The Australian Prime Minister, who heads a minority coalition in Parliament, has proposed carbon pricing scheme that will begin in 2012. The opposition parties are lobbying hard against the scheme, or any scheme that puts a price on carbon. In her regular blog for the Sydney Morning Herald, Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop uses an argument that will sound familiar to argues that will sound familiar to Canadians and Americans: in essence, why should "we" take action if China is not?
One of the principal arguments of the Julia Gillard - Bob Brown government to justify imposing a carbon tax on Australia is that the international effort on climate change will leave us behind and that even China is taking dramatic action to reduce its carbon emissions.
This is deeply misleading. What the government doesn't tell you is that even if the Chinese government met its stated targets of cutting carbon emissions "per unit of GDP", there will in fact be a massive increase in emissions from China for the foreseeable future.
And here is the evidence:
University of British Columbia Professor in Geography Simon Donner calculates in an article titled "China's emissions pledge depends entirely on economic growth" that the Chinese emissions "intensity" targets would still result in substantial emissions increases.He says: "If China keeps up the planned 8 per cent/year growth, emissions in 2020 will be 74-90 per cent higher than 2005 levels".
When I heard about this "citation" yesterday, I was puzzled. What article is she talking about? I'm fairly certainly I'd remember if I'd published an article about Chinese climate policy. It turns out she is referring to a brief Maribo post from two years ago in which I pointed out that the China's new emissions target is based on emissions intensity, and thus represents less of a decrease than it might sound. This brings up all sorts of interesting questions about appeals to authority, blog posts vs. published research, etc., which I'd be happy to discuss.
Now had the Deputy Leader or her staff or whomever writes the posts in her name contacted me or, say, done more than typed "china's emissions pledge" into Google (the post comes up #3, at least from here), she may have learned that many international policy experts think it is reasonable to allow nations with developing economies to set targets based on emissions intensity. I've written numerous posts arguing just that. In fact, that point was touched on in the previous paragraph in the post though only fully fleshed out in other posts:
It is, however, a reasonably fair way to bring a reluctant developing nation like China into an international emissions control framework.
The moral here is not what I wrote. The moral here is that Australians should be just horrified that by the lack of research and analysis being done by the opposition parties on the carbon tax proposal. They should not be citing a two-year old blog post written by a Canadian university professor for which the data is now out of date. I'd guess it took me about 20 minutes to do the analysis and write that post. Certainly that's not too much time to spend working on your position on a critical policy proposal.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Julie Bishop and Australian Opposition parties need to do better research about climate policy
Monday, November 30, 2009
China's emissions pledge depends entirely on economic growth
Last week, China announced that it will reduce carbon "intensity" by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2020. The emissions intensity (emissions/$GDP) approach taken by the Canada and the US in the past has been much maligned here as a dishonest dodge.
It is, however, a reasonably fair way to bring a reluctant developing nation like China into an international emissions control framework. The problem of course is that actual emissions target depends entirely on how much the Chinese economy grows by 2020. So 40-45% sounds impressive, but won't amount to an actual reduction in emissions.
The graph above shows a spectrum of possibilities. Unless the growth rate is less than ~4%/year - highly unlikely - Chinese carbon emissions will be higher in 2020 than 2005. If China keeps up the planned 8%/year growth, emissions in 2020 will be 74-90% higher than 2005 levels.
And, just like in the US and Canada cases, Chinese emissions intensity will naturally decrease over time without any policy intervention. It decreased 10% from 2000 to 2005, and well over 40% from 1990 to 2005.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Canadian emissions story
Earth Hour dipped electricity use in British Columbia by 1.1%. Again, a nice gimmick to raise awareness about energy use, but far far far from what's needed to tackle greenhouse gas emissions in Canada (right)
The Canadian government published a report earlier this year documenting the trends in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990, the first reporting year, up until 2006. The data reveals a lot of interesting and surprising trends and can answer some of the questions about the contribution of individual Canadian provinces raised by my recent post on change in per capita GHG emissions around the world.
