With U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration quickly approaching, the stage has been set for the world’s second-largest emitter to take renewed action on climate change that could spill over into Canada.

Biden put forward an ambitious vision for a clean energy transformation of the U.S. economy during the election campaign — pledging to rejoin the Paris Agreement and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

And with Democrats snagging control of the Senate after winning both seats in Georgia’s runoff elections, Biden will be able to count on steady support for his environmental initiatives.

“It’s night and day within the U.S. to go from a president who rejects science and has been rolling back fairly modest measures to one that is promising 100 per cent clean electricity by 2035,” said Kathryn Harrison, a University of British Columbia political science professor who studies climate and energy policy.

Biden will take office in the wake of a sustained effort by his predecessor to undermine key climate and environmental regulations and policies. More than 70 such rules — including vehicle emissions standards and controls on methane emissions from oil and gas — were eroded under the Trump administration, with efforts underway to weaken more than 25 others, according to a New York Times analysis.

U.S. climate action is crucial to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: the country was responsible for 15 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, second only to China, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists’ analysis. 

“With or without the U.S., the world is not on track to meet the targets in the Paris climate agreement, but without the U.S. there’s absolutely no chance,” said Simon Donner, a climate scientist and geography professor at the University of British Columbia. 

Renewed commitment to climate action from a Biden administration could reverberate around the world.

“The U.S., for good and bad, is a leader economically around the world and the decisions the U.S. makes influences what other countries are willing to do,” Donner said.

Here’s where the President-elect stands on key climate and environment issues.

Biden pledged to rejoin the Paris Agreement and ramp up climate action

The United States officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change on Nov. 4, the day after the U.S. election and a year after Trump gave notice to the United Nations. 

Biden, however, has pledged to rejoin the international accord and could do so as early as February.

That would provide “a shot in the arm” for the agreement, said Ravipal Bains, a McMillan LLP corporate lawyer with expertise in corporate governance and environmental and social governance issues.

Donner agreed. Even if passing legislation remains a challenge, it will mean a lot to have the U.S. “as an international champion” for climate action once again, he said.

Biden also campaigned on a $2 trillion plan to combat climate change that includes major investments in clean energy and a commitment to eliminate carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035. 

His platform includes commitments to sign a number of executive orders “on day one” to put the country on track to meet its 2050 target and to push Congress to pass climate legislation with milestone targets and enforcement mechanisms within his first year in office. 

Biden also committed to major investments in clean energy research and innovation, clean infrastructure, including electric vehicle charging stations, and to — one day — ensure 100 per cent of new cars sold are electric. 

“He’s promising a pretty bold transformation of the U.S. economy pretty quickly,” Harrison said of the plan.

And any transformation in the U.S. is likely to spill over to other countries, according to Bains. 

“If the U.S. government takes a stance that they want to accelerate decommissioning of certain types of fuel sources, that will have ramifications in the U.S. economy and the broader global economy because many of the other economies take cues and are suppliers for the U.S.,” he said.

Emissions rise from an industrial facility in Kentucky. The U.S. was the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter after China in 2018, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Photo: Nik Shuliahin

The U.S. Senate, climate legislation and Biden’s options

Even a Democrat-controlled Senate won’t have guaranteed easy passage for effective climate legislation, experts say.

But Biden could have a meaningful impact through spending and regulation.

“The Obama administration, which Biden was a part of, showed that you can do a lot with regulations, even if you can’t pass a bill,” said Donner, pointing to the Clean Power Plan as an example.

“If it had been fully enacted, because of course Trump repealed parts of it, it would have probably reduced emissions about as much as the legislation would have,” he said.

Donner said he would expect to see Biden reverse Trump’s executive orders that weakened environmental regulations, but noted the courts could pose a challenge given the number of appointments Trump made during his presidency.

Several other initiatives, including energy efficiency retrofits, investments in public transit and electric vehicle charging stations, could be pushed forward through spending, Donner said.

Spending on climate adaptation measures may have more bipartisan support, in part because it wouldn’t necessarily have to be framed as a climate measure, he said.

“We shouldn’t discount the fact that with Biden as president, the Democrats have control of who’s appointed to run all the government agencies,” Donner added.

“That absolutely matters,” said Debora VanNijnatten, a Wilfrid Laurier University political science professor who studies transboundary environmental governance.

Under Trump, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took a marked deregulatory bent and prioritized the needs of the oil and gas industry, VanNijnatten said.

Under a Biden administration she expects “an absolute sea change in terms of what the U.S. EPA is and can do.”

‘Policies of the U.S. administration echo across the world’

Action on climate change in the U.S., Canada’s largest trading partner, should make it easier for Canada to take more ambitious climate action of its own, Harrison said, noting the federal government needs to implement additional measures to meet its 2030 targets.

Biden seems prepared to ensure other countries are pulling their weight. According to his platform, Biden would consider imposing “carbon adjustment fees or quotas on carbon-intensive goods from other countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations.”

Such climate tariffs could exert pressure on Canada and others to ensure their emissions reductions targets and regulations measure up to those adopted by Biden’s administration, Harrison explained.

A Biden presidency also offers a wide range of potential partners for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in Ottawa, VanNijnatten said, noting that a number of the initiatives Canada and the U.S. were collaborating on, such as methane emissions and fuel efficiency standards, “ground to a halt” under the Trump administration. 

Bains said Biden’s plan will also create opportunities for Canadian clean tech companies through trade — and send a signal to investors that “green investments will be a key component of America’s growth.”

“As one of the world’s largest economies and as one of the globally leading centres of power, the policies of the U.S. administration echo across the world,” he said.

That could serve as a “wake-up call that Canadian industry has to get their act together because our major trading market could be transforming rapidly and we risk getting left behind,” Harrison said.

Biden promised to scrap Keystone XL

A key concern for Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government in Alberta will be the future of the Keystone XL pipeline.  

The province bet $1.5 billion on the project moving forward earlier this year, but Biden has said he would cancel the controversial pipeline. 

The day before the U.S. election, Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan reiterated the federal government’s support for the pipeline, which could ship 830,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta to the U.S.

In an interview with Global News, O’Regan said “there is a very, very strong argument for the Keystone project that continues regardless of who the president of the United States is.”

“We will continue to make that argument strongly,” he added.

Construction of the Alberta section of the Keystone XL pipeline began near the town of Oyen in July 2020. Photo: Government of Alberta / Flickr

Should Biden scrap the project it could make it easier for Canada to meet its climate targets if the cancellation wards off an anticipated increase in oil production, Harrison said.

But it’s likely to increase pressure from the industry to build the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, she added.

Bains, however, said given the scope of Biden’s clean stimulus plans, Keystone XL may not be among the first issues he examines.

“The Canadian government has been in favour of this project so there may be opportunities where they can engage with their American counterparts,” he said.

“Short of having specific guidance from the Biden administration on how they plan to deal with these issues, I think there will be opportunity for cooperation with respect to Alberta as well, because from a U.S. perspective getting oil from Alberta is more cost efficient than from a number of international markets,” he added.

Biden’s climate plans could affect Canada’s oil industry

Other Biden climate measures could impact the oil industry as well, including a commitment to phase out the sale of new gas-powered cars — a step that would significantly reduce U.S. oil consumption, Harrison noted.

Donner said simply shifting U.S. government procurement to electric vehicles could have a significant impact.

Any measures that increase the supply of green energy and reduce U.S. demand for oil are likely to affect the Canadian oil and gas industry and more broadly the transition to a clean economy in Canada, according to VanNijnatten.

“The quicker that transition happens in the U.S., the quicker the transition is happening in Canada,” she said.

The Trudeau government may also encounter less pushback from industry on climate measures if Biden moves forward with similar initiatives, in turn alleviating Canadian concerns of a competitive disadvantage.

Permanent protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Hulahula River flows north to the Beaufort Sea, from the Brooks range mountains in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

Biden’s platform includes a commitment to permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area of roughly 8 million hectares in northeastern Alaska that includes the critical calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, from oil and gas development. 

In August, the Trump administration took another step toward allowing oil and gas development in the previously protected area, when the U.S. Secretary of the Interior signed a decision approving the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program. The decision made about 8 per cent of the area available for oil and gas leasing. 

Trump’s efforts to open the area to development have met with major political opposition and lawsuits from the Gwich’in Steering Committee and environmental groups, concerned about the threat to wildlife, food security, and culture. 

Alongside protections for the refuge, Biden said he would push for a global moratorium on offshore drilling in the Arctic.

Biden climate action could ease impacts of U.S. wildfires

While commitments to reduce emissions in the coming years may help avoid the worst effects of climate change, it is already taking a toll in the U.S. and Canada. 

Hotter, drier weather, for instance, has dramatically increased the risk for wildfires each year.

In California alone, wildfires burned more than 1.7 million hectares this year — an area almost three times the size of Prince Edward Island — destroying more than 10,000 structures and killing 31 people.

San Francisco covered in an orange haze during the 2020 wildfires. Photo: Thom Milkovic

While B.C.’s own wildfire season was relatively quiet, smoke from fires along the west coast of the U.S. blanketed southern B.C. for days.

Biden pointed to the fires as evidence of the need for concerted action on climate change.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze,” Biden said during a September campaign stop in Delaware, USA Today reported. 

“We need a president who respects science, who understands that the damage from climate change is already here and unless we take urgent action, it’ll soon be more catastrophic.”

For those communities already impacted by natural disasters, Biden promised investments in efforts to adapt to climate change, creating new jobs and more resilient communities.

—With files from Julien Gignac

Update Jan. 8, 2021: This article has been updated to reflect the results of Georgia’s runoff elections.

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The B.C. government is looking at a suite of the province’s natural resources — including liquefied natural gas — that could be marketed globally as “clean” products in an effort “to create new markets for B.C.’s goods and services.” 

Draft government documents obtained by The Narwhal through a freedom of information request suggest the province may also be looking to secure credits through international emissions trading for any reductions that result from the export of lower carbon products, such as lumber, copper, and aluminum, from B.C. to help meet Canada’s climate targets.

What’s unclear, according to Simon Donner, a climate scientist and geography professor at the University of British Columbia, is how it would work in practice.

“That’s probably where this falls apart,” he said.

In more traditional carbon accounting, countries are responsible for the greenhouse gasses emitted within their own borders, Donner explained.

What the province and the Business Council of British Columbia seem to be proposing is a situation where Canada is able to use the trading mechanisms that may become available under the Paris Agreement to get credits for natural resources produced with lower emissions that are then exported to other countries.

“There’s a reason this system hasn’t been set up, this is hard to do and people don’t agree on it because it upends the way some of the accounting is done,” Donner said.

“Here’s why the accounting matters: If you set up a system that allows for double counting of emissions, it could disincentivize people to do emissions reductions,” he said. “If Canada somehow is able to get emissions credits for selling LNG to other parts of the world, that disincentivizes us from doing other emissions reductions at home.”

There is also much debate about whether LNG is truly a lower carbon energy source than coal, when fugitive methane emissions are taken into account. A report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Corporate Mapping Project, released in July, details how B.C.’s plans for LNG are inconsistent with provincial climate targets. The report found that if all proposed LNG projects go ahead, the province will exceed its 2050 climate target by 227 per cent.

Paris Agreement rules for emissions trading still under negotiation

The exact rules for international trading of emissions reductions credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement have yet to be finalized, but the idea is that it would allow countries to buy credits from other nations that have already exceeded their reduction targets through voluntary agreements called internationally transferred mitigation outcomes, or ITMOs. 

A draft “ITMOs 101” presentation shared among senior B.C. government officials in November 2019 says “around 50 per cent of countries intend to use international carbon markets to meet their targets, including Canada.”

It goes on to say that “B.C.’s lower carbon exports (e.g., wood products, copper, aluminum, cement, LNG) may result in real global GHG reductions when used to displace higher carbon products.”

A draft presentation deck from government documents obtained by The Narwhal via a freedom of information request.

“Canada may need ITMOs to meet its targets; B.C. can work with Canada to feature clean exports that reduce emissions globally while supporting clean growth opportunities here at home,” it says.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said the province “recognizes that emissions trading across borders like those being explored at the United Nations through Article 6 may help jurisdictions meet global targets.”

“We continue to work with the federal government to support international negotiations.”

B.C. needs further reductions to meet emissions targets

It’s not just Canada that may be looking to international trading to meet its targets. So far, B.C. has only released a plan to get the province to 79 per cent of its emissions targets for 2030. Measures are still needed to cut an additional 5.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions — emissions from more than one million cars per year.

A July 2019 briefing note prepared for then-Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall and obtained by The Narwhal shows the NDP government considers emissions trading under Article 6 to be “a priority to ensure further industrial development fits within the B.C. climate plan.”

Earlier this summer, a spokesperson for B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said the government “is committed to meeting our emissions reductions targets with or without an agreement on Article 6” but “recognizes that emissions trading across borders like those being explored at the United Nations through Article 6 may help jurisdictions meet global targets.”

B.C.’s pitch of a low-carbon advantage

In the meantime, the province and the Business Council of British Columbia have been working to develop a low-carbon industrial strategy that would “establish B.C. as a world leader in delivering low-carbon goods and services.”

The draft ITMOs 101 presentation cites preliminary findings from research comparing the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of key commodities produced in B.C. — coal, copper, LNG, natural gas, lumber and aluminum — to the emissions intensity of those same products produced in certain competing jurisdictions.

That work was completed as part of a joint effort between the government and the Business Council of British Columbia to develop a low-carbon industrial strategy that would “establish B.C. as a world leader in delivering low-carbon goods and services.”

According to that preliminary modelling, B.C. emits between 3.8 and 4.6 million tonnes fewer greenhouse gases per year from aluminum production compared with the average emissions from aluminum production in the Middle East and Russia or China.

A tailings pond in northwest B.C. at Imperial Metals’ Red Chris mine, which produces copper, gold and silver. Documents obtained by The Narwhal reveal the B.C. government is considering marketing the province’s copper — and other natural resources — as ‘low carbon’ to earn emissions credits. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

B.C. also emits about 3.7 million tonnes fewer greenhouse gases per year from natural gas production than Texas and 3.3 million tonnes less than Australia in coal production, according to the draft presentation.

“The research found that B.C. commodities can on average have a greenhouse gas advantage over the same products from specific competitive jurisdictions,” a spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement to The Narwhal, noting emissions from production facilities, upstream emissions from electricity and downstream emissions from transportation of the products to the final destination market were all considered.

“There is however more work to do on this,” the statement said.

While the business council and province are still working on a final report of the research, the business council has released some of that preliminary work already, including a greenhouse gas benchmarking and competitiveness assessment. 

According to an August 2019 report prepared by consulting and accounting firm MNP, B.C.’s low emissions electricity and its provincial climate policies are greenhouse gas advantages over competing jurisdictions. However, transportation distances are a disadvantage for B.C.’s coal, natural gas, lumber and aluminum industries when it comes to emissions.

The business council is seeking relief from at least one of the climate policies that may be contributing to the very greenhouse gas emission advantage they’re hoping to promote: the carbon tax. 

The tax, according to the council, adds costs for B.C. industries and puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

In its report, MNP notes the analysis was based on modelling and cautioned “actual results across individual entities may differ.”

Proposal criticized as lobbying effort, not ‘real system’

Canada has proposed similar arrangements before in an effort to secure credits for exporting lower-carbon natural resources, to no avail. 

Referencing the clean exports project of 2002, the province’s draft ITMOs 101 presentation notes “Canada attempted to introduce the concept that credits from natural gas exported to the U.S. would meet 30 per cent of Canada’s targets. The international community reacted poorly, especially Europe, and the concept was scrapped.”

B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau is critical of the idea. In a statement she said “this endeavour by the NDP and (Business Council of British Columbia) is more about greenwashing our fossil fuel industry than it is about avoiding a climate catastrophe.”

“The explicit objective of ITMOs is that they should support ambition to promote greater efforts to cut emissions. LNG Canada plans to drastically increase our emissions by expanding fracking for the next 40 years, they’re just looking for a way to greenwash it,” she said.

“We need to get to work actually reducing our pollution levels instead of betting our future on a theoretical agreement that has yet to be finalized.”

The Narwhal did not receive a response to requests for comment from the provincial NDP or the Liberals by publication time.

Donner said one of his key concerns is the “cherry picking” of natural resource industries that might benefit from a system that allows Canada to claim credits for lower carbon exports.

“What if it turns out that the way we grow our fruits and vegetables, particularly where it’s done in hot houses, is actually higher carbon emitting than the production that happens in other countries, the U.S. included, that we import fruits and vegetables from,” he said.

“The concept isn’t bad, but it’s just ignoring all the practicalities of it,” said Donner, who questioned the focus on ITMOs when the rulebook for international emissions reductions trading has yet to be finalized.

That uncertainty isn’t expected to be resolved this year with the United Nations climate conference delayed until November 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It makes it feel like more of a marketing, lobbying argument than a real system,” Donner said. 

“I just think all of the other aspects of the CleanBC plan are great and that’s where the effort should be going.”

B.C. business leaders, however, are calling on the province to do more to promote B.C. natural resource industries as part of the climate solution, noting the sector is key to B.C.’s post-pandemic recovery.

Business leaders say natural resources critical to post-coronavirus pandemic recovery

Last month, the Business Council of British Columbia released a report citing the MNP research and calling on the province to maximize B.C.’s low-carbon advantage, arguing that a competitive industrial sector will be critical to the post-pandemic economic recovery. 

“The industrial sector, which produces the goods we and the global marketplace need, is the backbone of B.C.’s export economy and is essential to recovery, hiring and creating new jobs,” the report says.

A new Ipsos poll conducted for the Business Council of Alberta suggests a significant number of Canadians agree there’s a role for natural resource industries in the economic recovery. 

Using the Ipsos online panel, 1,003 Canadians were surveyed online between Aug. 24 and 27 for the poll, which found 75 per cent of respondents believe the COVID-19 recovery should both support natural resource industries and protect the environment.

When asked whether the recovery should be used to make green investments or get existing businesses back on their feet, 54 per cent of respondents said existing businesses should be the priority, while 27 per cent want to see a green recovery prioritized.

The business council’s report suggests B.C. can do both by supporting its natural resource industries.

Critics, meanwhile, contend that the continued promotion of extractive industries is at odds with emissions-reduction goals. A July report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Corporate Mapping Project found that, should B.C. proceed with all proposed LNG projects, the province would exceed its 2050 climate targets by 227 per cent.

Business Council of B.C. calls for carbon tax break

In its report, the business council calls on the government to develop a business investment strategy that markets B.C. as a lower carbon producer of key commodities, to embrace carbon offsets and investment in nature-based solutions as a means to meet emissions targets and to exempt heavy industries that compete in international markets from the full carbon tax.

“On average, our energy and commodity exports have half the climate change-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of our competition,” the business council’s report says. 

But B.C.’s industries “face a significant competitive disadvantage compared to global competitors” because of the carbon tax, it says.

B.C. is “the only jurisdiction with carbon pricing without a comprehensive approach to protection for its trade-exposed industries,” the report says.

“If B.C. products aren’t competitive in the marketplace, the products will come from elsewhere, at a proven higher carbon content,”it continues.

The ministry statement didn’t say whether the government is considering carbon tax protections for industry, but the province has delayed until next year an increase to the carbon tax, citing the coronavirus pandemic. The levy was initially supposed to take effect this past April.

The ministry statement also pointed to the CleanBC industrial incentive program, which reduces the cost of the carbon tax above $30 per tonne for industrial operations that have lower emissions than world-leading competitors.

“The lower emitting a facility is, the more carbon tax payment it can receive in return,” the statement said. “This provides a strong incentive for large facilities to invest in cleaner operations in B.C. and reduce emissions. 

Mark Jaccard, the director of the school of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University, said he agrees with industry’s argument that the carbon tax puts them at a disadvantage by raising their costs relative to their competitors, but he said there’s a contradiction in asking for a carbon tax break while simultaneously calling for a plan to promote your products as low carbon.

“It’s disingenuous,” he said.

Jaccard cautioned that there may not be much of a market for lower carbon products anyway — unless countries put climate tariffs in place. 

“Who’s willing to pay more for the low-emission aluminum? There’s nobody. But there would be if there was a system of global carbon pricing,” he said.

“We need countries like Canada to put tariffs on or to join with other countries in climate clubs and when that happens then you might have a system where everybody’s constrained to be reducing emissions and there would be more value for products whose production involves less emissions,” he said.

“We are nowhere near an agreement like that.” 

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The B.C. government may be banking on buying emissions reduction credits to offset the effects of future industrial development, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal through a freedom of information request. But the postponement of this year’s international climate conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic means prolonged uncertainty on if and when this will be possible under the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

Negotiations on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which will establish the rules for trading emissions reduction credits internationally, were set to continue at the United Nations climate conference this November. The conference has been delayed until November 2021.

The B.C. government considers emissions trading under Article 6 to be “a priority to ensure further industrial development fits within the B.C. climate plan,” according to a July 2019 briefing note prepared for former Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources minister Michelle Mungall (now minister of Jobs, Economic Development and Competitiveness) and obtained by The Narwhal.

“Emissions trading could be a mechanism to mitigate B.C. GHG emissions from industrial development by offering an internationally recognized path for sharing reductions,” the document says.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement will allow countries to purchase emissions reduction credits from other countries that have exceeded their reduction targets through voluntary agreements called internationally transferred mitigation outcomes, or ITMOs. 

How countries are allowed to purchase these emissions reduction credits will depend on the final rulebook, but they may be able to invest in other countries’ emissions reduction projects, share emissions reduction technology or, as the B.C. government documents suggest, offer some form of trade concession. 

Burgeoning LNG industry threatens B.C.’s ability to meet climate commitments 

B.C. has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050. The province’s emissions, though, increased by 3.5 per cent between 2017 and 2018, according to Canada’s 2020 National Inventory Report to the United Nations.

While the actions outlined in the CleanBC plan are projected to get B.C. 80 per cent of the way to its 2030 target, additional measures are needed to cut the outstanding 5.5 megatonnes of greenhouse gases standing between B.C. and its target. That’s equivalent to the emissions from more than one million cars in a year.

Future emissions from the province’s burgeoning liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry could make the challenge of meeting its targets more difficult. There are several LNG projects at various stages of development in B.C., including the LNG Canada project, which is under construction in Kitimat. Phase one of the LNG Canada project will add an estimated four megatonnes of emissions per year, according to the B.C. government. If phase two goes ahead, total annual emissions will be an estimated 8.6 megatonnes by 2030 and 9.6 by 2050, according to a report from the Pembina Institute and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

B.C. has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent below 2007 levels by 2050, but emissions continue to rise and LNG development will push that goal further out of reach. Phase one of LGN Canada has received approval but phase two has not. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The report concludes that LNG Canada, along with the Woodfibre LNG project, “would together emit enough carbon pollution to make meeting B.C.’s 2050 climate target virtually impossible.” 

In a statement, a spokesperson for B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said the government “is committed to meeting our emissions reductions targets with or without an agreement on Article 6.”

However, the province “recognizes that emissions trading across borders like those being explored at the United Nations through Article 6 may help jurisdictions meet global targets,” and it continues to work with the federal government to support international negotiations.

“CleanBC is one of the strongest plans of its kind in North America and includes dozens of actions across sectors to help us reach our targets and build a cleaner, better future.”

The ministry statement did not, however, include a response to questions about what consequences the delay of Article 6 negotiations could have for B.C.’s climate plan or the release of additional measures to ensure the province meets its 2030 targets, which are expected by the end of this year. 

B.C. considers giving countries a deal on LNG so it can produce more LNG

B.C. appears to be considering emissions reduction credit trading as a way to offset greenhouse gases from the LNG industry in particular, according to an April 2019 briefing note prepared for Minister Mungall and obtained through the same freedom of information request. 

The document suggests B.C. might be willing to offer a deal on LNG in exchange for the emissions reduction credits needed to meet its climate commitments. “Further work will have to be done on what the province and the federal government is willing to exchange in return for gaining the ITMOs (e.g. lower LNG prices, other trade concessions),” it says. 

What rock-bottom natural gas prices mean for Canada’s aspiring LNG industry

The briefing note mentions an opportunity to export LNG to Asia-Pacific countries including Japan, which is among the world’s largest importers of both coal and LNG.

“B.C.’s natural gas has much lower carbon intensity than similar products from other jurisdictions due to high regulatory standards and the availability of renewable, clean electricity,” it says.

While the paragraphs in the statement immediately after have been redacted, industry groups have repeatedly touted the potential for B.C.’s LNG exports to help reduce emissions from coal in a global context.

The Canadian LNG Alliance, an industry association, says liquefied natural gas production can help bolster the economy as part of the COVID-19 economic recovery and support a global transition to cleaner energy at the same time.

While the industry argues LNG will benefit the climate by replacing coal, which emits more greenhouse gases when it’s burned, a key concern observers is whether an uptake in natural gas would delay investments in renewable energy.

If countries such as Poland — home to the world’s largest lignite-fired power station — use B.C. LNG to reduce their reliance on coal, those countries will own the emissions reductions. Photo: VLLI / flickr

Moira Kelly, a spokesperson for federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, said in a statement to The Narwhal that the federal government’s priority is reducing emissions in Canada but that Ottawa recognizes “LNG is a transitional fuel that has the potential to significantly cut emissions as we transition to a clean economy.”

If other countries use B.C. LNG to replace coal, any emissions reductions would be owned by the countries that make the switch, said Kathryn Harrison, a University of British Columbia professor who studies climate policy. B.C., meanwhile, would take the hit for the greenhouse gases emitted during the production and transport of natural gas to LNG facilities, as well as the conversion of the gas to a liquid state for transport overseas. 

A large-scale LNG industry would mean “significant emissions increases” in B.C., as the province is working to reduce its climate contributions.

“That’s a hard circle to square, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’re looking into international trading as a way forward,” Harrison said.

“It wouldn’t be necessarily illegitimate,” Harrison added. “What’s worrying to me is that we’re not having an open conversation about that and these are big policy decisions.”

Article 6 could make or break Paris Agreement 

The stakes are high. Depending on the rules, Article 6 could either “strengthen” or “essentially gut” the Paris Agreement, Harrison said.

“There’s a lot at stake and I think that’s why it’s the last piece of the Paris rulebook that is yet to be finalized,” she said.

At its best, trading of emissions reduction credits could allow countries to meet their targets at a lower cost, which in theory means governments may be more willing to ramp up their climate ambitions, Harrison said.

“If we don’t get it right, what we can have is one country paying another country for fake reductions and what that does is it gives the appearance that we’re making progress when in fact emissions aren’t going down and might even be going up,” she said.

There are concerns, for instance, that some credits issued through the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions trading system are the result of companies temporarily ramping up production to gain more credits for their efforts to reduce emissions, Harrison said.

Since countries set their own targets, Harrison is concerned they could set them lower in an effort to increase the number of credits they have to sell. Australia, for instance, had a “very weak” target under the Kyoto Protocol, which it beat with little effort, and now wants those credits to count under the Paris Agreement, she said.

“The scale of carry-forward credits is potentially very large and it’s not enough for one country to say, ‘Well, we won’t buy any of those,’ ” she said. “They’re still on the market.”

Another challenge is ensuring emissions reductions aren’t double counted. While Harrison said the Paris Agreement is quite clear on this matter, she noted Brazil has tried to oppose rules meant to prevent the double counting of emissions reductions.

Kelly, the federal spokesperson, said “Canada will continue to stand firm in insisting on rules for Article 6 that ensure environmental integrity, rigorous accounting and respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

“It benefits everyone if we can agree on rules that ensure the reductions from any emissions trading are real and verifiable first,” she said.

The site of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Exporting a fossil fuel to offset another fossil fuel shortsighted, observers say

Some observers say B.C. should focus on provincial rather than international solutions to meet its emissions reduction targets. 

“There’s no doubt that the phasing out of coal is important, but over the long term if we’re substituting LNG, which is also a fossil fuel, for coal, that’s not a long-term solution to our climate challenge,” said Karen Tam Wu, regional director of British Columbia at the Pembina Institute.

Rather than trying to “export a fossil fuel to offset another fossil fuel,” B.C. should focus on reducing its emissions within the province, she said.

“That’s the part that we can control and that’s the part that we need to keep our eyes on.” 

Tam Wu said there are still plenty of opportunities for B.C. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, freight and the energy used to heat and cool buildings.

Andrew Weaver, an independent MLA and former leader of the B.C. Green Party, pointed to the province’s recent investments in renewable energy projects to reduce reliance on diesel generation in First Nations communities as an example of the way forward.

As for the Article 6 negotiations, Weaver said he’s happy they have been delayed. 

“It’s such a gong show with people figuring out loopholes to do nothing,” he said of Article 6, adding that we will have an opportunity post-pandemic “to do things differently moving forward, to build a clean economy — one that will actually be resilient and vibrant and prosperous in the years ahead.”

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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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“This is the biggest challenge as we have at the moment as a company,” Ben van Beurden, chief executive of oil giant Shell, said recently. “The fact that societal acceptance of the energy system as we have it is just disappearing.”

Speaking at the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston on March 9, van Beurden described the growing tensions between his industry, which has created our fossil fuel dependent energy system, and the public, which is demanding a switch to clean energy: “I do think trust has been eroded to the point where it starts to become a serious issue for our long-term future.”

