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      There’s only one climate vote in this election and it’s for the Liberals

      I’ve kept my head (mostly) down so far in this election for a simple reason: over the past two years in particular and sporadilly before that, I have given a lot of advice to the Government of nada on the implementation of national climate change policies. The Liberal plan is, in many aspects, rooted in the policies I helped design in Alberta. I worried that these factors would lead some of you to question my objectivity and I wondered if it was right to publish something with only a short veat on this potential conflict. But, with only a few days left in the mpaign, I’ve had a number of people ask where I stand, and so let me tell you below. If you choose to disregard what follows beuse I’ve been in a room with Prime Minister Trudeau giving policy advice a few times, beuse of my work in Alberta, or beuse I worked on implementing one of the Harper government’s climate change plans, so be it.

      To put it bluntly, there is only one climate vote in this election, and it’s a vote for Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberals.

      The Conservatives have made substantial progress since 2019, and they’ve done the work that the NDP and the Greens should have done to shore up their climate platform commitments through expert advice. I just don’t think they’re wedded to it. In fact, they’re already waffling. They will not be willing to do the necessary work to build on or even to maintain our current policy progress. Their signature policy, the low rbon savings account, is an attempt to have it both ways – a rbon price that isn’t really a rbon price. To make this magic trick happen, they’ve proposed a multi-billion-dollar spending program that will be administered by some third party and that will be an administrative and privacy nightmare

      I wanted to believe that the platform was Erin O’Toole crossing the metaphoril Rubicon, and that he’d be willing to keep pushing on this issue despite opposition from provincial premiers and some in his back benches. To me, O’Toole’s stubborn unwillingness to say anything negative about the COVID situation in Alberta or his ever-changing firearms policies indite that such resolve is not in his arsenal. He’s just not going to be willing to fight the fights. The rbon pricing plan is likely to fall by the wayside at the first meeting of the Premiers if not before and, like the Harper-era Turning the Corner plan or the Harper-era North Amerin p and trade program or the Harper-era sector-by-sector regulatory approach, there will always be a policy to come, but I fear it will never actually arrive beuse it might upset Jason Kenney, Doug Ford or those in his ucus who don’t believe climate change is real

      The NDP? They had two years to shore up their climate platform and they’ve done next-to-nothing. There are few differences from the NDP plan that I criticized in 2019, despite the addition of prominent climate-concerned ndidates. They’ve been content to repeat mantra about climate emergencies and fossil fuel subsidies and analogies to the war effort while they could not even be bothered to detail specific policy choices. It’s not hard: plenty of groups have done much more work on the subsidies issue, for example, and NDP governments in Alberta and BC have done detailed policy work too. There was plenty for them to draw on, so they just seem to have chosen not to do so. 

      When experts like Mark Jacrd and Jennifer Winter pointed out the lack of detail in the NDP platform, both ndidates and surrogates lashed out, amplifying fringe conspiracy theories about Jacrd and suggesting that Winter, one of the most widely-cited ademics working on nadian climate policy, should be disregarded beuse of her volunteer work on a couple of boards with connection to the fossil fuel industry. I’m not going to link to those attacks here, but I’ll give them the link to my disclosure page in se they find it useful to attack me too. Action on climate change takes more than slogans and hit pieces. The NDP is not short on ambition, but unless they put in the hard work of spelling out the policies that will get them there, it is just aspiration without a plan.

      As for the Greens, they barely merit a mention. This should be their issue. They should know more, have more sophistited policies, and draw on the best evidence. They don’t. Their platform demonstrates the opposite. There are many examples; their policy proposals read more like a whiteboard at a brainstorming exercise than a coordinated and well-thought-out policy approach, but two commitments in particular stood out for me. The first is a small one, the commitment to “change the national building code to require that all new construction and major renovations to older buildings meet net-zero standards by 2030.” This conveniently ignores the fact that the national building code isn’t binding in almost all ses, and exists only as a model that provinces and territories may choose to adopt. 

