Alberta, Canada Announces Climate Leadership Plan, Will Protect Alberta’s

Alberta’s plan, released Sunday, also features a phaseout of coal-fired power in the next 15 years, a 10-year goal to almost halve methane emissions, as well as incentives for renewable energy.

In the short term, renewable electricity – mostly wind power – will replace two-thirds of the electricity now produced by coal-fired power generation in Alberta’s electricity supply mix, with natural gas making up baseload power supply. Renewable energy sources will comprise up to 30 percent of Alberta’s electricity production by 2030.

Starting in 2017, Alberta will apply a $20-a-tonne price on carbon emissions that will cover about 90 per cent of the economy, including essentials such as gasoline and home heating fuel.

· A 100-megatonne cap on carbon emissions from the oil sands, Canada’s fastest-growing source of emissions, once new rules are adopted.

But as remarkable as it was for the likes of both oilpatch billionaire Murray Edwards, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.’s chairman, and former US vice president Al Gore, an outspoken advocate for tougher climate action, to back the plan, not everyone is singing its praises.

Irrespective of the final mechanisms chosen to implement the policy, what is clear is that Premier Notley has put an absolute cap on emissions from the oil sands and is boldly moving away from a policy under the SGER that captured only approximately 45% of Alberta’s carbon emissions to an economy-wide policy capturing all emissions.

Coal producers criticized the new policy, saying it will raise electricity costs in Alberta and cost Canadian jobs.

The premier spoke to nearly 600 people about the newly passed provincial budget, the climate change policy, and the NDP’s commitment to education and social services. He says companies such as Suncor, CNRL, Shell Canada and Cenovus are glad they can still operate in the Alberta, noting during the federal election campaign the possibility of a federal NDP government shutting down the oilsands seemed a real possibility.

That tax will bring in an estimated $3 billion in revenue annually for the province.

“Today we are making history, with Alberta taking its rightful place as a leader on the world stage”, said Ed Whittingham, executive director of the Pembina Institute, a think tank.

“That was a necessary condition for acting on this”, said Andrew Leach, who headed up Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel, which created the document upon which the province’s new climate-change strategy is based.

But the provinces are also wary that Ottawa may seek to impose a federal approach despite the fact that in Quebec last April, premiers reached their own framework to guide a pan-Canadian climate approach, and then in the summer, concluded a broad-brush energy strategy focused on innovation and clean technology. “We are turning the page on the mistaken policies of the past, policies that have failed to provide the leadership our province needed”. “Used in power generation, it emits about half the carbon dioxide compared to coal and could virtually eliminate emissions of smog-causing pollutants”, McMillan said.