When President Obama came to Ottawa last year, one of the few items that was agreed upon was to engage in a so-called "Clean Energy Dialogue". Looking at the budgets that the governments on both sides of the border have released since then, it appears as though our American friends have a lot more to talk about.
Last week, we raised some concerns about the lack of federal spending on sustainable energy technology in the 2010 federal budget. Our initial analysis done in the first few hours after the budget was released found that the U.S. was set to spend at least 14 times more per capita than Canada on renewable energy in 2010 (coincidentally the same ratio we'd calculated last year when comparing the countries' respective stimulus spending.) Having had a few days to digest all the details, a closer look at the numbers done in partnership with Environment Northeast found that the gap in spending on renewable energy between the U.S. and Canada this year is widening to nearly 18:1. (The ratio of the two countries' overall spending on sustainable energy is also set to rise to more than 8:1, up from 6:1 last year.)
Jim Prentice reponds to questions about environmental spending in the 2010 federal budget from CBC host Evan Solomon on the program Power & Politics.This is unfortunate, because in Canada we still have a long way to go to clean up our electricity sector. When Jim Prentice responded to my initial analysis on CBC's Power and Politics, he correctly pointed out that the American electricity system is a lot dirtier than the Canadian one. However, this doesn't mean our electricity is clean - far from it. We still have five provinces burning a lot of coal to generate power - which, when combined, account for over 10 per cent of all of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions (amongst other nasty emissions like mercury). Plus, our demand for electricity is growing.
While our government made a commendable election promise have 90 per cent of Canada's electricity come from "non-emitting sources" (defined as large-hydro, nuclear, carbon capture and storage and renewables), there is still no plan in place to get us to that target. In fact, the 2010 budget seems to download the responsibility of achieving the national target onto the provinces, some of who (like Ontario, for example) have stepped up to the challenge, while others, like Alberta, are actually building new coal as you read this.
One day soon we hope to see some regulations in place to control emissions, but after four years and four climate change plans, it's difficult to say when that day will be. In fact according to media reports in November 2009, Environment Minister Jim Prentice stated that a regulatory proposal might not be unveiled until late 2010 or even later, and that it would have to be preceded by a continental climate change agreement between Canada and the United States. This certainly doesn't inspire a lot of certainty for investors, and so it's shouldn't come as a surprise if we see renewable energy investors and innovators putting their money into attractive markets south of the border.
In the absence of federal leadership, here's hoping more provinces will step up.
Dr. Tim Weis was the director of the Pembina Institute's renewable electricity program until 2014.