Between 1990 and 2006, Alberta passed Ontario as the largest total emitter of greenhouse gases [top chart]. Alberta is responsible for 33% of emissions, despite housing only 11% of the Canadian population. Alberta alone was responsible for just over half of the total increase in GHG emissions between 1990 and 2006 [second chart].
The #2 province Ontario is responsible for 27% of national emissions but has almost four times the population. Therefore the per capita emissions in Ontario are 15 t CO2-eq / person, hardly a lofty goal, still more than three times that of China, but one quarter that of Alberta.
Saskatchewan is fourth in total emissions at 10% of national emissions, only slightly behind Quebec, despite housing only one-seventh of the population of la belle province. Saskatchewan’s carbon-intensive economy has become even more so over the past two decades. Thanks to a growing uranium and potash industries, expansion of oil production and reliance on coal power, the province of only one million people was responsible almost a quarter of the national increase in GHG emissions from 1990 to 2006.
Quebec, on the other hand is Canada’s pocket of Europe in more ways than one. Thanks to a heavy reliance on hydro power, la belle province’s per capita GHG emissions of 10.7 t CO2-eq/person are more in line with Europe than the rest of North America. Lower heating demands and increased reliance on hydro power helped make Quebec the one Canadian province where GHG emissions decreased (by 1%) between 1990 and 2006. Note the word province; this is not to slight the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, where GHG emissions decreased 17% over the same time period.
Per capita emissions [third chart] were relatively steady across much of the country between 1990 and 2006: there was a 12% decrease in Ontario, a 10% decrease in Quebec, and a 7% increase across the Maritimes. The big discrepancy is between Alberta and Saskatchewan. Alberta’s population growth kept pace with the growth in emissions – people came from other provinces to work in the oil sands operations. Saskatchewan, on the other hand, has seen a 67% increase in per capita emissions due to a declining population (this trend began to reverse in the past few years).
The carbon-intense nature of the economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan is best illustrated by a chart of the GHG emissions intensity: the GHG emissions per $ of GDP. This is shown in the final chart to the right (2006 only). In 2006, creating one dollar of GDP in Alberta required over five times the GHG emissions as in Ontario, over six times the GHG emissions as in Quebec. The high emissions intensity of Saskatchewan and Alberta leads to the interesting results that the emissions intensity appears to decrease with population.
There’s likely some economic logic to that pattern: for example, areas of higher populations and large cities are more “efficient” overall, and resource extractive industries tend to be located in areas of lower population.
These are just some of the broad patterns in the GHG data. There is much much more to analyse and discuss.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Are emissions growing faster than the models say?
There have been a number of recent studies warning that greenhouse gas emissions will skyrocket in the next three decades, thanks to rising energy use in China, India, and the developing world. The new International Energy Outlook from the US Energy Information Administration reports that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels will increase 51% by 2030.
Projecting future emissions is by no means simply. The underlying conceit in much of the discussion (e.g. see Pielke et al.) of late is that the projected emissions in the scenarios used by all the climate models are too low. In other words, climate change will be even worse than the models say, and the runaway emissions train will be even harder to stop than we think.
I had to plot some emissions data for a presentation, so I did a quick comparison of the SRES scenarios, the group of future emissions scenarios used by all the climate models in the last IPCC assessments. The global carbon emissions from fossil fuels only in the four main scenarios are plotted in the figure to the right. [A note: These are the means for each scenario. Despite what most people think, A2, A1b, etc. do not each refer to one set of emissions data, rather a series of datasets generated by different economics / emissions models using the same inputs].
Now here's the same graph with the high growth, medium (reference scenario) and low growth scenarios from the IEO (coarse grey/black lines). And the surprise: the path of the
highest IEO scenario lies in between SRES A1b and SRES A2, basically what people have been calling "business as usual" for quite some time. The low growth scenario parallels SRES B1, a scenario in which thew world seeks "global solutions to economic, social, and environmental sustainability, including improved equity". The emission path in all the IEO scenarios fall below that of SRES A1F1, the fossil fuel intensive scenario. In other words, the scary new report is no worse than what we were already projecting. That is hardly a reason to celebrate, yes, but it may be a reason to argue with those claiming emissions are rising so fast that climate change mitigation is prohibitively expensive.
