‘It’s Very Misleading’: Energy Experts Critique Canada’s Rosy Carbon Pricing Report
Earlier this week, the federal government published a bombshell report on carbon pricing, predicting that a nationwide price of $50 per tonne by 2022 will cut emissions by 80 to 90 million tonnes of carbon pollution.
That’s equivalent to shutting down up to 23 coal-fired power plants or taking as many as 26 million cars off the road. In other words, a pretty big deal for the climate.
The stunning news spread quickly in online circles, shared by renown energy economists, clean energy experts and pollsters.
Globe and Mail journalist Justin Ling tweeted: “There's been an incredibly disingenuous effort to suggest that carbon pricing won't reduce CO2 emissions, or at least to contend that there's no evidence to support the claim. So Ottawa went and produced the research.”
But nobody slowed down to check if the numbers were actually reflective of reality.
And they’re not.
According to an analysis by Simon Fraser University energy economist Mark Jaccard, the federal carbon pricing policy will only reduce emissions by 10 to 15 million tonnes below 2005 levels — but it will take until 2030 to get there.
So the federal government’s claim of a 80 to 90 million tonnes reduction by 2022 is raising some eyebrows.
“When I see that, I’m like ‘oh come on guys, you’re trying to pull a fast one on us.’ ” Marc Lee, senior economist at the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives, told DeSmog Canada.
“People who ought to know better are just uncritically praising it.”
Carbon pricing being used as tool to justify new pipelines
This might just seem like a boring and wonkish debate over numbers. And in a way, it is.
But carbon pricing is currently playing a major role in the current climate policy landscape, viewed as the likes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley as a key bargaining chip in the campaign to get Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion built.
As a result, the amount of emissions that we think the policy can cut matters a great deal — especially if it’s used to justify a new pipeline and subsequent oilsands expansion.
Carbon pricing can be a very effective tool for increasing the cost of emitting. B.C. has been a shining example of a carbon tax that is both effective and popular with the public.
But disingenuous accounting has undermined faith in both the efficacy of putting a price on carbon emissions and the integrity of climate plans.
“The federal climate plan, overall, is weak,” said Laurie Adkin, political science professor at the University of Alberta, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.
“They keep trying to dress it up, and the latest assessment of anticipated gains from the federal carbon tax may be part of that effort.”
The research that Ottawa went and produced isn’t really evidenced-based at all.