Earlier this week, the federal government published a bombshell report on carbon pricing, predicting that a nationwide price of $50 per tonne by 2022 will cut emissions by 80 to 90 million tonnes of carbon pollution.

That’s equivalent to shutting down up to 23 coal-fired power plants or taking as many as 26 million cars off the road. In other words, a pretty big deal for the climate.

The stunning news spread quickly in online circles, shared by renown energy economists, clean energy experts and pollsters.

Journalist Justin Ling tweeted: “There’s been an incredibly disingenuous effort to suggest that carbon pricing won’t reduce CO2 emissions, or at least to contend that there’s no evidence to support the claim. So Ottawa went and produced the research.”

But nobody slowed down to check if the numbers were actually reflective of reality.

And they’re not.

The research that Ottawa went and produced isn’t really evidenced-based at all.

According to an analysis by Simon Fraser University energy economist Mark Jaccard, the federal carbon pricing policy will only reduce emissions by 10 to 15 million tonnes below 2005 levels — but it will take until 2030 to get there.

So the federal government’s claim of a 80 to 90 million tonnes reduction by 2022 is raising some eyebrows.

“When I see that, I’m like ‘oh come on guys, you’re trying to pull a fast one on us.’ ” Marc Lee, senior economist at the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives, told DeSmog Canada.

“People who ought to know better are just uncritically praising it.”

Carbon pricing being used as tool to justify new pipelines

This might just seem like a boring and wonkish debate over numbers. And in a way, it is.

But carbon pricing is currently playing a major role in the current climate policy landscape, viewed as the likes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley as a key bargaining chip in the campaign to get Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion built.

As a result, the amount of emissions that we think the policy can cut matters a great deal — especially if it’s used to justify a new pipeline and subsequent oilsands expansion.

Carbon pricing can be a very effective tool for increasing the cost of emitting. B.C. has been a shining example of a carbon tax that is both effective and popular with the public.

But disingenuous accounting has undermined faith in both the efficacy of putting a price on carbon emissions and the integrity of climate plans.

“The federal climate plan, overall, is weak,” said Laurie Adkin, political science professor at the University of Alberta, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“They keep trying to dress it up, and the latest assessment of anticipated gains from the federal carbon tax may be part of that effort.”

Analysis way overinflated current emissions

So what went so wrong with the federal government’s analysis?

Well, for beginners, it didn’t actually reference any specific numbers. The closest that they came to that was presenting a colourful graph with unclear metrics.

As Bora Plumptre of the Pembina Institute put it: “There are difficulties in actually assessing how they actually got the numbers that they did.”

By manually drawing a straight line from the supposed emissions reduction to the vertical axis (yes, that’s the only way of figuring it out) it appears that government assumes that carbon pricing will cut emissions to 680 megatonnes by 2022.

Given they’re predicting 80 to 90 megatonnes in savings, that means that it thinks emissions without carbon pricing would be between 760 and 770 megatonnes without carbon pricing.

But at last count, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions were 704 megatonnes. Even the country’s highest year for emissions — in 2007, when we emitted 745 megatonnes — was considerably less polluting than what the federal government used in the analysis.

So the actual starting point appears inflated.

“This is a trick the Conservatives used many times to try to pretend their plans were actually doing a lot more than they were actually doing,” Lee said.

A spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada told DeSmog Canada that they were contacting a “few different branches within the department” for more detailed methodology of the carbon pricing analysis but didn’t provide a response before deadline despite multiple extensions.

Government analysis ignored existing provincial carbon pricing

The analysis also assumed that the four provinces that currently have carbon pricing in place (B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Alberta) don’t already have them in place.

You read that correctly.

B.C. introduced its carbon tax in 2008. Quebec brought its cap and trade scheme into existence in 2013.

For inexplicable reasons, the federal government simply pretended that wasn’t the case and that four of the five highest polluting provinces in Canada didn’t already have carbon pricing. In his critical breakdown of the analysis, Jaccard wrote that it’s “grossly misleading to suggest that current provincial pricing can be attributable to federal policy.”

It also appears safe to assume that the modelling didn’t include industry exemptions and subsidies like gasoline used on farms, or natural gas burned by conventional oil and gas producers, or a large chunk of completely unpriced emissions at oilsands mines via Alberta’s convoluted output-based allocation system.

Experts suggest there’s also a chance that the federal government included significant emissions reductions accomplished by other policy measures.

“It’s very misleading, and also neglects that most of the impact is largely based on regulation, Lee said.

“We didn’t get rid of lead in gasoline because we had a lead tax that was phased in over 20 years. We just said ‘no, you can’t have lead in your gasoline after this date.’ ”

A steep carbon price needed for dramatic cuts

It’s not like carbon pricing couldn’t have these kind of reductions.

In fact, if you plug in a $50/tonne carbon price into the Pembina Institute’s nifty new climate policy simulator, it pops out 114 megatonnes in reductions by 2022.

But Plumptre caveated that by noting the simulator doesn’t include any exemptions or subsidies, and treats all carbon pricing as a tax (instead of including more complex cap and trade schemes, used in Ontario and Quebec).

Furthermore, Pembina actually uses a considerably higher baseline emissions assumption than the federal government due to recently updated global warming potential factors and higher rates of methane leakage, which puts Canada even farther from its Paris targets.

Jaccard and his team at Simon Fraser also reported in a 2016 analysis that Canada could meet its Paris target with a $200/tonne carbon price by 2030.

But they concluded rather starkly: “ It is highly unlikely that our political leaders will implement such a price, given the severe political consequences.”

So without such dramatic increases to the carbon tax and in the absence of transparent government accounting, experts are left scratching their heads at Ottawa’s latest rosy report.

“It’s all just been this black box and they’re basically saying ‘trust us,’” Lee said.

“I feel like the federal government doesn’t have much credibility on the climate file these days because they’re saying ‘we’re all in favour of climate action and we’re also in favour of pipelines,’ which we know are going to increase emissions and are specifically designed to allow the increase of production from the oilsands.”

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Mark Jaccard has seen it all before.

Over the decades, the leading energy economist from Simon Fraser University has watched as government after goverment pledge lofty climate targets and proceed to totally overshoot them: Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, Stephen Harper. But he certainly hasn’t been silent. In that time, Jaccard has authored dozens of books and papers based on modelling that points out the political hypocrisies and maps how to get back on track.

Now, his sights have turned to the federal and Alberta governments, which are loudly proclaiming that the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline can be reconciled with Canada’s international climate commitments.

In a widely shared op-ed for the Globe and Mail titled “Trudeau’s Orwellian logic: We reduce emissions by increasing them,” Jaccard systematically pulled apart popular pro-pipeline arguments. Notably, he calmly reminded readers that despite what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, the federal government doesn’t need any pipeline to implement its climate policies but simply needs to “quickly apply his federal authority” to impose them. You know, just like Alberta is calling on Ottawa to do in order to build the pipeline.

On Wednesday, DeSmog Canada interviewed Jaccard about the op-ed, pipeline politics and the challenge of building new oil pipelines and meeting climate targets.

Why did you write this op-ed?

I write about once a year in the Globe and Mail. The articles are almost always the same. What motivates me is if I hear enough inaccuracies that I put aside other stuff that I’m working on, which is all related — analysis and so on that I’m doing for governments, independents, academic paper, theses that my students are doing. In this case, I was really struck by the illogic of Trudeau saying that we had to say “yes” to this pipeline in order to get the Pan-Canadian Framework that reduces emissions. Just to be clear, I think it’s been great to have Prime Minister Trudeau for the last two years working on climate instead of Stephen Harper faking it. Trudeau has really done some things that I really support. It’s not like I lightly attack politicians. But I think that point he was making right now needed to be challenged.

