Evidence of meeting #11 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was targets.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
World Wildlife Fund does not support nuclear as an option. It's neither necessary nor desirable from an environmental perspective.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
Very soon, Ontario will have shut down seven coal-fired electric power plants. What technology should Ontario embrace? It needs to generate electricity for its industries. What approach do you advocate?
5:10 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
World Wildlife Fund did a--
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
We've heard some lofty theories, but I'm talking about concrete proposals.
5:10 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
According to a study done by the WWF, through the use of clean energy, that is by resorting to energy efficiency and conservation measures, we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and close coal-fired electric power plants.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
You're saying that if we did that, we could close the seven power plants?
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was interested in your comments about Norway. It's a very similar kind of economy. It's oil based, and it has a kind of petro currency, which apparently, from what I hear, appreciated significantly and had a significant negative impact on its manufacturing sector.
Could you elaborate a bit more on the Norwegian experience? When you say that Norway is carbon neutral, could you, for the benefit of review, define that for us?
5:15 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
Essentially, what Norway is planning on doing is reducing its emissions quite dramatically, probably somewhere on the order of what's being proposed in this bill. Obviously, a country cannot eliminate its carbon emissions entirely. Part of its plan is to reduce emissions as deeply as it can, and then any remaining emissions that may come from that jurisdiction, from Norway, would be offset with credible emission credits from elsewhere, most likely the developing world.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Maybe this isn't a fair question--we're being very country specific here--but what strategies have they employed that perhaps we could employ here? Is it just setting targets?
5:15 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
They have a carbon tax.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
They have a carbon tax that affects their oil and gas industry, which is why the oil and gas industry actually uses CCS, because once you apply a large enough tax, it becomes commercially effective.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Which brings me to carbon sequestration as it would relate to Alberta and the oil sands. How far along are we in making carbon sequestration viable? For example, when we were discussing Bill C-288, we had some experts come in and say that we were still a ways away from making this an efficient or effective solution.
To any of the panel, what are your thoughts on the state of carbon sequestration, and what do we do if the predictions are right and the oil sands will produce 15% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by some date soon? What do we have to do to meet our targets? Do we have to cancel oil sands projects?
Is carbon sequestration a solution that will allow the Alberta economy to move ahead with oil sands projects? How do you see Canada's future from the oil sands perspective?
5:15 p.m.
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
On the tar sands and the role of carbon capture and storage, I don't see that anybody is seeing a future in which we can actually meet deep reduction targets without some significant investment in carbon capture and storage. As the panel that just reported has pointed out, we do have some of the geological formations that allow that. We have capacity to build infrastructure, etc. It's not that this is impossible; it just has not been done.
Then the question becomes, who's going to pay? Who's going to be responsible? In what framework does this reside?
If we put in place an appropriate, aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target that constrains carbon, which creates a price signal, we will see deployment of that technology, because it is one of the ways that industry can really reduce emissions. We have to do that, and it is being done. There are projects in the United Arab Emirates. There are projects starting up as pilots in Europe. There is a project in Australia. This is happening around the world. It's a collaborative exercise, and really, it's only a matter of working out the framework and the arrangements for that. So it certainly should go forward.
What does that mean for the Alberta tar sands? Well, I don't think I'm the first person to be saying that it's an overheated situation and that we should have a more appropriate pace and scale of development at the very least. We need limits. There are no limits right now, and in the absence of that, it's an absolute free-for-all, using the global atmosphere as a commons to pollute. The implications for the boreal forest and for water are immediate and pressing. We have so many reasons to do this.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
This is a question for Ms. Langer or any panellist. You're saying we have to put some limits on oil sands developments if we are to meet our national greenhouse gas emissions. Do you think realistically--and this is probably not a fair question--you can see this particular government ever getting tough, in that respect, with that industry to a sufficient degree?
5:20 p.m.
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
I find it interesting that former Premier Lougheed is able to make pronouncements about pace and scale of development without blinking an eye. You have to read the situation, look at the overheated state of it, look at the public opinion in Alberta, and make a rational decision.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing. I really enjoyed some of the conversations here today, some of the solutions. In fact, they spur probably more questions than I have time to ask now.
I want to start with a question for you, Mr. Ogilvie. When you were talking about Gwyn Morgan you said we had to work back from the science. It becomes an interesting question. There are probably two questions I have on this.
The first one, since this is a global issue, is, have any of your groups done any modelling, or is there modelling out there by the United Nations to suggest targets for developing countries? For instance, what kind of a target should China have, and by what year?
5:20 p.m.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
There's a whole bunch of different proposals for what should happen. The UN agreed that we should consider a peak and decline from 10 to 15 years and be well below 50% of global emissions by 2050, and that has very real implications for the developing world. Both of those things mean that the developing world, during that 10- to 15-year period, will have to peak and decline themselves, because they're making up an increasingly large proportion of the emissions. As I said, developing countries have signed onto that in Bali, saying that we do need that peak and decline to happen.
5:20 p.m.
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
One of the slides in my presentation is this very complicated little graph with many wedges. Those are solution wedges.
What World Wildlife Fund did was ask the question: can we live within a seven-gigatonne budget, which is a 50% global reduction from the projected business as usual, while still meeting our energy needs, recognizing that there's growth in population and there's growth in development? The answer is yes, if we aggressively pursue efficiency, if we aggressively pursue renewables. Carbon capture and storage is a wedge there.
So it is possible, the whole world cooperating together to meet that, which has obvious implications for China, India, etc.--the developing world.
