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 […]

Al Gore has been on an oilsands kick lately, telling anyone who’ll listen that gasoline made from Alberta oilsands bitumen makes a Toyota Prius as emission-intensive as a Hummer. He may be right: oilsands operations pump over 50 million tons of CO2 into the air every year. Most of this CO2 comes from burning and reforming natural […]

Canada takes a lot of flak for not getting its environmental act together, but you should take this criticism with a grain of salt. It’s either political, which is fair and understandable: Canada is a democracy and opposition parties are supposed to attack the government. Or it’s ideological, which is where it just conflicts with […]

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) […]

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 […]

A note attached to documents left behind at the CTV studio in Ottawa may hint at the dollar figure the federal government will pitch, or has already pitched, to Ontario to sweeten the province’s incentive to buy Canadian in its nuclear reactor competition. The figure: roughly  $538 million. i.e., the same amount that former prime […]

Do a content analysis of current news stories on the U.S. federal budget, and you won’t find many instances of the words “green,” “climate,” “environment,” or “carbon.” Occurrences of those words started subsiding around two weeks ago. The politicians involved are clearly not going out of their way to push an environmental agenda. This includes […]