“C” is for climate platform: Grading the major national parties’ climate plans

NOTE: A revised version of this post will be published on the Center for International Policy Studies blog next week (August 8, 2021).

The summer of 2021 may mark a potential turning point in Canada’s collective climate consciousness: In June, an unprecedented “heat dome” in Western Canada saw temperatures soar to record heights. The whole world watched as the town of Lytton, BC, hit 49.6°C, completely shattering the country’s previous heat records. Then came the wildfires – hundreds of them – followed by relentless crop-killing drought throughout much of the prairies, and hazy smoke-filled skies across the rest of the country for weeks. The highly anticipated release of the IPCC’s Sixth Climate Assessment in August seemed to solidify for many Canadians just how destabilizing climate change will be in their own lifetimes.

It is perhaps unsurprising that climate change now ranks as the number one concern of Canadian voters. Now that the Trudeau Liberals have called a snap election, let us take a moment to evaluate the four major parties’ climate platforms. With the exception of the Green Party, which hasn’t yet released a full platform, the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP each have dedicated climate plan documents, available here, here, and here, respectively. For its part, Green Party leader Annamie Paul has suggested that the party’s stance on climate change is “virtually identical” to what it was during the 2019 election campaign (so I base my analysis on that document, which can be found here). For this analysis I developed a fairly rudimentary ‘rubric’ to grade each climate plan along four axes: ambition, feasibility, effectiveness, and accessibility. Here’s a breakdown for each category, with the final ‘grades’ posted below:

Ambition 

Here I sought to determine how ambitious each plan was relative to Canada’s current climate policy framework. Ramping up ambition is important domestically, as it signals to voters how urgent of an issue the government considers climate change to be, and hints at the scale of change required to address the problem. Canada’s current climate policy framework, as shaped by the Trudeau liberals over the last half decade, is more ambitious than the prior Harper government’s climate policy, thanks to a wide range of programs and policies that have been introduced (in particular, the Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which includes carbon pricing as a core element of the plan; and the Net Zero Accountability Act, which requires the government to set legally-binding five-year GHG reduction targets through to reaching Net Zero in 2050). 

I graded each party on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 marks a major scaling back of ambition; 5 marks the same level of ambition as the government’s current policy; and 10 marks a major ramping up of ambition. The Liberals scored a 7/10, in part because they have expressed a clear desire to take their climate mitigation strategy to the next level, including ramping up Canada’s GHG reduction target, earlier this year, to 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2030. The Conservatives have stated a desire to scale back to the Harper era target (30% below 2005 levels by 2030). That’s a major problem, as it would mark a violation of the Paris Agreement rules. For this reason, they scored a low 4/10. If the Liberals mark a scaling-up of ambition, then the NDP’s plan does so even further, with a stated reduction of 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 (earning them a score of 8/10). The Greens, who in 2019 called for a 60% reduction below 2005 levels by 2030 as well as a complete re-orientation of the economy around climate change mitigation, earned an impressive 9/10 for ambition. 

Feasibility

Of course, it’s one thing to have ambition, quite another thing to have a viable plan to get us there. Unsurprisingly, those parties with the most ambition generally have plans that seem harder to swallow given Canada’s contemporary political reality. Here I asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how feasible each plan was in terms of being “palatable” and “adoptable” given Canada’s contemporary social, political and economic contexts, with 1 representing a plan that will face major obstacles; 5 representing a ‘typical’ level of political support and opposition seen in Canadian policy implementation; and 10 marking a plan that will easily garner enough support to come to fruition.

