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.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
I cited evidence as to how we can get the kinds of deep reductions we need at little economic cost. The IPCC has done one globally. We've done modelling for 2020, and there is modelling for 2050.
All of it shows that we can get serious, deep emission reductions with virtually no impact on the economy. I cited the study we did where we would have economic growth in Canada at 26% instead of 27% between now and 2020.
You can turn that around and ask about the costs of not acting, and you start--
Conservative
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
I think that's an important point.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
I appreciate that, and I hate to cut you off, but my time is limited. You're suggesting that in your report it is costed in a very general way.
Mr. Ogilvie, could you comment?
Executive Director, Pollution Probe
There is no large-scale integrated cost analysis around anything I've ever seen in a plan.
I expressed the view that when we do the analysis we're going to see lots of opportunities. There have been bits and pieces. The energy ministers had modelling done on energy efficiency and came up with their agreement on efficiency. We know we can save money on buildings. There is a model ready to be run for the transportation sector on vehicle fuel efficiency, and so on. I'm a big fan of doing that analysis.
I think we know what we have to get to in 2050, and we know we have to get there in stages and steps. We also have a signal as to what we should probably shoot for in 2020. To me, it's a matter of costing that out and finding the most productive, least cost, and most favourable competitive positions to achieving those goals.
So yes, the analysis should be done. Pollution Probe hasn't done it; we've been part of exercises where some of it has been done.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Okay, thank you.
I, too, think we should be costing this so that Canada knows where we're going. I think the targets are aggressive, but we need to really look at the impacts.
When Mr. Layton was asked what the costs are and where the targets come from, he acknowledged they were from the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute. And he gave a very interesting analogy about a railroad. He said:
I think of the people who thought about connecting one end of the country to the other with a railroad. Do you think they had it all figured out as to how they were going to pull it off? Do you think they had figured out how they were going to pay for it all? Did they do it perfectly? The answer to all those things would be no, but they had a dream about where they wanted our country to be, and they took on the impossible and they focused on it.
He has a dream. He set these targets, as recommended by the David Suzuki Foundation, which is a well-respected organization, and the Pembina Institute. We thank you for encouraging those.
Can you elaborate on what you see Canada looking like? I'll preface my comments by saying that I drive a hybrid. It's a transitional technology. I look forward to a time when they have electric cars that I can plug in when I get to the airport and I can drive home and plug it in. I think that technology isn't that far away.
Where do you see Canada in 2020 and 2050? Do you see coal-fired generating plants like we have in Ontario, for which the federal government provided $583 million to shut down and they haven't been yet? In 2020, do you see that kind of technology being shut down and us moving to a greener Canada, greener technologies, maybe with electric cars, solar energy, tidal energy, and more efficient homes with people living on smaller lots?
And do you also see there being a carbon tax? I hope not. I think Canadians are overtaxed, and our government doesn't support a carbon tax. But do you see a carbon tax in 2020?
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
Up until the opposition to a carbon tax it sounded like you had a vision.
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
Because that's what it is. It's about using less energy. It's about using cleaner energy. It's about moving away from polluting industries and toward industries that provide us with the services we need and yet don't disturb the climate.
It will have to involve a carbon tax--a carbon price of some kind--whether it's a tax or a cap and trade system. It will have to. You don't get the reductions unless you have a regulation to reduce emissions or a price that compels polluters to reduce their emissions.
You can design a carbon tax or a cap and trade system in many different ways and, if you wanted to, make it completely revenue neutral from a government perspective. You reduce other taxes. You can also use some of that money to invest in the emission reductions we need elsewhere, like retrofitting buildings, or putting more money into transit, which we have a consensus needs to be done.
Conservative
February 4th, 2008 / 4:50 p.m.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Thank you.
First of all, I want to thank all of you for coming. What has been useful is that you've come to the solution side from different angles, but they all add up to the same direction and to the picture, but it was a very rich set of presentations, so I want to thank you.
I want to go with Dale Marshall. Of course, part of the challenge is that he's shown us a bit of what this future study is going to be like, the one that's going to be released in three weeks. A couple of questions just beg to be asked. Whether he'll give me the answer, I don't know.
Canada could get to more than 80% of the way to the 2020 targets by applying a sufficiently high carbon price. What would the price be?
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
It is something we're going to release in three weeks.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Would it be in the zone of $15 to $20, which has been proposed by--
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
No, it would be significantly higher than that.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
I also want to understand the way you've set it out here. It suggests the whole of our 2020 target, or 80% of it, doesn't apply to other gains from vehicle fuel efficiency, appliances, and buildings, so I would assume you're talking about large final emitters, which, depending on your way of calculating, is either 47%, as Julia Langer suggested, or 53%, but we know the categories we're speaking of. Are you saying that just setting aside the other 47%, or whatever it is--let's call it the 50% that isn't there--you can achieve 80% of Canada's total target from that large final emitter sector, or 80% of it within that category?
Analyst, Climate Change Policy, David Suzuki Foundation
No, a widespread carbon price, when just applied to large final emitters, would apply to all energy use that involved fossil fuels, so we're not just talking about 50%. It's actually closer to 80% of the sectors that are putting out carbon dioxide.
