Environment Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have only six minutes of time. Thank you for helping me home in on this.

Specifically related to the coal phase-out in 2030, if we have no coal in this country, we have no fly ash production. If we have no fly ash production, then cement production becomes cost-prohibitive, because we'll have to import fly ash from the United States. Have there been any impact studies on the cost of increases in infrastructure specifically with regard to the phase-out of coal and the loss of fly ash production?

[Matt Jones]

We could probably get back to you with additional details, but in our consultations with the Cement Association, this is not something that has come up. I have a university friend who works for the Cement Association. We have lots of discussions about the industry and environmental impacts and their efforts to improve their environmental performance. My understanding from him is that there are a number of alternatives to fly ash and that cement is produced around the world, including in jurisdictions where there is no coal and where they use alternatives to fly ash.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Will it raise the cost because these alternatives are more expensive? Or is that not something you're aware of?

[Matt Jones]

I can't say off the top of my head, but I think if there were concerns, the Cement Association would have raised this over several years of discussion. Keep in mind that the efforts to phase out coal started many years ago. The initial regulation dates back several years. This has not come up from the Cement Association to date, to my knowledge.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

It's not just related to cement. For example, I worked in road construction for several years. When you're laying a roadbed, a tremendous amount of fly ash is used to set a base for the road. Really, there's no effective replacement when you lose that. There are more expensive alternatives.

Has there been any economic modelling done on the coal phase-out and the costs associated with it, not just from the carbon and electricity prices going up from but the secondary by-products created by that?

[Matt Jones]

I think we'd have to follow up with our sector experts in our regulatory branch, including those who deal with the Cement Association, the cement industry and the electricity industry. We can return to the committee and provide additional information, if that's helpful.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Here's another thing. It's actually an interesting consequence. When you input carbon pricing, you're raising the price of carbon, and this unleashes certain innovations, which is what I think the government intended to do. One innovation, which was planned previously at the Keephills plant, near my riding, was to input carbon capture sequestration technology. The pioneer project, as it was called, was later abandoned because the company said there is no carbon tax and so there's really no reason. Then when you have a carbon tax, it creates an incentive to keep that coal plant running, with carbon capture. However, when you put a ban on coal for 2030, at a plant that can reduce emissions by a million tonnes at one plant, which is about a 30% reduction of what that one facility had, it really reduces your innovation.

Do you have any comments on that? When you have a carbon price combined with regulations, that can actually stifle innovation in some ways.

[Judy Meltzer]

I would just make the general point that there are different technologies that become more cost-effective at different price points. There's no singular correct or right path. It depends on the industry. As you know, there are significant coal-to-natural gas transitions in certain jurisdictions. There are different incentives that lead to different things.

Really, I would say it's the range of measures. Carbon pollution pricing creates a particular price signal, but it works in conjunction with other regulations and complementary measures. I would also just note—and maybe carbon capture and storage is one good example—that carbon pricing rewards and recognizes the investments that are made by industry to improve their performance. There's an ability to get surplus credits for clean performance, which can be traded or sold for economic benefit. There is that incentive to improve performance. It doesn't necessarily determine which trajectory a firm will take—that will be shaped by a range of factors, like business decisions that are obviously informed by a whole range of considerations—but I don't think it would be fair to frame it as a sort of disincentive for a particular kind of clean technology.

Do you want to add to that, Matt?

[The Chair]

We're out of time on that one, but there may be a chance to get back to it.

Mr. Stetski, you're up next.

[Wayne Stetski, Kootenay—Columbia, NDP]

Thank you. It's good to see a number of you again. The title of our study is “Clean growth and climate change in Canada: International leadership”. Due to logistics, we haven't really been able to talk to anybody from other parts of the globe. I'm wondering whether any of you....

Perhaps Mr. Flato, you might be the best person to comment on it. I'm really interested in best management practices around climate change and what can be done. When you look around the world, have you seen anything internationally, or any countries in particular that you think are good models, that are doing things we should be doing more of, or that are perhaps better at it?

[Dr. Greg Flato]

My expertise, of course, is in climate science. I can speak to the stature of Canadian climate science internationally, which is very well regarded. We have a very well regarded global climate model. We have a lot of research undertaken in Canada that is published in very high-profile journals and is cited in IPCC assessments and other places. From that perspective, Canada has a very good reputation internationally as a leader in climate science.

