You can also find the summary report for this challenge here. Download the full conference summary report here.
As 2009 drew to a close, Canadians were calling out for the federal government to demonstrate leadership on climate change. Public opinion research showed that a vast majority of Canadians believed environmental initiatives should be as high a priority as the economy – even as they were still feeling the effects of the recession. However, the research also shows that few Canadians think that Canada is viewed as a respected leader in the fight against climate change.
Accounting for 82% of Canada’s total emissions per year, the energy sector is Canada’s largest contributor of green house gas (GHG) emissions. However, it is also a significant Canadian employer, and a geopolitical asset. Action is necessary to create a more sustainable economy in Canada and to protect our environment for generations to come. Clearly, this will require innovative policy approaches towards environment and energy in order to make meaningful progress towards reducing GHGs.
In March 2008, Environment Canada projected that if Canada did not make efforts to change its energy mix, Canada’s GHG emissions would rise an additional 26% from 2005 to 2020. Our country will need to move towards the increase in the production of clean energy in order to prevent dramatic increases in Canada’s emissions levels and begin reducing them.
Investing in clean energy sources can be a boon, rather than a burden, to Canada’s economic growth, and can help create the high-value jobs of tomorrow. This includes investing in cleaner, conventional energy technologies as well as in low-impact renewable power sources.
Canada is currently falling behind countries like China, Spain, Germany, France, India and the United States in our ability to attract investment in clean energy. Globally new power generation capacity sourced from renewable energy technologies attracted more investment dollars than those sourced from fossil fuels for the first time in 2008. Wind, solar, hydro and other clean technologies drew in US$140 billion globally, while fossil fuel technologies like gas and coal drew only US$110 billion. Unless investments are made now, Canada will continue to fall behind.
Most experts feel that Canada is not doing enough to foster its green sectors, and is missing out on this new global market as a result. The US is investing over CAN$26 billion in renewable energy initiatives – thirteen times more per capita than Canada. And they are spending $50 billion on energy efficiency measures such as high-speed rail, building retrofits, and the electrification of transportation. Germany’s investments have created more than 250,000 clean energy jobs. Great potential lies in Canada’s renewable energy sector – in wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal technologies. But we must help them to grow.
The world of 2017 is increasingly demanding clean technologies. New wealth and jobs will go to those countries that can meet that demand. This is an enormous opportunity, and one that Canada cannot afford to miss.
Canada must harness the link between environmental sustainability and economic growth in order to make Canada a clean energy leader. The Canada at 150 Conference will be looking at how Canada can create a more sustainable economy to both protect our environment and create jobs for ourselves and for future generations, and ask the questions:
• What does a continental market mean for Canadian interests, business strategies and public policy goals?
• What are the challenges and opportunities of Canadian energy in the marketplace of 2017?
• What are the innovative policy measures required to encourage Canadians to consume less energy, while working with the provinces and territories, municipalities and the business community to produce cleaner energy?
• How can we balance our energy mix so that it is more sustainable, but still affordable?
• What should Canada be doing to foster innovation?
• How do we ensure that Canada has access to the skilled labour required for this future economy?
Canada at 150: Rising to the Challenge is about the future. Michael Ignatieff is inviting leading thinkers and doers from across Canada and around the world to grapple with what kind of country Canada can be – and should be – when we mark our 150th birthday in 2017, and to ask what must be done today and tomorrow to get there. The objective is not to advance simple solutions, or short term tactics. Rather, the conference will start a national dialogue about the big issues that will determine the future well-being of Canadian families, individuals and urban and rural communities.
Canada should have a National Environment Program which should explicitly set out canadian environmental rights…clean air, clean water and supply of healthy food free. These rights are Canadian and should be open for adjudication by an authority firstly responsible to government but reports ultimatley to parliament.
I am in the 7th decade of my journey of life and have spent the last 45 years working in the electrical industry. My views are as follows:
1. All policy approvals that will have long term affects of our future generations should be weighted by the same generations that will bear the responsibility of them.
2. The majority of Canadians do not approve of nuclear power generation, including the federal political parties. I think Obama is going in the correct direction because it is the only option that is greener than all others when all factors are taken into consideration. We need an open debate with all factors including, security to power supply (presently we have thousands of kms of transmission lines that are vulnerable to attacks, less destruction of low lands that are the best growing lands, less displacement of wild life). Small nuclear plants placed in strategic locations could supply a safe and long term secure power supply. I have not touched on the slowing of the use of oil, coal, gas.