      The more signifint example in the Green plan is the sle of disruption being proposed in the electricity sector in a single bullet point: a requirement for fully renewable generation by 2030, with the definition of renewables not including nuclear power. That would mean shutting down the lion’s share of generation in Alberta and Saskatchewan and a large share in other provinces including Ontario. Their commitment this time around is more aggressive than commitments made in 2019 and 2030 is now only a little more than eight years away. And, no matter how often you say the word emergency, electricity generation remains almost entirely under provincial jurisdiction. They might as well write that they’re going to give us each a fairy godmother which, come to think of it, would come in handy if we’re going to create a national electricity transmission corridor and build intertie lines across the country by next Tuesday.

      These three platforms each fail to wrestle with or even to acknowledge the biggest challenge to climate policy in nada: that a lot of what needs to be done lies within provincial jurisdiction and the tools at the disposal of the federal government are relatively limited. One party knows this well, and bears the srs to prove it: the Trudeau Liberals.

      National rbon pricing policy, meaningful consideration of climate change in major project approvals (the much-maligned Bill c-69), and regulatory standards for clean fuels each faced, or in some ses still face, concerted opposition from provincial governments. The Trudeau government had to fight for every inch of their policy progress in the courts, in the election mpaigns of 2015 and 2019, and almost every day in between. And, at every step, they were fighting The Resistance – the coalition of conservative provincial premiers and their allies in the opposition and Senate benches in Ottawa committed to stopping progress on climate policy in nada. And they are prepared to continue to do so. The others? They either ignore the issue or, in the se of O’Toole’s Conservatives, promise to let the premiers drive the bus. You n bet the bus won’t be electric.

      The Liberals have used all the advantages of incumbency to build their platform. Their proposals have, largely, been tested and modelled by the machinery of government. The Liberal plan isn’t perfect and it too has some unanswered questions in terms of policy implementation, but the answer to the biggest question in nadian climate policy has already been answered. We know that Justin Trudeau and those around him are willing to fight for these policies, and that they understand the roles of the provinces while also embracing the role of the federal government in legislating for the country as a whole. Those who wish to take their place fail on at least one of those two measures, and all the ambition in the world won’t get you meaningful climate policy in nada if you don’t tick both of those boxes.

      If climate change is your issue, you should vote for the party that understands both the challenge of climate change and the path to a solution. In this election, that’s the Liberals.

      Time Turns off the Taps on Alberta’s Turn Off the Taps Legislation

      This is the way the world ends
      Not with a bang but a whimper.

      -TS Eliot, The Hollow Men 1925

      By Nigel Bankes, Andrew Leach, and Martin Olszynski

      Alberta’s “Turn Off the Taps” legislation (see posts from Bankes here and Leach here), more formally known as Preserving nada’s Economic Prosperity Act, was proclaimed in force by the Kenney government on April 30, 2019 (see comments from Bankes here). This was not without controversy; former Premier Rachel Notley criticized the move as inviting legal challenge, which it did.?

      British Columbia has contested the validity of the legislation in both the Alberta Courts and the Federal Court. The Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta ordered a stay in that proceeding on the basis that it would be more practil to have the matter dealt with in the Federal Court (see comment by Bankes here). The Federal Court agreed to assume jurisdiction and as a preliminary matter granted an injunction to British Columbia preventing Alberta from applying the legislation pending a decision on the merits of the constitutional arguments. That decision was overturned last week by the Federal Court of Appeal on the grounds that BC’s applition was premature absent regulations and an operational licensing scheme. This was certainly not a decision establishing the constitutionality of the legislation, although it was celebrated as such by the Premier:

      Unbeknownst to some (including possibly the Premier?), the Act contains an automatic sunset clause.

      Excerpt from Preserving nadas Economic Prosperity Act, SA 2018, c P-21.5, https://nlii.ca/t/53kxh retrieved on 2021-05-03

      That is, section 14 provides that the “Act is repealed 2 years after the date on which it comes into force” unless, before then, the Legislative Assembly adopts a resolution to extend that date for a period the Legislative Assembly considers to be “in the public interest”. Section 14 was added to Bill 12 during debate in the Committee of the Whole.