For context, it’s important to remember how wedded parts of the country are, politically and economically, to oil and gas production. Let us also not forget the torrent of opposition that often comes alongside new oil and gas infrastructure (in particular, pipeline projects). Canada, in short, is a divided nation on the question of whether fossil fuels have any role to play in the future. The country also has a complex federal structure where various areas of overlapping jurisdiction between provinces and the national government compete, making climate policy a slow and hiccup-ridden process. On one hand, the Liberals have a high level of political support for their climate objectives, even from voters in other parties, leading to a fairly high score on feasibility. However, because of the tensions simmering beneath the surface of its carbon pricing plan, the Liberals’ platform scored a 7/10. There are plenty of actors, in short, that will seek – and have the means – to throw wrenches in Trudeau’s plans. The Conservative plan scored a titch higher (at 8/10). The reality is that because most Canadians want to see climate action, it is unlikely that there would be much opposition to any climate-based policies that the Conservatives seek to put in place, with perhaps the exception of the increasingly vocal youth climate movement, which is unlikely to take kindly to a roll-back in ambition. The NDP plan would likely garner support from many corners of the Canadian populace, but its proposed deep emissions cuts are likely to push up against social and cultural norms in various parts of the country (they got 6/10); the Greens would push even more buttons (the policy changes required for a 60% reduction of 2005 emissions over the next 9 years would be very difficult to bring about politically, so their score was 4/10). 

Effectiveness

In terms of effectiveness, I sought to measure how successful the plan would be in meeting global climate change mitigation goals if the plan were fully instituted. I asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective each plan would be in terms of putting Canada on a path towards supporting the Paris temperature targets of limiting global warming to between 1.5° and 2.0° C (with 1 representing a plan that does not come close to supporting Canada’s required contributions; 5 marking a plan that approaches the 2.0° C threshold; and 10 denoting a plan that would firmly put Canada in the group of countries helping the world get to within the 1.5° to 2.0° C temperature target). 

Canada’s current planned policies put the country on track for what Climate Tracker calls an “insufficient” contribution to climate mitigation, meaning that if all other countries had the same level of ambition as Canada, the world would likely see up to 3°C of warming by 2100. Given the Liberal plan to improve emissions reduction targets and its overall comprehensiveness, I’m tempted to offer a score of 6/10. However, the plan’s relatively high reliance on carbon sequestration technology, its unwillingness to embrace the idea of full decarbonization (using instead the oil and gas sector’s subversive language on “Net Zero”), and its central focus on the ever-elusive idea of “green growth”, bring the score down to a 4/10. The truth is it’s going to be incredibly difficult to make Canada’s economy compliant with Paris’ global temperature goals without drastic changes to our economic and regulatory structure, because we’re starting from such a high baseline and have so little time to get to zero. For all their good intentions, the Liberal climate policy is too conservative in its attempts to achieve emissions reductions without changing the nation’s political economy too significantly. The Conservative plan is even worse as far as effectiveness goes. Yes, it offers up a range of tools mirroring some of the Liberal policies, including carbon pricing for individuals and corporate polluters, EV sales mandates, and billions in clean energy investments, but these place much of the GHG mitigation burden on greener market activity, which just isn’t going to cut it (they get a 2/10). The NDP scores a 6/10 for effectiveness (it’s got great broader plans, but it’s also a little light on details, so it’s hard to measure how effective these would be). The Greens score 7/10 (they offer a comprehensive set of policies, though it is a bit surprising to see them turn their back entirely on nuclear energy, which already accounts for 15% of Canada’s electricity generation and arguably should play some role if the foremost concern is climate change mitigation). While these latter two plans are indeed ambitious, they sadly only narrowly put Canada on track to support a global warming limit of below 2°C.

Accessibility

Even though a plan may garner sufficient political support, a plan’s overall quality can be weakened if it is seen to be “out of touch”. Here I’m looking at things like how each plan tackles the problem of incorporating various subtypes of Canada’s diverse population into the plan of action. To what extent do oil and gas workers, Indigenous communities, Canada’s rural population and urbanites, youth and elders, etc. see themselves represented in the plan? Is the platform presented as a “top-down” plan that citizens will be coerced to follow, or is it a fully-inclusive plan that Canadians from coast to coast to coast will willingly participate in? On a scale of 1 to 10, I sought to measure each plan’s “accessibility” in this regard. Part of the score was also reserved for the actual nature of the platform as a communication tool – since that is the first entry point for most climate voters seeking to determine whether the party has something to offer.