3. Building a transcanada electical tranmission power grid that would allow energy to follow with the time zones, with key power grid lines to the US. Electrifying the rail roads, eliminating the use of carbon fuels, allowing electric high speed rail to develop.
4. All other energies are supplementary and could supply maybe 10% of our total supply.
5. We must reverse our present day utilities mindset, that a customer is some one that they supply power to, instead of looking at the connection to a customer is a potential supplier of power from the customer, no matter how small it is.
6. A federal energy policy which is built on the dreams of our young generation of today and the future,the environment, research, economy — like the building of the CNR, CPR, and the Transcanada Highway, the time has come to start the next dream that will bring Canadians together.
7. If it is not too late, having favourable energy prices to industry gives the Canadian companies an advantage.
One last comment: We must use our personal energies where it counts.
Ensuring that Canadians have clean water, strict restrictions that guarantee safety of our food products that is a ban on hormones and antibiotics in our milk and meat products and clean air with a set goal of eliminating the pollution in the environment.
Having a strategic plan in place with a time frame of 5 years to cut green house gases is possible if smart goals are set yearly and measured. Smart goals can have regional objectives set in different areas of Canada where the pollution is high. Alternative replacement can be made where changes are needed. Wind and water energy should be inplace of fossil fuel energy. There needs to be Government control consisting of a staff of youth who have a real interest in making this work. Jobs will emerge from this changeover, but work needs to be done to educate Canadians. Young Canadians need to take the major part in this communication.
As I belive Canada is the best country for peaceful living and wish Canada would be the best naturally managed environmental place too, with its all the resources; river, lakes, creeks should be taken more care by cleaning and protecting the edges and from the overflood. Roads, bridges, railway, Subway and bus station mostly the restaurants washrooms and food preparation areas would be taken care for regular cleaning in a hygenic way. I am really aware of the warehouses, food retail and manufacturing services areas/places where regular cleaning is mandatory and the frequent inspection by the environment Ministry and Food Inspection Agency is neccessary rather than some one complain.Frequent observation and monitor by the higher authority would be appreciable. I saw sometimesstreet light and community area pole lights are on at the day times, it has to stop by inspection to save our energy, money and environment.
I agree with Bud, that it would be wonderful to have electric trains connecting the country, have individuals contributing excess power to the grid for profit, and have the next generation give input to the policies that will shape their future. How can we afford nuclear for energy considering the massive costs of cleaning up the polluted biproducts, like radioactive plutonium?
Ms. Thompson is exactly right when she talks of ensuring a clean water and food supply, one area that needs futher study is the role of urban agriculture. Is there a significant one, to what extent should it be encouraged if at all.
The move to replacing fossil fuels should be seen as a huge generational opportunity. The post carbon economy be it wind, tidal on the coasts, bio-energy or other form should be encouraged and dirty oill which threatens vast water supplys must be discourage. Young Canadians need to be invited to engage in a meaningful way on this matter.
The Kitchener Centre Policy Committee has identified the environment as one of the key areas that the Liberal Party needs to stress and develop concrete policy positions before the next election.
We are writing to you to ask you to look at the position paper we have developed and if you agree with our position, we ask you to support the petition which will be presented to key people in the upper ranks of the party. We think it is important that they hear ideas from those who constitute the grass roots of the Liberal Party.
Because Canada at 150 Conference will explore policy in late March, it is necessary that your opinion be submitted before March 15, 2010.
http://www.kw.igs.net/~raclausi/petition.htm
CCF01 Let the long-term Climate Change Fight in Canada be independent on short living governments.
Fighting the Climate Change will probably last a century, or longer. During that time it has to be consistently financed. Since during the same time the governments will change ca. 25 times or more, and bring with them their blue, red, orange and whichever other ideology, you cannot entrust them the needed consistency in financing the climate change battle. The best reason for such distrust you may find in our present government’s aversion towards almost everything what looks, sounds, smells or acts like “de-carbonization”.
I think, this is sufficient motive to keep any more-or-less intermittent government “at the arms length” from such a – by the parliament appointed and controlled “tandem”. By the one, which should consist of both a new authority – lets name it “Canadian Climate Change Fighting Authority (CCCFA)” and an “arms-length distant” crown corporation – let’s name it “Climate Change Fighting Canada Limited (CCFCL)”- slightly similar to the “Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL)”.
The CCCFA could be structured slightly similar to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) but with completely different mandate and with complete independence on existing government.