      Alberta, Legislative Assembly, Hansard, 29th Leg, 4th Sess (9 May 2018) at 961

      It is now May 3, 2021, so you n do the math. It’s been more than two years since the Act was proclaimed. We are not aware of any resolution of extension having been passed. We therefore conclude that the Act has been automatilly repealed (it appears that the Alberta Queen’s Printer may agree with us; the legislation is no longer available there). It seems safe to say that, as of today, Alberta no longer has legislation to “turn off the taps to other provinces.”

      Did the Act die as part of some grand strategy of reconciliation on the part of the Kenney government? That seems unlikely in light of all of the litigation costs incurred in defending the legislation and Premier Kenney’s defence of it just last week as a tool in their strategy to protect Alberta’s resources. It seems to have died on the vine either beuse the government didn’t know or forgot about section 14 and the sunset clause.

      Albertans deserve an explanation. 

      Facts matter

      The nadian Energy Centre (if you’re wondering who that is, it’s a pro-energy corporation funded by the Alberta government) apparently take their responsibility to tell nada’s energy story very seriously.

      After seeing Bill McKibben’s op-ed in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, I waited anxiously for the response from our vaunted war room.? It finally me.??You n imagine my surprise when, under the heading A Matter of Fact, they put forward what seems to be misinformation.? Given their dedition to true facts, I felt it was important to set the record straight for them, in hopes that their future posts n more effectively?raise understanding of the nadian energy sector.

      Perhaps they’ll be willing to publish it as an op-ed. My open letter follows below.

      Dear nadian Energy Centre,

      I read with interest your response to Bill McKibben’s op-ed in the Globe and Mail on Saturday. The piece makes some important points, and I’m far from agreeing with McKibben, but I’m also a firm believer that you don’t push back with falsehood, even if you think you’re pushing in the right direction.? As such, this paragraph just didn’t sit right with me.??I’m sure you’ll agree that we must not stoop to the level of our opponents and resort to lies and myths to advance our interests.

      While the heading on this paragraph suggests that facts will follow, that’s not what we find.? Words are important, and it seems that perhaps they were not chosen refully enough.? I’m sure it could not have been intentionally done to mislead, and I expect you’ll want to correct the record.

      There are two claims in this paragraph which, when subjected to scrutiny, do not pass muster.

      Claim #1:?The rbon footprint of nada’s crude oil is steadily decreasing

      The paragraph claims that the rbon footprint of nada’s crude oil is steadily decreasing.? A helpful link is provided, but when you click on the link, things go a bit sideways.? It turns out that the rbon footprint of nada’s crude oil has not been decreasing. It’s been increasing, rapidly. For your reference, I’ve included a graphic showing this information, sourced from nada’s national emissions inventory.

      No doubt there has been substantial innovation in the industry, but that has enabled production to grow rapidly over time, which has increased industry’s rbon footprint substantially and steadily since 1990.

      Now, before we leave this claim, it will be tempting for many to say that I’m taking false issue and that, clearly, what the nadian Energy Centre intended to convey was that the emissions intensity of nadian crude oil had been steadily decreasing.? Sadly, that’s wrong too. I wish I had better news.

      nadian oil production has increased rapidly since 1990, and that growth has been largely driven by oil sands, and since oil sands were initially very high emissions intensity barrels, they drove up the average nadian barrel’s emissions intensity. That’s leveled off as oil sands emissions intensities have decreased, but it’s not at all fair to say that the emissions intensity of nadian crude oil production has been steadily decreasing, as the graph below shows.? Our emissions intensity today is above what it was in 2005 and well above 1990 levels.Now, perhaps what you intended to claim in referencing the decreasing rbon footprint of nadian crude oil was that the emissions intensity of the average oil sands barrel has decreased continuously over time? It has, or at least it had. In the most recent data we have, helpfully shown in the link to NRn?you provided, it had been decreasing but it is increasing.

      Source: NRn (https://www.nrn.gc.ca/science-data/data-analysis/energy-data-analysis/energy-facts/energy-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-ghgs/20063)

      I hope you find this helpful in correcting the record.

