Transcript Page, Rivers, and Climate Policy: A Comment

Page, Rivers and Climate Policy: A
Comment
Chris Green
McGill University
Queens IIGR Conference on Environmental Policy
October 17, 18, 2008
1
The Papers
• The two papers provide good background
-The Rivers paper surveys past policy failures and
current provincial/federal carbon pricing initiatives
• The Page paper focuses on Kyoto failure and
- goes beyond carbon-pricing to consider technologies
- implicitly sends a warning signal to avoid falling into
a Kyoto trap in the next international agreement
• Neither paper provides any idea of the magnitude of the
global challenge to stabilizing climate
2
What I intend to do
• I view climate change from a global perspective
• The benefits from Canada’s actions depend heavily on:
-what other nations are able to do
-what it is that we do that could help reduce emissions
elsewhere in the world
• Before turning to these points, I note the following
- Canadian GHG emissions fall 2004-2006. Why?
- A carbon tax is essentially a tax on coal. Why?
• The next two slides explain
3
Canada’s GHG Inventory
• In 2006, Environment Canada reported 2004 GHG
emissions at 758 MtCO2. The estimate for 2004 has now
been reduced downward to 743 MtCO2
• By 2006, emissions have fallen to 721 MtCO2.
• Environment Canada attributes the decline to:
- warmer winters in the last 3 years
- a switch to natural gas in some industrial activities
- reinstatement of Ontario nuclear generators taken off
line in 1990s
• The next slide indicates what a $10/tCO2 tax means
4
A $10.00/tCO2 Carbon Tax
CO2
(tonnes)
$
Coal/tonne
2.86
28.60
Oil/bbl
0.37
3.70
Gasoline/gal 0.0088 0.09
NG/1000cu.ft 0.055
0.55
NG/1000cu.m 2.025 20.25
Current
Price
$16-110.00
~$120.00
~$3.00-4.00
$10.00-11.00
~$400.00
5
The Magnitude of the
Stabilization Challenge
• Climate change is essentially an energy technology
problem, and the challenge to stabilizing climate is huge
• This is not the prevalent view. IPCC WG III claims the
required technologies are available, or awaiting
“commercialization”.
• WG III also claims the barriers are “socio-economic” and
institutional, not technological
• The WG III claim has been challenged by Hoffert et al in
Nature and Science (1998, 2002); Caldeira et al,
Science, 2003; Pielke et al, Nature, 2008, and by others
• Pielke et al (2008) identify a source of understatement
6
Baselines: “Frozen” and Emission
(IPCC WG III AR4, Ch.3, p.220)
7
8
9
What is Happening?
• A major part of the story is the nature of the
development process in China and other
populous developing nations
• Development in these countries is very energy
intensive, in part due to urbanization
• Very energy intensive materials are required for
high rise development--see next slide
• Without scalable, non-carbon emitting
technologies that are transferable, global
emissions will continue to increase
10
China: Energy Intensive Production
11
Implications for Canada
• Using current emission scenario baselines will
understate the difficulty and cost of achieving deep
reductions in emissions, at least in absence of new
technologies
• Carbon pricing without a technology policy is a bankrupt
approach to the problem, in Canada and for the world
• Canada’s success with CCS may be crucially important
to what happens to global emissions
• Thus Alberta’s current approach to reducing emissions is
very important. It combines a tax at the margin with
payment to a technology fund, especially for CCS
12
Conclusion
• Canadian climate policy should not be limited to
federal-provincial naval gazing
• Pricing carbon is not nearly enough. New energy
technologies are required.
• Canada should contribute to the global energy
technology challenge
• The most important climate policy decision
awaiting the new government is its policy stance
at Copenhagen in 2009. A repeat of Kyoto would
be a setback if stabilizing climate is the objective
13