Similar to the CNSC role in nuclear matters, such a CCCFA should have a role of being “the parliament’s (but not governmental) watchdog in the Climate Change Fighting matters.” For details see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Nuclear_Safety_Commission
As such it should have the power of setting and updating the price of Green House Emission by country-wide big emitters and executing the compliance with these settings and updates. In the early phase of the “tandem’s” activity, the money collected this way by the CCCFA should be used only for leverage-like funding the activity of the “tandem” in a simple “carbon-tax similar manner”- not in the complex, costly and speculation-prone “Cap&Trade” one. Once the results of the “tandem’s” activity start bringing profit to its clients, a part of it can be returned to the taxpayers either in a form of dividends or other subsidies. But not earlier.
The CCFCL could be structured slightly similar to AECL, but with the mandate of researching, developing and marketing tools, needed to de-carbonize a variety of “dirty” industries, while working cost-efficiently and independently on the government, under the guidance and supervision of CCCFA.
CCF02- Some tools of fighting the Climate Change
In the previous part of my suggestions I have explained why the long term fighting the Climate Change should be independent on short living governments.
In this and in the next section I’ll describe some attributes of just two classes of available and prospective tools which could do that work – material ones (e.g. physical, chemical, biological, etc.) and immaterial ones (methodological, attitudinal, emotional, interest related, etc.)
Some material tools include replacement of “dirty” equipment by “clean” one, e.g. replacement of Coal Fired Power Plants (CFPP) by Renewable Energy Converters, such as water-, and/or wind-turbines, Carbon Capture and Storage, etc.
The water turbines are usually very reliable if their water source is sufficient to power them all the year round. This typically applies to big rivers or big storage reservoirs, which don’t freeze in winter. They are usually very costly to build, but once they pay off their amortization cost they generate electricity very cheaply. The reservoirs, which are not natural and need to flood large pieces of land in order to store enough water, are not environmentally-neutral and cost much more than the natural ones.
The wind turbines have the advantage of working in every windy place. Their electrical output is proportional to the cube of wind speed so if the wind blows with the twice the speed than before, then its output electricity is eight times as powerful as before. Their drawbacks depend on both – their intermittency of generating electricity, caused by intermittently blowing wind, and their occasional suppleness to storm-and-fatigue-related damages (fires-triggered-by-lightning, broken bearings, scratched/split blades, cracks between the tower and foundation, etc.). Of course, if we don’t take in account their absurdly high initial cost – ca. $ 3Million per 1MegaWatt of installed power.
But once they start working, and their mortgage gets paid off – their electricity cost drops close to nothing.
Some of those drawbacks can be eliminated by either connecting them to big, multi-generator grids, or by storing the surplus of electricity in a variety of accumulators during low demand for electricity, and re-using it again during the high demand.
In my opinion they could cost much, much less than today, generate electricity much cheaper than now, and beat the fossil competition without being subsidized as today, if they would capture more wind from the idle area between their blades. But that’s a matter of both changing the existing paradigm of design and challenging the scientists and designers to try that.
“The Green Light for Green Electricity” would surely help.
Carbon Capture and Storage in the generation of electricity is a very costly environmental misunderstanding. It may be justified in some other applications, but not in the electricity generation. It not only sweeps just the CO2 under the Earth surface and emits the remaining GHGases to the atmosphere, but also does not eliminate them from the coal’s mining and transportation process.
Stan
CCF03- Immaterial aspects of fighting the Climate Change
So far, the perspective of fighting the Climate Change was understandably very controversial. Since, on the one hand the majority of climatologists urges all of us to start such fighting ASAP, because the fate of our planet is in jeopardy, so on the other hand – the powerful minority of big emitters hinders such fighting as strong as it cans. Following the climatologists’ urges would inevitably mean the re-direction of some GHG emitters’ wealth towards the Climate Change fighting needs, what – in the opinion of the latter – would harm the economy.
Both arguments are strong. Conflict of interests is undeniable, though still veiled in muted lingo. The climatologists have the power of arguments, while the GHG emitters have arguments of strong financial power.
This looks like the conflict between the Pope John Paul II and Joseph Stalin, in which the latter is famously said to have asked an adviser, dismissively, “How many divisions does the Pope have?” See:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1492
Who will win the Climate Change battle controversy is still a big question.
The fact is that several solutions were tried to solve that controversy:
(i) Dr. Dion’s “Carbon Tax”, though probably the simplest of all, has resulted in Liberals’ defeat at the recent election. There is no need to remind the defeat’s reasons. Many of us still remember them.