There is a caveat. The red line on the graph comes from a recent paper by Sheehan in Climatic Change (see Pielke's commentary). This scenario attempts to take into account the "abrupt shift to rapid growth based on fossil fuels" that has occurred in Asian countries. The paper argues that the SRES scenarios assumed too much decarbonization of the energy system and the economy. The SRES approach is reasonable -- as I've argued before, the emissions intensity of the world economy, the amount of carbon pumped out per unit of GDP, has been declining for decades as we became more efficient at making producing stuff. The problem is that we're at a moment where Asian are using coal and oil to expand, so the global decarbonization is slowing down or even stopping (because the carbon emissions per unit energy production is rising). How and whether recent Asian fossil fuel growth should be extrapolated 25 years into the future, I can't say. I'd be interested to see a comparison of Sheehan-style scenarios with those of the IEO.
(By the way, the IPCC is planning a new set of scenarios for the fifth assessment)
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Do the IPCC scenarios underestimate future emissions?
A commentary in this week's Nature by Roger Pielke Jr. and colleagues about whether the future scenarios used by the IPCC underestimate future emissions has caused all sorts of fits, defenses and sighs. The journal itself went so far as to include rebuttals from climate and energy experts in the same issue.
One of the causes of the furor is Pielke's reputation. The lead author's previous writings stressing adaptation to climate change give some the impression he is either climate skeptic/denier or a Lomborg-esque "delayer" (and drive many other people crazy). This is the problem with applying broad labels, especially ones with, intentional or not, serious historical overtones.
Let's be fair: Pielke (and his colleagues) don't question the basic science behind climate change, rather whether we should spend more effort on mitigation or adaptation. Like many, I'm troubled by some of the pro-adaptation arguments, both because of the particular way the science is interpreted in those arguments, and in the way that they can create soft bigotry of low expectations (we can't reduce emissions, so we won't reduce emissions). But, it is not like Pielke et al. ever argue that cosmic rays are to blame or that CO2 was higher in the mid-1800s.
The basic premise of the commentary is that all of the future scenarios used by the IPCC presume there will be substantial technological advances in the future, and that without that assumption, emissions would actually be much higher. The authors calculate how much future emissions are "reduced" in the scenarios by the technology assumption by comparing with a case in which technology is effectively frozen over time. The result is some big numbers.
The argument comes down to rates of technology change, measured here by the emissions "efficiency" of energy production, and whether we just naturally become more efficient. Graphs of declining energy intensity (energy/GDP) or emissions intensity (emissions/GDP) over the past century show that we're now producing far more "stuff" per unit of energy and per unit of emissions. That happened naturally, without any emissions or climate policy.
Pielke and colleagues argue the energy intensity cannot continue to drop as such rates, especially with the growth of China, and that's where the scenarios used by the IPCC go wrong. Either way, the real issue, I would think, is not the energy intensity but what's buried within it, the "GHG intensity".
If you look at the energy intensity plot, it is clear that the energy intensity improvements in the past have happened from producing more "stuff" (GDP) per unit of energy, not from emitting fewer GHGs per unit of energy. In other words, there's not been much advance in the GHG intensity. In fact, it is currently decreasing because so much GDP is being produced by coal burning in China.
Under a business-as-usual scenario, it is reasonable to assume the world will keep trying to produce more stuff per unit of energy, so energy intensity would continue to fall. That's the "technological advance" the authors of the scenarios supposedly assumed. One can -- and should -- debate the numbers. But the basic assumption the world would go in that general direction without prompting by policy follows from history. Under a mitigation scenario, I'd think the reduction in emissions should come more from producing far fewer emissions per unit of energy (or from dramatically cutting energy use), because we'd already naturally be trying to produce more per unit of energy.
In the end, whether one agrees with the logic of the commentary or not, or whether one likes the tone, it is hard to figure out what the take-home message of such an argument should be for policy. The authors are members of the Breakthrough Institute, which arguments in favour of funding new energy technologies, without much mention of climate change or emissions targets. The paper and the Institute present their arguments set up a false dichotomy between technology and climate or emissions policy, as if talking about climate change distracts us from developing new energy technologies, or other in the community think we can magically reduce emissions without any technological advances. I've argued about this before. There's no reason that a technology policy and emissions targets have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, the entire purpose of the binding emissions targets is to force things like the development of cleaner energy technologies.
At least the commentary has people talking about these issues. That we can all support.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Funding and new transit announcements
Earlier this week, British Columbia announced a massive new public transit plan including over $10 billion for rapid transit lines in my new home of Vancouver. It has raised much excitement but also many questions about who will be paying for it all.
A couple days later, the Globe and Mail reported that Canada will copy the new and relatively meaningless US vehicle mileage standards. Today it rather ignorantly reports the move will increase automobile prices by thousands of dollars (even if it were true that costs have to go up to meet the standards, it would happen regardless of the Canadian decision because prices are driven by the US market).
You get the feeling that Canadians are concerned only about cost of transportation, not the efficiency. For the foreign readers of Maribo, it is important to understand that thanks to Canada's unique federalist system, 95% of the political life in Canada is spent arguing over which level of government should be paying for things. We tend to roll out massive public spending programs or new federal regulations without having secured any of the funding. With programs like the BC transit plan, the hope is that by generating excitement, the level of government announcing the program can guilt the other levels into coughing up some money.
Most of the time, guilting the province or the feds fails. So Canadians are quite skeptical of grand proposals for things like expanding public transit, building new inter-city train lines, etc. If you want to raise the ire a Torontonian, just ask about the waterfront redevelopment plan (the response will begin with "which one?").
On the odd occasion, the guilt approach actually works. We Canucks are, after all, generally apologetic people who hate to disappoint others.
Is this one of those odd occasions? Perhaps we've reaching this nexus of voter concern about climate change, oil prices, urban air pollution and traffic congestion that the every level of government will find a way to contribute at least a decent proportion of the requested funds for the BC transit plan, for Toronto's light rail plan, etc. Don't expect the SkyTrain all the way down Broadway to UBC to appear anytime during, say, the current millennium. And don't expect the auto manufacturers in Ontario to suddenly embrace new fuel efficiency standards. But I can guarantee you no one, at any level of government anywhere in the country, wants to look like Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, who toured Washington this week trying to deny the environmental impact of oil sands operations*.
* The argument: large facilities are required to "reduce the intensity by 12 per cent." This while they plan to triple production. So if intensity is the emissions per unit of production, that means the emissions would multiple by 2.64. Canadians do understand fractions.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Intensity targets for the world, says PM Harper
The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian PM Stephen Harper is pushing for a new international climate change plan using intensity-based emissions targets rather actual emissions targets, like Kyoto.
Harper is correct in asserting that many countries, including China, are currently unwilling to accept hard targets. In that case, an intensity-based targets may be an acceptable middle ground (though not indefinitely!) for countries in the midst of economic growth and development. Not for the whole world, and especially not for the worst per-capita polluters like the US and Canada.
The claim that this "Canadian" idea is the best way to engage the US is laughable.
First of all, the emissions intensity tack taken by the Can. Conservative party and now at least temporarily enshrined in government policy came directly from Bush Administration policy set over five years ago. I wrote a warning about this 16 months ago in the Toronto Star (at the time, I admit, I never considered the plan would be lifted almost digit for digit from US policy!).
Second, time is running out on the Bush Administration and its refusal to accept real emissions targets. There are multiple bills with medium and long-term emissions targets before Senate and the Congress, summarized by this dizzying World Resources Institute chart. States representing almost half the US population have set long-term emissions targets. I even drew a map. And all the major contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination are putting forward climate change plans with real emissions targets.
Third, the Conservative government is a minority, and all three opposition parties support real emissions targets. The only reason their approach to climate change may survive is that no party in Parliament wants to force an election over this, or possibly, any other issue. The result is that the Canadian government is now advancing a policy that is dishonest, regressive (with respect to other developed nations), and does not have the support of the Canadian people.
