Energy

Dec 14, 2016 - After working on climate and energy issues intensively for the past nine years, I would love to scream from the rooftops about how Canada now has a real climate framework, and how as a nation we are proudly, if belatedly, walking the talk. Instead, I feel immensely disappointed by last week’s First Ministers’ Meeting on climate change both in terms of its limited outcomes, as well as the media focus on the politics of getting to a deal rather than the substance of the deal itself.

OVERVIEW • 

WHAT’S MISSING • 

To view this 6 page, Dec 12, 2016  summary click here: 

Dec 13, 2016 - On Dec. 9, after much deliberation and political theatre, the federal government, eight provinces and three territories signed the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba were notably absent from the list of signatories.

Dec 22, 2016 - After spending the past 13 months focused on international and national climate negotiations, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna will turn her attention in 2017 to the more prosaic work of implementation – ensuring that what was agreed to at high-profile political summits is acted upon.

The pan-Canadian climate agreement signed earlier this month by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and 11 provincial and territorial premiers includes a plan for Ottawa to impose a carbon price on provinces that refuse to adopt their own by 2018.

Dec 15, 2016 - And there’s one country that can claim a huge share of the credit for it.

Solar power is becoming the world’s cheapest form of new electricity generation, data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) suggests.

VANCOUVER — An annual Amnesty International human-rights campaign is taking aim at a Canadian project for the first time — the Site C dam.

The $8.8-billion hydroelectric dam project in northeast British Columbia was one of 10 global issues targeted by the Write for Rights campaign on Saturday.

The campaign involves events held across the world where people write letters petitioning leaders for action on human-rights causes.

Sometimes in this vast and complicated world, it's easy to feel a bit lost and hopeless. It can be hard to see progress or positives in the face of so much struggle. But I find if I focus things inward and think about the community with which I work to put renewable energy on the map, my mood changes. Drastically.

At a projected cost of $8.8 billon, the approved but yet-to-be-built Site C dam is the single most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history.

However, far more is at stake than just our pocketbooks when assessing the costs of Site C. So before returning to the appalling economics behind the project, consider the following: