Friday, February 09, 2007

A National Carbon Trading Market?

No carbon tax, international carbon trading, Baird says:

But Baird said he is moving toward a carbon trading market in Canada. This would allow a company in one part of the country to invest in green projects somewhere else in Canada and be given credit for reducing its emissions.

Its safe to assume this is just empty gesticulation on Baird's part.

Because if an international carbon trading market proves unacceptable to Canada as a whole, a nation-wide market will almost certainly prove unacceptable to Albertans.

For, as the CIBC's Rick Rubin makes clear, under the initial conditions of any type of carbon regulation scheme, oil sands producers will have to be huge purchasers of emission credits. And these will have to be purchased from companies in other provinces. So there will be a "huge"outflow of money from Alberta to, if this map of Canadian emissions is accurate, places like Quebec and maybe even Ontario.

Sell that to Ed Stelmach.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great!

I walk to work and don't own a car.

So how much money will you give me from your wallet?

Let's start the negotiations around $100/week - but don't be stingy now, you're gonna save the planet after all!

Anonymous said...

Hey me too! I've taken the bus to university and work for almost 25 years! Even at $50/week, somebody owes me $65,000 for saving the planet!

Anonymous said...

You get nothing if you're in Alberta dude!

Anonymous said...

What the hell does it matter which province we're in? So you're telling us that people in Alberta won't be ALLOWED to reduce emissions? What an ignorant, bigoted comment.

wilson said...

The map show increases from 1990 to 2020:
Sask +44
BC +43
Alberta +40
Man +24
Atlantic +22
Ont + 17
Que +7

Anyone else surprised that Sask and BC will have the highest increase in GHGs?
Ontario & Quebec in an economic slump??

Alberta will go nuclear ( zero ghg emissions) for the oilsands expansions, before it would send one penny to Russia or China.

Anonymous said...

funny how quebec has the lowest GhG's but has the highest level of Equalization Payments.

Maybe if the Kyotoistas kill off the Alberta economy, taking with it BC's and half of Ontario's, then Quebec can ladle the gravy out instead of being a perpetual suck at the teat of the provinces with productive economies.

Anonymous said...

I think that the actual CO2 reducing ability of a certified emission credit will decrease with the square of the distance from the certificate purchaser.

Mike said...

wilson,

Were talking about a national carbon trading scheme, not and international one. So the money stays in Canada and goes to low (hopefully negative, since that is how it is supposed to work) ghg emitting companies, not regions. Its a perfect, made-in-Canada, stays-in-Canada solution. And it uses the market to help fight global warming.

Tell me again why you are against this? Or are you just having another knee jerk reaction because the word Kyoto appeared?

Are you even a real conservative, or just a non-thinking Harper fan-boy?

bigcitylib said...

I am not against it. But lets face it the companies that will be buying the emissions will largely be in Alberta, and the companies sucking up the cash will be largely elsewhere. Why would this be any more acceptable to the oil patch (or Albertans generally) than Kyoto?

Anonymous said...

Hey mike,

Glad to see somebody is so committed to saving the planet that he's going to keep riding his motorcycle. Or is that your 'for sale' ad picture? But then somebody else will spew more CO2 with a wasteful luxury? Why not really put your money where your mouth is and simply DESTROY your motorcycle - I mean two-wheeled planet killer - so that nobody else can use it?

Anonymous said...

Would you pay for something when you do not know what it is or if it exists, or how to measure it, or how to know when you have it, or how to persuade someone else it has value, or what to do if someone says Boo! It disappeared!
There will be flocks of sellers, and they will find some sincerely dumb buyers, but the fate of the brand new Canadian market will be like the others: market collapse. There is just no way to avoid the ugly truth the scientists are trying to pound in, which is that we have to leave a lot, more, a big lot, of the hydro carbons in the Ground. We need to do the traditional things like tax (yes a carbon tax to move conduct from this to that); large scale public investment; end susidies (yes, just listen to the Alberta tycoons of oil sands scream); simple regulation (caps mandatory and declining over time)
and ample scope and support for any number of local initiatives at the City and Province levels. A sort of CRTC from the top down, and a Red River Floor activities from the bottom up. Caps yes, trades no. The trade part will not help.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
garhane said...

PLease remove the second post...pushed the wrong button I guess. And why does it tell me to use a different name, garhane is the one in use, the only one.