News and views from SA Canada Alberta’s new energy policy— A marketing triumph!
2015Barry Weisleder 2015-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 10 →
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With the bar set so low by previous regimes in the oil patch, it seems that all the new Alberta govern ment had to do was suppress a burp to be consid ered a leading agent of positive climate action. In truth, despite all the fanfare, the new energy policy of Premier Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government is more a “marketing triumph” than a substantial ef fort to tackle global warming.
According to media reports, Alberta’s overall car bon emissions will be allowed to grow. There are no hard targets for emission cuts, only the vague pledge that they will begin to fall below today’s lev els by 2030. Alberta coal plants will gradually be shut, but they were slated to be closed anyway.
The new cap on dirty oil emissions is so high that the tar sands will be able to grow another 43 per cent, roughly until 2030. Presently, they emit 70 megatonnes per year. With an annual cap of 100 megatonnes, there’s plenty more damage to the en vironment in store.
Alberta’s proposed carbon tax will hit consumers in the pocket book, regardless of ability to pay. It will cost an additional 7 cents a litre at the pump, and it will cost workers and the poor in other ways too as prices on related commodities rise.
The carbon tax would apply to all sectors of the economy and be phased in by Jan. 1, 2018, to $30 per tonne. When fully in effect, it would take in $3 billion a year. Notley promised that all the money would be invested in green initiatives within Alber ta, including research and public transportation.
But it won’t keep the carbon in the ground. It will transfer wealth to the private-sector firms that will get the contracts. And in polishing the image of Can ada’s most polluting province, it will profit the big gest polluters on the planet, breathing new life into their schemes to build more pipelines, including east through Canada, and south through the USA.
Does that explain why oil industry giants are so happy with Rachel Notley’s plan? At the news con ference announcing her policy, in the company of several other big oil executives, Suncor CEO Steve Williams said, “This plan will make one of the world’s largest oil-producing regions a leader in ad dressing the climate-change challenge.” Sure. When pigs fly. n