I did not follow-up the application of Carbon Tax in British Columbia, so I hold back my opinion.
(ii) The Cap-and-Trade system, which was supposed to accelerate the greening of our planet failed shamefully, at least in the competition with the “Minimum Feed-in-Tariff”, applied to green electricity generation in both the European Union and in Canada (Ontario). According to the Germany’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, expressed in the ENERCON WINDBLATT magazine, under the URL address: http://www.enercon.de/www/en/windblatt.nsf/vwAnzeige/5DAA8E69DB50C545C12574740048C95A/$FILE/WB-0208-en.pdf (on the page 16.), the application of C&T incentive system resulted in installation, by the 2007, of just 6,865 MegaWatt of wind power, while the application by the same time of Feed-In-Tariff resulted in installation of 46,023 MegaWatt of the same power. The difference equal to whooping 39,158 MegaWatt to the benefit of “Feed-In-Tariff” and its ratio 6.7 times as much as the C&T. No wonder, it is very complex, and abusive-manipulation- prone.
What does not mean that the “Feed-In-Tariff” does not have drawbacks. They are: (a) the cost to taxpayers, (b) benefits available just to “big pocket” buyers, who bought, installed and started operating the turbines BEFORE getting eligible “F-I-T” benefits. Not to those who need some “seed money” and affordable mortgage to buy a turbine in a similar way as buying a house.
It is strange, that nobody has yet proposed the COMPETITION with emitters, as the hardly controversial tool to fight the climate change. In the electricity generating sector that would mean elimination of the turbines’ drawbacks, which hold back their cost-efficiency. Such as the idling of huge percentage of wind, which blows between the blades, and much more.
The task, the Liberals should challenge our scientists and engineers with.
CCF04 – Competition:
I thing there is no much doubt left, that the already noticeable Climate Change amounts to the most serious problems of this century. Not just because of hardly deniable physical changes to the climate’s behavior, but also because of conflicts of human interests in fighting those changes.
The history knows many examples of dealing with big conflicts, either peacefully or by arms. With various results, of course. In the case of fighting the Climate Change two specific cases could serve as examples: (*) The October 4, 1957 launch of satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union; (*) Sending man into space by the United States and landing him on the Moon.
Launching the Sputnik 1 to the space was considered a “provocation” by the United States, which were behind the Soviet space technology at that time. To counter that “provocation” they accelerated their R&D in the space-related technology and the Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon. On July 20, 1969 they both became the first people to set foot on the Earth’s satellite.
The common denominator of those two events is called COMPETITION.
That’s what we need to win in our contribution to the Climate Change deceleration.
In our case we would face one, financially strong competitor, i.e. a variety of financially strong GHG emitters supported by the present government.
Our assets are:
(i) Huge amounts of idly wasted renewable energies;
(ii) A lot of highly qualified and environment –friendly scientists and engineers;
(iii) Increasing awareness of imperfectness of our weapons used in fighting the climate change (e.g. obsolete wind turbines in clean electricity generation)
Our challenge should be:
Improve ASAP the above weapons to such degree, which will force our competitors to retreat from their “dirty” GHG emitting trenches. In the clean electricity generation that would be the development of much cheaper, but still highly efficient new classes of wind turbines. Their price per Mega Watt should be much, much lower than the average price per Mega Watt of Coal/Gas Fired Power Plants (CFPPs)– without subsidies.
As of today their price per Mega Watt is ca. 30% higher than the CFPP’s. In my opinion such a price drop is feasible, when we shift the existing design paradigm and start looking outside the box.
I have chosen the wind turbines example purposely, because the cost of electricity influences both our economy and our capacity of helping the developing countries. In the proposed version the cost of electricity generated during the Climate Change deceleration would drop down. What would contradict Mr. Harper’s old assertion, that it has to go up.
He probably included the $ Billion costs of Carbon Capturing and Storing to his estimate.
The stakes are extremely high – the fate of our planet is at risk. The cost of trying is incomparable with the costs of looming disasters resulting from Climate Change. The prospective benefits may be significant.
What’s needed?
The green light for green inventors.
Stan
CCF05: The author of “Energy, Environment and Economy in 2017: Growth and Responsibility” wrote rightly:
“The world of 2017 is increasingly demanding clean technologies. New wealth and jobs will go to those countries that can meet that demand. This is an enormous opportunity, and one that Canada cannot afford to miss.”