Have you been surprised by the emergence of that particular argument: in order to complete the Pan-Canadian Framework, we need this pipeline?

When Trudeau made the announcement a year ago that he was not going to allow Northern Gateway to go ahead but said he was going to allow Trans Mountain, at the request of some politician I did a public forum in Vancouver in which I explained his decision. If you’re the prime minister of all Canadians, you sincerely have to try to please everyone. That’s his idea of cooperative federalism. I understand how a Canadian prime minister would have that view. At the same time, he said to Brad Wall of Saskatchewan that “you’re not willing to play ball at all, so we’re just going to have to roll over you.” With Alberta though, he had a government that said “we want to do things differently, we’re going to be a model in the world of a fossil fuel-rich region that actually tries to act on climate.” Trudeau had to make a strategic choice that related to being the prime minister of all Canadians to a federal system and trying to get action. I understand completely why he did that.

There’s been a lot of rhetoric lately suggesting the construction of new pipelines will only slightly increase Canada’s annual emissions, calculated at around eight megatonnes or so. Why do you think that particular argument doesn’t fit well into the bigger picture?

I’m really glad you asked that. That is what I do. I model. A model is a representation, in my case, of how the energy economy system unfolds or would unfold under certain key assumptions about the economics and policy. If someone were paying me a lot of money — and I’ve been offered this in the past — to make an argument that “oh, building this fossil fuel infrastructure won’t increase greenhouse gas emissions,” I can make that argument. In the case of an oil pipeline, I would say: “Oh, all it’s going to do is reconfigure things. There will be a little more oil going to the West Coast, a little less going to the U.S., a little less going on rail car.” I could do that for you beautifully. I could do that one pipeline after another, until you’ve built ten more pipelines and tripled and quadrupled the size of the oilsands. When someone comes out with a number like that of eight megatonnes, I immediately want to say “ok, what assumptions?” Because I can also — if someone else was paying me, or actually they wouldn’t have money to pay me so I was doing it for free — I could do an analysis that showed that if you look at the total output of oilsands or oil in Canada, it correlates perfectly with pipeline capacity. In other words, you need the delivery pipeline infrastructure to match your production capacity. I would argue the real correct long-run way — the total system evolution way — of looking at a new pipeline is to correlate it one-to-one per barrel of oil of production. If the pipeline can carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day, then assume that you’re causing 800,000 barrels of oil per day of production in Canada.

Now, you can still make the argument that the production would have happened somewhere else. And that leads us to the general issue that climate change is a global collective action problem. We can always ensure that we will fail if we say “if I act to try to save us, others will just compensate.” By that logic, we all go to hell together. What you have to do is say “okay, how do we think strategically: what if we act as leaders, and as leaders we try to form what are called ‘climate clubs’ of first movers. And then we use approaches like being a demonstration, probably by trade pressures and so on to try to get the rest of the world to go along with us.” What I’m giving you right here is the standard rationale that they can use, and I just got a lot of that in the last 24 hours after the op-ed from Alberta, about why we should be allowed to continue on this destructive path.

“By that logic, we all go to hell together.” @MarkJaccard on Trudeau’s pipeline talking points https://t.co/7JSlYNtnQC #oilsands #cdnpoli #bcpoli #ableg pic.twitter.com/hlvK97uUYG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 21, 2018

You’re obviously not arguing that the oilsands should be shut down tomorrow, just that they not be allowed to expand, right?

Exactly. When you asked me what motivated me to write this right now, some of it was to do with this whole collective action thing. Another one was that every time I turn on Twitter I get an ad from Alberta that tells me British Columbia is threatening Alberta jobs. It’s not true! It’s threatening jobs ten years from now of maybe British Columbians that moved to get jobs, or people from Newfoundland, or from China. Those people might not have jobs but the current Albertans are not threatened if you don’t expand the oilsands. That really started to bug me.

Anything you wanted to add?

A big motivator for the op-ed as well was that I’ve done a lot of the national modelling. If you froze the emissions from the oilsands, it is still really hard to hit a Paris target. If you look on the graphs, we’ve gone all the way up to 2.5 million barrels a day. Maybe it’s going to stabilize up there. That would be fine with me. But if you build more pipelines, it’s most likely going to keep going higher.

The talk has been “oh well, this is Trudeau helping Rachel Notley stay in power.” I don’t think Rachel Notley’s going to stay in power. As the federal government, you’ve just got to get ready for the fact that you’re going to have different people in different jurisdictions who are going to stop you from doing a climate policy. Trudeau says he’s serious about his Paris commitment. That’s one area where I have expertise and people like me should be speaking up. People have a short memory if it’s not their area. I understand that. But I need to explain why Brian Mulroney didn’t hit his target, and Jean Chretien, and Stephen Harper. To me, the burden of proof is on Trudeau. If he’s going to keep telling Canadians that he’s serious about his Paris targets, then the burden of proof is on him. Any expert will tell you that he should already have all the policies in place right now. We can map how they achieve Paris. I was trying to make that shout out as well with the op-ed.

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Until 11:13 on Monday morning, the B.C. Utilities Commission (BCUC) had a website that was as much of a snoozer as its name. It had tiny lines of text and looked like something that harkened back to the horse and buggy days of the World Wide Web.

Just as all eyes turn to the BCUC — which will begin a review of the Site C hydro dam project any day now — the commission is striving to find a bit more sizzle and pop when it comes to public relations.

It launched a new website on Monday, with big photos and cute little icons representing BCUC areas of oversight: electricity utilities, gas utilities, intra provincial oil pipelines and auto insurance.

Commission spokesperson Katharine Carlsen described it as a “modernized” look that will make it easier to engage British Columbians.

The BCUC also has a new logo — a map of the province in orange dots of various sizes and shades, like shining lights — to replace the previous B.C. Coat of Arms it used.

The logo, part of the BCUC’s “new visual identity,” was requested by the former Liberal administration to emphasize the commission’s independence from government, according to a news release.

You can even follow the commission’s new public engagement messaging on Twitter.

“BCUC ready and able to review Site C if directed by government,” said one BCUC tweet posted not long before the New Democratic Party came to power in an alliance with the Greens.

What is the BCUC?

So what, exactly, is the BCUC? And what does it have to do with Site C?

When the newly minted B.C. cabinet meets tomorrow, the NDP government is expected to fulfill an election promise and refer the $8.8 billion Site C dam project to the BCUC for review.

The review, according to statements made by Premier John Horgan, will be expedited. An initial BCUC report is expected after just six weeks, with a final report due six weeks after that.

Some important clues about the scope of the Site C review — known as the terms of reference — were revealed last week in Horgan’s mandate letter to Energy Minister Michelle Mungall.

The review, according to Mungall’s instructions, will focus on Site C’s “economic viability and consequences to British Columbians” in the context of the “current supply and demand conditions prevailing in the B.C. market.”

In other words, it will look at how much our hydro rates will climb if Site C is built, on top of rate increases that are already scheduled.

Some call the BCUC a public watchdog for large energy projects like Site C. But Mark Jaccard, who headed the BCUC from 1992 to 1997, said that is incorrect.

The BCUC is a “watchdog” on the fiscal responsibility of “everyday utility capital and operating expenditures, which then determines electricity rates,” said Jaccard, a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.

In the commission’s words, it makes sure that ratepayers — including BC Hydro customers — receive safe and reliable energy services “at fair rates.”

The BCUC also carries out “fair and transparent” reviews of matters within its jurisdiction and “considers public input where public interest is impacted,” according to a recent news release.

In the case of Site C, though, the BCUC noted that it had no jurisdiction to review the project, which it described as “an exempt project” under the 2010 Clean Energy Act passed by the former Liberal government.

