The Alberta government will spend at least $30 million on new technology and other innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and will ask Ottawa for matching funding, says Alberta Environment Minister Lorne Taylor.
Taylor said the federal government will have to do better than the $1.2 million for 21 community projects across Canada to reduce greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, announced last week by federal Environment Minister David Anderson.
“They’d better get with it,” Taylor said in a talk last week to the Calgary Council for Advanced Technology.
“We’re investing at least $30 million, and that doesn’t include our $200 million” previously committed to purchase “green” power for government operations, he later told Business Edge.
“I intend to write the federal government and ask them . . . where are your matching dollars?”
In his talk, Taylor complained that Ottawa is still not working with Alberta on a co-ordinated national plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He said he has always favoured co-operating with the federal government on a plan, “but I will not accept a one-way street.”
“There’s still a huge degree of uncertainty around the Kyoto plan from the federal government,” Taylor added.
“There’s a huge vacuum in Canada in terms of leadership.”
The Kyoto Protocol, which the Canadian government approved in December, commits Canada to reducing greenhouse gases to six per cent below 1990 levels.
The accord still needs Russia’s approval to meet the required number of countries and total greenhouse gas emissions to become legally binding and Russia has been giving mixed signals.
Taylor said that due to Canada’s healthy economy and ever-increasing demand for energy, the latest computer models he has seen indicate the country might have to reduce 300 million tonnes of emissions by 2012, or be in non-compliance with the treaty.
Even the earlier projection of a 240-million-tonne reduction under Kyoto is “absolutely unrealistic,” he said.
Taylor rejected news reports that the Alberta government has softened its approach on Kyoto in a revised version of provincial climate change legislation, released earlier this month.
The changes in the revised version – Bill 37, the climate change and emissions management act – merely removed some language that “was a little aggressive” and referred to areas of federal jurisdiction, he said.
Unlike Alberta’s technology-focused plan to reduce greenhouse gases, “Kyoto is anti-technology,” Taylor said. “It’s a political argument, not a climate-change one.”
The province will require mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by industrial sectors, the minister said. Alberta’s proposed legislation “clearly says that there will be targets, and we expect these targets to be followed through.”
Taylor said he also anticipates more provincial funding will be forthcoming for Climate Change Central, Alberta’s public-private sector partnership that is co-ordinating efforts to reduce greenhouse gases across the province.