But this is just a great general statement, which begs for specifics. So, in order to satisfactorily participate in making that demand happy and to make a decent profit from that, we first need to identify such potential clients, whose demand for our products is expected to be long-term, while the quality and price of our potential products would be competitive with all potential competitors in the race.
That would require some intensive R&D work first, including drawback analysis of existing solutions, designing, building and testing a variety of much better small-scale prototypes, selecting the most promising ones for both patenting of intellectual property and for production of products’ pilot series ready for their “last polishing” tests. In the mean-time, all of the above should result in a design specification for building brick-and-mortar facilities needed for mass-production of final products. Once such facilities get built and all installed machinery start manufacturing what they were designed for, the full attack onto the market may start.
With deserved profits to enjoy.
Of course, all of that would require appropriate personnel, material, instrumentation, etc., which would have to be paid-for from some sources. Without adequate amount money all of the above will remain an unfulfilled dream.
In my opinion the natural source of such money would be the GHG fighting fees, enforced from all major GHG emitters ASAP. So far no one dared to question the principle: “POLLUTER PAYS”. Even Mr. Harper mentioned something like that in the past. But, until now there is a “deafening silence” about implementing that principle.
As I explained in the chapter CCF01, the money collected this way must not land in the coffers of short living governments’ . Since the collective “polluters” are forced to pay fees for their collective “pollution” they sooner-or-later should see some results from that payment. E.g. some processes and/or equipment which reduce the GHG emission, and…, and…, and…reduce their payments in the long term. But before that happens the payments should start from a low level, and gradually grow to the maximal bearable one, before a tough decision gets made whether to start reducing the existing per unit GHG price when their emission shows down-wards trend, or let them stay at the critical level for a while, when their emission is expected to fall in the near future, or let the company bankrupt if there is absolutely no hope of any reduction of GHGs in an industry.
Such setting the price for GHG emission, executing the emission fees and deciding the fate of the hope-less industries should be best done by the powerful “Canadian Climate Change Fighting Authority (CCCFA)”, described in the chapter CCF01 above.
Hello Gordon,
I think, Kitchener could be a great place to house an Institute for Wind Turbines Improvement.
There are two universities and one college, with some professionals interested in such improvement.
There is also an “idle” ThyssenKrup Budd building on the Homer Watson Boulevard, which would be probably suitable for housing such experimenting tenant as the mentioned institute.
I recommend you figure that out. After losing over 1000 jobs @ both Uniroyal Goodrige and ThyssenKrup Budd, that could be a great opportunity to recover from recession. At least partially.
Figure that out, please. It does not cost very much, but may make a big difference if it’ll get accepted.
Greetings from Stan
Canada must make efforts to change its energy mix. Great strides have already been made in Ontario, as one example, but we need a national approach that enhances and builds on initiatives already underway. David McPhee suggests Canada should have a “National Environment Program”. I agree that, as Bud Jacobs points out, nuclear powered generation “is the only option that is greener than all other when all factors are taken into consideration”. Nuclear powered generation, though costly to build and commission provides the best option for reliable base-load generation.
Christy Gain questions how we can (collectively) afford nuclear considering the costs of dealing with highly radioactive waste fuel but the solutions to this problem are known. Deep burial in a managed facility is the answer; all that’s needed is for Canadians to accept and see management of nuclear fuel waste as a huge economic generator and not as a problem.
Nothwistanding, Canada must also make the best use of alternative energy sources, where practical, to reduce the amount of capital we need to invest in future nuclear powered projects. The way to do that, of course, is to encourage investment in projects that generate energy from alternative sources.
One component of a “National Environment Program” could be the NERP – “National Energy Re-investment Fund” – which would collect ‘contributions’ (often referred to as carbon taxes) by province and territory and direct those investments back into alternative energy generation projects within their respective provinces and territories. As an example, if $2.4 billion is collected from Alberta contributors in a given year, those contributions would be contributed towards alternative energy generation projects only within the Province of Alberta.
Hello Douglas, nice to see your post on this site.
This is my humble question to Christy Gain’s statement: “Deep burial in a managed facility is the answer;”
1) How do we assure the safe management of the facility, which would contain highly-radiocative material over the period of its dangerous radioactivity?
For the next 10,000, or 100,000 years, or even more?
I was part of Gord Edwards Green Energy Conference in 1989 and was a former
‘public participant’ at the Blair Seaborn panel on Nuclear Waste Management.
My senior univerisity research in the late 1980’s was on the dimensions of Canada US energy trade.