Jaccard explained that energy projects like Site C “are the decision of cabinet, which may or may not ask for a BCUC review in advance of deciding, under any terms of reference it deems important.”

What You Need to Know About the B.C. Utilities Commission and the Site C Dam https://t.co/LK4YX2JDzq #bcpoli #SiteC #BCUC pic.twitter.com/lx43rEFp0l

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 2, 2017

Deja Vu: Site C and the BCUC

In the early 1980s, when the BCUC examined Site C, it took almost two years to issue its report. The report was delivered only after nine months of public hearings, held in a Fort St John hotel, on First Nations reserves and in Vancouver, remembers Adrienne Peacock, who sat through it all.

Peacock, fresh from completing a PhD in zoology at UBC, was the coordinator of the Peace Valley Environment Association at the time. One of her responsibilities was to find expert witnesses to testify about Site C’s potential impacts, including the little-known consequences of methylmercury contamination of bull trout and other fish.

The hearings were very court-like, recalled Peacock. Panel members sat in a row at one table — only one of the five appointed panel members was a BCUC commissioner — and a brigade of BC Hydro representatives and lawyers sat up front.

People giving testimony did so from a stand with a microphone, and had to take an oath as though they were in a courtroom. “They swore to tell the truth,” said Peacock. “It was quite formal that way.”

In May 1983, in a 314-page report, the BCUC concluded that Site C construction should not proceed at that time, a recommendation followed by the government. The panel noted that Site C’s rate impacts “could become significantly larger if the project is built prematurely,” if costs escalated or if interest rates increased unexpectedly.

“The evidence does not demonstrate that construction must or should start immediately or that Site C is the best project to meet the anticipated supply deficiency,” said the report.

If that sounds familiar it’s because the Joint Review Panel that examined Site C for the federal and provincial governments, 30 years later, concluded that BC Hydro had not fully demonstrated the need for Site C within the timeframe it provided.

The Panel recommended that Site C be dispatched to the BCUC for review, a recommendation ignored by the Liberal government.

The former government of Christy Clark appointed eight out of BCUC’s nine commissioners, who work part-time and earn $650 per day, for annual salaries ranging from a few thousand dollars to more than $100,000.

Clark also appointed BCUC Chair and CEO David Morton, who recently welcomed the idea of a Site C review. How long a review would take to complete would be “determined by the terms of reference and the level of public engagement,” Morton said.

The BCUC’s revamped website and Twitter feed may, however, prove to be about as close to formal public engagement on Site C as British Columbians get this time around given the tight timeframe anticipated for the review.

Image: Site C dam construction in July 2017 by Vicky Husband.

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Two weeks before the premiers met in Ottawa to finalize the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change, the federal government unveiled plans for a national clean fuel standard. If adopted, the measure could drive down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector, Canada’s second biggest contributor to climate change.

“One of the root issues around our climate problem is the fuel that we use to heat our homes and move our cars and so I think this is an excellent first step,” Dianne Zimmerman, director of Pembina Institute’s transportation and urban solutions program, said.

“The other piece of the puzzle is ensuring the infrastructure is in place to support alternative forms of fuel.”

In all provinces and territories, transportation ranks among the top emitters. Despite advances in vehicle fuel efficiency, emissions from transportation have barely moved up or down from 171 megatonnes annually or 23 per cent of Canada’s overall carbon footprint since 2005.

“The only challenge is political will,” Mark Jaccard, a leading energy economist in Canada, told DeSmog Canada when asked if the transportation sector faced any unique challenges in reducing its emissions.

“Around the world…we have electric cars, we have plug-in hybrid electric cars, we have flex-fuel vehicles that can run on 85 per cent ethanol, we can make ethanol with almost zero emissions,” Jaccard said. “All the technologies are there.”

What Canada is lacking at the moment are strong policies to support the necessary technological transformation to low emission vehicles. The pan-Canadian climate framework contains a section on tackling transportation emissions, but it is light on details.

Canada has committed to a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 based on 2005 levels.

Provincial Policies Don’t Make the Grade: Report

Canada’s transportation emissions are mainly from vehicles on the road. Personal vehicles — cars and light trucks — account for half of all emissions in the sector and freight trucks are an additional 32 per cent. Aviation, rail, marine shipping and recreational vehicles make up the balance.

“If we are serious about meeting our climate targets and we are committed to action to do so, decarbonizing our transportation is one effective way and electric vehicles provide an opportunity to do that,” Suzanne Goldberg, director of research at Simon Fraser University’s Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team (START), told DeSmog Canada.

The International Energy Agency estimates to avoid increasing the average global temperature by more than two degrees — the Paris Agreement target — sales of electric vehicles must exceed 40 per cent of all vehicle sales by 2040.

Goldberg and START analyzed federal and provincial policies that directly or indirectly affect electric vehicles sales in Canada and found no province will hit the agency’s proposed target.

START's Electric Vehicle Policy Report Card highlights provincial policy deficiencies. Image: sustainabletransport.ca

“The policies we have…aren’t pushing us to the levels we need to make a big difference in climate change,” Goldberg said. “The good news is governments have access to these policy tools and some governments have started to demonstrate leadership like Quebec and Ontario.”

Quebec led all provinces with electric cars projected to be 24 per cent of all vehicles sales by 2040. This is largely due to the province adopting a zero emission vehicle mandate last October, which requires at least 15 per cent of vehicles sales in the province to be zero emission vehicles like electric cars by 2025.

British Columbia and Ontario, which have purchasing incentives for electric vehicles, trailed Quebec substantially with 10 per shares for electric car sales by 2040. All other provinces will likely only reach five per cent electric vehicle sales by the target year. Goldberg and her research team published their findings in a report last November .

The report concluded the “most effective policies” to slash emissions in transportation are a strong price on GHG emissions, long-term financial incentives and a zero emissions vehicle mandate.

Jaccard said he prefers a partial-zero-emission vehicle mandate to a zero emission vehicle mandate. Partial-zero-emission vehicles include electric cars, hybrids, and vehicles running on hydrogen fuel cells or biofuels. A mandate supporting these types of vehicles would give consumers and retailers more flexibility.

“What is important is the sale and use of conventional gasoline and diesel declines,” Jaccard said. “And that is what these mandates or a carbon price must do.”

Close to two million vehicles were sold in Canada last year, but less than one per cent of sales was for electric cars.

Electric Vehicles ‘Are Fun’

“New technology needs to be discovered and understood by the general public,” Ron Groves, outreach and education manager with Plug'n Drive, told DeSmog Canada. “In order to want [electric vehicles], they have to think it’s better product than the gas car.”

Plug’n Drive is a Toronto-based organization promoting the economic and environmental benefits of electric cars. Groves and Goldberg agreed that when people have the opportunity to test drive electric cars they are more likely to purchase.

“People really love to drive them. They are fun,” Goldberg said.

“We ask them before they get into the car ‘what do they think of EVs?’ and they say ‘yeah, I don’t know too much,’” Groves told DeSmog Canada. “And then at the end of the test drive we ask them ‘do you think you’d be more inclined to buy an EV?’ and the answer is always yes.”

Groves said it is up to governments, companies and organizations like his to educate the public and address public concerns about electric vehicles from “range anxiety” to how to they recharge. The range or distance a fully charged electric car can travel has grown to over 300 kilometres, depending on the model. Most electric vehicle owners recharge their cars overnight by plugging in at home.

“If you are going to encourage adoption, the public wants to know where they are going to plug in and if they see that infrastructure being installed it gives them a greater sense of security,” Groves said of charging stations.

“Even though the chances are half the time they won’t need it.”

