Andrew
There’s only one climate vote in this election and it’s for the Liberals
I’ve kept my head (mostly) down so far in this election for a simple reason: over the past two years in particular and sporadically before that, I have given a lot of advice to the Government of Canada on the implementation of national climate change policies. The Liberal plan is, in many aspects, rooted in […]
Facts matter
The Canadian Energy Centre (if you’re wondering who that is, it’s a pro-energy corporation funded by the Alberta government) apparently take their responsibility to tell Canada’s energy story very seriously. After seeing Bill McKibben’s op-ed in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, I waited anxiously for the response from our vaunted war room. It finally […]
To whom is Jason Kenney selling a bill of goods on Energy East?
Jason Kenney is, ahem, bending the truth, for someone on Energy East. The questions we should be asking are whether he knows that he is and, if his Energy East fantasies were to come true, to whom would he have been selling a bill of goods.
Senate Testimony on Bill c-48
Bill C-48, An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations located along British Columbia’s north coast, has passed third reading in the House of Commons and is now at the Senate committee stage. I’ve been invited to appear before Senate Committee on […]
My thoughts on the UCP Climate Change Plan
Jason Kenney formalized the United Conservative Party’s climate change and energy plans on the weekend. There’s more to Kenney’s platform than the headlines about scrapping the carbon tax – the platform is a systematic walk-back of some of the most important climate change initiatives in Alberta, an effort to perpetuate myths about other initiatives and, […]
The price of gas and the taste of crow
Over the past few days, I’ve been involved in a lot of discussion on Twitter and in other fora about the distribution of transportation fuel expenditures across Canadian households. The purpose of this post is two-fold: first, to eat a little crow for an error of my own, and then to provide some additional data […]
What can we learn from the church carbon tax fiasco?
Yesterday morning, United Conservative Party candidate for Brooks-Medicine Hat and well-known conservative activist Michaela Glasgo tweeted a claim, since debunked, that her church, Hillcrest Evangelical Missionary Church in Medicine Hat, would be facing a $50,000 bill from Alberta’s carbon tax next year. The claim, and the subsequent challenges to it, were picked up by the Edmonton […]
House Standing Committee on Environment
The following is a transcript of my remarks to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development from Monday, January 28. 2019. Please check against delivery. Thank you for inviting me to appear before your Standing Committee to make the case in favour of carbon pricing. I am an Associate Professor at […]
The federal output-based carbon pricing system works because it’s not an exemption
This week, the federal government announced more details of their Output Based Pricing System (OBPS) which targets greenhouse gas emissions from large, industrial facilities. These policies are complex (although perhaps not as complex as their acronyms make them sound) and build on a long line of similar policies proposed and/or implemented in Canada. In this […]
The evolution of Alberta gas prices
Today was mostly a course prep day for me and, as part of that, I was updating a graph package for my students. I decided to pull down some longer history on Alberta natural gas prices and overlay them with settlement prices for futures contracts. These are US-dollars-denominated contracts but for gas at the Nova […]