The agenda remains simple and people like Amory Lovins and EF Schumacher
come to mind. We require more sources of small scale ‘green energy’ production at the
micro level for local use/distribution. Retention of public ownership of the energy grid while allowing a multiplicity of suppliers down to the household level to feed the grid is part of this new eco-calculus for Government to apply as a regulatory device.
Full Social/Environmental costing of electricity is required. This means that cleaner renewable forms of energy are preferred to non-renewable fossil and nuclear inputs and priced accordingly. It sounds simple.
Under this program we need to end all subsidies to the nuclear and fossil energy producers because we are currently (and perveresely) subsidizing ecological destruction to keep the computers running and the lights on. We can still keep the machines running with a higher ‘quality’ of energy and we are evolved enough (I hope) to make it happen.
Canada’s Audior General can’t quantify the cost of long-term storage of nuclear waste.
The nuclear question is one for the Canada-US Military alliance to determine. Canada is the supplier of strategic US military interests i.e tritium. We can’t terminate
nuclear power until the US agrees to get its tritium elsewhere. The nuclear waste problem is irrevocably coupled to the nuclear power and nuclear weapons problem.
Hello Stan. Used nuclear fuel material is – and has been since the first fuel bundle was removed from a nuclear plant core – managed by securing the material on-site at each of the plants that produce it. However, this method of storage has only been a ’short-term’ solution considering the material’s radioactive life-span.
Managing the material in a deep burial (Deep Geological Repository) facility for many thousands of years would mean that the facility itself would need to employ trained, skilled people for as long as the material presents risk to life and the environment.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) was established in 2002 by the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act and has assumed responsibility for long-term management of used nuclear fuel.
For more information on the NWMO’s “Adaptive Phased Management” Program (draft document now available), please visit: http://www.nwmo.ca/home?language=en_CA
From my readings of previous public proceedings, the idea of “deep geologic burial” of nuclear waste is “off the table”. The concept we are dealing with is long term “retrievable storage” of nuclear waste. The hope is that one day we will have a technology to render this waste ecologically benign but until that day comes, we must recognize that some forms of nuclear waste will not break down for thousands of years. Therefore, it is completely irresponsible and indeed reckless to go down the path of “disposal” for truly, no waste is ‘disposed of”, it remains in the biosphere. Einstein warned us that the power of the atom had changed everything except our way of thinking and it is time we changed our nuclear waste thinking towards a ’storage and retrieval” model. Of course, the planners and proponents of nuclear power would never accept full life cycle costing of nuclear power to include/embed the cost of nuclear waste management at the front end where the consumer (in Ontario mostly) pays for this cost up front (similar model to paying a disposal fee for recyclables here in British Columbia). If this cost were included effectively, nuclear power would be priced right out of the market due to its sheer unaffordability.
I believe our first goal must be to encourage all age groups to participate in helping the environment. Water bodies must be taken care of; it is pouted and nobody has taken the initiative to clean it up. The Aboriginal reserves are also not sanitary and global warming affects them more than us. First we should spread awareness and get as many age groups as possible to participate and then we should clean up the parks. We should have more free recreational activities so we do not spend our life indoors watching television.
Canada cannot keep on encouraging new industrial growth. The factories produce harmful toxins. We a talk about economy and how it is finally growing. Economy and Environment should be hand in hand. Unfortunately, the environment has worsened and Canada is not doing a good job in keeping its promise with regards to the environment.
How about a National Green Energy Act similar to the Ontario act.
Let’s expand the mandatory energy audits to businesses as well as residential. Let’s make the Feed In Tariff system National. Let’s become the world centre of renewable products while targeting our carbon footprint to 10% of today.
I belong to the EnFamille Forum and would like to summarize our current thinking after more than 200 posts on the Topic: “Cap and trade with hard caps”.
Our current thinking is:
1) “Cap and Trade” may not work because the Credits for Carbon could come in at free market price of $50 per Ton which would drive up the price of oil by more than $20 per barrel. There are also major administrative problems with “Cap and Trade”. We therefore believe that a Carbon Tax starting at maybe $10 per ton on the major emitters would be more effective.
2) We would recommend a Carbon Tax on gasoline to encourage people to migrate to more efficient cars.
3) We must continue with energy reduction campaigns for improving insulation in existing buildings and new construction, using energy at night etc.
4) We would recommend that Ontario be encouraged to buy hydro power from Quebec and Alberta should be encouraged to buy hydro power from BC.