The world’s largest oil companies are increasingly faced with public pressure to do something about their impact on climate change. And increasingly we’re seeing their chief executives responding. The question is though, how much is for real and what's just greenwash?

It’s been just over a year since the Paris climate deal was agreed in December 2015 and slowly corporate annual reports are being filed. In these, companies take stock of the year’s changes and assess the future risks to their business. Meanwhile new strategies and corporate statements are being issued. Statoil recently released a climate roadmap and ConocoPhillips has come out in support of the US remaining part of the Paris Agreement.

But what are we to make of all of this? Do the actions of these oil giants match the big words put out by their chief executives when it comes to climate change? Has anything really changed since Paris?

Royal Dutch Shell

It feels like Shell is going through a bit of an identity crisis. On the one hand, it’s been pretty clear about the risk climate change poses to its business and the need to transition to renewable energy. But on the other hand, it sees this as a slow, decadal process and has a record of lobbying against climate action.

Last week headlines were made when Shell announced it was selling off most of its Canadian oil sands assets. Mixed in with this also was the news that it would now be tying 10 percent of its directors’ bonuses to how well they manage greenhouse gas emissions in their operations.

It also aims to invest $1 billion in renewable energy by the end of the decade.

But a look at the bigger picture shows that while these are steps in the right direction, they’re relatively small steps given Shell’s total annual spending comes to $25 billion.

And according to a recent article written by Shell’s climate advisor David Hone, the company has “no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years”.

That said, Shell appears to be somewhat ahead of the curve compared to other oil majors. Maybe it's making up for lost time, or perhaps it doesn't want to be left in the dust. Either way, it's not entirely burying its head in the sand. In its annual report last year for the year up to December 2015 it was the first company to recognize that policy action and legal risks due to rising climate change concerns are mounting. These same concerns are repeated in this year’s report.

However, this comes after the Guardian revealed that Shell knew of the impact fossil fuels would have on the climate as far back as 1991. In a film on temperature and sea level rise the oil giant accurately predicts what scientists now all agree on about climate change.

Yet, despite the company’s own data, it has spent decades investing in unconventional oil and gas projects. Projects which it has always known are incompatible with tackling climate change.

BP

Meanwhile, BP is facing significant pressure to boost production. Part of this effort means it continues to expand into more and more challenging projects in search of bigger returns. But it’s having some trouble.

After strong public opposition to its plans to drill in the pristine waters of the Great Australian Bight it pulled out of the deepwater venture. And now it’s planning a similarly controversial project: drilling for oil near a recently discovered coral reef off the coast of Brazil.

The company also isn’t performing as well as it would have hoped, with share prices currently sitting 30 percent lower than before its Deepwater Horizon disaster.  All of this has led to rumours of takeovers, with reports last week that Exxon was eyeing up the British oil giant.

And as it continues to lay off workers from its drilling operations on the North Sea, a DeSmog UK investigation shows BP has been working hard to boost its social license by putting BP-branded tutors in primary and secondary schools all across Aberdeen.

In the US, however, BP chief executive Bob Dudley seems encouraged by the change in winds that came with a new White House administration. Dudley recently said that the political situation meant business is much more open now, saying that the White House is “very interested” in BP, “more so than at any times in the last eight years”.

As BP continues to push into riskier projects – and riskier in all senses of the word, from its operations to the climate and the marine environment – it will be interesting to see what its annual report (yet to be published) makes of all of this. Last year’s simply recognizes the impact that complying with climate change regulations and laws may have on its profit margin.

Chevron

Compared to last year, Chevron’s come a long way. Whereas its chief executive John Watson boasted last year that the world will always need Big Oil this year it too has publicly recognized to its investors that climate change lawsuits can pose a risk to its profits.

In its annual report for the year up to December 2016 it states: “increasing attention to climate change risks has resulted in an increased possibility of governmental investigations and, potentially, private litigation against the company.”

But amidst growing demand from shareholders for corporate disclosure on climate risks, Chevron this month said in a quietly released report that a transition to lower-carbon energy sources would pose only a “minimal risk” to its operations because it’s investing in these options too. It then goes on to explain that oil and gas will remain the fundamental energy sources.

ExxonMobil

Like BP, Exxon fails to go beyond the impact of climate regulations on its profits. The company however continues to be in the spotlight, from investigations into its long history of funding climate denial to former chief executive Rex Tillerson becoming part of the new White House administration – the same Rex Tillerson who, as Exxon's chief, went by the alias 'Wayne Tracker' when emailing colleagues to discuss climate change.

Since Tillerson left the helm, Exxon has made some attempts to improve its climate credentials. The new chief executive Darren Woods publicly endorsed the Paris climate deal and just weeks after he took over from Tillerson, Susan Avery, a climate scientist, was appointed to the company’s board.

This comes after the company’s shareholders failed to do just that during Exxon’s annual general meeting last summer. During this meeting three other climate related initiatives were voted down including one to stress test the business to avoid 2C warming.

However, no major shift on strategy was announced during Woods' first speech on March 1 since being appointed to lead Exxon. Instead, investment priorities will continue to be in oil and gas.

The company also appears to be taking full advantage of the new US administration’s warm welcome to oil lobbyists as it pushes for weaker regulations on the oil and gas industry.

Photo: Drew Kolb via Flickr | CC 2.0

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On Dec. 9, after much deliberation and political theatre, the federal government, eight provinces and three territories signed the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba were notably absent from the list of signatories.

But also absent was an explanation of just how and how much Canada will rely on emissions trading  — technically known as internationally transferred mitigation outcomes — to meet its 2030 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions down to 524 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, a reduction of 30 per cent compared to 2005 emission levels.

In its framework Canada vaguely pledged to “continue to explore which types of tools related to the acquisition of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes may be beneficial to Canada.”

Yet Canada may be eyeing the offset tool as a fundamental part of achieving emissions reductions, especially if global resource prices rebound and the oilsands expand to production levels allowable under newly approved pipelines.

Simon Donner, climate scientist and assistant professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, says Canada was “definitely a leading part of the push to have a carbon trading market” included in the UN Paris Agreement, which aims to limit temperature increases to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.

Dale Marshall, national program manager with Environmental Defence says emissions trading is “clearly something that’s being held up as not only an option but as a priority” for the Canadian government.

The new federal climate framework contains a gap, Marshall says, between expected emissions and climate targets.

“That gap can be filled by being more ambitious with regulations, it can be filled by ensuring the carbon price continues to rise…or it can be filled with the purchase of international credits.”

“The last option is certainly in the framework.”

However, emissions trading has developed a shoddy reputation over the years — which may account for the government’s decision to downplay the possibility of deploying it.

So, what exactly are emissions offsets or emissions trading schemes? How do they help reduce emissions? And what are the potential downsides?

How Does Emissions Trading Work?

If you’ve travelled on an airplane in recent years, you may have been invited to pay for offsets to mitigate the emissions associated with your flight. The money can be used to protect trees from deforestation, fund renewable power projects or cogeneration technology, or eliminate pollutants such as nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbon.

Governments have also participated in voluntary, one-time offsets, such as when the federal Conservatives spent $226,450 to make the 2010 Winter Olympics “carbon neutral.”

The purchase of offsets, whether personal, corporate or by government, basically amounts to a voluntary accountability mechanism.

An emissions trading scheme (ETS) is a different kind of beast, and one that arguably makes a bit more sense given there are now national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement that countries are expected to meet (as opposed to individuals who could ostensibly choose not to travel, for example).

Under a trading scheme, a jurisdiction can have an abatement opportunity “certified” by a governing body.

Investments in a wind farm or preservation of a peat forest designated for burning would be deemed equivalent to a certain number of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. These tonnes are then represented in the form of certificates.

Other jurisdictions can buy those certificates and the seller can use the profits to fund further emissions abatements.

The seller can’t count the sold emissions reduction towards its national commitments — but the buyer can.

So How Does this Help Climate Change Again?

Ultimately, it’s about rooting out the cheapest ways to prevent a tonne greenhouse gas destined for the atmosphere from getting there.

If a country or a province can purchase cheaper offsets elsewhere, an international emissions trading scheme opens up the market to those purchases.

For instance, Ontario and Quebec are in the process of establishing cap-and-trade schemes that will link their emissions reduction efforts to inexpensive carbon offsets in California via the Western Climate Initiative.

Blake Shaffer, doctoral student at the University of Calgary with an expertise in energy economics, says it makes sense for provinces to seek out the least expensive carbon abatement opportunities.

He points to a recent study that found Ontario would require a $157/tonne carbon tax if it tried to achieve its emissions reduction target domestically, yet could achieve those same reductions by purchasing much cheaper offsets in California.

Shaffer says that means Ontario will get an equal amount of emissions reductions for a cheaper price. That same principle applies internationally.

“International offsets are an intriguing solution because in the end, a tonne is a tonne is a tonne,” he says.

“If a country like Indonesia has reduction opportunities for less than a dollar per tonne, it’s a fair question as to why we’re paying $50/tonne in Canada.”

The cost savings are potentially very large, he says, noting that if Canada is short 100 Mt in 2030, the difference between abating between $50/tonne or $10/tonne on international markets is $4 billion a year in savings (and there’s a likelihood Canada’s carbon price could be higher by then).

Shaffer also notes there are more emissions coming from Indonesia’s peat fires in one year than all of Canada so “there’s really big-sized potential” for reductions.

Have Emissions Offsets Been Used Before?

Emission offsets have been used before — with seriously mixed results.

Donner says that although emissions offsets had been discussed since the early 1990s, it was under the Kyoto Protocol — with its binding emissions limits that entered into force in 2005 — that the idea really gained steam.

“It’s not a new idea, “ Donner says. “And there are mechanisms in place, like Kyoto. Under previous governments, under the Chretien government and then the Harper government, when we were part of the Kyoto Protocol it was assumed for a long time that the only way we could meet our targets was to purchase offsets on a trading market.”

It’s those binding limits that really give rise to market approaches. If a nation or province isn’t close to meeting its own targets, the option exists to buy your way to the finish line.