In terms of policy and regulation, I'm afraid it's just not my area of expertise, and I would have to defer to one of my colleagues.

[Matt Jones]

I'd be pleased to pick up on that point.

I think there's a lot to be learned from a number of other countries, particularly developed OECD countries. Each of them is doing something well. Japan, for example, has put a number of measures in place to maximize energy efficiency, for example, and has really greatly reduced the amount of energy consumed per unit of production, per household, per square foot of office space, and so forth. I think there are a lot of co-benefits that come with that kind of efficiency. Nordic countries have placed prices on carbon and seen subsequent emissions reductions across the entire economy. Even in the United States, in years gone by, we've seen a combination of regulatory measures targeting greenhouse gases, and even more so air pollutants from coal-fired power plants, coupled with some subsidies for renewables, and we saw some shift from coal. Older coal plants are shutting down on a fairly regular basis even now in the United States based on EPA policies around mercury, acid gases and other pollutants.

I think there's a lot to be learned, and part of the UN climate change process requires countries to report on what they're doing. Part of the motivation for that is to hold people's feet to the fire, but also so we can all learn from one another. We can go to the European Union, which has targeted both industrial and vehicle emissions, and Japan with its efficiency measures. We can talk all day about that; there are lots of great examples out there.

In developing the PCF, we have tried to look at what has worked well and what has not around the world. That's one of the reasons we did our analysis exercise, the four reports that were mandated by first ministers, and part of the Vancouver Declaration to produce a menu of options. We tried to look at every emission reduction opportunity for every greenhouse gas in every sector and every policy tool conceivable, and then drew from that menu to produce the PCF, and we tried to pick the right policy tool for the right source of emissions.

[Wayne Stetski]

Thank you.

My riding is Kootenay—Columbia, in southeastern B.C., but I was born in Churchill, Manitoba. The midwife was a polar bear. I lived in Chesterfield Inlet, which is about 500 kilometres north of Churchill, and so the Arctic is still near and dear to my heart. According to the IPCC special report, it's likely that with 2°C of warming, the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of sea ice on average once every 10 years, and with 1.5°C of warming the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of sea ice on average once every 100 years. Of course, both of those have severe impacts on everything that lives in the Arctic.

Has Canada at all looked at potential plans to deal with some of these scenarios going forward? What would they look like? If we know it's coming, what are we doing about planning for it?

[Matt Jones]

We're missing one key set of players at this table, which is our experts on adaptation. I think one of our concerns is that you can adapt to certain things and you can't adapt to others. The costs of trying to adapt to the impacts of climate change become prohibitive when you get past a certain threshold. Adaptation is a pillar of the pan-Canadian framework. We have a disaster mitigation fund and we have the Canadian centre for climate services, which is trying to paint a picture of what changes in temperature and precipitation have been and will be under different emissions scenarios. Step one is to understand what's coming. There's a lot of work we're trying to support around visioning and planning around adapting to the impacts, but we're trying to balance that with a desire to avoid the worst impacts certainly.

[The Chair]

You have half a minute.

[Wayne Stetski]

Being from British Columbia, of course, we have what we hope is not a new reality. I live in an area that people come to from all over the world to see: the Rocky Mountains and the Purcells and the Selkirks. By mid-summer, you can't see any of them because of the forest fires. It is estimated that over 200 megatonnes of CO2 are put into the atmosphere as a result of these fires.

How are emissions from things like forest fires and other climate-related events that result in significant emissions dealt with in reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? Are they accounted for?

[The Chair]

Just on that, we are out of time on this question, but I'll get the answer. If the question's out before the six minutes are up, we'll take a brief answer.

[Matt Jones]

We are trying to account for the emissions associated with “natural events” even if climate change is human-induced. The reporting requirements for the United Nations are narrowly focused on human emissions, so emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks, but we know, of course, that we're monitoring the concentrations in the atmosphere and we know very much that a lot of emissions are coming from events like forest fires and other things like volcanic eruptions. Some of those are human-induced and there is the possibility of a bit of a negative feedback loop, where warming causes release of methane or burning of forests, which then increases concentrations, which increases warming. These are the kinds of feedback loops that we are trying to avoid by reducing our emissions in the near term.

[The Chair]

Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our witnesses.