5) Any carbon tax collected by province would be returned to the individual provinces for Green Energy projects. Possibly Alberta would want to study and encourage Geothermal. New Brunswick might want to encourage more wind. Ontario might want to study wood pellets or biomass.
6) We believe we should avoid the term “Carbon Tax” because the word “Tax” does not go over. We would call this the “National Energy Reinvestment Fund”.
7) The whole program must be kicked off with a clarification of the science of Global Warming. Find simple examples like the declining summer ice in the Northwest Passage to show that Global Warming is real. And mention the problems of rising sea level and loss of arable land if our temperature keep rising. People have to buy in to the science of Global Warming before they will listen to the rest of the story.
For electricity, a national power grid – or at least increased inter-provincial transmission capacity – should be part of the mix, in addition to more localised transmission possibilities. For the earlier, there is a lot of renewable capacity (for example) in regions that don’t have as much demand, but little infrastructure (and a thing called ‘confederation’) to impede them from sending too far within Canada.
Then there is public concern against renewable. Hydro-electricity gets a bad name because of flooding, when there are a couple thousand megawatts of capacity in Ontario alone on already existing dams or fairly low-impact ‘run-of-river’ projects. The example of the PEI venture to build some forty or more windmills that would have supplied the entire province with power and then some that was reduced to a token few windmills because of poor visuals is striking as well. If we are to power our future, we need intense conservation, but also reduced reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear, both of which have nasty legacies no matter how much sequestration we can do and no matter far down into the Canadian shield we bury the Strontium 90. Anyway we do it is going to have a less-than-desirable impact of some form, unless we can simply consume less power as we grow.
For the later, I see no reason beyond political why there can’t solar panels on the roofs of houses and wind turbines on tall buildings. Costs are manageable if there’s a political will to make it happen. This sort of localised micro-production of electricity will require grid improvements, since no province really has one set-up for many small in-feeds in conjunction with the large generating houses.
In terms of other issues, electric trains would be awesome: I’m recalling Norway, where 90%+ of it’s power is Hydroelectric and almost it’s entire train system is electrified – frieght and passenger. It’s a little harder in Canada – being slightly larger than Norway – to have a total national electric train system, but not impossible. We just need to start somewhere: the Greater Toronto Area; the Windsor-Gaspe corridor; Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa; Edmonton-Calgary; A Commuter system for Halifax and out-regions such as the Annapolis Valley and Truro. I’m sure it’s possible for VIA Rail to electrify it’s system, obviously requiring the cooperation of CN and CPR. It might not happen in twenty years, but the point is that it’s possible.
Finally (for now anyway) I would like to see a National Public Transit Plan/Strategy etc. that would bring the Federal Government into a permanent relationship with Provinces and Municipalities on public transit initiatives throughout the country. And even beyond public transit or power, it would be nice to see more long-term commitment and cooperation from the Federal wing of Confederation, and less specific funding at specific times that might or might not coincide with approaching elections. The Federal government for many years has been a hodge-podge contributor on most things besides Health Care. For things like transportation and electrical power, which are essential for our economic viability, there ought to be a Health-Care style funding/management commitment to build and maintain the infrastructure required for such projects. At one time we built the Trans-Continental Railway, and the Trans-Canada Highway, and the Trans-Canada Pipeline, and the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the Universal Health-Care System. Why not a Trans-Canada Power Grid, and a Trans-Canada Public Transit/General Transportation system beyond airports and Port Authorities? And I’d rather not hear that’s there no money: this would be a twenty-year, non-partisan (!) plan, not next week. Oh, to dream!
What can the Liberals do to help put meat on the new Sustainable Development Act? How can the Liberals help ensure that all new policies are developed through a sustainability lens – where the environmental and social impacts are given as much weight as the economic? Will the Liberals help Canadians understand that we cannot pursue economic growth at all costs – we are running out of natural resources. We need to increase taxation to bring in the revenues we need to support green programs and programs that address the inequalities that are growing in Canada.
We need a new way of doing things. Let’s stop blaming each other; let’s try to work out what we can agree on in common, and move as quickly as we can towards these goals – after all we want to be able to hold our heads up and answer our grandkids when they ask what we did to help address climate change, pollution, poverty etc etc.
One of the main reasons why our GHG emissions are over 30% higher than we promised in the Kyoto Accord is because of population growth. We need to rethink immigration – curt it in half, which will make it much easier to dal with our environmental challenges.
There are other economic reaons why I believe this is necessary, but I want to say that the usual reason many give for our high immigration policy (which is 2 to 3 times per capita the rates of legal immigration to Australia or the US) is that we have an aging population – well, so does every other country, but our current immigration levels will do lettle to help with this problem, and most of the immigrants we let in are not young enough, if this was our goal.