The Kyoto Protocol spawned the European Union Emissions Trading System, the largest of its kind in the world. The system had certain “flexibility mechanisms” built into it to help countries purchase different kinds of offsets to meet their targets.

But the system was plagued with problems, like the so-called Clean Development Mechanism which has been accused of inefficiency, the undermining of Indigenous rights and fraud.

Donner says a major controversy under the mechanism involved companies purposely creating hydrofluorocarbon and other human-made gases only to destroy them for money.

In a similar vein, the whole trading system was marred by major issues such as a massive oversupply of allowances on the market and huge price spikes.

In 2015, it was found that the Joint Implementation scheme created in Russia and Ukraine following Kyoto led to “significant criminal activity” and the release of 600 million tonnes of emissions that should have been abated.

Many smaller offset initiatives have hit similar pitfalls.

In February 2013, it was found that many public institutions in B.C. had been paying $25/tonne for certificates only worth between $9/tonne to $19/tonne; later that same month, conflict flared up “over the appropriateness of counting credits in [Great Bear Rainforest] where it was understood that large swaths of land would be protected anyway.”

Indigenous groups have also voiced opposition to emissions offsets, due to the historic displacement of communities for privatization and commodification of nature into property.

The #Carbon Offset Question: Will Canada Buy its Way to the #Climate Finish Line? https://t.co/L2p32ArBS9 #cdnpoli #emissions

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 13, 2016

So Why Are We Still Considering Emission Offsets?

The UN Paris climate conference changed everything.

Specifically, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement changed everything, allowing for the use of emission offsets to achieve national targets.

Former CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association, Andrei Marcu, called its unlikely inclusion a “major success and minor miracle.”

The recent UN climate summit in Marrakech expanded on that opportunity, effectively making decisions about the process for making the decisions about implementing it (that’s international geopolitical bureaucracy for you).

Marshall, who attended the climate talks in Marrakech as part of the Canadian delegation said the emissions trading scheme under Article 6 is undetermined as of yet.

“What we don’t have all the information on is how Article 6 will be articulated [in the Paris Agreement]. We still have two more years of negotiations to determine what the market mechanisms are and what the non-market mechanisms are as part of Article 6,” he says.

“Those will also determine to what extent Canada can rely on [emissions trading] as an option.”

Despite uncertainties, Canada was eager to have the option included in the agreement. Canada’s climate and environment minister Catherine McKenna chaired the negotiations on Article 6 in Paris and Canada’s senior negotiators described the element as “very dear” to them, Marshall says.

Emissions trading is expected to play an important and positive role in the way the Paris Agreement influences international climate policy.

So why such optimism?

For one, unlike with Kyoto, China is a full participant in the Paris Agreement. Shaffer suggests the momentum from its inclusion is resulting in an acknowledgment that global integrated action is cheaper than individual unilateral action.

Having China on board increases the potential of eventually equalizing abatement opportunities across the globe.

Amin Asadollahi, lead on climate change mitigation for North America at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, says the Paris Agreement specifically called for a detailed measurement, reporting and verification process.

While such a process has yet to be developed at the international level, some more localized systems, like the one serving the Western Climate Initiative, could serve as models.

Donner is also confident that we won’t see a repeat of previous problems with emission offsets.

Canada, he adds, pushed for guaranteed accounting to ensure incremental reductions that wouldn’t otherwise be performed and avoids double counting (in which both parties, buyers and sellers, take credit for emissions reductions).

“The good news is that by making mistakes in the past, the world can maybe figure out a better system this time,” he says.

Downsides of Emissions Trading

Of course, there are potential downsides associated with an international emissions trading scheme.

George Hoberg, environmental policy professor at the University of British Columbia, worries an over-reliance on offset measures could draw down ambitious climate leadership.

“Sharing technology and climate financing are also important indications of leadership, but only if they are a supplement to, not a substitute for, meeting domestic emission reduction obligations internally,” Hoberg says.

Asadollahi agrees: “Longer term, if you just rely on that and your emissions continue to go up, you’re not preparing your economy for this changing world.”

Marshall adds it is still important to focus on the hardline domestic policies and sectors that influence Canada’s emissions.

“I think the priority for those who want to see as much domestic action as possible is to continue to push for more ambitious emission reductions at home and for Article 6 to be relied on only to get Canada beyond its 2030 target, which we know is a weak target,” he says.

Critics also worry emissions trading could potentially be used to cover poor policymaking at the expense of public coffers.

Shaffer notes that offsets result in capital outflow — money leaving jurisdictions for specific reduction targets — unlike a carbon tax which results in a higher per-tonne price retained in the jurisdiction for possible investments in renewables, energy efficiency measures, rebates or tax cuts (that very debate surfaced at the Pan-Canadian Framework negotiations).

He says that requires governments to compare the trade-offs between a lower price per tonne and keeping all the money in the province.

Possibly the greatest danger of all — and this is something near impossible to assess as the federal government still hasn’t released the specific math of its 2030 plan — is the chance of overbetting on the availability of cheap offsets.

If many other countries manage to greatly reduce their emissions in the next decade-and-a-half due to strong climate policies and the falling price of renewables, the number of offsets on the global market may be fewer than expected.

That low supply of sellable certificates could drive up the price, the inverse of what happened under the European Union Emissions Trading System.

None of this takes into account the fact that the world’s combined national climate commitments don’t result in enough emissions reductions to stay within 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

“There are real accounting challenges in doing this,” Donner acknowledges.

With files from Carol Linnitt.

Image: Emissions rise from a processing plant in the Alberta oilsands. Photo: Kris Krug/DeSmog

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On Nov. 29, the federal government granted conditional approvals for the twinning of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline replacement project.

If built, the two pipelines will add just over one million barrels per day of export capacity from Alberta’s oilsands. Expectedly, many Canadians cried climate foul.

And, equally as predictably, there’s been a litany of arguments criticizing people for protesting the approvals.

The University of Calgary’s Trevor Tombe penned a thoughtful essay for Maclean’s contending that “blocking pipelines achieve less emissions reductions, at substantially greater cost, than the most efficient approach of pricing carbon.” In another vein, former Alberta Oil Magazine editor Max Fawcett suggested in an op-ed for Vancouver Is Awesome that “if you oppose the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, you’re effectively being an environmental NIMBY.”

It’s true not all anti-pipeline rhetoric gets the numbers right, especially when it comes to the slippery practice of predicting emissions growth.

There’s no guarantee, for instance, that the two pipelines will generate 23 and 28 megatonnes (Mt) of new emissions as suggested by some. There’s also no guarantee oil in the expanded pipeline network won’t simply displace oil from rail transport. So when it comes to emissions counting, the incremental impact of these projects on overall emissions is hard to pinpoint.

But even despite those vagaries, Canadians concerned about climate change, or concerned about our international climate commitments, have some very legitimate reasons to protest the federal approvals.

Paris Agreement Requires Canada To Cut 291 Megatonnes of Emissions by 2030

Of course, that’s assuming Canada intends to honour international climate commitments. Some Canadians might even oppose those commitments — but that’s a very different story.

Under the Paris Agreement, Canada committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which would drop the total to 524 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.

The government also loosely committed to the “high ambition” goal of keeping temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, which would require a reduction to 400 Mt by 2030. In addition the federal government committed to an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, a goal that requires dropping emissions all the way down to 150 Mt per year.

So, how do new pipelines and the oilsands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, fit into those promises?

In its submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the National Energy Board (NEB) estimates Canada’s emissions will hit 814 Mt per year by 2030. The oilsands are predicted to account for 115 Mt of that, up 43 per cent from 70 Mt in 2015.

Those numbers are “baked in” to the NEB’s 2030 estimates according to Erin Flanagan, federal policy director for the Pembina Institute.

“The reference case is bullish on fossil fuel development,” Flanagan says. “These numbers are not consistent with the Paris Agreement. These are not numbers that are aligned with Canada doing its fair share to address global climate change.”

“That’s the unfortunate reality of the NEB reference case,” she says.

“That’s why people call it a ‘coin toss on the climate.’ It’s not a Paris Agreement-aligned reference case.”

Oilsands to Expand with Global Oil Price Rebound

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers anticipates 3.7 million barrels per day of oilsands production by 2030, up from 2.4 million barrels per day in 2015.

(A July 2015 report by the Canadian Energy Research Institute pegged the 2030 higher, at 4.3 million barrels.)

Right now, oilsands producers aren’t moving enough oil to fill Canada’s pipelines. There’s currently 400,000 bpd of spare capacity in the pipeline network.

But that surplus could be rapidly filled with a recovery in global oil prices.

Brent oil prices are currently hovering around $53/barrel USD. In October, the National Energy Board predicted that Brent oil prices will hit $68/barrel USD by 2020, rising to $90/barrel USD in 2040.

But prices aren’t the only factor determining oilsands production in Alberta.

As part of Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan, the provincial government introduced a 100 Mt cap on oilsands emissions. If per-barrel intensity remains the same, that cap would allow for about 3.4 million barrels per day of oilsands production, which could be accommodated via existing pipeline and rail networks with room for maintenance and outages.

But industry is planning for much more production than that. The National Energy Board is forecasting for 4.3 million barrels per day by 2040, an almost 80 per cent increase from 2015.

That’s where new pipelines such as Trans Mountain and Line 3 come in, providing a combined one million barrels in additional capacity to move product to heavy oil refineries in California and the Gulf Coast.

Andrew Leach, energy economist at the University of Alberta and former chair of the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel, tweeted back in April: “System will face constraints in the future, which is key to case for new pipes.”

The federal government has also reiterated its support for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, a project President-elect Donald Trump intends to approve, providing he can negotiate more profits for the U.S.

Keystone would add 830,000 barrels per day to the network, bringing the total pipeline capacity to 4.2 million barrels per day by 2030, exceeding the 3.7 million barrels per day of production.