Canada Can Make Huge Climate Gains by Cleaning Up Transportation Sector: Experts https://t.co/MdKYQTNs5C #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 28, 2016

Freight Truck Emissions Grow 132 Per Cent Since 1990

Freight transportation by truck and rail predominantly runs off of diesel, a fuel that produces more carbon dioxide than gasoline. Heavier loads and longer distances make electrifying freight transportation tricky, but not impossible. Since 1990, emissions from freight trucks have grown a whopping 132 per cent, making freight trucks the transportation sector’s fastest growing source of emissions.

“It is more difficult to address emissions from heavy duty freight because of the nature of the fuel that’s necessary,” said Zimmerman of the Pembina Institute. “The one thing with freight is that it is closely tied to Canada’s GDP and so as that increases so to are the demands put on the movement of goods.”

“There are less technological opportunities for heavy duty freight and even for rail,” Zimmerman told DeSmog Canada.

Jaccard and his research team published a report last September that shows switching to biofuels could significantly displace diesel in freight transportation:

“Most trucks do not require engine modification to run on a high blend of hydrogenation-derived renewable diesel (HDRD), which could become a key biofuel candidate to replace diesel for trucks. HDRD could simply be blended with conventional diesel in increasing quantities over time, without the need for new refuelling infrastructure or new truck engines,” the report reads.

Also called green diesel, hydrogenation-derived renewable diesel is fats or vegetable oils that have been through a process called hydrotreating. Some studies suggest green diesel produces 80 per cent less emissions than regular diesel.

The federal government’s plans for a clean fuel standard will likely encourage some switching to biofuels. The proposed measure will require transport fuel suppliers in Canada to shrink the carbon footprint of their product, although it is not clear by how much. The federal government estimates the standard will take a 30-megatonne bite out of transportation emissions or the equivalent of removing seven million cars off the road.

Zimmerman said she would also like to see Ottawa develop a national land freight strategy to better coordinate freight between trucks and rail, cut down the amount of kilometers goods travel and minimize empty loads travelling on the road.

“When you look at addressing the largest GHG impacts [in freight], I think the greatest opportunity would be to look at a comprehensive strategy for both trucking and the opportunity for intermodal with rail,” Zimmerman said. “Inherently long haul trips and heavy trips are much more fuel efficient if going by rail as opposed to truck.”

Aviation the Next Low Emission Frontier?

Transport Canada estimates domestic and international aviation in Canada produced 17 megatonnes of GHG emissions in 2014, a 20 per cent increase since 2005.  Emissions from freight trucks reached 54.7 megatonnes and personal vehicles came close to 86 megatonnes in 2014.

If Canada plans on “meeting or exceeding” its 2030 GHG reduction target, aviation emissions will also need to be addressed.

“We have to go after aviation big time,” Jaccard said. “The Brazilians have flown jets on biofuels, on biokerosene…we can make that now. Again, we have the technologies, we have the fuels and it is a question of the political will.”

Last March, United Airlines announced it would begin using a 30 per cent biofuel, 70 per cent regular jet fuel mix for flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Air Canada announced last April it would join Canada's Biojet Supply Chain Initiative (CBSCI), a three-year project to insert 400,000 litres of a biofuel called biojet into the Canadian aviation market.

Image: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the GM Innovation Summit. Photo: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

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Canadians could be forgiven for being a bit confused about how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing on climate change these days.

Last week he approved one of the largest sources of carbon pollution in the country — the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal in B.C.

The week before that his government announced it would stick with Harper-era emissions targets.

Now Trudeau has announced the creation of a pan-Canadian carbon-pricing framework, which means our country will have a carbon tax nation-wide for the first time ever.

So are we hurtling toward overshooting our climate targets or are we finally getting on track?

Let’s look first at the carbon price announcement.

The carbon price will begin at $10 in 2018 and will scale up $10 per year until 2022.

The announcement “sends a clear signal that we’re all in this together and that we need a federal approach to regulate carbon pollution,” said Amin Asadollahi, lead for climate change mitigation at the International Institute of Sustainable Development.

The timing seems right as well, with a new Nanos poll showing 77 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support Canada pursuing a national plan to meet international climate commitments. Additionally, 62 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support a national carbon price.

Under the new framework, provinces will have the autonomy to choose a carbon pricing mechanism that works for them, whether carbon tax or cap and trade, and all revenues generated in province will stay in province.

Having a pan-Canadian framework for pricing carbon creates incentive for businesses, Assadollahi said, and “harmonizes the approach rather than having patchwork policies across the country.”

However, critics have already come out against the price as too weak to be useful.

“I was very disappointed we were starting with $10 per tonne,” said Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Green Party, “which is so low under British Columbia’s carbon tax of $30 per tonne. It was an obvious political calculation.”

And bringing the provinces together may be harder than Trudeau bargained for.

Already Premier Rachel Notley has announced Alberta will only support the plan in exchange for pipeline access to tidewater. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who has been a vocal opponent of carbon pricing for years, used the announcement to reiterate his position, saying the announcement wasn’t worth the carbon emissions it took to fly environment ministers to Ottawa.

May told DeSmog Canada the “recalcitrance of the provinces is very disconcerting.”

May said the environment ministers of Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, who were visiting a meeting of the ministers this morning, made a statement by walking out in response to Trudeau’s carbon price announcement.

“Ministers of provinces storming out of meetings is just childish,” May said, especially given the flexibility of the carbon price plan to suit individual provinces and territories.

Canada’s New Carbon Price: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly #carbontax #cdnpoli #climate https://t.co/g9nBo5m8d2

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 4, 2016

Matt Horne, senior policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, said the Prime Minister made a smart political move in considering differences among provinces in the plan.

“The feds were wise not to be too prescriptive here,” Horne told DeSmog Canada.

“The decision they made on the flexibility of the mechanism and revenue generated is interesting,” Horne said. “You have got to achieve this level of ambition but how you do it and how you use the revenue is up to you.”

“That gives maximum space to someone like Brad Wall to make this work in Saskatchewan.”

Province by province regulations will be necessary to meaningfully reduce emissions where they start.

A recent report by Mark Jaccard, climate policy analyst and professor at Simon Fraser University, found a carbon tax of $200 per tonne would be necessary to catalyze significant climate action and a transition to renewable energy systems.

Jaccard said an overreliance on carbon pricing can mask a suite of alternative options like sector-by-sector performance standards, renewable portfolio standards, mandatory market shares and zero-emission vehicles.

“Ninety per cent of the reductions in the last eight or nine years…in California are occurring because of the flexible regs, not because of that very low floor price in their cap-and-trade,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada in a recent interview.

Whether or not this federal government will be a strong actor on climate change remains to be determined.

For Kai Nagata, communications director at the Dogwood Institute, Trudeau’s carbon price announcement should be viewed within the context of last week’s approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal.

“If you set a weak carbon pricing target, that means to hit your pollution reductions targets you have to reduce actual carbon infrastructure. Are we doing that? Not at all, in fact, quite the opposite.”

“This is the dilemma,” Nagata said, “no one believes carbon pricing alone, through whatever form, is going to reduce pollution enough to get at base pollution levels.”

“The only thing that would really take a bite out of Canada’s carbon pie is to stop adding fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Nagata added if Trudeau fails to put pressure on the energy sector to reduce emissions, that pressure will be placed on other less-polluting sectors and individual citizens.

“It’s fundamentally unfair and it will have the effect, if they continue to approve extraction and production, of subsidizing the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the ordinary citizen.”

Alex Doukas, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, also pointed to the issue of subsidies.

“Setting a strong national carbon price is potentially a very important step forward for Canadian climate action,” Doukas said. “But there’s a multi-billion-dollar elephant in the room: Canada still gives $3.3 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies each year.”

