In early September, as smoke from the worst wildfire season on record still hung over much of the province, British Columbia’s new government signalled that it was time to stop fiddling while Rome burned.
“Your government will take decisive action on global climate change,” Lieutenant-Governor Judith Guichon said, reading a Throne Speech prepared, as it always is, by the premier and his advisors.
“We must do everything we can to reduce emissions and keep global temperature increases below two degrees. Together, we will fight climate pollution and create opportunities for people, including thousands of jobs through energy retrofits and public infrastructure.”
Three days later, in its annual budget, the government announced it will beef up its signature carbon tax while boosting protection for low and middle-income families. It will also channel the revenue that the tax generates into solutions that “support families and fund green initiatives that help us address our climate action commitments.”
Those commitments are to reduce emissions across the economy 33 percent below 2007 levels by the year 2020, and 80 percent below that level by 2050. We will miss the near-term goal by such a wide margin that the previous government stopped talking about it altogether some time ago. (This week, the federal government confirmed it will miss its 2020 target as well.) But the mid-century target is still within B.C.’s grasp, if we really buckle down.
In 2013, under premier Christy Clark, the government froze the carbon tax and instead began developing a new fossil-fuel (LNG) export industry. A number of the proposed plants would have produced so much carbon pollution that they would have been nationally significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Clark formed a Climate Leadership Team, talked up its work at the Paris climate talks, then returned home to put a red line through almost all of its recommendations, while adding a few from the petroleum industry.
A New Green Fund in the Works
Fast forward to now. The new government will raise the carbon tax to $35 starting April 1, and increase it by $5 annually, until it hits $50 by 2021. And B.C.’s largest LNG plant proposal is toast.
Since day one, B.C.’s carbon tax has been “revenue neutral.” Every dime of carbon tax that the government collects has been recycled back to British Columbians in the form of tax cuts. The money has not been available for climate-fighting investments.
But the new government will change that.
A friend working inside Alberta’s government called the removed revenue-neutrality requirement a smart move, and I agree. On the other side of the Rockies, Premier Notley’s government is similarly tapping the proceeds of her province’s carbon levy to support the phase-out of coal power, build renewables, create an new energy-efficiency agency, and invest in green-tech innovation.
It’s great that B.C.’s carbon tax will be increasing again. If it’s going to do its job, it has to keep rising—to keep up with population growth and inflation. That’s how it works; it signals to the marketplace that cleaner choices made today will be more competitive tomorrow. It helps ensure that the price we pay for fossil fuels—at the pump and elsewhere—more closely approximates their true costs, to public health, ecosystems, and the climate.
The new crowd in Victoria haven’t yet offered any hints about how the carbon tax funds will be put to work. But I have a couple of suggestions.
Strengthening Support for Electric Vehicles
First, the federal government is working on a national Zero Emission Vehicle Strategy. Clean vehicles are not, by a long shot, the fix to climate change, but they are part of a mix of needed solutions that also includes public transit and active transportation—bicycles, walking paths, and so on.
When it comes to electric cars, the biggest barrier in Canada is just getting your hands on one in the first place—it turns out that the car industry just isn’t bringing enough EVs into Canada, and isn’t giving us the full range of choices we deserve. A new campaign called EVchoice (EVchoice.ca) aims to fix that. Disclosure: I’m part of the team that developed it.
But we also need to make electric cars more attractive to consumers. B.C. currently offers a purchase incentive of up to $5,000 for a new electric car. Ontario’s incentive is double that. Victoria should consider accessing some carbon tax revenue to fund transit and cycling infrastructure—but also increase the EV rebate so that it matches Ontario’s.
Ensuring New Homes are Energy Efficient
There are also opportunities to fight climate change by requiring more energy efficient buildings.
The BC Energy Step Code is a provincial regulation that the previous government introduced in April, and that the new one will bring into effect on December 15. Local governments like Bowen Island Municipality can use it to significantly improve the energy efficiency of new homes that will be built in their communities. It’s a series of steps, each representing a higher level of energy efficiency. The higher the “step” a community requires its builders to reach, the more efficient its homes will be.
The Energy Step Code is a staircase that we have 15 years to climb. It’s designed to gradually transform our communities until all new construction is “net zero ready”—the most efficient buildings that can be built today.
B.C.’s biggest building industry groups support the Step Code (in fact, they helped design it) and new research suggests that the regulation won’t add much to the construction cost of a new home built to the Lower Steps—less than a 2 percent premium, it turns out, over a conventionally built home.
In return, the community gets lower carbon emissions (in those in which residences are heated with natural gas) and homeowners or renters get healthier, more comfortable, and better quality homes.
The Energy Step code is off and running—but high-performance buildings could certainly benefit from an injection of provincial energy and promotion, so that builders have the skills they need to construct them, home buyers know what they’re getting, and citizens understand what the Step Code is and how it works. (Another new initiative I’m working on, called Three For All, (ThreeForAll.ca), is encouraging local governments to adopt the Step Code at Step 3)
No Time Like the Present
According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the two largest wildfires in B.C. this summer caused more than $127 million in insured damage—and that’s just the first rough calculation for just two fires. We are already paying the costs of climate change, and those costs will rise precipitously in the coming years. I’m encouraged to see a government now in place that understands this, and is making well-placed investments to do something about it. We have a lot of catching up to do; I look forward to the province’s next moves.
As principal of Glave Communications, James Glave supports companies, organizations, and governments that are building resilience and the low-carbon economy. He’s on Twitter at @jamesglave.