An additional 1.1 million barrels of transport capacity will be brought online if the TransCanada Energy East pipeline is approved and another 400,000 barrels if the Enbridge Mainline expansion project proceeds (which is uncertain due to the potential approval of the Keystone XL).

These pipeline systems represent a significant potential to scale up production in the oilsands. So what does that actually mean for emissions?

Oilsands Would Account for Nearly 20 Per Cent of Allowable Emissions by 2030

Per-barrel emissions in the oilsands are high and getting higher by the year.

Between 2004 and 2014, per barrel emissions grew by 25 per cent, increasing from 50 to 63 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per barrel. Most future growth in the oilsands will occur via in-situ extraction, which emits about 1.5 times the greenhouse gases than open-pit mining due to the use of natural gas to create steam.

Industry has hyped up the possibility of using new processes to cut in-situ emissions, but the technology is not expected to come into play for years.

As mentioned above the National Energy Board anticipates Alberta’s 100 Mt oilsands cap will be breached — reaching a total of 115 Mt — before 2030 (assuming, of course, that the cap isn’t simply tossed out by a new government before then.)

Suppose industry miraculously finds a way to cut per-barrel emissions by eight per cent, allowing producers to grow oilsands production to 3.7 million barrels per day — as projected by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers — while remaining within the 100 Mt cap.

David Hughes, expert on unconventional fuels and author of multiple reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, calculates that if industry produces up to the 100 Mt cap (a 43 per cent increase in production), oilsands emissions will take up a whopping 19 per cent of Canada’s entire allowable 2030 emissions budget.

“Saying that we’re going to grow oilsands by 43 per cent means our Paris Agreements are a bit Orwellian for me,” Hughes told DeSmog Canada.

“Even if the oilsands didn’t grow, it’s going to be extremely difficult [to meet our targets] given the time that’s left.”

In addition to oil pipeline approvals, Trudeau has also granted federal permits for major liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals in B.C. The Pacific Northwest LNG terminal is projected to be Canada’s single largest point source of emissions (11.5 to 14 Mt), producing more carbon pollution than even the giant Syncrude oilsands mine (12.5 Mt).

Assuming only one LNG export terminal is constructed in B.C., increasing oilsands emissions to 100 Mt would require non-oil and gas sectors — i.e. the rest of Canada — to contract by 47 per cent in emissions intensity in order for Canada to meet its climate target.

Federal Climate Policies Uncertain and Insufficient

So is that major reduction in non-oil and gas sectors going to happen?

The federal government insists that a potential increase in oilsands’ emissions will be negated by ‘upcoming climate policies.’

Problem is, no one as of yet knows what those supposed ‘upcoming’ policies are. The Prime Minister will meet with premiers at at First Ministers’ Meeting on December 9 to discuss the details of a much-anticipated pan-Canadian framework for climate action.

Stephen Guilbeault, executive director with Equiterre, said he hopes the government will finally release its climate “balance sheet” at the meeting.

“Without a balance sheet there is no way of knowing if this plan is delivering on what it says it does. What is enabling Canada’s emissions to go down? Why are they going up? To be able to adjust that plan over time and to have a genuine understanding and reassurance that we do have a plan that will put us on a path towards emissions reduction is needed for credibility,” Guilbeault says.

“Without the plusses and minuses it’s impossible for us to say whether premiers and the Prime Minister have delivered on that plan.”

He added the 2030 climate target gets a lot of attention but is by no means the end point for Canada’s climate commitments.

“Really 2030 isn’t the end. We have to totally or almost totally decarbonize our economy.”

Adam Scott, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, told DeSmog Canada that plan remains a mystery.

“The federal government has not demonstrated publicly in any way how their plan adds up,” he says.

Erin Flanagan from the Pembina Institute said nearly 100 Mt worth of emissions reductions can be pieced together from various mitigation measures: 30 Mt from a new clean fuel standard, 20 Mt from methane reductions, 18 Mt from the $50/tonne carbon price, 15 Mt from the coal phaseout and eight Mt from hydrofluorocarbon gas regulations.

But most of the meaningful emissions reductions are coming from the provinces, not federal leadership.

When it comes to phasing out coal, for example, only five Mt of emissions reductions will specifically occur due to federal policy (a number which Hughes describes as “absolutely trivial” compared to the anticipated gap from the 2030 target). Alberta and Ontario will take credit for the lion’s share of coal-related reductions.

But despite those gains made at the provincial level, continued oil and gas development, as anticipated by the NEB, means Canada’s emissions will only be reduced to around 715 Mt by 2030.

Under the Paris Agreement, Canada committed to a target of 524 Mt by 2030, leaving a gap of 191 Mt.

“That is a very different than the reality of of Canada living up to the Paris Agreement,” Flanagan says. “To meet that we need to fuel switch our entire economy. We need to run our homes and lives on clean electricity.”

Liberals Have Already Flip Flopped on Key Election Issues

Flanagan says the federal government has an excellent opportunity to present an updated plan at the First Ministers’ Meeting that details all sources of emissions, current and proposed policies, how those policies will reduce emissions and what further measures will be taken to reach the 2030 target.

But the federal Liberals have established quite the track record as of late for ignoring reports and findings, resulting in major flip flops on issues from electoral reform to marijuana legalization.

When it comes to pipelines specifically, cabinet seemed to totally disregard the six questions posted to it by its ad-hoc environmental review panel that asked the federal government how it intends to build new pipelines as well as fulfill its climate commitments.

So what the federal government intends to do nationally to reduce emissions in light of anticipated oilsands production increases is anyone’s guess.

The Liberals may be plan on allowing 115 Mt of oilsands emissions while attempting (somehow) to cut total emissions to 524 Mt by 2030.

Or perhaps they’re planning to dramatically increase carbon pricing to the $150/tonne or $200/tonne range experts say is necessary to bring emissions in line with national climate targets.

At this stage, we simply don’t know.

‘This Takes Us Completely In the Opposite Direction’

Whatever the federal government’s plan, they have plenty to do to show their work.

Sure, in the meantime uncertain, external forces could redefine the playing field.

Global oil prices may never bounce back, resulting in a natural slowdown of oilsands expansion as president-elect Trump expands U.S. domestic production.

Or, amazing new emissions-reducing technologies may be developed in the next year or two, allowing for 4.3 million barrels per day to be developed in 2030 without seriously undermining climate commitments.

The Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipelines may even be constructed but barely used, failing to deliver on promises made to company shareholders.

But one thing is certain: the urgency of the climate crisis will not wane. The power of the oil and gas lobby in Canada isn’t likely to subside and the challenge of increasing emissions from the oilsands while meeting our climate commitments isn’t likely to resolve itself.

“I don’t think it’s possible for Canada to meet its targets if it allows the tarsands expansion that this pipeline will facilitate,” Scott concludes.

“We know Canada’s target is already super weak. They’re really struggling to find all the pieces that would get them to their target.

Building new pipelines, Scott said, “takes us completely in the opposite direction.”

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Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's decision this week to approve a major expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline has negative implications that go well beyond the borders of the Great White North.

Canada is currently the largest supplier of oil to the United States. We export more oil to the US than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico combined. We are a secure, stable and reliable trading partner with the US for a product that can make or break their economy.

Right now, Canada has almost zero ability to transport its oil to anywhere other than the United States. There is no big spigot off of our east, west or north coasts that allows for overseas export to other markets, particularly in Asia. 

Approving the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion changes all of that, and for the first time Canada might be capable of shipping significant amounts of oil to markets other than the United States (assuming the project is actually completed — a big question mark given ongoing First Nations' legal challenges and resistance from British Columbians).

This fact has got to have the attention of the US government. Their stable, reliable and secure oil supply is now, for the first time in history, under threat of going to other markets.

What is President-elect Donald Trump Thinking About This?

I would bet this announcement is on President-elect Trump's radar. Trump has promised to renegotiate or even terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Trump has also promised to restart the process of building the Keystone XL pipeline that would significantly expand transport capacity for tar sands oil from Canada to the United States and foreign export markets via the Gulf of Mexico. 

While there is no doubt a benefit to Canada diversifying the customer base for its oil products, it may come at the expense of ticking off our biggest customer to the south. In the complicated world of geopolitics and oil, who knows where this could lead.

Trudeau Just Knocked Over the First Domino 

Here is a graph showing the largest proposed oil and gas projects in the world, along with the carbon emissions they will put into our atmosphere:

According to a report earlier this year by Oil Change International, if these projects are built, we are toast. Burnt toast that is.

It is crucial to the earth's climate that the projects represented in this graph are never built. Canada is in that top five as you can see, and you can also see that some not-too-cooperative countries are also in the top five, including Russia and Iran. 

What kind of message does Trudeau's approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project send to these other countries like Russia, Iran and Qatar?

I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that if there was any inkling of hesitation amongst these other countries to not proceed with building their own new pipelines, that has all been thrown out the window with Trudeau's decision. 

In fact, it is most likely that many of the countries in this graph will speed up their timelines, so as to maintain a competitive edge in the oil market over us Canadians. 

Oceans Have No Borders

The Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion will increase oil tanker traffic from around 60 tankers per year to more than 400. So instead of a massive oil tanker coming through Vancouver's waterfront and the Burrard Inlet on average every couple of weeks, we will now see on average one a day.

Experts have always said that when it comes to oil tankers, spills are not a question of if, but when. We have been relatively lucky so far that the only major spill from the existing Trans Mountain pipeline happened on land. And no matter how prepared we could be for a spill in our Inner Harbor here in Vancouver (which history has shown not to be the case), the problem is likely not containable within our own borders.

According to media reports last year, the neighboring Washington State government is "worried about Canada's ability to respond to oil spills." And they should be considering that the US-Canada ocean border is only a few miles from where all these oil tankers would travel through. The US San Juan islands for instance is a major tourism destination and home to diverse marine life, and is in serious risk from any spill that happens just up the coast. 

Image credit: Wilderness Committee

First Nations communities on both sides of the border are tied together in the Salish Sea, which predates any borders. The Coast Salish nations, along with many other First Nations' communities, are strongly opposed to this pipeline and so we will see mounting opposition and court proceedings, with implications that will likely reach across the Canada-US border. 

