U.S. greenhouse gas plan puts Canada further behind: climate scientist

Canada could be feeling the heat from the United States’ adoption this week of specific greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The U.S. Clean Power Plan leaves Canada a “rogue state” when it comes to tackling climate change, says Andrew Weaver, the sole Green Party member of the British Columbia legislature and a climate scientist who was a member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“It’s yet another indication that the Canadian government’s singular focus on the fossil fuel industry is making us fall behind,” Weaver tells Yahoo Canada News.

“We were leaders but government has sent a signal to the market that, really, if you want to do business in Canada, you better be involved in the oil industry or the natural gas industry.”

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama finalized the country’s first-ever carbon limits, aimed at reining in emissions from the electricity sector.

The plan drafted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets a target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.

The plan assigns each state a specific target for reductions from existing fossil-fuel fired power plants.

Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol to address greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The U.S. did not.

The Conservative government abandoned Kyoto and now the U.S. is set to meet reduction targets and more, Weaver says.

At the time, the federal government said Canada would suffer economically if it pursued emissions reductions while its neighbour to the south did not.

“It was an excuse,” he says.

“The reason why we decided not to meet Kyoto was exclusively because it was inconsistent with the federal policy of exploration and rapid expansion of extraction of bitumen from the tarsands.”

The Canadian Electricity Association welcomed the plan, which specifically says that clean energy from outside the U.S. can be part of the solution for American states.

“Certainly we’re very encouraged that [the] EPA left the door open to states and utilities that want to use imports of clean, non-emitting energy from Canada as a greenhouse gas reduction strategy,” says Patrick Brown, director of U.S. affairs for the association.

It’s too early to know where and how much but Brown expects the Clean Power Plan will have a positive effect on Canada’s already significant cross-border trade in electricity.

“We’re confident that it will lead to incremental growth,” he says.

The Clean Power Plan has created a “new frontier” in the power sector, Brown says.

Canada has a clear advantage with its high proportion of hydro generation, which accounts for about 65 per cent of electricity in this country. That will only increase as projects like the Site C dam in B.C., the Keeyask project in Manitoba, the La Romaine in Quebec and the Lower Churchill dam in Labrador are developed.

“That will continue to remain the most important generation resource for Canada and arguably our greatest competitive advantage when it comes to cross-border trade with the United States,” Brown says.

Canada is a net exporter of electricity, Brown says. In 2014, cross-border trade of electricity amounted to about $3.5 billion. Approximately $2.9 billion of that was comprised of exports from Canada to the U.S.

“That’s a significant level of economic activity and one which we hope to expand under this new direction that [the] EPA has charted,” he says.

The White House says the Clean Power Plan will spur a 30 per cent increase in renewable energy generation by 2030.

Forbes magazine estimates the plan will create thousands of jobs in the more labour-intensive renewable energy sector.

Weaver says it will undoubtedly create opportunities for the Canadian clean energy sector — but mainly for Canadian companies to move to the U.S. and take their innovation with them because of the barriers to continued growth of the sector here.

“We’ll see a continued brain drain from Canada to the U.S.,” he says.