Ontario needs a serious and substantive climate plan and an open, accountable and evidence-based approach to decision-making around energy. 

This article was written by Mark Winfield and was published in the Toronto Star on January 22, 2024.

MARK WINFIELD IS A PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND URBAN CHANGE AT YORK UNIVERSITY AND CO-CHAIR OF THE FACULTY’S SUSTAINABLE ENERGY INITIATIVE.

The Ford government announced last month its intention to procure 2,000 megawatts (MW) of new electricity supplies from renewable sources, including wind, solar and hydro by 2030, with a potential for another 3,000MW by 2034.

The government’s move is certainly a welcome development, particularly given its previous refusal to consider additional renewable energy sources in its electricity plans and its infamous 2018 decision to terminate 758 renewable energy projects across the province at a cost of at least $231 million.

At the same time, it is important to recall that the government’s decision does nothing to change its overall trajectory on electricity and energy. The province remains committed, as laid out in its July 2023 energy plan, to a major expansion of the role of nuclear energy, including 4,800MW of new generating capacity at the Bruce site, and four 300MW new reactors at the Darlington site.

No cost estimates are available for the proposed nuclear projects. The bids submitted as part of the province’s last attempt at a new-build nuclear project would optimistically suggest costs in the range of $50 billion for the Bruce project alone. The costs of the four smaller reactors proposed for Darlington remain essentially unknown, given that none of the proposed type of reactor have ever been built or operated before anywhere in the world, but will run into the billions as well.

A refurbishment of the four-reactor Pickering B station, previously assessed as uneconomic, is under consideration as well.

The province is also in the process of adding 1,500MW of new natural gas-fired generation to the system.

At the same time, the role of existing natural gas-fired plants is growing rapidly to replace nuclear facilities that are being refurbished or retired. Emissions from gas-fired generation have more than doubled since 2017, and are projected to continue to increase dramatically.

None of these directions have been changed by the December renewable energy announcement. The province’s electricity system remains on the same high-carbon, high-risk and high-cost pathway of nuclear and natural gas-fired generation expansion that it was on before.

It continues to lack any meaningful planning process around its electricity system — the process is instead governed by political directives. That means there is no need to explain or justify the costs and risks flowing from its nuclear and gas heavy plan, before any sort of meaningful public review process or regulatory body.

Nor is there any requirement to demonstrate consideration of different pathways to decarbonization, such as those might incorporate a stronger focus on energy efficiency and productivity, greater development of renewable energy, distributed energy resources, such as networked rooftop solar and building-level energy storage resources, and relationships with neighbouring jurisdictions.

The province has been happy to accept billions in federal funding for “green” steel, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, and nuclear projects. But it continues to lack any meaningful or effective strategy around climate change, particularly in key areas like transportation, space heating and land use.

Instead, the growing role of natural gas in electricity generation has put it in a position of directly contradicting the directions laid out in the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, intended to move Canada towards a net-zero electricity gird.

A carbon-intensive highway expansion plan remains at the centre of the province’s transportation strategy.

Ontario needs a serious and substantive climate plan and an open, accountable and evidence-based approach to decision-making around energy. A rational planning process for electricity and decarbonization would prioritize the options with the lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks first.

Higher-risk options, like new nuclear, would only be considered where it can be demonstrated that the lower-risk options have been fully optimized and developed in the planning process.

Unfortunately, the province continues to take the opposite path — pursuing the highest cost, highest risk and highest negative impact option, nuclear expansion, first, along with growth in greenhouse gas-intensive natural gas-fired generation. Everything else — efficiency, renewables and distributed energy resources — remains at the margins.

Last month’s announcement does nothing the change that basic reality.

This opinion was written by Barry White and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 22, 2024.

Just like many here in Canada who worry about climate change, I am worried about attacks on the carbon tax. As others have written, the carbon tax works – it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions – and crucially, it accomplishes that goal while ensuring most Canadians receive more money from the yearly rebate than they pay in extra tax. And yet, the carbon tax is increasingly unpopular.