As far as grades go, the Liberals took a hit for having a plan that comes across as a tad out of touch with everyday Canadians (scoring a 5/10). Yes, different stakeholder groups are mentioned in the plan, but the plan is communicated more as “we’ve got a plan for you” than “we’re counting on your unique contribution”. The Conservative platform is notable for seeking to reach out to a number of different groups in Canada without alienating them, from oil sands workers to Indigenous peoples, to farmers and everyday Canadian families. Ironically though, the growing pool of climate-concerned voters may not be intimately enthused by the watered-down role expected of them (so the Conservatives scored a 6/10). The NDP score was hurt in part by just being a bit wordy – the plan comes across as overly academic, although they get points from strong worker incorporation through a focus on green jobs (score 5/10). The Green Party incurred a score reduction due to its likely interpretation as excluding workers in heavy-emitting sectors; many “comfortable” Canadian families will feel like the plan is an attack on their way of life (it also took an added hit for not having released a climate platform specifically for this election; final score 4/10).

Overall Results

In the end, we get a sense of the “shape” of each party’s plan by plotting the scores on a radar graph (see Figure 1). As expected, parties with lower ambition scores tend to have higher feasibility scores, and parties that have comprehensive effective plans are likely to be seen as less ‘accessible’ to everyday Canadians. That’s just how democracy rolls. 

Figure 1: Assessment of the Four Major National Parties’ Climate Platforms, Canadian Federal Election 2021

Finally, we can also tally up the cumulative scores to see which party receives the highest grade overall (Figure 2). Here, the NDP pulled ahead ever so slightly, with 25 points (out of a possible 40). They were followed by the Greens in second place (24/40); Liberals in third (at 23/40); and the Conservatives trailing behind at 20/40). Climate voters should consider this analysis critically, this is, after all, just one person’s subjective analysis. The bad news is that, in grading terms, no party scored higher than a “C”! While it’s certainly no easy task to come up with a viable climate plan that will please everyone, our country’s historically lax efforts on climate change mitigation make this evermore important for Election 44.

Figure 2: Cumulative Scores (out of 40), Party Climate Platforms, Election 44 (2021)

Taking the train across Canada is worse for the climate than flying (and why the government ought to do something about that)

Despite its reputation as a more sustainable form of transport, long-distance passenger rail travel in Canada typically results in a higher carbon footprint per passenger than long-distance commercial air travel. This is what I discovered after diving into the emissions data (recently published in the journal Canadian Geographer). I know it seems crazy, but that's what the data suggest...

So, I wrote a blog post about this, which the folks at the University of Ottawa's Institute for Science, Society and Policy kindly published on their blog site. Check it out! In it I explain why Canada’s long-distance rail services defy the ‘green’ reputation held by rail transportation globally, and offer some policy proposals for improving the situation.

Here's the link--> https://issp.uottawa.ca/en/news/taking-train-across-canada-worse-climate-flying-and-why-government-ought-do-something-about

Canada’s oil and gas sector and climate mitigation – Part 1: The problem

The following is from a two-part guest blog I wrote for the McLeod Group. See the original here.

The 2019 federal election revealed an underlying contradiction between Canada’s climate change mitigation policy and its energy development strategy. On one hand, voters rewarded the Trudeau government’s efforts to take bold action on climate change. On the other hand, the Prairie provinces demonstrated deep discontent with what they saw as a federal government bent on stifling the energy sector.

Despite trying to find a balance between economic and environmental interests, the Trudeau government’s balancing efforts during its first term – particularly its decision to purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline and put a price on carbon – only aggravated both sides. Environmentalists believed that the pipeline concession was a death blow to a viable climate plan, while proponents of the oil and gas sector argued that the “carbon tax” would increase the cost of everything and fail to reduce emissions.

Canada thus faces an extremely difficult challenge ahead in reconciling these competing interests. It wants to do well by the world in terms of contributing to climate change mitigation. And yet it also wants to accrue some economic benefit from being in the fortunate position of sitting atop the world’s third-largest oil reserves (169 billion barrels, 10% of the world’s oil).

The Canadian government also wants to achieve reconciliation with First Nations communities. While some of these communities see commercial opportunities in oil and gas development, others vehemently oppose the sector. Moreover, it wants to unify a country which is deeply divided along provincial lines, with Québec and B.C. effectively blocking Alberta oil from reaching the East and West coasts, respectively.

