Environment Committee on Nov. 19th, 2009

[His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann]

Of course, this is pretty new. It's a learning-by-doing process. In addition to what you mentioned, there are also other programs. There are unused credits, for example, by some countries from the Kyoto Protocol. That ought to be addressed. Two-thirds of that surplus belongs to Russia and to Ukraine, for example, and the rest to Eastern European member states. We are aware of that, but all this needs to be addressed. But that's not a reason not to do it.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I have a last question.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You will have to make it short.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

What would you consider as a fair contribution so that the industrialized countries would help the developing countries in the context of the climate change adaptation? It is expressed as a GDP percentage.

Is it 3 to 4% of the GDP? What kind of contribution by the industrialized countries, under the climate change adaptation scheme, would you consider as a good starting point to the negotiations?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Ambassadors, perhaps you could give us a very brief response.

[His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary]

I'm afraid I'm really not enough of an expert to answer that. I'm not close enough to the negotiation. I do know that we want to have a sort of key that would be based on capacity to pay and also the cost of mitigation, which would be different for different countries. For some countries there will be quite easy opportunities to mitigate, and for others it will be more expensive. Whatever key we have needs to take account of that and also take account of those who've already taken early domestic action and those who haven't. That also needs to be included in the calculation--and population trends.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, High Commissioner.

We're going to continue on.

Ms. Duncan, you have the floor.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you both, Your Excellencies, for appearing. I'm absolutely delighted to see you here and I want to personally commend both the European Union and the United Kingdom for your incredible dedication to this issue.

I would like to ask Ambassador Cary this. Thank you for the excellent overview of all the initiatives in the United Kingdom. I'm wondering if it's possible, if you have copies available online of those specific documents, to make those available to the committee. I know I certainly I would welcome the opportunity to look at them.

[His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary]

I set out at the back of the paper a list of websites from which you will be able to download the particular documents.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

If there are any of those you would particularly like to make available to us—for example, the national security strategy—I would be immensely interested in reviewing that.

I'm going to have very little time to ask you questions and I look forward to the opportunity to follow up outside of the committee to pursue more.

First of all, my question is to Ambassador Brinkmann. Am I to understand that the European Union has actually issued a binding directive for all of the member states in setting these targets?

[His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann]

It's not by way of a directive. For the time being, these are targets for the negotiations in Copenhagen. That's our position, and we will negotiate along these lines.

Later on, once we have an agreement--hopefully--it will be transposed into acquis, as we call it, in community legislation. Whether it's by directive or by regulation remains to be seen. We have the carbon market already. We've built on the Kyoto Protocol. In terms of implementation, there will be legally binding instruments internally.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thus far, it's the member states that have or have not issued binding targets. In addition to the United Kingdom, how many other members of the European Union have actually issued binding targets in law?

[His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann]

As for the European Union, we have set these overall binding targets for ourselves. How we distribute that amongst ourselves is still to be seen. I cannot speak for individual member countries; I don't know.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

So you're not aware.

[His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann]

No.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay.

Ambassador Cary, it's absolutely stunning what you've presented to us here, and very illustrative of the frameworks. It sets an incredible map for the kinds of instruments that can be used.

I'm particularly interested in your national security strategy. It seems to mirror the direction the United States has gone in, including under the Bush regime, where they've put together national security with climate change. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail out of this framework of the climate change act, various initiatives on housing and so forth. Can you tell us specific initiatives under that framework that are already under way in the United Kingdom to actually begin to meet these targets?

In other words, you have legislation on the books, but are there initiatives already under way pursuant to those laws and policies?

[His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary]

Yes, there certainly are.

One example would be the renewables obligation. All utilities in the United Kingdom now must have a rising percentage of renewable energy in their energy mix. Every year, that goes up by 1%.

We start from a very different position than Canada does. We have almost no hydro, and we depended very heavily on coal 20 years ago. So we start from less than 2% renewable, whereas I think Canada is at around 70%.

But we are driving that up as fast as we can, and that's being done through a renewables obligation. There's an obligation on utilities to have a rising percentage. They combine that energy, too; they can get some government subvention for energy that's created with renewable energy.

That has done a lot to stimulate the market. People producing renewable energy, whether it's solar or wind or tidal or biomass, know that they have a ready market for that and will be able to sell it, and sell it at well above normal market price. That is already driving behaviour.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I understand you also have a number of energy efficiency mechanisms for housing and building. Is that also driven by legislation?

[His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary]

That's not yet driven by legislation. There was a consultative document suggesting that all newly built housing should operate as carbon neutral by 2016. That went out for consultation.

On the basis of the consultation, the government then produced a policy statement, called “Building a Greener Future”, that confirmed their intention that all houses should be carbon neutral by 2016, with a progressive tightening of building regulation by 25% in 2010 and by 44% in 2013.

As far as I know, the legislation for that is still to be put through Parliament.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

We all were made aware yesterday of the new agreements between the United States government and China that set out a framework for how they're going to work together towards cleaner energy, cleaner electricity, cleaner vehicles, and exchange of technology. Has the United Kingdom or has the European Union pursued similar-type agreements with China or with any of the other “developing nations”?

[His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary]

I'll perhaps answer first.

We have a near-zero utility, which we're doing as a joint project with China, in China. We originally were aiming to have that up and running and fully on stream by 2020. The Chinese came back to us earlier this year and said they wanted it up and running by 2014.

So the Chinese now are the ones who are pushing us to move faster on this. I think they see enormous potential and opportunities in developing carbon capture technology. I think that's why they were interested in a faster delivery of that near-zero utility.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Ambassador Brinkmann.

[His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann]

Yes. The EU has a number of agreements on science and technology, research, and so on with developing countries, but we think it's important that the private sector be engaged in that. That's why we think technology cooperation and research and development must be substantially scaled up. At the same time, we believe it is important to maintain intellectual property rights because that stimulates research being done, and also you can then have market-specific rules for the intellectual property rights so that you can differentiate prices.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired. It goes by fast when you're having fun.

Mr. Warawa, you're batting cleanup in the first round.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Your Excellencies. I appreciate your being here.

As you know, the committee has been looking at a private member's bill, Bill C-311, but your comments today are focused more on the general issue of climate change and the negotiations for a new international agreement on climate change as we approach Copenhagen, which is just weeks away.

I'd like to focus, first of all, on a collective position of the EU and the U.K. as part of that collective position's targets. What is the importance of having a collective position? What would be the disadvantage of each of the 27 countries having their own position on climate change?