Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  No, there are some answers, because there are things being built. For example, there are gasification plants that are going forward in the U.S.—two of them—and there's BP's Carson City plant. Let me say it this way. I think that at the prices we had a few years ago, a carbon price of $30 a tonne of CO2 would really make people move in the electrical power centre.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  We have, actually, a lot of information. I recommend to you table 5.5 of the IPCC report, which summarizes the key lines of argument we have for understanding the long-term stability of storage. Let me just give you two of them: one engineered and one natural. There are CO2 accumulations underground that have been there in excess of a hundred million years.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  The short answer is exactly the answer I gave. This is essentially an issue of how well you do the regulation. I think it is the clear consensus of the scientific and technical community that if you want to do this safely, you can do it extraordinarily safely at the level of other large industrial processes.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Dr. Jaccard would precisely agree with my assessment. I think the issue, though, is that in a theoretical sense you can prove at the level of a textbook economics paper that taxes and cap and trade can look almost the same; the issue is the details and political issues of real implementation.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I have no idea, sorry.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  This really sounds like a pretty political comment, and it's off topic. Sorry to be blunt, but let's get to it.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm well aware of that. This is the kind of grandstanding that is the reason we're not having policy in Canada. I'm sorry to be that blunt.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'll answer your first question first. The reason why I and I think many policy-makers in the U.S. now are rethinking taxes seriously is that when you look at what happened with the European emissions trading system, it certainly hasn't been a total failure, but even the people who are in the middle of creating it, folks like Michael Grubb, agree that it actually has been very ineffective in incenting real emissions reductions.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  About two and a half years ago.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you today. It's really a pleasure. I'm going to start by giving you some general background on CO2 capture and storage. I'll give you a sense of what's changed, what's happened, and why people are talking about this seriously.