So, what is to be done? I do not claim to have all the answers. But if the Trudeau government sticks with the same approach as before, it is destined to fail.

The previous approach was kneecapped by its unnuanced interpretation of the relationship between the economy and the environment. The Trudeau government’s mantra became “the environment and the economy go hand in hand!”. This adage was rammed down Canadians’ throats at every turn.

The problem is that this is not always true. What’s good for the economy is not always good for the environment, and vice versa. While it is possible to lessen the environmental footprint of growth (in fact, for every dollar of GDP growth today, Canada only emits 65% as much CO2 as it did in 1990), there are nevertheless limits to this trend. In some spaces this type of win-win relationship between economy and environment is simply unattainable.

Attempts to reconcile climate action and growth is a lost cause in the oil and gas sector in particular. Even if it were possible to achieve carbon-neutral production (a nearly impossible target in the case of Alberta bitumen), there is the additional challenge of decarbonizing the transport of oil and gas to market.

Pipelines currently emit the equivalent of 7.1 million tons of CO2 in Canada, more than all emissions from domestic aviation. We would also have to neutralize leaks, known as fugitive emissions, which amount to astonishing 54 million tons of CO2, or 7.5% of Canada’s total emissions. In addition, we would then need to decarbonize oil and gas consumption within the end-use sectors such as transport and heating, which account for 28% and 11% of Canada’s emissions, respectively. Oil and gas extraction alone accounts for nearly 15% of Canada’s total, and these emissions are expected to increase in the coming years. In short, any form of support for oil and gas – be it regulatory approval of a pipeline, or a fossil fuel subsidy – poses a direct challenge to climate action.

By the same token, most aggressive climate mitigation policies – such as putting a price on carbon or investing in renewable energy – pose a threat to the viability of the oil and gas sector. In this particular instance, what’s good for the economy is not good for the environment.

However, that is not to say that there’s no possible win-win scenario, even in the Prairies. In fact, numerous opportunities await, with four obvious areas of opportunity: a) renewable energy; b) regenerative agriculture; c) oil well reclamation; and d) alternative fuels.

The renewable energy opportunities in Alberta and Saskatchewan are exceptional. The potential for wind power, solar energy, and geothermal are orders of magnitude greater than presently installed capacity of those energy technologies. They could be expanded with the aim of generating tens of thousands of green jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity over the next decade.

The Prairie provinces are also agricultural powerhouses. While agriculture presently emits about 8.4% of Canada’s greenhouse gases, the switch to regenerative practices like no-till crop production or grassland conservation grazing have potential to sequester enormous amounts of CO2. That would offset some of those emissions, all while producing high-value food commodities and generating other ecosystem benefits, relating to biodiversity, soil quality and watershed management.

After decades of oil and gas development, Western Canada has a significant problem on its hands, with 139,000 inactive or abandoned oil wells requiring clean-up. Alberta’s share of the clean-up will cost $260 billion. As Regan Boychuk and Avi Lewis recently pointed out, this could be interpreted as a $260 billion opportunity. One of the obvious benefits is that the same jobs which were created by the drilling industry could be sustained by substantial investments in the reclamation industry. Since reclamation involves restoring topsoil and re-establishing vegetation, these projects would also support additional carbon sequestration.

Finally, alternative fuels offer tremendous promise in the Western provinces as well, particularly since they are linked to existing sectors such as agriculture, forestry and fossil fuels. There are a number of different kinds of low-carbon alternative fuels.

Biofuels are in theory carbon-neutral because they are made using crop by-products or other materials, such as forestry residues and waste from the agri-food sector. They thus return CO2 to the atmosphere in a cyclical manner when burned – as opposed to burning fossil fuels, which just pumps additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Hydrogen is another proposed alternative fuel for the transport sector. There is presently a carbon-neutral trucking pilot project in Alberta underway. It is fuelled entirely by hydrogen, which only emits water when burned.