Doukas said the Trudeau government needs to complement its carbon price with an “ambitious timeline for phasing out all of its fossil fuel subsidies.”

“Otherwise, the Trudeau government’s incentives to polluters risks cancelling out the newly announced carbon price.”

So while some Canadians are celebrating the announcement of a national carbon tax as a victory, it will remain pyrrhic until Trudeau implements the types of regulation that will actually bring significant emissions reductions and starts to make the tough calls on building new fossil fuel infrastructure. Until then, we’re going to hold the applause.

Update: October 4, 2016. The provincial environment ministers walked out of a meeting of ministers in Montreal, not out of the House of Commons as was previously stated. Kai Nagata’s title has been updated from energy and democracy director to communications director. 

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Environment Minister Catherine McKenna earlier this month said the federal government does not have a preferred carbon pricing system. Whether the provinces and territories go with cap and trade or a carbon tax, McKenna simply wants to see Canada produce less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

“I just care about how do we reduce emissions at the end of the day,” McKenna said during a panel discussion on Canadian climate action in Ottawa. “That is the most important piece.”

Unlike the previous federal government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has made putting a price on carbon pollution a priority. A recent meeting between premiers and the federal government on a national climate strategy nearly broke down last March because of the Trudeau government’s insistence on a national minimum carbon price.

“The carbon pricing lobby sucked all the air out of the room,” leading Canadian energy economist Mark Jaccard told DeSmog Canada. “What we should be doing is looking at those jurisdictions that have made progress and learn from them instead of closing our eyes saying ‘I want a carbon price and don’t bother me with the evidence.'" Jaccard is not opposed to carbon pricing. In fact, he believes given Canada’s current political climate a national cap and trade system is feasible.

What concerns Jaccard is policymakers pushing for emissions pricing as the centerpiece of a Canadian climate plan are overlooking the success regulations have had in reducing GHG output.  

“You can meet our Paris Agreement targets strictly with emissions pricing whether cap and trade or a carbon tax. You can also do it strictly with regulations,” Jaccard said. “What looms large in the discussion is political acceptability.”

Jaccard’s and his research team at Simon Fraser University have put together a rather convincing case showing regulations are responsible for cutting more GHG emissions than carbon pricing systems in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

The evidence is not that hard to find either.

“The policy that had the biggest effect in B.C. was the electricity regulations I helped design for Gordon Campbell’s government in 2007, not the carbon tax,” Jaccard told DeSmog. “It forced BC Hydro to tear up two proposals for coal plants and abandon its own plans for a large natural gas plant.”

Halting the construction of three fossil fuels powered electrical facilities prevented four times more emissions than B.C.’s world famous carbon tax will cut, according to Jaccard. The carbon tax is expected to reduce B.C.’s annual emissions by 3 to 5 megatonnes in 2020. The province’s clean electricity regulation on the other hand will keep between 12 and 18 megatonnes out of the atmosphere by the same year.  

Ontario eliminating coal-fired power plants remains the “single largest regulatory action” in North America to reduce GHG emissions, the equivalent of taking seven million cars off the road.

Nova Scotia does not have a carbon price and yet the province is expected to lead all provinces and territories in future GHG reductions. Regulations like adopting North America’s first “hard caps” on GHG emissions in the electricity sector, setting ambitious renewable energy targets and tightening up energy efficiency standards have all put Nova Scotia in position to shrink its carbon footprint by 37.5 per cent in 2020.

“Is a carbon price more economically efficient? Of course it is more economically efficient,” Jaccard said. “All I am saying is can’t we — we so-called experts like me — learn a little bit from evidence from around the world, from what’s gone on in Canada and that’s the reason I might talk about regulations.”

Regulations and Carbon Pricing: A Fair Comparison?

Promising GHG regulatory actions are on the horizon in Canada as well.

The Alberta government last year pledged to phase out coal-powered electricity by 2030, which will take a 17 per cent bite out of the province’s large carbon footprint. Alberta produces more emissions than Ontario and Quebec combined.

Last March, Canada and the U.S. agreed to introduce national regulations halving methane emissions in their respective oil and gas sectors. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas packing a global warming punch far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Measuring Canadian carbon pricing systems against Canadian GHG regulations may not seem like a fair comparison. For an entire decade, the previous federal government went out of its way to slam the mere idea of making polluters pay from their emissions.

Carbon pricing has only recently recovered from this unwarranted attack.

But the success of regulations in reining in GHG emissions can be seen outside of Canada as well. Jaccard says analysts in Sweden and California — two carbon pricing pioneers — have told him regulations are responsible for reducing the majority of their emissions. Sweden adopted a carbon tax in 1991 and California has had a cap and trade system since 2012.

Joseph Pallant, manager of Brinkman Climate, said regulations do have a role to play in addressing climate change although they may not be enough on their own.*

“The question is not regulation or carbon pricing – we must clearly do both. Governments should regulate greenhouse gas emitting activities where doing so is efficient, but regulation alone can be a bit of a blunt instrument. We find it much more effective to spur innovation and implement new, clean technologies across the whole economy by putting a price on carbon,” Pallant told DeSmog Canada.

“Otherwise,” Pallant added, “we set 10 year targets and then wring our hands in year eight because we're off track and need to set another distant goal. Can’t stop climate change with discipline like that.”

Pallant argues regulations are not always a slam dunk. He points to the promised oil and gas regulations of the Harper government, which were years in the making, and never saw the light of day. Emissions from oil and gas grew substantially during the Harper years and now the sector is Canada’s biggest contributor to climate change.

Regulations can take more time than carbon pricing systems to be crafted and implemented as well. It took Ontario roughly five years to produce province-wide coal phase out regulations, but only a year to table legislation for a cap and trade system.

With Canada and the rest of the world in a race against the clock to curb emissions in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, delays on climate action have the potential of exacerbating an already dire situation.

“Carbon pricing is at its best where we implement a cap and trade system, making it more expensive to pollute by creating a specific limit on emissions. The carbon price then automatically rises to the level needed to pay for the required emissions reductions,” Pallant said. “Transparency is a key feature, as we can draw a line between our emissions today, and what we've committed in the future and know that we’re hitting our target year on year.”

“People interested in stopping climate change should be wary if pundits or governments try to pivot from carbon pricing and concrete emissions reductions because of some perceived difficulty in implementing such systems,” Pallant told DeSmog. “Nobody said this would be easy — but if we can’t do it in today’s socio-political climate, when will we ever be able to?”

But for Jaccard, ‘trying’ might mean finding more creative ways of understanding new roles for regulations in the energy marketplace.

Jaccard said he sees great value in what he calls “niche market” regulations. These regulations create space in the economy for the technological solutions to the climate crisis like electric cars or solar panels.

“What you want is a growing share of vehicles, for example, that have the desired characteristics of the future penetrating your market,” Jaccard said. “Regulations tell manufacturers that if you want to keep selling Hummers or big Ram trucks you can still do that, but you need a growing share of sales in low, ultra low and zero emission vehicles.”

“With niche market regulations the retailer has to pay a penalty per car if they miss their target. What they do or what they must be doing even though they don’t talk about it is cross subsidizing,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada.

An example of cross subsidization is a California car retailer adding an additional $70 per vehicle on big sellers like SUVs and then using that money to decrease the price of lower emissions vehicles like Teslas, and hybrids. Increasing the affordability of low emissions vehicles could in turn help boost sales and meet the quota. A new, clean energy industry can expand without being utterly dependent on government subsidies.

“With a cap and trade you are trying to limit a bad like carbon dioxide,” Jaccard said. “With regulations like the renewable portfolio standards and the vehicle emissions standard in California instead we have decided we want more of something.”