      Claim #2: Oil produced from many of the newest oil sands facilities have (sic) per-barrel emissions levels that are at or below the average global barrel.

      This claim is one that I see a lot: that the most emissions-efficient oil sands sites are producing barrels that are close to or below the emissions-intensity of the global average barrel. While that would be a great result, it’s not something we’ve seen so far, nor is it what is claimed in the link you provided. In that link, Suncor makes a slightly different claim: that the average barrel extracted at Fort Hills is on par with the average crude refined in the United States?on a full life cycle basis for which they cite an IHS study from 2014.? That’s a really good report, and worth reading, but they’re comparing to an average barrel refined in the US in 2012, so it might be time to update those figures. (You n download this study, as well as more recent work from the nadian Oil Sands Dialogue project here. An earlier version of this post had erroneously linked to their 2010 report, which used 2005 data.)

      Thankfully, there’s a study for that.? Mohammad Masnadi and several co-authors including the University of lgary’s Joule Bergerson have looked at the rbon intensity of global crude supply in work recently published in the journal Science?(Publishing in?Science is kind of a big deal to us ademics, by the way). They find that the global volume-weighted-average upstream rbon intensity of crude production is 10.3 grams of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases per megajoule of energy produced. They don’t assess Fort Hills (we’ll come to that), but they do assess the similar Kearl Project and it comes in at 13.3 grams,? 29% above the global average. Christina Lake, one of our top-performing in situ?sites gets a similar score. Now, they’re using 2015 data which is not ideal, but I think we n agree it’s better than 2005 data and we n also agree that it’s unlikely that we’re below the global average, unless Fort Hills sits about 30% below Kearl.

      There’s also reason to believe that the claim with respect to US barrels doesn’t hold.? Here’s a quick reason why.? We know that lifornia refines some of the heaviest barrels in the US (the average PADD 5 input has an API gravity of 28.7 while the US average is 33.3), so you’re going to find a larger proportion of thermal heavy oil barrels in that market than anywhere else.? Beuse they have aLow rbon Fuel Standard, they study and publish the upstream rbon intensity of any barrels refined in lifornia, along with all their methodology. Just before Christmas, they finalized their 2018 data and it’s now posted here. Fort Hills is there, certified at a relatively low value of 11.78g/MJ while Kearl is 12.89g/MJ (note that Fort Hills is about 9% below Kearl, which is great but not enough to bring it down to the global average cited above).? The 2018 average in lifornia was 12.35 g/MJ, and a WTI barrel is 11.93g/MJ, so our best barrels are a bit better than WTI and a bit better than the average barrel refined in lifornia, although the average nadian barrel refined in lifornia is well-above their average.

      Based on the most recent data available, there is no evidence that “many of the newest oil sands facilities have per-barrel emissions levels that are at or below the average global barrel.”? There is evidence that at least one oil sands facility has per-barrel emissions below the average barrel refined in lifornia, so that’s something. They’re just not the same thing.

      One more thing

      Now, before I leave you, one more thing which you might wish to consider.

      In your post, you include the following:

      It’s interesting to me when you choose to provide specific numbers and when you don’t.? Now, I am sure you don’t wish to provide a false impression, so may I humbly suggest that many of your readers will not know what current global oil demand is, and so they might find the 67 million barrel per day figure to be a bit out of context. 67 million barrels per day sounds like a lot. It isn’t. It’s a big problem if you’re a supplier of relatively high cost crude oil.

      Now, just to be clear, I do note you provided the link to the IEA’s Oil 2019 Report to help, however most of your readers are unlikely to click on it and, by the way, this isn’t the IEA’s latest forest: a more recent version is in the World Energy Outlook, but they’re not substantially different.