For other opinions, try the Toronto Star's latest editorial, the Globe's editorial, and the various angry online reactions (here here here).
Monday, September 10, 2007
Resolution at the APEC summit. Well, sort of.
The APEC nations have agreed on the expected deal (CNN/AP) on climate change and energy use.
Hmm. Note the many adjectives involve. Tentative (no one signed anything yet). Non-binding. Aspirational. Voluntary. Consensus-based.
Those words describes the deal best. The last one may jump out. The use of the term "consensus-based" implies that the alternative to this agreement, like a post-Kyoto plan involving all the nations party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, would not be consensus-based. It is setting up the straw man, much like saying [as Pres. Bush and PM Howard have] you desire a technology-based approach implies that others do not.
The Globe and Mail reports that Canada and Japan pushed for (a voluntary) 50% emissions reduction by 2050 goal though erroneously reports that the APEC leaders agreed on a 25% reduction by 2030. The agreement, as discussed here before, is for a 25% decrease in energy intensity.
I don't particularly enjoy repeating myself on this issue of intensity-based targets. But people keeps getting it wrong. Here's the key: An intensity-based target is not inherently evil. The problem is this target much those used in US policy and past Canadian government policy is, at best, a forecast of business-as-usual for the next 23 years. As such, it appears to be designed for show, and not much else.
So, presuming the APEC nations all sign the final agreement, the question remains: which is better, a weak deal or no deal at all? Is it better to have these reluctant nations put their names on something? Or will it undermine other efforts?
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Leak of Asia-Pacific climate policy
Apparently I’m not the only one talking about energy intensity.
The declaration – you can read it here – is a remarkably evasive document (if it is genuine...). It takes real craftsmanship to construct something like this.
A 25% reduction in energy intensity, essentially producing more income with less energy is important, yes. Especially in China and India. But is it an accomplishment? No. Like the US and Canadian targets based on emissions intensity, this target is a farce. It is destined to happen with or without a "climate" policy. The real advance, as the graph shows, would be a decrease in the greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy production.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
China, the G8 and emissions intensity
Earlier, this week China announced a vague climate change policy that includes no GHG emissions targets. While hardly a surprise, the refusal to consider any emissions targets, or even any aspirational emissions goals pretty much destroyed whatever little chance there was that UK, Germany, Japan and the G8 countries would oppose the US effort to block the use of hard emissions targets.
China may be one place where the intensity-based metrics make some sense. With low per capita emissions and a smaller historical contribution to emissions, forcing China to drastically restrict economic development would hardly be a globally equitable solution to climate change.
As I discussed a couple weeks ago, China’s GHG emissions intensity rose in the past decade. China is at the stage of development where “carbon” generation is outpacing economic development. In terms of carbon efficiency, you can imagine China being around where the West was back in 1920s, before the global peak in emissions intensity (see the global intensity graph)
So at least new Chinese policy calls for a 20% decrease in energy intensity, the energy consumption per $ of GDP. Whether that policy has any teeth, or whether the emissions data is trustworthy, who knows? But it is a start.
The Canadian government proposal that G8 countries adopt intensity-based targets is ridiculous for Western nations. Europe, Japan, Australia and North America passed their peaks in emissions intensity, or lows in carbon efficiency, decades ago. For those countries, targets have to be based on the actual emissions.
For China and other rapidly developing nations, however, setting initial targets based initially on the “carbon” efficiency or intensity of the economy may be the only sensible solution to the global policy stalemate. Perhaps the only global plan that is equitable is one in which: i) the U.S., Europe, Canada and other Annex 1 nations accept hard caps on their own emissions, and ii) China and other developing nations use intensity-based targets until the per-capita emissions reach some threshold, beyond which hard emissions caps should be applied.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Exporting a bad idea to the world
First, the US proposes setting a global GHG emissions "goal" - an object to which effort or ambition is directed, rather than a "target" - an amount set as a (minimum) objective. Then, the effort to undermine the push for a global emissions agreement at the G8 Summit was savaged, by foreign governments, by Democrats and by commentators, like a tofurkey at a Greenpeace rally.