California’s Zero Emissions Program requires 10 per cent of vehicle sales to be zero emissions vehicles. By 2025, the quota increases to 15 per cent or 270,000 new vehicle sales.

Canada does not have zero emissions vehicle quotas for cars. Close to two million vehicles were sold in Canada last year and an estimated 5,700 or 0.33 per cent were zero emissions vehicles.

The transportation sector is Canada’s second largest producer of GHG emissions.

*Correction: This article has been updated to reflect Joseph Pallant is manager of Brinkmann Climate, not president of the Carbon Solutions Project as previously stated.

Image: Kris Krug

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Workers are laying down their tools across the Canadian oilpatch as the price slump draws on. Alberta had a net loss of nearly 20,000 jobs in 2015, with skilled workers being laid off and little hope in sight. The reaction, then, to talks of climate action has been often hostile, with people fearing more economic damage from carbon pricing or other new environmental regulation.

But for some there is an upside to the glut of out-of-work skilled people: it’s an opportunity to shift gears and put them to work in a growing green sector. Former oilsands tradesman Lliam Hildebrand started a non-profit group, Iron & Earth, to get oilpatch workers back to work on the next generation of green energy projects. (Investment in clean energy now doubles that of fossil fuels world-wide.)

“We have the skills to build the renewable energy infrastructure required for Canada to meet their climate target,” Hildebrand told CBC News. “That will open up a huge amount of opportunity for us if we can start diversifying our energy grid and it would ensure that we are less vulnerable to price fluctuations.”

The new organization brings a fresh perspective to a longstanding perceived tension between climate action and its spinoff benefits and the fear of damaging existing emissions-intensive industries.

In a panel discussion last week Environment Minister Catherine McKenna assured Albertans that the Liberal government would not risk damaging “national unity” by acting quickly on climate change. For some, her comment begs the question: when exactly will the Liberals be ready to start acting on their emissions reductions targets?

“Climate policy that is effective — by that I mean significantly reduces emissions over two decades — will challenge national unity in most countries,” says Mark Jaccard, a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.

The tone since the Liberals took office has been to reassure Albertans that the climate police aren’t coming to kick them while they’re down. Trudeau’s “Canadian approach” to climate change action has thus far meant that little in the way of concrete policy has been set down to meet his ambitious Paris goals.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair came out this week in support of a carbon price to keep oil in the ground, saying the political will to get it done has been lacking so far in Canada. Federal plans to put a price on carbon, while supported by most of the premiers, have met the expected opposition from fossil fuel industry boosters like Premier Brad Wall, who handily won a third mandate this week in Saskatchewan.

“Don’t set a climate target that is ambitious if you’re not willing to take on national unity,” Jaccard says. “It’s one or the other; they’re trade-offs.”

McKenna’s comments frame the notion of climate change action as something that can potentially be done gingerly, with the cooperation of emissions-intensive industries, doing little to disrupt the status quo. Environmental psychologist Renee Lertzman says this kind of wishful thinking is not a helpful way to approach a complex issue.

“It sounds to me like it’s a mode of leadership that’s not really applying…emotional intelligence,” says Lertzman. “As humans we have tremendous capacity and capability to deal with this. When we communicate in ways where we’re trying to be cautious we can unintentionally send a message that’s deeply disempowering. What’s most needed, in fact, is leadership that’s deeply empowering, that’s above-board, that’s compassionate but grounded and strong.”

She echoes a sentiment expressed by Naomi Klein in a recent op-ed for The Nation, in which she skewered Hillary Clinton’s “corporate worldview”:

“For [climate action] to happen, fossil-fuel companies, which have made obscene profits for many decades, will have to start losing,” she writes. “And losing more than just the tax breaks and subsidies that Clinton is promising to cut. They will also have to lose the new drilling and mining leases they want; they’ll have to be denied permits for the pipelines and export terminals they very much want to build. They will have to leave trillions of dollars’ worth of proven fossil-fuel reserves in the ground.”

There is also a growing cost to delaying action on climate change. Consequences are compounding and tipping points are approaching, and every investment in fossil fuel infrastructure like oil pipelines, LNG facilities or coal ports further commits the Canadian economy to emitting more, not less, into the future.

“Once you go down that road, you may not be able to turn back,” said Naomi Oreskes, Harvard professor and author of Merchants of Doubt in an interview with The Tyee this week. “And if you can’t turn back, then you’re looking at four degrees of climate change, metres of sea level rise, and massive intensification of extreme weather events.”

This kind of grown-up discussion about the current direction and how and when to slam on the brakes is lacking in Canada, seemingly out of respect for Alberta’s fiscal trauma. It’s times like this, however, that Lertzman says traumatized people most need to hear the truth spoken plainly.

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For more than two decades, Mark Jaccard has been penning “report cards” about Canada’s environmental track record. The results haven’t been pretty.

Jaccard, a veteran professor in Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, notes his annual evaluations were harnessed in the mid-2000s by Stephen Harper (then serving as federal opposition leader) as arguments for why the Conservatives deserved a shot at governing the country.

Those report cards were used as “a way of saying ‘look how incompetent the Liberals are, they haven’t done anything on climate, we’re not going to achieve Kyoto but let us get into power and we will set a new target in 2020 and implement regulations immediately to achieve that target,’” Jaccard recalls.

The Conservatives eventually formed a minority government in 2006 and became the majority government after the 2011 election.

Jaccard’s latest report card, released on October 6, concludes the Conservative Party has since “implemented virtually no policies that would materially reduce emissions” despite making significant emissions pledges for 2020 and 2050.

The five-page report notes the Conservative government has scored a “failing grade” for neglecting to introduce easily realizable policies in the sectors of transportation, electricity generation, construction and industry. Jaccard concludes the absence of such actions shows “they must have had no intention” of dealing with climate change.

“I know there are a lot of people in the Conservative Party — because they talk to me — who are disgusted that the current leader is so against implementing policies that would have no political cost to him but would reduce emissions,” he says. “I don’t know what [Harper’s] issue is, I don’t try to guess what’s in his mind, but he could do so much more.”

Harper’s Climate Policies Insignificant

Of course, the Conservative government has consistently told a different tale, pointing to regulations on coal-fired power plants built after 2030 and vehicle energy efficiency rules as instances of action on the climate change front.

However, Jaccard notes there are no new coal plants planned in the near future and that vehicle efficiency standards introduced under Prime Minister Harper don’t have nearly the same impact as regulations introduced in jurisdictions like California.

In short: the policies that Harper has introduced technically exist but are by no means enough to get Canada as close as it needs to be to emissions targets.

“Any academic will give you the same answer I did,” Jaccard says. “It’s got nothing to do with partisanship.”

In the report, Jaccard outlines three primary reasons why politicians like Harper don’t act on environmental policy: the absence of compulsory policies such as carbon taxes or sector-by-sector regulations, the global nature of climate change (requiring far larger jurisdictions such as China to cut emissions before seeing obvious impacts) and the absence of an independent monitoring service that provides feedback about progress.

It’s the latter factor that Jaccard has attempted to change with the annual “report card.”

Canada’s 2020 Climate Target Now Unachievable

Jaccard also notes his conclusions aren’t born from a particular animosity towards conservative parties, pointing out that Gordon Campbell, long-time premier of British Columbia, introduced very effective climate change policies such as the Clean Energy Act while sharing similar ideological stances as Harper.

Canada’s 2020 target is now unachievable due to the country’s laggard approach, Jaccard writes.

The 2050 target, requiring a 65 per cent cut in emissions, would require “an almost complete transformation” of the economic system. As a result, every day counts.