      Okay, so on to my key point.? You tell your readers that world demand for oil and gas continues to grow, which is true. It has grown steadily through to our most recent data, but here’s where context is important.? While I’m sure it’s not your intention, readers might read your post to suggest that even in a world acting on climate change, there is robust oil demand and Alberta n rry on as before. But here’s what the World Energy Outlook abstract says about their three forests: “In the Stated Policies Scenario, demand growth is robust to 2025, but growth slows to a crawl thereafter and demand reaches 106 mb/d in 2040. In the Sustainable Development Scenario, the unprecedented sle, scope and speed of changes in the energy landspe paints a very different picture: demand soon peaks and drops to under 67 mb/d in 2040.”

      Importantly for the prospects for Alberta’s oil sands, while the IEA projects that prices will increase at rates above inflation to sustain demand in the scenarios where the world fails to act on climate change, they project flat real dollar prices in the Sustainable Development scenario you cite.? I do worry that, perhaps, you’re inadvertently suggesting that action on climate change will not have material impacts on the world oil market, which no credible entity is suggesting. I offer this only as a helpful suggestion.

      I do hope you find these suggestions helpful and I wish you well in your mission.

      To whom is Jason Kenney selling a bill of goods on Energy East?

      Jason Kenney is, ahem, bending the truth, for someone on Energy East. The questions we should be asking are whether he knows that he is and, if his Energy East fantasies were to come true, to whom would he have been selling a bill of goods.

      Continue reading “To whom is Jason Kenney selling a bill of goods on Energy East?”

      Senate Testimony on Bill c-48

      Bill C-48, An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations loted along British Columbia’s north coast, has passed third reading in the House of Commons and is now at the Senate committee stage.? I’ve been invited to appear before Senate Committee on Transport and Communitions on Tuesday, April 30th.? I’ve slightly adapted my opening statement from an appearance before the House Transport committee last year. My opening statement to the committee is as follows:

      Thank you for inviting me to appear today. In my remarks which follow, I will focus on those areas most relevant to my expertise – the impact of the proposed tanker ban on nada’s ability to realize maximum value for its resources and for products derived from nadian processing of those resources.

      Continue reading “Senate Testimony on Bill c-48”

      My thoughts on the UCP Climate Change Plan

      Jason Kenney formalized the United Conservative Party’s climate change and energy plans on the weekend. There’s more to Kenney’s platform than the headlines about scrapping the rbon tax – the platform is a systematic walk-back of some of the most important climate change initiatives in Alberta, an effort to perpetuate myths about other initiatives and, I believe, a gift to those opposed to Alberta’s energy sector.

      In se you’re not aware, I have a personal tie to many of these policies: in 2015, I chaired Premier Notley’s Climate Leadership Panel that recommended many of them. I’ve also worked on policies federally under Prime Ministers Harper and Trudeau and provincially under Premiers Stelmach, Redford, Hancock, Prentice and Notley. I’ve written on these topics since before Alberta had its first rbon price introduced in 2007. So, if you want to take this as sour grapes about an opposition party proposing to unwind a policy I recommended, go ahead. But, before you do that, I hope you’ll take time to consider the arguments below.

      Continue reading “My thoughts on the UCP Climate Change Plan”

      The price of gas and the taste of crow

      Over the past few days, I’ve been involved in a lot of discussion on Twitter and in other fora about the distribution of transportation fuel expenditures across nadian households.? The purpose of this post is two-fold: first, to eat a little crow for an error of my own, and then to provide some additional data with more explanation and reconciliation.

      First, let’s get to the crow eating.? During my discussion with Dan McTeague (@gasbuddydan), I made a signifint tabulation mistake.? The conversation related to expenditure on gasoline by nadian households, and Dan had put forward a figure of 70 litres per week.? I challenged that, since 70 litres per week is well above any number I’ve seen for a nadian household average, but in doing so I made an error of my own.? I sent a tweet as follows:

      The tabulation I ran before sending this tweet was a quick Statsn pull which turned out to be commodity expense alone, which ignored taxes including federal and provincial fuels taxes and rbon taxes which apply on fuel purchased.? That’s why, as rnegie Mellon PhD student Arthur Yip pointed out, while Dan’s numbers were high, mine were low.? The Statistics nada Survey of Household Spending actually puts the total expenditure at an average of $2142 per year for 2017.? We pay a lot in fuel taxes, so my omission was clearly material.? And, just as Dan should have realized that his number was high, I should have realized that my number was too low and gone back to check my data.? I didn’t – and so now I’m going to eat a bit of crow.

