Can B.C. make U-turn to green?

The province will take concerted action to reverse greenhouse gases, but MARK HUME discovers some doubt the strategy

MARK HUME
Globe and Mail
26-Mar-2007

VANCOUVER — As Throne Speeches go, the one delivered in the British Columbia Legislature this year by Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo could only be described as electrifying.

In the middle of her address the elegant former broadcaster who speaks with a carefully measured tone and whose stiff posture is reflected in her native Tsimsean name, "Person Who Sits High," veered from the usual political banalities and went straight to the heart of one of the most troubling problems of our age.

"The Kyoto treaty, which is now in place, just came into force two years ago this Friday," she said, her clear, sharp voice capturing the attention of the entire legislature and those watching on television.

"Little has been done to seriously address this problem, which is literally threatening life on Earth as we know it.

Hudson Bay Mountain overlooks the Bulkley River,
a world-renowned fly fishing river and part of the
Skeena River system.

Since 1997, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to grow here in British Columbia and across Canada. Voluntary regimes have not worked.

In 2007, British Columbia will take concerted provincial action to halt and reverse the growth in greenhouse gases," she said, looking out across the hushed legislative chamber.

Sitting in the front benches just to her right, nodding in affirmation, was Premier Gordon Campbell, the man who had shaped the words she was delivering -- and who at that moment was signalling a dramatic U-turn for his government.

For the past decade British Columbia has been an energy pig, with greenhouse-gas emissions soaring. Now Mr. Campbell is promising to apply the brakes and reduce those emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. That ambitious target would outpace even California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger aims to cap that state's greenhouse-gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020.

The question is, can Mr. Campbell deliver?

B.C., birthplace of Greenpeace, a province where people embrace nature so fervently even loggers call themselves environmentalists, might already seem to be the greenest place in Canada.

But the statistics tell a different story, a story about how a booming economy and a growing population has put B.C. on what the Suzuki Foundation calls "a torrid pace to catch up" to the worst greenhouse-gas offenders in the country.

From its booming energy sector (fugitive emissions up 96 per cent; mining emissions up 186 per cent) its road transportation (which has so clogged major highways a $1-billion-plus expansion is under way) British Columbia is pumping more than 66 million tonnes of greenhouse gas into the air yearly.

Promising to stop is an important step, but at the moment B.C. is like a glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, talking loudly about going on a diet while loading up at the dessert tray.

Since 1990, the province's greenhouse-gas emissions overall have soared by 35 per cent -- and this despite having in place since 2004 a provincial plan to reduce carbon output.

In the Throne Speech, Ms. Campagnolo acknowledged that B.C., and the country as a whole, have reached a crisis point.

"The rate of atmospheric warming over the last 50 years is faster than at any time in the past 1,000 years. The science is clear. It leaves no room for procrastination. Global warming is real," she said.

"If we fail to act aggressively and shoulder our responsibility, we know what our children can expect -- shrinking glaciers and snow packs, drying lakes and streams, and changes in the ocean's chemistry. Our wildlife, plant life, and ocean life will all be hurt in ways we cannot know and dare not imagine."

It was dramatic stuff and it drew news media attention from New York to London, inspiring comparisons to the greening of California under Mr. Schwarzenegger.

As if to underscore that connection, Mr. Campbell flew to California this month for a photo op with the governor, emerging from a meeting to hint at a "hydrogen-highway" from B.C. to California and to say "concrete results" in the fight against greenhouse-gas emissions will soon be seen.

But getting from here to there is not going to be an easy commute.

A few weeks after Ms. Campagnolo's address, the government delivered an energy plan that seemed to send conflicting signals.

"Over all it's hard to reconcile the energy plan with the visionary Throne Speech," said Ian Bruce, climate-change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation.

He noted that on one hand the government promises reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, while on the other it promotes expansion, in the north and offshore, of the oil and gas industry, while offering the industry tax breaks and subsidies worth $250-million.

"It will be difficult to reduce emissions here in the province without having market-based regulations to ensure the oil and gas industry reduces its fair share," Mr. Bruce said. "If we look at California, they've set legally binding targets, so that's a much stronger signal . . . and that's exactly what we need here in B.C."

Fossil-fuel industries are one of the biggest -- and fastest growing -- contributors to greenhouse-gas emissions in B.C., ranking third behind only road transportation and manufacturing industries.

Rather than targeting those sources, however, the energy plan stresses the need to find a balance between reducing greenhouse gases and promoting growth. That search for a balance has been a consistent theme of Mr. Campbell's government, but Mr. Bruce sees it as a fundamental flaw in the B.C. strategy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

"About 40 per cent of B.C.'s greenhouse-gas emissions come from the transportation sector," said Mr. Bruce. "Although B.C. has alluded to bringing in California vehicle-emission standards, for all new vehicles sold in the province, which is a very promising policy, at the same time the B.C. government is talking about spending billions of dollars in expanding freeways throughout the lower mainland, which will wipe all the progress that those promising policies would have made."