Our friends in the US take on a lot of risk from a potential oil spill, but see none of the economic benefits of Canada's expanded oil export capabilities.

All risk and no reward is likely something that is not sitting too well with Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, who is a very vocal supporter of action on climate change.

What About the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement, negotiated late last year by 195 countries, commits the vast majority of world leaders to dealing with the issue of climate change by committing to significantly reducing their country's greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.

At the time, newly-elected Prime Minister Trudeau and his Environment Minister Catherine McKenna were a breath of fresh air at the Pairs climate talks.  As much as we are a small country (by population), Canada is a significant player at these climate negotiations because per-capita we are historically a large emitter of greenhouse gas pollution. We also hold massive amounts of greenhouse gas reserves in our oil sands and other fossil fuel deposits. So to see Trudeau and McKenna step up at the Paris climate talks was a big deal. 

The Paris Agreement is both a functional document and a symbolic one, and in many ways its symbolism is the more powerful of the two.

The Paris Agreement sent a resounding message to the world that business-as-usual is no longer acceptable. It made clear to the global business community that the days of paying lip service to concerns about climate change is no longer acceptable, and markets have reacted. 

Speaking of lip service, did you hear about Prime Minister Trudeau approving a new expansion in oil sands pipelines that will lock in massive new amounts of carbon being pumped into our atmosphere? 

Somehow Trudeau and his government think they can reconcile a commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change with the construction of a new pipeline that will greatly increase emissions of the very thing the agreement is trying to reduce.

On paper Trudeau might be able to make that case, but he is missing the real point of the Paris Agreement and that is the signal it sends out to the world. 

With Trudeau approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, he and his government have just thrown a big bucket of sloppy crude onto that clear and resounding signal the Paris Agreement sent out to the world. 

Between domestic unrest and the international ramifications, this pipeline decision will likely come to define much of Trudeau's time in government, which quite honestly I think is something this Prime Minister really didn't think through that well.

Image courtesy of Abdallahh on Flickr under creative commons.

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The UN climate talks seemed to grind to slow motion this week with the much-hyped, much-anticipated arrival of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry arrived late for his scheduled talk, striding in with that celebrity dignitary air, surrounded by a posse of private security guards and long-lens photographers. An inexplicable apocalyptic plume of black smoke rose from the Marrakechi cityscape behind him.

From along the corridors of the conference venue adoring bystanders yelled, “We love you Secretary Kerry!”

I swear I saw Kerry’s teeth glisten like a Disney princess as he smiled and waved.

The moment was perfectly American, unfolding like a scene from a high-budget Hollywood film. In this conference mashup of international attendees it really did feel like the whole world was watching.

But they weren’t.

Secretary John Kerry at the UN climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo: Carol Linnitt

In fact, the whole of the giant complex making up the 22nd Conference of Parties seemed only to gaze up at the commotion before carrying on with its work.

At most international diplomatic events, the U.S. takes up a disproportionate amount of the sociopolitical bandwidth.

With the recent dramatic unfolding of the U.S. election — and the elevation of sideshow performer Donald Trump to one of the most powerful thrones in the world — this is truer than ever.

The reverberations of Trump’s win are still being felt in Marrakech where delegations from some 200 countries are deliberating the details of the Paris Agreement, a historic international treaty to limit global warming to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.

Trump, who said he believes climate change to be a Chinese hoax, has vowed to pull out of the Paris Agreement and unleash America’s fossil fuel corporations on the nation’s remaining hydrocarbon deposits.

Here’s Trumps 100-day energy action plan:

Trump's 100-day action plan for energy #climate #cop22 "cancel Paris Climate Agreement" and stop payments "to U.N. global warming programs." pic.twitter.com/p0BvVXzyrf

— Graham Readfearn (@readfearn) November 9, 2016

Many responded by announcing the end had come, the planet will fry and we’re all screwed.

As a Canadian watching the U.S. election furor descend into ever-deeper madness from north of the border, I’ll admit it was hard to ward off the end-times thinking.

Yet arriving in Marrakech after extracting myself from my self-referential cesspool of a Facebook feed, it was clear just how much of the world is… well… not America and preoccupied with very non-American things.

In an interview at the climate talks Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said the leadership gap left in America’s wake will simply be filled by other countries.

“The small talk here in Marrakech was, of course, completely overshadowed by the U.S. election, as everyone knows,” Solheim said. “But I’m very optimistic that whatever happens in the U.S., China and others will provide the global leadership that we need.”

China, responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s emissions while also being the world’s largest solar energy market, seemed eager to wave its diplomatic finger at the U.S. It backed up the gesture by announcing a new climate partnership with the European Union.

Lutz Weischer, leader of international climate policy at Germanwatch, said the EU/China collaboration is a game changer. He suggested Trump may have inadvertently strengthened the international community’s resolve.

“The Chinese have made statements that read to me they believe this is a global challenge…indicating the EU and China can move forward on this together,” he said. “Trump was sort of a wake up call to everybody. Countries seem even more committed than in the past.”

Solar installation in China. Photo: The Climate Group via Flickr.

Australia, Pakistan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and the U.K. have all ratified the Paris Agreement since Trump’s election, putting an end to speculation the U.S. shakeup might cause a climate treaty exodus.

Mohamed Adow, climate lead from Christian Aid International, said it’s a significant sign that even a post-Brexit U.K. isn’t abandoning the agreement.

“During a week in which the international climate negotiations have experienced the shock of the U.S. elections, this backing by America’s oldest and strongest ally shows that support for global action to tackle climate change remains resolute,” he said.

“If the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States can’t shake countries’ resolve then nothing will.”

Beyond pure political and economic leadership, many have expressed concern that the real loss will be felt in the absence of America’s moral leadership. But Weischer doesn’t see it that way.

“The strongest moral leadership in this process has always come from the vulnerable countries,” he said. “And not just in providing that leadership but in actually committing to do more.”

Bill Hare, climate scientist and director of Berlin-based Climate Analytics, said Trump’s surprise victory did dampen the mood in Marrakech — for a day.

“People bounced back quickly, thinking ‘well, okay, we can also do tough.’ “

New climate possibilities are opening up in new ways, Hare said, “because the geopolitical and technological dynamics have changed.”

Slowing emissions in China are the most obvious example.  

“From our technical analysis, we’re beginning to think China has peaked its carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels,” Hare said.

“It’s the second or third year in a row where carbon dioxide emissions have reduced and new policies announced by China should continue that trend.”

Earth to America: Trump’s Not the Centre of the Universe (Or the Climate) https://t.co/hNspoMRXIx #cdnpoli #ClimateAction

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 18, 2016

But Hare said the real news story is coming out of India, which is responsible for 6.96 per cent of the world’s total emissions and has millions of residents still without power.

For several years the world has been left to wonder if India’s solution to its energy poverty would be coal or cleaner alternatives.

Hare said news that India cancelled four ultra, mega coal plants —“which are as bad as they sound” — is a positive sign, as is the country’s massive growth rate in renewable energy.

“I think that’s the biggest story on the planet right now: will India make that transformation away from coal towards renewables bringing hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty in a clean and sustainable way?”

“That would be the biggest transformation the world has seen should it come about,” Hare said.

“So despite the depression that many people feel about the Trump election, and rightly so, in the climate policy space we see a lot of potential for things to move forward rapidly despite the turbulence from the U.S. political system.”

Liz Gallagher, senior associate with the UK-based climate analysis group, E3G said Secretary Kerry’s remarks to conference attendees may have provided some measure of comfort by emphasizing the role of pure market forces in deciding the fate of the climate.

Over 360 businesses and investors have also called on Trump to stick with the fight against global warming, saying it simply makes good business sense.

The Paris Agreement calls for a worldwide decarbonization by 2050, something that is going to require what Trump might term ‘tremendous’ amounts of renewable investment dollars.

“That’s the paradox of what president-elect Trump is proposing: he’s going backwards on policy that could make it harder for the U.S. to retain or grow its place in the world,” Hare said. “The economic benefits will be lost to the United States.”

Weischer had a similar sentiment: “This is the first time the federal U.S. government has actively decided to take the U.S. out of an emerging industrial revolution.”

Emissions in the U.S. will likely be affected by Trump’s victory but it’s not yet game over for the universe.

So maybe all that apocalypse talk emanating from the U.S. is really about something more specific: in the coming clean energy rapture, America is the one who risks being left behind.

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Implement an economy-wide carbon tax, attain “social licence,” score a federal approval for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.That’s been the advertised logic of the Alberta NDP since the introduction of its Climate Leadership Plan a year ago. Nearly every mention of carbon pricing and associated policies — a 100 megatonne oilsands cap, coal-fired power phase-out and methane reduction target — has been accompanied by a commitment to “improve opportunities to get our traditional energy products to new markets.”  Such a sentiment was reinforced with Premier Rachel Notley’s retort on Oct. 3 to the announcement of federally mandated carbon pricing: “Alberta will not be supporting this proposal absent serious concurrent progress on energy infrastructure.” But for some, the Alberta NDP’s rhetoric represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of social licence, with the government assuming that moderate emissions reduction policies allows it to ignore serious concerns about Indigenous rights and international climate commitments.

“It’s like saying: ‘if I’m good to my neighbour then I can engage in some petty theft of the corner store.’ As opposed to saying: ‘Being good to my neighbour and the environment just means that I’ve learned how to start to do that on an ongoing basis.’ It doesn’t open up the possibility for something else.”

Social Licence Responds to Perceived Flaws in Regulators

The concept of “social licence to operate” was birthed out of the mining sector in the late 1990s.

Jennifer Winter, director of energy and environmental policy at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, says the idea made sense in that particular context, with companies attempting to engage the immediate community with partnerships, Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs) and local hiring preferences.

However, Winter notes there’s never been a clear articulation of what social licence even is.