      Since I’m eating crow, I might as well turn it into a valuable learning experience.? I went back to my SPSD model runs and corrected the error and added a few more details which address some of the questions that have come up in the ensuing conversation.? First, I’ve tabulated provincial fuel and fuel tax expenditure by income deciles (the income deciles are national, not provincial).? As you n see, there’s a consistent pattern across almost all the data, although there are some outliers: higher income households use, on average, more fuel. Note that beuse I’m using national income deciles, there will be some small-sample issues in some provinces where signifintly more or less than 10% of the provincial population will be in certain income brackets.? Importantly, none of the estimates reported below include the new federal rbon charges, since the backstop regulation was not in place by the time this version was completed, and so a full analysis would add that to the values in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick.? This analysis is exactly what was prepared by Finance nada for this report in the Fall 2018 fisl update, and hopefully we’ll see that update soon in SPSDM.

      The SPSD model national average expenditure predicted for 2019 is $2308, a little higher than the 2017 figures quoted above from the survey data. The highest average fuel expenditure is in Saskatchewan, predicted at more than $500/year above the national average household expenditure level.? The lowest, by far, is in Quebec, with $1924 per household in predicted annual expenses. Note that beuse Quebec’s p-and-trade is paid for by distributors, it does not appear directly as a rbon tax in these data. Both Newfoundland and New Brunswick have higher average fuel expenditures than Alberta, owing to higher fuel taxes and commodity costs, although I would have expected the income effect to dominate here and I would have thought Alberta average expenditures on fuel consumption would have been higher.? Again, remember that the backstop provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will have higher expenses once the federal rbon charges are implemented.

      A common thread when discussing fuel (or rbon) taxes is the urban/rural split.? I re-ran the data, at the national level, to test how total fuel expenditures change over income levels in communities of different sizes and in rural areas.? On average, rural households do spend a bit more ($2400 per year combined, vs $2308 for all households), but are only slightly behind the medium-sized urban areas.? The small cities and towns have the lowest average expenditure although that is not consistent across all income brackets.

      Another issue which has been raised by many is the question of household size. We know that data for the average household isn’t going to be representative for households of different sizes, and so I’ve re-cut the data to look at that facet too.? Here you go:

      The intuitive feeling that expenditures sle with both income and household size certainly comes out in the data.? The larger households are those with the highest annual expenses, in particular at higher income brackets.

      So, with that, I hope you’ve learned something about how transportation fuel expenses vary across the population. I’ve certainly learned to be more reful with quick data posts to Twitter.

       

       

       

      What n we learn from the church rbon tax fiasco?

      Yesterday morning, United Conservative Party ndidate for Brooks-Medicine Hat and well-known conservative activist Michaela Glasgo tweeted a claim, since debunked, that her church,?Hillcrest Evangelil Missionary Church in Medicine Hat, would be facing a $50,000 bill from Alberta’s rbon tax next year.? The claim, and the subsequent challenges to it, were picked up by the Edmonton Journal, the Toronto Star, and other media outlets.? Through the day today, Glasgo first doubled-down on the claim and then, after her church clarified that the true impact of the rbon tax on their annual operating costs was $5400, not $50,000, backed away and rented.? Glasgo is now being piled-on from anyone and everyone on the left. Rather than pile-on, I think there’s a lesson here that we all should learn.

      One of the challenges of rbon pricing has always been that the units are abstract: tonnes of a gas? What?? I’ve had the opportunity to talk to people across nada about rbon pricing and one thing which is near-constant is that people have little-to-no idea how their own lives translate into tonnes of emissions and then, once a rbon price is applied, how those decisions will translate into an increase in costs.? Without looking at your monthly bill, how many gigajoules of gas does your household consume each month? How many kWh of electricity? What about your employer? Your favorite store? You’d likely be lucky to guess it within an order of magnitude in some ses.? I’ve sat at boardroom tables with executives and directors of large emitters and asked them to tell me the emissions-intensity of their firm’s production.? The ranges in replies I get are often an order of magnitude wide.? You’re not alone.