If the country opted for an economy-wide carbon tax — a move favoured by many economists — Jaccard estimates it would need to be introduced at $50/tonne, increasing to $150/tonne by 2020 (for reference, B.C. taxes carbon at $30/tonne).

But for Jaccard, the technicalities of a future transition — whether it’s a carbon tax, cap-and-trade or sector-by-sector regulation — doesn’t matter so much as some sort of move being made. The longer the country waits, he warns, the more economically catastrophic such moves will be given the potential stranding of fossil fuel assets and compounding of climate change-related costs.

“If the Conservative Party had overthrown [Harper] in the last year, I would be saying ‘let’s see what they do,’” Jaccard concludes.

“But because they have not and given the idea of him continuing as prime minister, any of the other parties would be better.”

Image: Mark Jaccard via Running on Climate

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Stephen Harper’s participation in the G7 leader’s declaration to decarbonize the global economy by 2100 was a massive headline generator in Canada, and not surprisingly so.

For a Prime Minister who has openly mocked the idea of carbon pricing, mercilessly driven an expensive (both financially and politically) energy superpower agenda and earned a reputation for pulling out of or stalling climate negotiations, the very idea of an ‘end’ to fossil fuels would seem … counterintuitive.

Although the shock of seeing Harper even touch something called ‘decarbonization’ is still reverberating, experts were quick to point out a long-term goal that shoves off concrete climate policy is likely just what Canada was hoping for.

Long-term Goals Are Easy

Michael Levi, senior energy and environment fellow writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, said the G7 agreement merely rearticulates what diplomats and policymakers have basically agreed to for several years now: dramatic emission cuts are required by mid century if we are to avoid surpassing the two-degree target.

“If the-two degree target didn’t motivate deep enough emissions cuts to actually meet it, recasting it in terms of global emissions won’t change that,” Levi wrote. “And the idea that an 85-year goal will have much impact on present policy or investment is a bit ridiculous. (Had you told a physicist in 1905 that a fifth of U.S. electricity would be generated by nuclear fission within 85 years, they would have said, ‘What’s a nucleus or fission?’)”

Levi said the bottom line is this: “Fiddling with distant targets is a great way to generate headlines, but doesn’t do much to affect policy and emissions themselves; at best it’s marginally irrelevant, at worst it lets people feel good without doing anything.”

Mark Jaccard, energy and climate economist from Simon Fraser University, agreed, saying the goal to end fossil fuels by 2100 makes it easy for politicians like Harper to detract from the short-term.

“Harper has gotten good at shifting timeframes, helped by a forgetful opposition, media and public,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada. “His 2006 promise for reduced emissions in 2020 slides into a 2015 promise for reduced emissions in 2030. His 2007 promise for reduced emissions in 2050 slides into a 2015 promise for reduced emissions in 2100.

“It would be funny — like Lucy lying to Charlie Brown that she would hold the football — if it weren’t so tragic." 

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, said the G7 agreement does have the upside of legitimizing discussions around decarbonizing.

"The important thing here is that for the first time we have world leaders acknowledging that we have to ditch fossil fuels; not just reduce emissions at the margins, but go cold turkey on our fossil fuel addiction,” he said.

“Of course we'd be crazy to wait 85 years to do it. But it's now a question of when, not if, we go to a 100 per cent renewable energy system."

David Keith, professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard University, who lives in Calgary, said the agreement does nothing more than score cheap political points.

“It’s not groundbreaking,” he told the CBC. “It is politically cheap to pledge a non-binding commitment that falls way behind someone’s time in office.”

“What we really need is specifics in the next few years or decades.”

Keith was one of more than 100 natural and social scientists who recently called for a moratorium on new projects in the Alberta oilsands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada’s Climate Target Weakest in G7

Environmental Defence recently gave Stephen Harper’s conservative party a ‘C’ on a climate scorecard, saying Canada currently has the weakest post-2020 climate target of all G7 nations (although Japan has yet to submit its plan).

Canada’s target to reduce emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 was recently assessed as “inadequate” by the Climate Action Tracker, a coalition of four research institutions including Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institue. The groups determined Canada’s reductions targets will not be sufficient for Canada to do its fair share for the world to avoid dangerous climate change. 

In its report, Environmental Defence said Canada has shifted its climate targets over time as a way of appearing to do more than it actually is:

“The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997) both used 1990 as the reference or base year. Most countries still use 1990 as the base year but some have started using more recent base years. Since the Copenhagen summit in 2009, Canada has been using 2005 as a base year. This makes comparison between targets more difficult. It also makes targets look stronger than they are since Canada’s carbon pollution increased significantly between 1990 and 2005. For example, the Canadian government’s pledge to reduce emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 by 2030 is actually less than half as strong (-14.4 per cent) when expressed using 1990 as the base year.”

Environmental Defence adds Canada has consistently refused to address the Alberta oilsands when discussing climate targets, a subject of some controversy during last year’s UN climate talks in Lima, Peru.

Canada has pledged to regulate emissions from four sectors: natural gas-fired electricity, the chemical industry, methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and sources of hydrofluorocarbons.

For years the federal government has failed to deliver on its promise to regulate carbon from the oil and gas industry. Last year Harper said it would be “crazy economic policy” to regulate the oil and gas sector and indicated (incorrectly) that no other country was doing so.

Last year, Canada's environment commissioner Julie Gelfand said the country has "no overall vision" when it comes to oil and gas regulations and as a result will not even meet its 2020 international greenhouse gas reductions targets agreed to in Copenhagen.

Ed Whittingham from the Pembina Institute said he thinks industry will begin to pick up the slack, now that definitive dates for decarbonization are being discussed.

"We are all clear, we are still going to need fossil fuels for some time to come. Now we have, at the global level, the latest day for when we need to be off fossil fuels," he told the CBC. "CEOs in Calgary are smart; they will do the planning that needs to be done." 

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A group of scientists from across North America are calling on the governments of Canada and Alberta to impose a moratorium on future development of the Alberta oilsands.

The recommendation is the result of a consensus document that surveys scientific literature related to the oilsands from across research fields. The clear outcome of the research — as it relates to climate, ecosystems, species protection and indigenous rights — is a need to end oilsands growth, the group states.

“As scientists we recognize that no one can speak with authority to all aspects of this complex topic, which is why we came together to synthesize the science from our different fields,” Wendy Palen, professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University, said.

The group of scientists, which include 12 fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, 22 members of the U.S. National Academy of Science, five recipients of the Order of Canada and a Nobel Prize winner, released their consensus position on a website, www.oilsandsmoratorium.org, Wednesday. A ful list of the scientists supporting the moratorium can be found here.

“These decisions are complex,” Palen added, “they transcend national boundaries and national interests and they are far broader than any single scientific study or economic assessment.”

Canada’s Carbon Budget

“Within our carbon budget we have high emission sources such as oilsands and unconventional sources of oil and coal that cannot be developed,” Mark Jaccard, energy and climate economist at Simon Fraser University said.

“Therefor while the existing output of the oilsands should not be shut down tomorrow — we’re not talking about harming the Alberta economy or the jobs that are there now — what the research shows, and that’s why we’re calling for it, is that we shouldn’t be doubling down or quadrupling down on the oilsands,” he said.

The oilsands industry produced just over 2 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in 2014. The most recent projections released this month from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers projects oilsands production to grow to more than 4.2 million bpd by 2030.

In 2013 Canada’s National Energy Board forecasted 5 million bpd by 2035, although falling oil prices have altered most projections.

Jaccard said other forecasts see production skyrocketing to 6 or 9 million bpd.

“None of this needs to be done,” he said.

Alberta Taking on Too Much Risk

Thomas Homer-Dixon, Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo said the call for a moratorium shouldn’t been see as an “attack on Alberta.”

