Environment, resources & sustainability

How the so-called “Clean Energy Plan” still wreaks havoc on BC Hydro’s rates

Aug 22, 2016
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My wife says I hold on to things too long. Still, when I read BC Hydro’s most recent rate application to the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), I couldn’t help but recall Mark Jaccard’s spirited—if misguided—defence of Premier Gordon Campbell’s Clean Energy Plan in a critique of a paper, Lost in Transmission, that I co-authored in 2007. BC Hydro is seeking approval for… View Article

Correcting the Fraser Institute’s crude assumptions

Jul 25, 2016
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The Fraser Institute’s new report, The Costs of Pipeline Obstructionism, claims that lack of new export pipelines to tidewater is costing Canada $2.02–$6.4 billion dollars per year (depending on the assumed oil price). The authors offer the following table, based on exports via the proposed Energy East pipeline, as evidence (Table 1 from page 10… View Article
Is the BC government a climate outlaw?

BC government: climate leader or climate outlaw?

May 24, 2016
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At both the Paris climate negotiations last November and the recent federal-provincial climate meetings, Premier Christy Clark was keen to position British Columbia as a climate leader. There may indeed have been a short window during the 2008-2010 period when BC could legitimately (albeit arguably) make such a claim; when the province introduced the carbon… View Article

Food security in BC? Don’t count on it.

May 19, 2016
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If California’s farmers ever run out of the water needed to irrigate their crops, we’ll be in for a rude awakening. With 70 per cent of British Columbia’s imported fruits and vegetables coming from the sunny US state, any climatic disaster there would almost certainly result in dramatic run-ups in food prices here. Our elected leaders… View Article

Pipelines vs Paris: Canada’s climate conundrum

Apr 21, 2016
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The push for new pipelines to bring Alberta bitumen to “tidewater” is on, even as the ink is barely dry on the Paris Agreement, and its call to action on climate change. Alberta Premier Notley argues that “We’re not making a choice between the environment and the economy. We are building the economy.” For his part, Prime Minister… View Article

A carbon tax comes to Alberta

Apr 19, 2016
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Alberta’s 2016 Budget presents its plan to price carbon, in two parts: a new Carbon Levy applied to transportation and heating fuel, at $20 per tonne of CO2 (4.5 cents per litre at the pump) starting January 2017, rising to $30 (6.7 cents per litre) in 2018; and, changes to the  Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) framework… View Article