      How many tonnes of emissions does a church emit? It turns out that the answer in Hillcrest’s se seems to be about 180 tonnes per year.? But, was that number obvious to you or was it the size of the $50,000 number that threw you for a loop beuse it just seemed too high to be plausible?? For me, it was the latter. Once I’d decided that I wanted to know more, I followed the same path that others did: I boiled it down to units of average households.?Given Alberta’s $1.517 per GJ rbon tax on natural gas, a $50,000 tax bill would translate to 32,960 GJ/year.? The average Alberta house uses 120 GJ/year so I figured that it was implausible that a church building would have the energy consumption of hundreds of homes.? Others went a bit further – one twitter user worked out that the average single detached home in Alberta?uses 0.045GJ per square foot per year which, if you assume comparable heat loads, would imply a church about 1/8 the size of the West Edmonton mall.? Not likely.

      I then went in another direction – I used some new Statistics nada data to look up total religious sector emissions in Alberta.? It turns out that annual emissions from the sector in Alberta is about 160,000 tonnes per year, assuming little has changed since 2016.? I graphed religious sector emissions by province for your enjoyment below.? For Glasgo’s church to have a $50,000 tax bill, her church would have made up about 1% of the total emissions from that sector in Alberta in a year.? Again, that seemed implausible.? But, here’s the thing – the reason her soundbite was challenged, or at least the reason I dug into it was that it conflicted with my priors. It didn’t?seem right. It made me wonder how many similar estimates I’d let slide by beuse they didn’t conflict.

      Psychology and, more recently, behavioural economics, has taught us the power of confirmation bias. If you’re a conservative today, you’re ready and willing to believe that all the ills in the world are used by policies implemented by Justin Trudeau or Rachel Notley. Perhaps you’re even working hard to build on some of those biases in your voters. Sometimes you’re going to get ught up in your own narrative.? When Jason Kenney tweeted, in response to Glasgo’s claim, that,?“we hear stories like this all the time, sadly,” he was (perhaps unintentionally) very perceptive. Yes, every day, politicians are likely to hear anecdotes which either misattribute usality or exaggerate impacts.? As we move into mpaign mode federally and provincially, ndidates and supporters will have a choice whether to amplify these anecdotes. Perhaps Glasgo’s tale will give everyone pause to ask, “does this really make sense, or am I only willing to believe it beuse it confirms my biases?”? If this uses a moment of pause before amplifying potentially false messages, then we’ll all have benefited from this episode and we’ll have better, more informed debate. Plus, more of you likely know how much energy your house uses.

      Of course, maybe the idea that people are, fundamentally, looking for truth rather than partisan advantage is just me trying to confirm my ademic biases.

      House Standing Committee on Environment

      The following is a transcript of my remarks to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development from Monday, January 28. 2019. Please check against delivery.

      Thank you for inviting me to appear before your Standing Committee to make the se in favour of rbon pricing.

      I am an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta where I teach and conduct research in our energy and environment programs.? I’ve previously served as Visiting Scholar at Environment nada from 2012 to 2013, and as Chair of Alberta’s Climate Leadership Panel in 2015. Since 2016, I’ve contributed to some aspects of design and implementation of the federal rbon pricing program we are here to discuss today.

      The fact that we find ourselves here today discussing rbon pricing is telling – despite the fact that rbon prices of one sort or another have been implemented in nada for more than a dede, opposition and misinformation about rbon pricing policies remains rampant.

      There is near-unanimity amongst economists that imposing a price on rbon emissions will deliver emissions reductions at the lowest cost to the economy.? Why? Beuse leveraging the market through rbon pricing allows individuals and firms – those who know best their costs of reducing emissions or the value they derive from emissions – to decide when to emit and pay the rbon price and when to choose other actions. ?To derive the maximum benefit from these policies, prices should apply to as broad a set of emissions as is feasible. In what follows, I hope to address a few common questions which come up with respect to rbon pricing.