The most common source of hydrogen is fossil fuel (of which there is no shortage in Western Canada!). One recent scientific effort has found a way to extract hydrogen from oil deposits underground, leaving the carbon dioxide underground as well. This is also useful for a third kind of alternative fuel known as electrofuels. They combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide sucked out of the air to produce synthetic hydrocarbons that mimic fossil fuels, but are carbon-neutral.

In many ways, these four opportunities are already being explored. The renewable energy sector is red hot in the Prairies. The expansion of no-till agriculture across the Prairie provinces, which started decades ago, has increased yields, reduced fertilizer and fuel costs and continues to support the drawdown of CO2. This year, there were more decommissioned wells than drilled wells in Alberta. One report on bioenergy found that between 2007 and 2014, bioenergy projects in Alberta produced a savings equivalent to 11 million tons of CO2 and gave rise to a $2 billion dollar industry supporting thousands of jobs.

But there’s a catch. These climate mitigation and economic development opportunities will only be truly maximized if they receive the requisite levels of support from the rest of Canada.

The federal government in particular has an essential role to play. Instead of extending olive branches in the form of pipelines, the feds should get out of the oil business and focus their efforts on achieving a genuine, just transition led by the innovative people of the Prairies. Instead of merely paying lip service to incentives for clean energy through tax breaks, Canada ought to fork over major investment dollars – in research, development and, in particular, support for new infrastructures required for this transition. Instead of centring its economic development strategy on getting Alberta oil to tidewater, the Trudeau government ought to recognize the vulnerabilities lurking behind high-cost synthetic bitumen in a very volatile world market. Finally, the government should support indigenous leadership in climate change mitigation, particularly by fully implementing the 94 calls to action laid out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The post-2014 downturn in Alberta has exacerbated sentiments of Western alienation. The resurgence of secure, well-paying jobs in the region could help reduce these tensions. The Trudeau government must recognize the opportunity before it. It needs to tackle economic development, national unity and climate change all at once. There’s not enough time left to keep making the same mistakes as before.

The GM Oshawa Closure and Canada's Transition to a Zero-Emissions Vehicle Fleet

This post was originally published in Policy Options/ Options Politiques, on December 3rd, 2018.

The recent closure of the GM Oshawa plant has both nothing and everything to do with climate change. Nothing, in the sense that any claim that GM was motivated by altruistic desires to curtail emissions by focusing on electric vehicles is largely hogwash: The plant closure was fundamentally a financial decision made by a mega-corporation stuck making a bid to survive in a very quickly evolving global automobile market. Everything, because at a macro-scale we can in part attribute the closure to climate change, as climate change had a fundamental role in prompting that transformation of the global automobile market.

There are many questions coming out of this unfortunate event. But a couple of the important ones are, Where does this leave Canada in terms of its preparedness to participate in the 21st century automobile sector, which is largely centred on electric and autonomous vehicles? And, what role (if any) should governments, at all levels, play to improve Canada’s industrial positioning in that sector?


Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and the international community has committed to keeping the world to 1.5°C of warming from preindustrial levels. The transport sector is responsible for a considerable part of both domestic emissions (about 28 percent of the total and growing) and global emissions (about 14 percent of the total), so the transition to a zero-emissions vehicle fleet could be a significant part of the broader climate change mitigation efforts.

There are a few considerations to keep in mind, as Canada navigates through this multifaceted transition. First, there is an important distinction between policies oriented toward shifting production and those focused on consumption. Governments have a role to play in both, but they would require very different types of actions.

On the consumption side, there are the incentives and regulations shaping consumer behaviour. The “carrots” include policies like the handsome rebates offered by some provincial governments toward the purchase of electric vehicles; the “sticks” include putting a price on carbon (making fuel-powered cars more expensive vis-à-vis electric alternatives), and jurisdictional “bans” on internal combustion engines, as we’ve seen in Paris, Madrid and Mexico City. Of course, these bans are rather intangible in terms of actual changes to law or policy, but they are nevertheless important in that they signal to consumers, commercial enterprises and vehicle manufacturers that this change is coming down the pipe, so they should start preparing for it now.