I'd first like to thank the entirety of the Environment Canada team who have really lifted hard, and in fact the whole Government of Canada, Natural Resources, Global Affairs, other departments. This has been a major lift since the fourth quarter of 2015. There have been some significant policy shifts and it represents a lot of work. I'd also like to compliment Mr. Flato and the modelling community in Canada. There is some incredible work that's being done. I know Canadians are helping lead the world and I commend you on your work, particularly with the IPCC.

The report says that future climate risks would be reduced by the upscaling and acceleration of far-reaching, multi-level, cross-sectoral climate mitigation and by both incremental and transformational adaptation. I'd like to learn more about the mitigation measures being undertaken that are far-reaching, multi-level and cross-sectoral, particularly as they relate to small communities.

In Pontiac, I represent a bunch of suburbs but also a large number of small towns. Sometimes I get asked the question, what are the best examples of how small-town Canada can contribute, because rural Canada wants to do its part. How can you provide them some guidance and some inspiration?

[Matt Jones]

It's a tough question. I think our focus has really been on the biggest sources of emissions. You start with the biggest sources of emissions and work forward in the spirit of fishing where the fish are in terms of emissions. We have focused on the largest sources of emissions, whether it's electricity generation, heavy industry, the transportation sector and the building stock.

One potentially interesting example for smaller towns is opportunities for geothermal energy and community heating and cooling. In downtown Toronto, they're pulling cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario and cooling the banking district with that cool water. There are opportunities for district heating systems in smaller communities where you can have a combined heat and power system that generates a little bit of electricity and a lot of heat and heats the downtown core.

That's a little further afield. It's not something that's common now, although in Charlottetown I believe they're heating part of the downtown core by an incineration plant that basically runs off the methane from a landfill. We're supporting that through the low-carbon economy fund, an expansion of that program.

There are opportunities. The question is what is cost effective, and our hope is that with the implementation of policies, including a price on carbon pollution, we can get to the point where the cost of the technologies comes down and the economics work so that there are, maybe, some opportunities for district heating and cooling.

Public transit, obviously, is an important one that is more relevant for larger centres, but there are opportunities for smaller-scale public transit in smaller communities, including shuttle routes between popular destinations within towns.

I'm also from a small town and there is a small public transit system that shuttles between downtown and the suburbs. There are opportunities and there are examples that we can draw from on both the building stock side and on the transportation side, but, as I say, right now that has not been the core focus so far.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Okay. My next question is for Mr. Flato.

What are some of the modelling challenges that your community now faces? What do you think are some of the issues around modelling that Canadians should be aware of? I know that if a member of the public asks me to what extent can we trust this kind of reporting, I know I instinctively do because I trust scientists, not just one but the hundreds and thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC report. Modelling is a very technical area and I'd be keen to learn more.

[Dr. Greg Flato]

We participate in a bigger community, so the model we developed in Canada is one of roughly 30 or so around the world. There are about 30 centres like ours in other countries that develop and use the kinds of models that we have. One thing we do is compare one to another and ask how well our model compares to other models. How well does our model compare to observations? We're constantly evaluating the model as we try to improve it.

In terms of the big challenges, the things we're really trying to work on now are some aspects of the feedback that Matt alluded to earlier, in the sense that as the climate changes, there are certain parts of the natural system that change along with it in ways that can enhance emissions from natural sources. These include changes in the ocean and the way the ocean takes up carbon.

Right now, the ocean takes a lot of the carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere; it gets into the deep ocean through circulation. As the ocean warms up, that circulation changes and the ability of the ocean to take up carbon can change, so we're doing a lot of work on that.

We're also looking at the extent to which, as the climate warms, the carbon that is currently locked in frozen form—in permafrost, for example—can be released as that permafrost thaws, and enter the atmosphere.

The role of wildfires is another area in which we're working. We're building all these capabilities into our model so that as we go forward, we can try to simulate these feedbacks and make more quantitative estimates of how they affect the climate.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

Chair, I have one more very quick question they could respond to in writing.

I want this to be perceived as a non-partisan report. I don't want it to be the “leadership since 2015 onwards”.

I would like to know specifically what federal leadership the Government of Canada can be shown to have demonstrated internationally, including prior to 2015. If it's a very thin list, that's fine as well, but I'd like a written response please.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

I just want to say welcome to Madame Laverdière. Thanks for joining us.

Mr. Lake, over to you.