Now, quel horreur, the Canadian PM says his government wants to play peacemaker (CBC).
Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a German business audience Monday Canada won't meet its Kyoto targets to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but can be a world leader in battling climate change.
And here it comes:
Harper did say he believes his government's plan for intensity-based targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions will be more effective than setting overall reduction targets.
I was so dumbfounded by this, I double-checked on the CBC's French language service:
Selon la solution canadienne, il n'y aurait pas une réduction draconienne des gaz à effets de serre, mais l'encouragement de mesures moins polluantes dans chaque unité de production industrielle.
That's right. Canada is championing the emissions intensity policy as the solution to it all. Could it work? Only if the intensity-based targets, not aspirational goals, are set such that total emissions actually decline. However, that is not the case in the Canadian policy.
The joke is, er, the tragedy is, not only has the Canadian policy been ridiculed by experts across the spectrum, it is not even original. It was lifted, almost digit for digit, from the equally toothless American policy.
Let's hope the rest of the world looks at this graph. And that someone out there has a calculator that can do compound interest.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The IPCC on emissions intensity
The IPCC Working Group III report – the one on mitigation and adaptation – contains some more interesting data on emissions intensity. Once again, emissions intensity is a handy concept for comparing economic efficiency, but a pointless metric for climate and emissions policy.
The report summary explains that world GHG emissions increased by 70% from 1970 to 2004, a statement widely referenced by the press. The next line of the report, not as widely referenced, explains that despite this GHG emissions increase, there was a 33% decrease in energy intensity (energy supply per $GDP) and 40% decrease in emissions intensity (emissions per $ GDP) over the same time period. As I’ve been arguing for weeks, both here and over at Worldchanging, it is important to read the IPCC summary reports yourself.
So I’ll say it again. Emissions intensity naturally decreases over time, even as total emissions increase. Setting an intensity-based target is a foolish way to reduce total emissions. And, yes, I intend to keep hammering away at this point until emissions intensity is removed from North American policy.
The above figure from the IPCC report shows that the more economically developed countries tend to have lower emissions intensity (on the y-axis). In other words, as the economy develops, it tends to become more greenhouse gas efficient. The graph also shows that emissions intensity is much higher in the US and Canada than in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the EU. You could argue that reducing emissions should be “easier” for the US and Canada because we are less greenhouse gas efficient than other countries at a similar stage of economic development. While there is some truth to that argument, it ignores the large differences in sources of emissions in North America (e.g., large energy production) than in Europe.
What about China? Bucking the global trend, the emissions intensity in China has increased in the past decade. As the IPCC reports, the economic boom has been fueled by dramatic increases in coal and other carbon-based fuels. This is not surprising – it is just what happened in the west during the Industrial Revolution (see here). Emissions and emissions intensity rose until the early 1900s. Economic growth and emissions then began to decouple – emissions continued to soar, but the economy grew even faster.
If anything, the fact that China is bucking the global trend demonstrates the tremendous lack of leadership from western nations on this issue. Rather than learn from our experience, China is reliving it.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Emissions intensity: Declining for decades
In case you are still not convinced that the emissions intensity concept is a sham, take a look at this graph.
In fact, don’t just look at it. E-mail a copy to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Or fax it to the Environment Minister. Or walk around Ottawa with it stapled to your forehead (er, ok, you can use tape instead).
I’ve calculated the change in global emissions intensity since 1750, using data on manmade CO2 emissions by (Oak Ridges National Lab) and a recreation of world GDP expressed in 1990 dollars.
The data is not perfect. Obviously the 1800 GDP is an estimate. But it demonstrates the point. Emissions intensity increased during the industrial revolution, as the world learned how to burn coal, drilling for, etc. Afterwards, we became more efficient in the way we produce and use energy.
