Climate change & energy policy

BC’s carbon tax turns two

Jul 5, 2010
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With all of the attention focused on the HST implementation on July 1, most people seemed to miss the next increment of that other much-hated tax, BC’s carbon tax. As of July 1, the carbon tax is now $20 per tonne of CO2, or about 4.6 cents on a litre of gasoline. And like any… View Article

‘Green’ Summer Reading

Jun 3, 2010
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As I was wandering through the airport this spring I succumbed to my one true addiction: books.  Yes, I know that a good environmentalist uses the local library, but I’m working on it….. Anyway, as always, I try to pick up something that I’ve read a review on or something that just jumps out at… View Article

Buying off industry

May 27, 2010
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At first glance, the response of the forest sector and other large energy users to the province’s Clean Energy Act was surprising. Here is an Act that will force BC Hydro to waste literally billions of dollars to create an artificial demand for private power.  It will without question drive up BC Hydro’s rates far more… View Article

The Clean Energy Act – adding insult to injury

Apr 29, 2010
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I don’t follow the provincial legislature closely enough to judge whether the proposed Clean Energy Act is the worst legislation the Liberals have introduced since first being elected, but it has to be a front runner. The first objective listed in the Act is the government’s misdirected requirement for BC Hydro to be self-sufficient, with all of… View Article

Site C

Apr 19, 2010
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I recall talking to a senior BC Hydro planner a number of years ago who mapped out a very sensible way to develop the BC Hydro system. Retain the Burrard gas-fired thermal power plant as a back-up for extreme drought, when electricity supply at the hydro facilities on the Peace and Columbia river systems is… View Article

Keeping emissions underground

Mar 26, 2010
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I was intrigued by a quote in a recent Globe Foundation report on BC’s green economy that BC has 1000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, a “low carbon resource opportunity for both transportation and for export to other economies around the world.” Converting to metric, and using BC government emission factors for combusting… View Article

Peddling GHGs: How much does BC export?

Mar 16, 2010
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Bill Rees, the father of the ecological footprint, likes to say that fossil fuels are a powerful hallucinogenic drug. We are all addicted to cheap and abundant fossil fuels, and so have reshaped our economy and society in fundamentally unsustainable ways. When emissions are reported for BC or Canada, there is an accounting convention that… View Article

More Please!!!

Mar 9, 2010
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Every now and again you read something so outrageous you have to laugh. So it is with the report recently released by BC Citizens for Clean Energy: A Triple Legacy for Future Generations. The essence of this lobby group’s proposal is that the government should develop an export policy for green energy targeting up to… View Article

Climate inaction and BC’s budget

Mar 3, 2010
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The 2010 BC Budget was a disappointment on the climate action front. Even as Premier Campbell waxed poetic in the Globe about the impact of climate change on the 2010 Spring Games – with its sunny days, crocuses, daffodils and by the end, cherry blossoms making it fun for people on the street but a… View Article

Will the Olympics boost long-term tourism to BC?

Feb 15, 2010
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“We’ve invited the world, they’re coming, and the place is a mess.” That was the tag line the CCPA gave to our BC Solutions Budget back in 2004. At the time, we argued as strongly as we could that if BC was to change the story the world would tell of us this month, we… View Article