On the production side, we have to keep in mind that the 20th-century auto-sector model (in which a handful of global automakers commanded the market and much of the supply chain associated with it) is pretty much dead now. The new landscape includes a range of new players, with Tesla, BYD, Wheego, Coda, Bison, and even Apple, Google, Uber, Lyft and Zipcar vying for various aspects of the market. These companies are tackling specific challenges like automation sensors, artificial intelligence, larger batteries, onboard telecommunications, GPS, and cybersecurity integration, in the inclusion of automobiles within the sharing economy. A recent analysis by Frost and Sullivan found 1,700 start-ups around the world vying for various shares of these new auto market subsectors.

The GM closure is a wake-up call that the old model of relying on a few large players to benevolently pursue corporate social responsibility goals and drive consumer demand for more efficient vehicles is unlikely to work.

This in itself is an indication that the 21st-century auto sector is much more complex – we’re not just talking about competition between different brands of the same product (variations on the internal combustion engine). We are now talking about competition between different visions of human transportation: ride sharing vs. car-sharing vs. personal car ownership vs. new modes of public transit vs. telecommuting vs. human-driven vehicles vs. autonomous vehicles vs. plug-in hybrid vehicles vs. fully electric vehicles, and so on. The point is, policies centred on propping up the 20th-century model (such as the 2009 auto bailout) are bound to fail in this brave new world.

The good news is that if we think about the new automobile sector as one piece in a much broader multidimensional shift to a clean energy economy, things start to look a little more promising for Canada.

This clean energy shift includes the expansion and greening of the electricity sector; the development of smart grids and third-generation charging infrastructure; major improvements in autonomous vehicle technology; and the rolling out of new emissions-free equipment in the manufacturing and extractives sectors, among other changes. This is where Canada holds promise and opportunity. Whether it’s the mining of copper (electric vehicles use about four times as much copper as internal combustion engine vehicles) and other metals and minerals required for renewable energy and lithium batteries as well as for other hi-tech products, or research and innovation in new efficient or smart technologies, there are numerous opportunities for Canadian firms to participate in various aspects of the clean energy economy.

Governments at all levels do therefore have a role to play, which is to foster the clean energy transition that the players in this new auto sector will depend on to succeed. In this regard, the federal government and some provincial governments deserve at least some credit for large-scale investments they have made in programs like the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network, the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change (which included the development of a Zero-Emissions Vehicles Strategy), the tax incentives for firms using clean energy and manufacturing equipment, and other measures. Many of the incentives in the Pan-Canadian Framework support the demand side of the equation, with heaps of funding for green infrastructure (including public transport projects across the country).

If Canada is going to decarbonize its economy at some point this century, then it will need to achieve a zero-emissions vehicle fleet at some point this century as well. The GM closure is a long overdue wake-up call that the old model of relying on a few large corporate players to benevolently pursue their corporate social responsibility goals and drive consumer demand for more efficient vehicles is unlikely to work, as either an economic or an environmental strategy. Governments at all levels have an important role to play in signalling future objectives for our society, incentivizing positive action on behalf of consumers and producers, and fostering an environment conducive to high-calibre research and world-class innovation; investing in green infrastructures that support the transition; adequately and fairly pricing carbon; and regulating the “bad apples.” It is indeed a sad time for Oshawa, but hope is not entirely lost; policy-makers just need to think forward as they address this challenge, rather than replicating past mistakes.

Decarbonizing Canada: We Must Increase our Efforts in Electrification and Storage

Electric tractors, electric industrial machinery, electric trains, and batteries batteries batteries! These are the kinds of thing we absolutely need if we're going succeed in decarbonizing Canada's economy. It's a numbers game: If we completely switched to renewable energy tomorrow in the electricity sector - phasing out all coal plants and natural gas generating stations - we would still have 88% of the nation's GHG emissions to contend with! Yikes. Putting a price on carbon, increasing efficiency and eliminating waste, and building up renewables are all fine and dandy, but they can only go so far if our machinery and transport vehicles continue to be powered primarily by fossil fuels. Here's an article I wrote for Alternatives Journal about these missing pieces in Canada's climate change plan:

The Missing Pieces in Canada’s Climate Change Mitigation Plan

Canada needs to go above and beyond the Paris Agreement to make a decarbonized economy a reality

THE PARIS CLIMATE TALKS have come to an end, and a historic agreement has been reached. In Canada, environmentalists have breathed a deep sigh of relief as the federal and provincial governments have signalled their plans to collaborate on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, between all the talk about putting a price on carbon, increasing energy efficiency, and building renewable energy capacity, some crucial pieces of the climate change mitigation puzzle have been largely overlooked — electrification and power storage. It is in these related areas that the provinces and Ottawa must show real leadership if Canada is going to succeed in ‘decarbonizing’ the economy.