As a decision scientist, I study how decisions are structured, what people think about them and how to better design decisions so people can make the choices that best align with their values. A few weeks ago, I listened as callers expressed their frustration with the carbon tax on CBC’s Ontario Today call-in show. Many callers seemed not to know they were likely making money from the policy’s rebate. Now that the Conservative Party has put the carbon tax in its crosshairs (“Axe the tax!”), taking advantage of the tax’s unpopularity to win support, we might lose a tool to combat climate change because it is politically expedient to get rid of it.

The blame for such a failure lies largely with the government. Of course, the Conservatives are not helping, but opposition parties always hit the government where it is weak. Clearly, people do not know or feel the tax is working for them. But how could that be, if the majority are financially better off than without the policy? Decision science suggests an answer: The policy, as designed, requires us to feel that it makes life more expensive so the policy works.

According to this line of thinking, the carbon tax leverages the fact that we usually consume less of something when its price rises. But if we felt the true magnitude of the rebate – that it makes us richer even with the extra tax payments – then that would diminish the effectiveness of the very mechanism required to make the policy work. We would internalize the fact that our budget to spend on energy has increased, at least partially offsetting the effect of higher prices.

But that is not what happens. We do not feel the effect of the rebate the same way we feel the effect of the tax, so we consume less energy – and so the tax achieves its goal of lowering emissions. That makes sense to a decision scientist: It’s an example of “loss aversion,” wherein a loss of money feels more “bad” than a gain of the same amount feels “good.” It could be that the rebate, even if it is higher than the tax, is not high enough to offset negative feelings of higher prices.

We also only get the rebate a few times a year, but are directly confronted by the tax each time we fill our cars or buy fossil fuels in another capacity. In addition, once enough time passes after the latest rebate deposit, we go to the pump or open our natural gas bill and we feel the sting of higher prices with no accompanying emotional salve from the rebate. Each rebate payment will, without much notice on our part, get eaten up in smaller amounts by regular household expenses. We don’t place it in some mental accounting column as “money to pay for the increased cost of energy” every time we pay for fossil fuels. All of these factors contribute to a negative overall feeling toward the policy. It is worth repeating that the success of the policy depends on us not feeling the rebate makes up for the tax when we make decisions about how much energy to purchase.

If the continued success of the policy did not require people to like it, then its current implementation might be just fine: A government can’t please everyone, and policy makers would know the finances of Canadians are better off, even if many do not believe it. But, for better or worse, the policy must be popular for it to be effective in the long term, because otherwise, a new government will probably get rid of it. The Conservatives might be elected because they are promising to do exactly that.

How might we design something better? If the policy needs to be popular to succeed, then we need to convince Canadians they are better off with it. That could mean better communication on how the rebate works, and it might also include a better explanation of its climate benefits. If policy makers relent slightly on the amount of the tax, diminishing its cost (and, arguably, its effectiveness), even that would be better than electing a government that would get rid of the carbon tax completely.

This article was written by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and was published by Reuters News on January 17, 2024.

This editorial was written and published by the Toronto Star on January 17, 2024.

It’s hard to imagine the catastrophic costs and consequences of climate change being laid out in more apocalyptic words than those contained in reports from the United Nations over the last few years.

You’d have to go some distance, after all, to top UN Secretary-General António Guterres who described the 2022 report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

It would be difficult, likewise, to conjure a more horrific kaleidoscope of fire, drought, storm, flood and devastation than has played out live and in colour around our beleaguered planet. The evidence of what’s at stake is overwhelming, just about everywhere, inescapable. Another UN official has said, simply and starkly, that “the places where people live and work may cease to exist.”

From Nova Scotia to P.E.I., northern Ontario to the West and the Northwest Territories, flood, hurricane and wildfires have destroyed homes and devastated lives.

Yet it wasn’t the warming planet that sparked recent debate over climate change strategies. Rather, it was a polar cold snap in the Prairies and the resulting strain on Alberta’s electrical grid that prompted political potshots at the push for green energy.

As urgent warnings went out Saturday asking Albertans to curb their hydro usage or risk rolling blackouts, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe used the moment to take a shot at Ottawa’s draft clean electricity regulations which set the goal of net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2035.

