strategy.   “I look forward to working with the premiers on combatting climate change and moving toward a greener, more sustainable Canadian economy better positioned to compete globally in the areas of clean knowledge and technologies,” Trudeau said in a media release.

The Prime Minister announced he will meet with Indigenous leaders on March 2 to inform a national climate framework discussion with the premiers in a First Ministers' Meeting scheduled to take place March 3. First Ministers' Meetings did not occur under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

According to Clare Demerse, Ottawa-based energy policy adviser with Clean Energy Canada, the meeting provides an unprecedented opportunity to discuss Canada's renewable energy transition.   “The right people will be in the room to move forward on a national approach [to climate change]," Demerse told DeSmog Canada. "Whether it’s electrical production, or natural resources extraction, provinces make big decisions on energy in Canada."

Meeting to Capitalize on Low-Carbon Economy

According to the Prime Minister's press release, the Vancouver meetings "will focus on effective ways to adapt to climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and capitalize on the opportunities presented by a low-carbon economy to create good-paying and long-term jobs." 

“We’d really like to see the conversation in Vancouver be about what we're going to build, not just about what we’re going to cut,” Demerse said. “How many electric cars will we see on the road? How are we going to make buildings more energy efficient? How much solar, wind and water power needs to be produced in 2020 or 2030?”   “This is not to say reduction targets shouldn’t be discussed. But the discussion needs to be more focused on the ‘how’ instead of just the number."   Canada was one of the only countries among the world’s top ten greenhouse gas gas emitters not to provide a national clean energy plan to the United Nations in the lead up to the Paris climate talks last December. Other heavy emitters like the United States, European Union, China and even Mexico submitted plans with clean energy targets along with their GHG reduction targets.    The $125 billion the Liberal Party promised during the federal election to invest in infrastructure could go a long way encouraging provinces and territories to adopt strong climate policies.    “The low-carbon infrastructure dollars could be used to reward a province or territory for raising its carbon price, or for adopting stronger climate policies,” Demerse said.   Green infrastructure and public transit were two priorities in the Liberals infrastructure spending pledge. The Liberals also committed to increasing Canada’s Low Carbon Economic Trust to $2 billion.

Feds Could Set a National Minimum Carbon Price

Carbon pricing could also play an important role during the first ministers meeting.   “The First Ministers will consider all policy measures at their disposal to make sure Canada can take advantage of the significant appetite for expertise in the clean growth economy,” the PMO announcement states.   Currently, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec all have some sort of carbon pricing system: either cap and trade or carbon tax. Last December, Manitoba announced it would join Ontario and Quebec’s cap and trade market, which is linked with California’s.   Unlike his predecessor, Trudeau is a supporter of making polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions. He is also an advocate of the provinces and territories choosing the system that suits them best.   The problem now lies with the different prices on emissions in different provinces. B.C.’s carbon tax is $30 per tonne of carbon, but Quebec’s carbon price, which is meant to fluctuate, is about half that.    “Eventually Canada will want one coherent national carbon pricing market. The bigger the market, the more diverse the opportunities to reduce emissions,” Demerse said.   “But we aren’t quite there yet, and certain provinces have done a lot of leg work to create their own carbon pricing systems. So, to create consistency between the different system and jurisdictions, the federal government should set a national minimum price on carbon."

Image Credit: PMO Photo Gallery

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