“It’s like any other buzzword,” she says. “It sounds good and you think it has meaning. But what is it? Who grants this licence?”

Szeman agrees that the definition of social licence is indeed murky. But unlike Winter — who suggests the discussion “definitely hasn’t helped in terms of people thinking of the NEB as an effective and neutral regulator” — he says he’s “very glad” that it’s being talked about and that it helpfully attempts to broaden the onus of responsibility beyond what agencies and boards currently require from companies.

“I think it’s this kind of sense that ‘is this a kind of enterprise that is a legitimate one in today’s world given the challenges that the entire society is facing, whether or not our legal description has caught up to it?’,” says Szeman, adding that the Alberta NDP is “abusing the concept” by detaching it from such roots.

‘It’s A Real Stretch For Governments to Claim to Grant Social Licence’

As opposed to corporate social responsibility — which is largely assessed and reported on by the company itself via annual reports and sizable marketing teams — the idea of social licence has been claimed by communities as a pressure point to make up for perceived deficiencies in consultations and environmental assessments conducted by governments and corporations.

Fiona MacPhail and Paul Bowles, both economics professors at the University of Northern British Columbia who were collaboratively interviewed via e-mail, noted that many communities have “co-opted” the term for their own purposes as opposed to the typical co-optation by industry and governments of terms like “empowerment” and “participation.”

“Seeing this, governments are entering the debate too and trying to use the language to support their aims, in this case by arguing that oil pipelines have social licence if they are accompanied by a carbon tax and climate change targets,” they write.

“It’s a real stretch for governments to claim to grant social licence [to themselves] since it’s their failure to ensure that the ‘political licences’ which they grant to resource firms have legitimacy that spurred the move to social licence in the first place.”

#Alberta’s #CarbonTax Doesn’t Equal ‘Social Licence’ for New Pipelines https://t.co/woeYeqDJSs #ableg #bcpoli #cdnpoli #KinderMorgan

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Over Half of Canadians Have Little to No Confidence in the National Energy Board

This notion is especially true in the context of pipelines, which cross many jurisdictions that have distinct interests and concerns (including spills, tanker traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, all of which can result in problems far beyond the scope of provincial or national boundaries).

For instance, what does consent look like when a pipeline crosses dozens of First Nations, municipalities and tracts of private land? Is gaining an “approval” from 51 per cent of impacted citizens enough?

Winter argues that the job of regulators like the National Energy Board (NEB) and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) isn’t to decide if every person and community is better off by having a pipeline, but if “Canada as a whole is better off.”

This perspective is echoed in the rhetoric of a unitary “Canadian public interest” that the NEB uses to describe its own responsibilities, as well as Notley’s submission to the NEB in support of Kinder Morgan’s proposal: “This important pipeline infrastructure will support an integrated energy economy in Canada that will be more attractive to investors, which in turn will generate more economic activity Canada-wide.”

But Szeman suggests that such nationalistic rhetoric is no longer sufficient.

“I find it very interesting the degree to which quite a large segment of the Canadian public don’t find the claims made on behalf of pipeline projects to have the proper amount of legitimacy,” he says. “Not because they don’t understand that it might lead to jobs and profits, but because they don’t buy the long-standing argument that the thing that matters above all else is jobs and profits.”

Commitments to Indigenous Rights and Climate Targets Currently Ignored

If the responsibilities and actions of the NEB and CEAA reflected an acknowledgement of the inability for Canada to both build new pipelines and meet international climate commitments, for instance, then perhaps it would be a different story.

Or if projects only proceeded with the guarantee of “free, prior and informed consent” as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), then social licence might “not exist” as many conservative commentators insist.

But the overhaul of the NEB and CEAA hasn’t been completed in time to impact the review of the new Kinder Morgan pipeline, contradicting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge during the federal election to the Dogwood Institute’s Kai Nagata.

The project is still opposed by the mayors of Vancouver and Burnaby, the chief of Tsleil-Waututh Nation and the Treaty Alliance Against Tarsands Expansion, which features more than 50 signatories. On Oct. 24, 99 people received trespassing citations outside Parliament Hill while protesting the Kinder Morgan expansion; two weeks later, 15 people occupied the constituency office of Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr for the same reason.

Alberta’s climate plan and Canada’s review of its environmental assessment process hasn’t done nearly enough to satisfy concerns about new pipelines that will allow for the further expansion of the oilsands.

But as indicated in Notley’s Oct. 3 speech, the Alberta NDP seems to assume that the battle for hearts and minds has been concluded, and that social licence has been attained.

Winter says there’s a lot banked on that assumption.

“I think it would be really politically costly for the Alberta NDP if the federal government decides not to approve Trans Mountain,” she says. “The issue is that I’m not convinced that Alberta implementing a carbon tax is really going to change opinions on whether or not the oilsands are bad. I don’t think that moving to a broad-based carbon tax really buys that much more.”

Image: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Photo: Premier of Alberta via Flickr

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On Sunday, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced that the federal government will stick with the previous government’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The news, delivered via an interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon, attracted a significant amount of criticism.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May described it as “nothing short of a disaster for the climate” and Press Progress suggested the news undermined election commitments and later statements by the Liberals.

Fair enough: McKenna had previously called the targets the “floor,” noting that “certainly we want to try to do better.” And in election materials, the Liberals stated: “We will work together to establish national emissions-reduction targets.”

Not exactly a broken promise, but some had hoped for more.

But here’s the thing: yes, the Liberals could have set a more ambitious target. And yes, to help keep global temperatures below two degrees of warming, they will need to in the future.

But what matters is not setting a target — it’s meeting a target.

The two previous federal governments were nowhere near to meeting the targets they set, so Canada is working to catch up right now.

While setting a new, more ambitious target might have drawn positive headlines, it may well have set the country up for repeated failures.

Ultimately, policy experts are more concerned with the details that will be contained in the government’s upcoming climate plan.

“At the end of the day, as much as the goals and targets matter, what matters most is reducing emissions,” says Amin Asadollahi, the lead for climate change mitigation for North America at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“Measures matter more. Setting up a target and missing it misses the point.”

Clare Demerse, federal policy advisor for Clean Energy Canada, agrees.

“We have, in this country, a long history of having targets and a very short history of having actual plans to meet them. We have been in a situation where Canada has really established a credibility problem in terms of hitting targets. We need to fix that.”

Paris Agreement Requires Canada To Review Targets Every Five Years

The important and now reaffirmed climate target is a reduction of emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030; a recent paper from the Climate Action Network indicated that current measures will result in a 91 megatonne overshoot, so a lot is still going to have to change.

There’s also a goal in place to cut emissions in 2020 by 17 per cent, largely considered impossible given a decade of inaction by the federal Conservatives. And then there are the most distant goals of a 65 per cent reduction by 2050 and a G7 goal of full decarbonization by 2100.

The Paris Agreement, which hasn’t yet been ratified by Canada, will require each country to review targets every five years starting in 2018 and justify plans to the international community.

“Every five years, we’ll come back to the table and the international community will test this resolve as to whether it has the political will to put the world on a trajectory to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Asadollahi says.

And political will — inextricably linked to public acceptability — is what this is really about. Can the Liberals put in place a plan to meet the target and get re-elected?

Why @JustinTrudeau’s Commitment to Harper’s Old Emissions Target Might Not Be Such Bad News After All https://t.co/SBtzmCn2W0 #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 21, 2016

2030 Target Tough, But Achievable

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, says that meeting the 2030 target will be challenging but achievable, especially given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity and available political capital.

Plenty of options are on the table. A predictable price on carbon via a tax or cap-and-trade framework is considered the most important. McKenna has indicated the federal government will set a national price if provinces don’t take measures themselves, despite resistance from Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

A new report, Is Win Win Possible? Can Canada Meet Its Paris Commitment … And get Re-Elected?, published on Tuesday by renowned climate policy analyst Mark Jaccard recommends a combination of a $40/tonne of carbon dioxide tax by 2030, accompanied by an array of flexible and industry-specific regulations.

Other measures could include an accelerated phase-out of coal, better building codes, fuel efficiency standards, energy efficiency measures, incentivizing a faster deployment of renewables and smart grids, support for electric vehicles and charging stations and better public transit.

Demerse notes that governments and industry often overestimate how difficult environment policy is going to be to implement.

“Once you get started and it becomes a conversation where you take the lobbyists out and unleash the engineers, you see all kinds of innovation,” she says. “That’s certainly been the story with clean energy, where we’ve seen the cost of clean energy fall very significantly.”

Let's Not Forget About Decarbonization

Stewart warns that such measures could be effective enough to meet 2030 targets, but would be undermined if the Liberals approve new pipelines and massively expanded oilsands production, which would lock in new greenhouse gas emissions for decades.*

As a result, he says it’s important to start working now towards decarbonization — meaning no further growth of the oilsands, as also recommended by Jaccard — which in itself would allow for the meeting of 2030 targets given oil and gas now contributes the most emissions of any sector in the country.

Stewart says that such decisions will require some “tough political fights” but that the federal government has all the tools it needs to make the big changes required.

“If you’re not forcing anyone to change their behaviour, you’re not actually changing any outcomes,” he says. “Thirty per cent by 2030 isn’t good enough. We have to go farther. And the Paris Agreement builds in a way to ratchet up that level of ambition.”

The next United Nations climate conference will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from November 7 to 18. Given the successes at the last iteration in Paris, it’s likely that it will be a quieter affair. But Canada will need to have the ball rolling on a serious climate plan by that point, especially given its ambitions to land a UN Security Council seat.

“We haven’t seen the work they’ve been putting together,” Demerse says. “We know it’s going to be very political and not simple. We’re still in a wait and see mode. This is a process that can deliver but we don’t yet know what’s going to come out at the end of this.”

*Update Notice: Sept. 22, 2016, 10 a.m.: This article previously incorrectly stated that the Liberals could approve new pipelines and meet the 2030 targets.

Photo: Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and her chief of staff Marlo Raynolds, via the Pembina Institute.

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