Emissions increased throughout the 20th century, but not as fast as the economy. The global emissions intensity has been naturally decreasing - at an average rate of around 1.5%/year – since the early 1900s! The pace actually accelerated over the last few decades. Global emissions intensity dropped 27% during the 1990s alone.
The moral of the story: Emissions intensity is naturally decreasing as the economy becomes more efficient. This has been happening for a century. The idea – promoted in the Canadian government’s new climate plan and the Bush Administration’s 2002 policy – that reducing emissions intensity by a couple percent a year is the way to tackle greenhouse gas emissions is a complete farce.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Emissions intensity: read the fine print
The coverage of the new Canadian GHG emissions regulations (technically, it's not a policy) generally opens with a sentence like this:
The plan, entitled Turning the Corner, calls on Canada to reduce its current amount of greenhouse gas emissions by 150 million tonnes by 2020 and will require most industries in Canada to reduce greenhouse gases by 18 per cent by 2010. (CBC-News)
It is wrong.
The plan - read it here - calls for an 18% reduction in emissions intensity by 2010. That, once again (and again, apologies to regular readers, I harp on this point only because it is important), is not the total emissions but the emissions per unit of GDP, or in this case, production by the company.
The plan is, right down to the numbers, eerily similar to the American policy I lampooned, as a warning to Canadians, in the Toronto Star almost a year ago. I'd like to claim some brilliance in debunking the US and, at the time potential, Canadian plans. The truth is, as I wrote then "A couple minutes with a calculator, or a morning of Economics 101, will reveal a hole in the intensity plan so big you can drive a Hummer through it".
A target of 18% reduction in emissions intensity by 2010? Reads like the "ambitious national goal" set by the Bush Administration in 2002. Canadian companies are being given less time, but that's merely catch-up for the lack of policy until now.
After 2010, the new plan calls for a 2% per year improvement in emissions intensity. If your production, measured in terms of dollars, tracks with the economy (at roughly 3% per year), guess what? The actual emissions could increase by roughly 1% per year.
Yes, the emissions would be lower in comparison to a business-as-usual growth scenario, but they would still be rising over all. That's one reason the environmental organizations and the opposition parties are attacking this policy with a fervour. Or why they should be. If industries are not required to reduce their actual emissions, the odds of reaching any long-term reduction goal, even the inadequate goal announced yesterday (20% below 2006 levels by 2020), are extremely low.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The policy that won't die
Before tackling some of the new developments in climate science and climate policy, we've got to battle an old nemesis.
The concept of “emissions intensity” appears to rearing its mathematically twisted head again in Canada. According to yesterday’s Globe and Mail, a draft of the new federal climate policy includes what everyone is referring to as intensity-based targets. I've harped on this many times before, and with some luck, will do so here for the last time.
Emissions intensity is the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions divided by some measure of economic productivity, like GDP. Say your goal is to keep the emissions intensity constant. If GDP goes up, emissions go up. Since inflation causes GDP to rise every year, an intensity-based emissions plan may very well involved an increase in emissions.
That’s not to say there is no value in using intensity-based measures in an emissions policy. Say the country’s emissions are growing – each year, more is expected to be emitted than the last year – because of economic growth. That means at the beginning of emissions controls, simply slowing the growth may be an accomplishment. The problem is that the climate does not care about GDP. So, at some point, the policy has to involve actual reductions in emissions below current levels. The common beef with recent Canadian policy proposal is that point is being set too far into the future.
What bothers me, the reason I keep writing about this, is that the use of emissions intensity so often smacks of politics and marketing. Reducing emissions intensity sounds nice: We’re become less intense. We’re becoming more efficient.
See, in the policy, the emissions intensity “target” could be converted into an estimated emissions target.. Simple. Take the emissions intensity “target” set for industry for whatever year – say 2020 – and multiply by the projected GDP (which was used to estimate the intensity in the first place). That would give you the actual emission target.
This is never done. Why? Because it would lay bare the fact that actual emissions target in the policy is higher than the current emissions. And, that is a fact that the authors and promoters of the policy, regardless of their political stripes, would prefer to hide from the voters.
