The Canadian government’s follow-the-U.S. strategy on climate policy is still paying off, in petro-dollars. As I mentioned back in December, Canada gambled that the U.S. won’t make any environmental moves that hurt Canada’s oil industry. Of course that is a safe bet: America imports most of its oil, and Canada is its biggest foreign supplier. But with […]

Readers should note that I have reversed my position on whether nuclear energy projects should be eligible under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM was established by the United Nations under the Kyoto Treaty, and allows greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction projects in developing countries to earn emission reduction credits that industrialized countries can buy […]

There is no way a North American cap and trade system will emerge in the near future. That prospect died when the U.S. president showed at the Copenhagen climate conference that he can’t, and won’t, pursue the environmental policies the green lobby demands. Probably just as well. The continental price of natural gas, the most […]

The Obama administration last week quietly acquired a potential climate policy super-tool. The EPA announced its “endangerment finding” that a certain mix of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from new motor vehicles “threatens public health and welfare.” This gives the executive branch the ability to regulate GHGs directly, without waiting for congress to develop legislation. Suddenly, the […]

Can the proposed U.S. climate change legislation actually reduce carbon emissions? Not according to utility industry advocates worried about certain provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (a.k.a. Waxman-Markey), which narrowly passed the House of Representatives in June. The concern is that carbon offsets—financial instruments each representing one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) […]

Another year, another disagreement on a pan-provincial approach to climate change. You can almost set your watch to what Ontario and Alberta will say at the annual premier-fest (a.k.a. Council of the Federation meeting). Ontario will talk about closing its coal-fired generating plants, Alberta about its opposition to any plan to put a price on […]

In their brilliant book Smart Choices, Hammond Keeney & Raiffa warn against falling into the “anchoring trap”—a psychological quirk which makes human decision-makers glom onto the first number they see and base subsequent decisions on that number. If the number is wrong, or out of context, those subsequent decisions could be disastrous. On Tuesday of […]

When unit 2 at the Bruce nuclear plant comes back online this fall after a 14-year layup, it will, every year, inject around 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours of cheap, carbon-free power into Ontario’s grid. How much carbon will it offset? Between 3.5 and 6.5 million tonnes. At the often-mentioned price of $15 per tonne of carbon, Bruce 2 would save […]

Professional climate policy wonks are watching the spectacle south of the Canada-U.S. border, where a House bill on climate change will receive its first major political test Friday. Political wrangling over what industries get covered (or hit, depending on your perspective), and how they are covered (or hit) has virtually ensured that the bill will […]

Four years ago, I participated in an Environment Canada consultation on creating an offset system for greenhouse gas reductions. My aim was to see that nuclear power projects qualified under the proposed system. If emitters were able to buy down their emissions with nuclear offsets, this would represent a non-government way of financing nuclear power […]