Climate change & energy policy

“Climate change starts here: the BC dirty jobs plan”

Sep 19, 2011
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We are still on Day One of the Jobs Plan, and the afternoon news is all about proposed liquid natural gas plants in Kitimat, which will take pipelined gas and send it by tanker to Asia. Quoth the Premier: Creating a new industry with the capacity to export B.C.’s natural gas to overseas markets for… View Article

Jobs and BC’s Resource Extraction Mindset

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Day One of the week-long BC’s Jobs Plan: the Premier was in Prince Rupert to announce a commitment to making the port a “gateway” to Asia. Quoth Premier Clark: I am in Prince Rupert today because if you are looking at Canada from Asia, with an eye to investing in our country, Canada truly starts… View Article

So Where is the Science?

Sep 8, 2011
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The headline in the Globe today was certainly ominous — “Clark’s Hydro policy threatens to collapse B.C.’s climate change progress, scientist says”. The purported policy change seemed scary — the government might roll back the requirement for BC Hydro to be able to meet domestic electricity requirements in drought conditions. And the scientist’s description of… View Article

BC Hydro Review

Aug 12, 2011
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If it were true that BC Hydro could effectively plan and operate its system with 20% fewer workers, as the government panel has recently suggested in its Review of BC Hydro, one would have to assume that the BC Hydro Executive and Board, as well as the BC Utilities Commission, have all grossly failed in their… View Article

Decarbonizing BC homes and the price of gas

Jul 28, 2011
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Our climate justice framework for BC is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2040. In the household sector, this poses a significant challenge, not so much in terms of technology and knowledge, but because natural gas is much cheaper than electricity per unit of energy. Even though BC has among the lowest prices in North America,… View Article

Deconstructing BC’s carbon neutral government

Jul 13, 2011
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Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government… View Article

Is BC about to drop a new carbon bomb?

Jul 11, 2011
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Any day now the BC government should be releasing the latest greenhouse gas data for the province, and we will see if any progress is being made towards a legislated 33% reduction in emissions by 2020 (relative to 2007 levels; data will be for 2009 and we know that emissions rose in 2008). Below the… View Article