“SaskPower is providing 153 MW of electricity to AB this evening to assist them through this shortage. That power will be coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won’t),” he said on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.

In another posting, Moe weighed in again: “We will not risk plunging our homes, schools, hospitals, special care homes and our businesses into the cold and darkness because of the ideological whims of others.

“Net zero by 2035 is not only impossible, it’s irresponsible as it would leave Saskatchewan and Western Canadian families freezing and in the dark.”

The office of Steven Guilbeault, the federal minister of environment and climate change, denies that the proposed regulations, now in the consultation phase, would unilaterally shut down natural gas plants and leave people without power. In fact, the regulations would grandfather existing plants. With demand for electricity increasing, the goal is to diversify power sources and reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.

“The regulations would never put the province in a situation where they did not have a reliable electricity. We have proposed provisions so that provincial utilities can use natural gas electricity units to address peak power needs and in emergency situations. Fossil fuel plants of course would also be able to run if they have carbon capture technologies applied and blend with low carbon fuels,” Guilbeault’s office said in a statement to the Star.

Given Moe’s opposition to the federal carbon tax, such hyperbole might be expected. But partisan opposition to initiatives to curb greenhouse emissions, especially in the absence of meaningful alternatives, is disheartening and disingenuous as evidence of climate change mounts.

Another wake-up call came recently from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service which said the Earth shattered global heat records in 2023 and is flirting with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold. Copernicus said 2023 was 1.48 C, or 2.66 F, above pre-industrial times. That’s a sliver below the 1.5 C limit the world hoped to stay within to avoid the most severe effects of global warming.

The planet’s rising temperature will for the first time exceed the 1.5 C threshold for a 12-month period in January or February.

In many places around the world extreme weather events wrought death and destruction, from a drought in the Horn of Africa, to torrential downpours that wiped out dams and killed thousands in Libya, to Canadian wildfires that sullied skies as far away as Europe. Millions of people are directly affected by weather disasters that result in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.

Yet it appears conditions will have to get still worse in the way of wilder weather, species lost to changing climate, more areas made uninhabitable to shake us from our stupor.

Copernicus said that it wasn’t just a month or a season that was exceptional in 2023, but more than half the year. Simply put, the 2023 record underscored the extreme urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said. To date, the speed of change in the political world simply hasn’t matched the speed of change of extreme weather and warming.

Copernicus said the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere actually rose to the highest levels ever recorded at 419 parts per million last year. That makes even more depressing the debates over a carbon tax here in Canada.

Even comparatively small changes in global temperatures have huge impacts on people and ecosystems, scientists say. “Every tenth of a degree matters,” said Friederike Otto, a scientist in global weather research.

Alongside climate change caused by humans, the 2023 temperatures were increased by the El Nino weather phenomenon, which warms Pacific Ocean surface waters.

What scientists said they do not know is whether the extreme heat of 2023 is a sign global warming is accelerating.

“Whether there’s been a phase shift or a tipping point, or it’s an anomalously warm year, we need more time and more scientific studies to understand,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

Tipping point. There’s a term you’d expect might catch our attention. This is not some ideological whim. This is science.

But perhaps humankind is neurologically wired to fail to react to dangers that should prompt significant action. Perhaps our species will go obliviously to calamity like the fabled frog basking in the pot of increasingly hot water.

One thing is certain. No one can ever say we weren’t warned.

Lack of communication, vague bank statements, unfiled taxes contribute to confusion

This article was written by Robson Fletcher and was published by CBC News on January 15, 2024.

This article was written and published by the Breach on January 10, 2024.

State of the Climate: 2023 smashes records for surface temperature and ocean heat

This article was written by Zeke Hausfather and was published in the Carbon Brief on January 12, 2024.

This article was written by Jonathan Watts and was published in The Guardian on December 29, 2023.

This article was written by Maya Goodfellow and was published in The Guardian on January 10, 2024.

IEA report says 50% growth last year keeps hope of achieving Cop28 climate target of tripling clean energy capacity

This article was written by Jillian Ambrose and was published in The Guardian on January 11, 2024.