“The risks are largest for Alberta in particular continuing on this path,” he said. “This is an ultimately economic dead end because the climate is changing and because there will be, in time, some kind of North American or global pricing regime for carbon.”

Homer-Dixon said a path to “alternative routes for economic development” would involve less risk for Alberta.

“Rather than assuming what we’re suggesting is a risky alternative fraught with uncertainty — which it is in some respects — it’s actually less risky and less fraught with uncertainty in many respects than continuing down the current pathway of doubling down on oilsands extraction.”

This week G7 leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, released a declaration calling for a total decarbonization of the global economy by 2100 and a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Although Canada agreed to these goals in principle, many are left wondering what concrete steps will be taken to reduce Canada’s emissions. The Alberta oilsands are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

“A moratorium makes a lot of sense”

Homer-Dixon said a carbon-constrained future could have severe effects on Canada and Alberta’s economy if we don’t move into low-carbon sources of energy.

“Far sooner than most Canadians expect we may have trouble selling our fossil fuels to the world,” he said.

David Keith, professor of applied physics and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said there’s a “there’s enormous, direct self-interest here from people who care about a sustainable Alberta economy.”

“I’ve got kids and my own interests here,” he said. “But the more we grow the harder the fall is going to be.”

“If you don’t want to see a crushing downturn and want to see some sort of gradual turn for Alberta —where there’s a healthy Albertan economy when I’m old and my kids are grown — then a moratorium makes a lot of sense, even from a purely self-interested point of view.”

Keith added he doesn’t see a moratorium as the responsibility of industry.

“The fundamental onus is not on proponents,” he said. “The onus is on the regulatory system — the government of Alberta, the government of Canada — to act in the long-term interest of the people they serve.”

Thinking the Oilsands Beyond Climate and Economy

David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said the group of scientists are making arguments for a moratorium that extend beyond the scope of climate.

The group lists a total of 10 reasons that support a moratorium including broad support for alternative energy and the treaty rights of first nations.

“If you take the focus off carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses for a minute and look at the other points among our 10, oilsands are really a poster child for unsustainable development,” Schindler said.

He added an additional major concern is the risk pipelines destined to carry diluted bitumen to the British Columbian coast pose to salmon stocks. “They cross hundreds of river channels and particularly in winter when those rivers are covered with ice, you cannot remove spilled oil from under ice.”

He said small spills have caused major problems in the Athabasca River. “The technology for removing that oil from under ice doesn’t exist.”

He said caribou are also disappearing from the oilsands region and expansion of development and pipelines will further exacerbate their recovery.

Ken Lertzman, professor at the school of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University, said social justice is yet another reason to support the moratorium.

Lertzman said the production of oil in Alberta and its transit across North America “violates the treaty rights of many indigenous peoples.” He added much of the oilsands development occurs on the traditional territory of First Nations, many of which are still dealing with unresolved land claims.

Both the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Beaver Lake Cree First Nation have been involved in protracted battles with the Alberta and federal governments to protect their treaty rights and territorial lands from the cumulative impacts of oilsands development.

“Indigenous peoples live on the frontlines of energy development; it’s their rights, livelihoods, health and cultures that are most at risk,” he said.

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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Canada can reduce its carbon footprint by 90 per cent, play its part in the fight against climate change and grow its economy at the same time according to a recent report by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 

“This is a really important piece of analysis for Canada. It shows that we can cut our carbon pollution dramatically by 2050, making a strong contribution to tackling climate change, while growing our economy by over 200 per cent,” Clare Demerse, a senior policy advisor at Clean Energy Canada says.

By powering transportation, buildings and electricity with largely renewable energy (water-power, wind, solar) and biofuels and applying wide spread use of greenhouse gas (GHG) capturing technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the oil and gas sector the report argues Canada can cut its GHG emissions production by 90 per cent by 2050 based on 2010 levels.

The catch is none of this can happen unless Canada implements policies effectively regulating the production of GHG emissions, something the federal government has so far been unable to do.

“Many of the major changes described in the Canadian decarbonization pathway will not occur without strong policy signals, which will require public support and in many cases will be driven by public pressure,” the UN network concludes. 

Electrification of the Economy Is the Key to Reducing GHG Emissions 

Reducing GHG emissions of transportation and buildings sectors by 97 per cent and 96 per cent respectively are the “two of the core foundations of the Canadian deep decarbonization pathway.” The key to reaching these targets is a substantial shift to renewable energy.

Canada's projected GHG emissions by sector by 2050 in a 90 per cent GHG emissions reduction scenario. Source: UNSDNS

“Decarbonizing electricity production is essential, since it is a precondition to reducing emissions throughout the rest of the economy through electrification,” the report states.

Water-power (Canada’s largest source of renewable energy), biomass, wind and solar are projected to lead the way in decarbonizing Canada’s electrical supply with wind and solar generating as high as 17 per cent and 10 per cent of Canada’s electricity respectively.

Oil consumption for transportation will need to plummet with the majority of Canadian vehicles running off of biofuels, hydrogen or electricity in the 90 per cent GHG emissions reduction scenario. The report sees a slight shift to mass transit (trains, buses) over personal vehicles and a large transformation from trucks to trains for freight.

Electricity production (left) and fuel consumption (right) by source by 2050. 

“The results the modelers presented are one way to hit the target they were given, but they’re not a prescription. As they point out, Canadians and our governments will need to make policy choices about what kind of low-carbon path makes the most sense for us,” Demerse told DeSmog Canada.

British Columbia’s successful and surprisingly popular carbon tax and Quebec’s cap-and-trade system are two homegrown Canadian climate policy examples Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government could follow to fulfill Canada’s international responsibilities to cut global warming GHG emissions.

Report Surprisingly Projects Oil and Gas Output Will Double by 2050

The report assumes Canada can remain an oil and gas “energy superpower” in a world that has gone nearly zero-carbon. The report predicts Canadian oil and gas production will double by 2050 as well.

“The report’s assumptions on global oil demand seem a little unrealistic. Studies have shown that demand will drop as countries transition to low carbon economies,” Professor Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at Simon Fraser University says.

Canada's GHG emissions by sector (2010 baseline). Source: UNSDSN

“If Canada is able to power its cars and buildings with virtually zero fossil fuels by 2050, why wouldn’t the rest of the world want to do the same? If global demand for oil drops, oil prices will drop too — and then we would see far lower production than the oilsands industry is counting on today,” Demerse told DeSmog Canada.

To keep the oil and gas sector in play in a near zero-carbon scenario the report recommends Canada employ widespread use of technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the sector. CCS captures carbon emissions, and converts them into a dense fuel that can be transported to sites below ground for storage.

Canada only has one operational CCS project. The Pembina Institute, an energy policy think tank, predicts Alberta alone will need twenty-five large-scale CCS projects to meet its own GHG emissions reduction targets.

“Why would companies adopt expensive CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology if at the moment they can dump waste into our atmosphere for free?” Jaccard says.

The authors of the report admit CCS is not “commercially viable” in Canada at the moment given “current climate policy stringency.” The low price on carbon and lack of regulations on GHG emissions in the Canadian oil and gas sector provide very little financial incentive for companies to invest in expensive technologies that decrease the carbon footprints of their operations.

“Until there are regulations on carbon in Canada technologies like CCS are going nowhere,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada.

Unclear If the Oilsands Have A Place In A Decarbonized Canada

The UN network behind the report is unable or unwilling to say if the oilsands (also called tar sands) industry, the fastest growing source of GHG emissions in Canada, has a future in a low carbon Canada. The report cites “literature conflicts on whether production from the oil sands can be cost-effective in a deep decarbonization scenario.”

Image Credit: Blue Green Canada, United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network

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