It is one thing to green the existing electrical grid, it is quite another to facilitate the electrification of those sectors which have traditionally been dominated by fossil fuel use. Governments have overwhelmingly focused on the former, but it is just as crucial (if not more so) to find ways to electrify the machinery that has previously run on oil, gasoline and natural gas. This means greatly expanding electrical generation and storage capacity and introducing rules, regulations and incentives to change the way individuals and businesses carry out everyday tasks, particularly within the industrial, agricultural and transport sectors.

The norm for the last century has been to use diesel to power our tractors and agricultural vehicles, natural gas (or even oil) to heat our homes, gasoline to power our cars, and any mix of these fossil fuels to run our industrial machinery, construction tools and freight transport. If we want to have any hope of decarbonizing our economy Canada needs to make the shift towards electrification in all of these areas.

Let me demonstrate the absolutely crucial nature of this problem with the following thought exercise: If I told you Canada could completely green the grid overnight – that as of tomorrow only ‘carbon free’ sources of energy (hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and nuclear) will be used to generate Canada’s electricity, by what percentage would you think the nation’s GHG emissions would drop? It may surprise Canadians to learn that the answer is a measly 12 percent.  In other words, even if we completely eliminate all coal and gas-fired power plants, Canada would still have to find a way to eliminate the vast majority (88 percent) of its GHG emissions.

For many years electrification of this sort simply was not feasible due either to the inability and high cost of storing sufficient quantities of energy effectively in batteries, or the practical dilemmas involved in connecting mobile objects to an electrical current. There is no doubt these challenges persist, yet today significant inroads have been made in power storage technologies. For instance, there is Tesla’s new ‘power wall’ – essentially a large battery powerful enough to energize the typical North American home; or consider the ‘neighbourhood batteries’ that are being used to power entire communities in the UK. While domestic power agencies like Toronto Hydro have begun testing these types of large-scale electrical storage units, there is so much more that must be done at the policy level to facilitate, legislate, fund, and promote electrification and new forms of power storage across the country.The current plans for dealing with that remaining 88 percent focus almost exclusively on improving efficiency (though things like retrofits or new building codes) or putting a price on carbon. These are certainly worthy endeavours, but ultimately these measures will fail on their own because they do not address the reality that energy demand is growing and is forecast to continue growing over the coming decades (both on domestic and global terms). The only clear way to confront the reality of growing energy use while simultaneously reducing emissions is to electrify those sectors and aspects of our daily life that currently rely on fossil fuels.

The transport sector would be a good place to start. The technology exists to make buses, passenger trains and even freight trucks run on electricity, but there is still much in the way of research and development and regulation required to make this goal a reality. The previous federal government claimed climate leadership in September 2014 when it introduced regulations within the transport sector calling on vehicle manufacturers to make more efficient motors. Real leadership, however, would have looked more like the legislation passed at the same time in California, which focused on boosting the electric vehicles market.

There is no doubt electrification is an enormous challenge, but how much of a gargantuan task must it have seemed in the late 19th Century to bring electricity to Canada’s largest cities at a time when kerosene and whale oil were the dominant fuels? Genuine political leadership on climate change must include investment in research, development and innovation in electrification and new forms of power storage, not just in the areas of efficiency, pricing carbon and renewable energy. The latter are important, but we need all the tools in our climate change mitigation toolbox. 

The Economic Burden of Climate Change

May I recommend taking a look at a recently published report by the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, titled Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada. The report has found that the annual costs of dealing with the expected impacts of climate change will likely extend into the range of billions of dollars by 2020. It's a sobering report that highlights the linkages between environment and political economy. To download the report, click here.