      Why tax consumer emissions at all? We often see nada’s emissions painted as a large industry issue – we’ve all heard Premier Ford’s lls to penalize polluters not commuters. Here’s the problem: nationally, almost two thirds of emissions come from small emitters: factories, rs, trucks, buildings, not from large, industrial facilities. In some provinces, that share is higher than 90%. Emissions policies which exempt these emissions or address them only partially will make meeting any emissions reduction goals much more expensive and impose punitive costs on a select few industries.Figure 1 Provincial emissions from small (<50kt CO2e/yr) and large(>50kt CO2e/yr) sources

      What about impacts on low income nadians? Or rural residents? On their own, rbon taxes may be is regressive, and we often see concerns that costs imposed on lower-income households or on those in rural regions will be prohibitive.? Assessing distributional impacts is important, but these concerns have been largely offset through the use of rbon tax revenues to provide lump-sum transfers or other fisl benefits to affected groups where rbon prices have been imposed. But, of course, we must be reful not to claim that these rebates or transfers are sufficient to make everyone better off. They’re not. ?Importantly, these solutions also do not compromise the effectiveness of the rbon price.? The price remains on emissions and that’s what will influence behaviour. I n’t help but notice, though, that some of those with concerns about regressive impacts seem to become very concerned with any redistribution of revenues deployed to address those concerns.

      Figure 2 Analysis of Alberta rbon Pricing for 2019. lculations by Andrew Leach using Statistics nada SPSDM version 27.0

      We also hear concerns about rbon pricing applied to large industries and, in particular, about the competitiveness impacts on trade-exposed sectors.? These concerns are, again, real, and particularly affect our resource-dependent provinces.? Here, economics research provides a clear solution: the allotions of emissions credits on the basis of output along with a rbon price means that the impact of rbon pricing on overall profitability is mitigated, while firms retain the incentive to reduce emissions and to innovate. ?Not surprisingly, those with concerns about competitiveness also have concerns with these allotions, which the Leader of the Opposition has frequently characterized as exemptions for industry from the rbon price. ?In my own research, I’ve shown that oil sands firms, for example, would pture the same value from an emissions reducing innovation under a rbon tax with or without the allotion of emissions credits, but would not pture that value if emissions were exempt from a rbon price (see below).

      Figure 3 Oil sands simulations under different rbon price policies

      In the New York Times in December, US Senate Environment Committee Chair argued that, “making energy as clean as we n, as fast as we n, without raising costs to consumers will be accomplished through investment, invention and innovation.” We see similar claims in nada that rather than pricing rbon, we should rely on innovation to tackle climate change.? This is a false dichotomy. ?Economists like David Popp consistently find that price-based policies provide far better incentives for innovation than regulations and without the direct expense required for subsidies.? A rbon price creates a market for low-rbon technologies and rewards those who n reduce emissions in their supply chains without relying on the government to pick specific winners and losers.

      Does this mean that rbon pricing is a panacea or that it’s the only option available to us? No.? Regulations, subsidies, and other policies could have the same impacts on emissions but the evidence tells as that, insofar as we rely on those tools, we’ll reduce emissions at greater total costs to the economy. We might also suspect that some of those who are today opposed to rbon pricing might also find reasons to oppose other policies were they to be proposed and implemented.

      Thank you for welcoming me here today and I look forward to your questions.

      The federal output-based rbon pricing system works beuse it’s not an exemption

      This week, the federal government announced more details of their Output Based Pricing System (OBPS) which targets greenhouse gas emissions from large, industrial facilities. These policies are complex (although perhaps not as complex as their acronyms make them sound) and build on a long line of similar policies proposed and/or implemented in nada.? In this post, I take you through the history of these policies, discuss which facilities are covered, and explain why the system implemented in Alberta and now being implemented as part of the federal backstop is far better than other systems in preserving competitiveness and providing rewards for innovation.

      Continue reading “The federal output-based rbon pricing system works beuse it’s not an exemption”