“I encourage Premier Notley, and all of Alberta, to follow this first step with continued bold action to transition away from fossil fuels”.
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Notley is meeting with other premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa Monday, it’s expected the meeting will focus on climate change.
“Responding to climate change is about doing what’s right for future generations of Albertans – protecting our jobs, health and the environment”, Rachel Notley, Alberta’s Premier, said in the press release.
The companies agree that this is a historic development for Alberta and Canada that will change the conversation about climate change, oil sands and infrastructure.
In an interview Monday, Shell Canada’s outgoing president Lorraine Mitchelmore – a vocal supporter of the policy – said the feedback she’s heard so far from others in the industry has been “pretty positive”.
Notley said the plan will “flatten” the growth in emissions from Alberta and eventually start to reduce them, and she hopes the world takes notice.
Canada will be heading to the UN-sponsored summit with a limited national strategy and carbon rules that vary widely between provinces.
The plan includes a move toward renewable energy sources and natural gas-fired electricity in order to phase out coal.
The prime minister has been pushed into a whirlwind tour of global summitry after barely a month on the job, the result of a series of worldwide leaders’ meetings that have taken him from the G20 in Turkey to an APEC summit in the Philippines and, this week, on to a Commonwealth meeting in Malta and the Paris climate talks, with a side trip to Buckingham Palace to meet Queen Elizabeth, for good measure.
“But now we’re getting a chance to show the world really what we’ve been doing all these years and I think they’ll be a little bit surprised”.
The Canadian province of Alberta initiated a first-ever “carbon tax” in North America on Sunday that will place strict emission limits on the province’s oil sector, and cost taxpayers an estimated $3 billion annually in the form of higher energy prices.
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard frankly acknowledged last week federal-provincial haggling over climate change is “only going to be about the money at the end of the day”.
Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark said he’s broadly in favour of the strategy, but he wants to know how the billions will be spent and allocated.
Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne concurred: “What we’re looking for is support for the initiatives that we are taking province by province, territory by territory… not starting from scratch”.
Of course not much has changed in the short time the PM has been in office; for now the Liberal government will pursue the same emission reduction targets proposed by the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.
He said hard targets are needed to help set policies and make sure Alberta helps to reach the global goal of keeping climate from rising more than 2 C. “Right now this plan doesn’t have us on a two-degree path. Most of the climate scientists say jurisdictions need to reduce their emissions 30 to 40 per cent by 2030, 80 to 90 per cent by 2050”.
“There is no flawless policy, but I think this is probably the most balanced, most well thought-out policy that I’ve seen…”
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Not only are we an important producer of oil – which we should be happy with because it’s a source of wealth for Canada – but we’re also the third largest producer of hydro electricity in the world.