Making our country environmentally sustainable means rethinking everything – moving our economy away from resource and energy exports is another one of those things we need to do.
A great deal of useful discussion here on new ways to generate energy. However, the fundamental and undiscussed assumption underlying all of these is that the consumption of energy in all its forms must continue to grow.
In other arenas, there has been considerable dscussion about the nature of a “conserver society”, which takes as its fundamental premise that never-ending growth of comsumption is not feasible. Many of the discussions about such a new state of affairs seem naively arcadian, and there has been (to my limited knowledge) little practical description of a path from here, a consumer society predicated on contunuing growth of consumption in all domains, to there, a conserver society predicated on a sustainable balance between consumption and production.
Describing such a state, and describing a path to it, is a formidable challenge. I submit, though, that our talks about new forms of energy to keep our current future lives fully ppowered should be balanced by an equally substantive discussion about new ways of living which require far less energy. Our grandchildren are likely to astonished at our naivete in imagining that the current way of of going needs only additional energy supplies to be ’sustainable”.
I agree with decentralized generation of electricity, but I disagree with including nuclear power for two reasons.
1. Nuclear power stations make a nation vulnerable, annot be adequately defended to insure same level of security that citizens enjoy without the nuclear energy installations.
2. Nuclear power is not necessary in the mix, renewable resources can supply all the power we need. Speaking as a physicist, I guarantee that this is scientifically feasible.
Sustainability must become a national cross cutting policy, if we to ensure a future for our children. Just as the UN has ensured that gender mainstreaming is becoming an effective cross cutting policy, in the future. Sustainability, as a policy will join it. There may not be a peaceful transition to Sustainability — no thanks, say people who think dinosaurs’ bones and graves will never run out but when their short term gain runs out, they will pull out the patents they have hidden to change their business plan: doesn’t anyone remember Enron?
My admiration lies with the visionaries, scientists, engineers, and physicists who are dedicating their short lives to practical green and renewable solutions even as they educate our children to be good stewards of the planet earth. Let us work toward a nation FIT model perhaps? What a concept? Canada, a leader for distributed renewable power? Could Canada, of all nations kick the fossil fuel habit, after the Copenhagen Conference results came in? Finally, spend your national policy money on best practices of building design and energy savings, they are the first vanguard to saving energy everywhere especially if they are tied into sustainability as a cross cutting policy.
New technologies like horizontal drilling and multi stage fracturing has made large natural gas resources economic. In North America alone, gas reserves are now estimated at 100 years or more.
Another new technology is “micro” GTL (gas to liquids) which converts natural gas to crude oil, synthetic jet fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel. This technology ensures supply of liquid fossil fuels for at least another century.
The Liberal Party of Canada, under the venerable Prime Minister Jean Cretien, and Energy Minister Anne McLellan, can proudly take credit for the Tar Sands Accord – an agreement between the Federal Gov’t, industry and Alberta which facilitated the development of the tar sands, resulting in prosperity which the entire country continues to benefit from. Carbon based liquid fuels will be essential for another at least another century and the Liberal Party of Canada has now another opportunity to develop policies which foster development on these resources and Canada’s technology leadership.
Policy to encourage and foster new Nuclear energy also must be embraced as the lowest cost supply of base load energy.
In response to the idea of a National Power grid –
We should be moving towards local green generating capacity to not have everything tied to a grid. Reasons include costs of massive infrastructure, securityand vulnerability to failure (if one part goes down and stays down, we can all go down), concept of being more sustainable if we are not all locked into one system. I believe that at least the basic needs for electrical energy (keeping food secure and water running, plus basic heat in winter) should be met locally. I also believe that we should be moving to a supply appraoch for energy. Right now, all of us can turn everything on in our homes and leave it that way 24/7. This has to be addressed. If I can be goverened for not paying my bill, I should be governed so that I am not a power pig. I recognize that some of this is not within the domain of the Federal government but this can be addressed. Love to talk share more on this
Regarding Climate Change, focus on adaptation. Emission reductions of GHGs, and other air pollutants should be part of clean air and water objectives, a much more immediate environmental and social issue: this would also force the resolution of technology issues and the need to identify priorities where technology cannot yet solve both GHG and air pollutant emissions. Do not rule out nuclear power. Do not exempt any projects from environmental assessment laws; let the process inform as it is meant to.