Certain things aren't captured very well by carbon taxes, aren't affected very much by carbon taxes, and this is where I think there is a real need, at least in that case, for regulations for things like vehicle fuel efficiency, buildings, and much higher standards for efficiency for appliances, for example. We know how to make natural gas furnaces that are 96% efficient. Why do we have some on the market that are 78% efficient? It makes no sense, having regulations in various cases where the carbon price by itself won't incent the kind of behavioural change we need to reduce emissions to those levels.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
In terms of the other sectors, that is to say the other 50%, it really comes from three areas: one, transportation; two, buildings and appliances—I put that together—and the third, which isn't mentioned here, is agriculture, forestry, and urban waste, the bio sector. Realistically, of those three sectors, understanding that particularly in the third sector the source of the emission isn't always energy but has to do with nitrous oxide or methane or something else, other kinds of greenhouse gases, do the three of you think it is possible, without going crazy, to achieve that kind of efficiency in the other three sectors: transportation, the built environment with appliances, and the bio sector? Where are we going to have the toughest part by 2020?
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
On the efficiency side of things, there is no study in the entire world on greenhouse gas reductions that does not put energy efficiency at the top of the list.
First, energy efficiency is fast. These targets seem ambiguous in their timeframe. To protect the climate, you actually have to be front-end loading the emissions reductions. This is what the scientists show with all their curves—your panel must have shown you a lot of those last week. We need to front-end load some of the reductions, and the fastest, cheapest, and most permanent reductions come from reducing energy demand overall.
Conservatively speaking, in our Canadian economy we could be using 40% less energy to do exactly the same things we're doing now. But in fact we shouldn't be doing exactly the same things we're doing now. We should be using less. We should be using public transit more than cars. Then you get on top of that 40% additional reduction in energy demand. So in housing, transportation, agriculture, and forestry operations—the mill operations, not the fertilizer—we could get huge no-regrets gains. That's where we come down on the side of action now. We are wasting energy, and if we don't act, we're going to be disadvantaged as energy prices rise. So the potential is strongly there.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We got into the topic of carbon tax a little already, and there has been a fair bit of talk about the issue of carbon tax. We are not sure where the Liberals stand on the issue of carbon taxes. One day their deputy leader supports a carbon tax; the next day Stéphane Dion does not. Just a couple of weeks ago, Mr. McGuinty rejected the notion of a carbon tax. Then his colleague Mr. Godfrey said he wouldn't dismiss the idea.
So we don't really know where the Liberals stand on the matter. Dale stated his response, but maybe Julia and Ken could say what kind of carbon tax would be required to meet the target in this bill. What would it look like? What would be the shape of it?
Julia or Ken?
Director, Global Threats, Conservation, World Wildlife Fund Canada
First of all, it's not necessarily tax we are talking about but price. You can create a price by various methods, either through a tax or through a constraint. If you constrain carbon through a cap or a regulated target, the price will go up because carbon becomes a commodity. So you don't necessarily have to tax carbon to raise the price of it.
Some of the studies that have been done, looking at $30-a-tonne pricing, show that you would get a whole bunch of efficiency measures, a whole bunch of industrial reductions, with $30 per tonne. You increase the price, through whatever method, and you make additional measures, additional reduction opportunities, more cost-effective, more viable.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
It sounds to me like it is still a tax. But I could be persuaded.
Executive Director, Pollution Probe
There are some areas we know we can put a tax or a price on quickly, like fuels. The infrastructure to collect tax on fuels is easily used. You would hardly have to hire anybody else to collect and manage that money.
The national round table is moving into the next part of its analysis—looking at the pricing side of things. I think this requires a great deal of design.
It's clear that if you put an efficiency standard on, then the public simply takes that technology. But you have to get into the design of how to turn it over. If you are allowing people to make choices on whether they are going to use more or less heating fuel than they need, then price will have an impact.
So the word “tax” is a bad word, in a sense, but at the end of the day it is what it is. It's not so much whether to tax as it is how to tax . You have to make sure that you're dealing equitably with people who don't have the wherewithal to pay extra prices. But it's obvious: they're going to use less if they pay more, and they are going to use more if they don't pay at all. If we don't put that broad signal into the economy, then we're going to have real trouble. So I favour some kind of a price, whether it's a tax or not, on a heating bill or whatever.
There are some good analyses on this in the U.S. and in some parts of Canada, in which they study how much extra you actually end up paying if you have that extra price. I won't go into detail, but the Ontario Energy Board and the shared savings mechanism are ways in which you can go through utilities and consumers can pay more on the price side while saving on the fuel side through less use. So there are ways to do this, but it takes a great deal of design.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
I have another quick question, and just a quick yes or no from each of you would be appreciated, as I'm running out of time. The government is moving, as you know, from voluntary compliance agreements to some good regulations, some tough regulations, on big polluters, as evidenced by the announcement in Indonesia to proceed with section 71 of CEPA. Just quickly, yes or no, do you support that move, instead of the voluntary, to the tougher announcements, as in proceeding with section 71?