Mr. Bruce said such big contradictions have to be addressed if B.C. is to make progress.

"The Throne Speech acknowledged the seriousness of global warming, that we can no longer procrastinate, and it specifically acknowledged that we need to take urgent action now. But what surprised me is that the energy plan didn't even have greenhouse-gas-emission targets," Mr. Bruce said.

"To me it is difficult to comprehend, given these contradictions, how B.C. is going to be on track to be a leader in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."

One area where B.C. hopes to gain an advantage in the battle against global warming is in the vast forest lands that cover the province. In the Throne Speech the government boasted that next year B.C. will plant the six billionth tree since provincial reforestation efforts began in 1930. B.C. is planting 200 million trees a year as it tries to keep pace with an accelerated "salvage" logging program initiated after a pine beetle infestation spread over more than eight million hectares.

Mr. Campbell hopes the new trees will generate revenue as carbon sinks because over its lifetime each new tree will offset up to one tonne of carbon dioxide.

"British Columbia may be one of the places where we can inventory carbon offsets that other people can use. This can be a big economic engine for the province," Mr. Campbell said. But claiming carbon credits for replanting trees may not be as easy as it sounds.

Cariboo North NDP MLA Bob Simpson raised that concern in the legislature recently, when he pointed out that B.C.'s forests are largely unhealthy because of the pine beetle infestation -- triggered when global warming led to a succession of mild winters.

"This ideal view of forests as carbon sinks is not supported by science, and the current state of both our natural and managed forests suggests that it is foolhardy to depend on our forests as the centrepiece of any climate-change strategy," Mr. Simpson said.

While B.C.'s forests might not qualify as carbon offsets, there are other possibilities. One is that the wood killed by pine beetles could be used to generate clean electricity. A study by Professor Amit Kumar of the University of Alberta indicates a large-scale power plant, using about 7 per cent of the tree biomass killed by the beetles, could generate 300 megawatts of power for 20 years. B.C. Hydro is expected to issue a call for proposals soon for generating electricity from sawmill residues, logging debris and beetle-killed timber, and the province is developing a bioenergy strategy that will address other possibilities.

Private industry is investing $3.6-billion in producing clean power through a variety of sources, mostly run-of-river or micro-dams, the government is spending $1.9-billion on a new Canada Line expansion of SkyTrain rapid transit (which is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 14,000 tonnes by 2021); another $170-million in provincial money is being spent on the Evergreen transit line (from Burnaby to Coquitlam); $200-million is going into forest renewal; and B.C. Hydro is spending $127-million over two years to promote energy conservation.

At the same time Mr. Campbell has challenged the public to get involved, saying it not just industry that needs to change, but all of us.

But the experience of David Dranchuk, New Westminster diocesan co-ordinator for the Anglican Church of Canada, shows just how hard it is even to take simple steps.

Last year the diocese decided it wanted to make a statement by having some of its churches go green. The idea was to install wind generators and solar panels. Grants were obtained from Vancity and the Real Estate Foundation, and a search was made to find the first church to go green.

But the plan soon ran into unexpected problems.

"There is just no suitable location in the entire diocese for a wind generator," Mr. Dranchuk said. "We have 80 churches in the diocese, but this is just not a windy area and where there is wind, the church is not in the right place. It's got to be a considerable distance from tall buildings and trees and any obstruction."

While there won't be a wind generator, photo-voltaic panels will be installed to make one church independently powered, and five others will get solar panels to provide hot water, at a cost of about $6,500 per building.

The government is supporting the development of a strategy to have 100,000 solar roofs in B.C., but converting to solar power in B.C. has a built-in disincentive because electricity is relatively inexpensive.

Rob Baxter, director of the Vancouver Renewable Energy Cooperative, says there has been a growing number of inquiries from people interested in supplementing their homes with solar power, but relatively little action.

"There's a lot of people interested; it's just the barrier of the cost and the low electricity prices here in B.C.," he said, underscoring the dilemma governments and society face when economic reality and moral imperative conflict.

Premier Campbell got big headlines last month when his government delivered the greenest Throne Speech this country has ever heard. But so far his government has not delivered a detailed road map for getting from here to there.

Green around the edges

1. Premier Gordon Campbell has set out an ambitious target of slashing greenhouse-gas emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2020 -- a 30-per-cent drop from the latest count of B.C.'s emissions.

2. Most of those emissions - nearly two-thirds -- come from power generation and transportation, meaning that energy and vehicles will have to be targeted in the province's climate-change plan.

Total:

1990: 51,560

2004: 67,323

3. B.C. is the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases among Canadian provinces ...

Canada total:

1990: 594.155

2004: 747.628

4. ... But that performance is largely a result of abundant hydroelectric power. Emissions from transportation have soared since 1990, second only to Alberta.

Canada total:

1990: 148,010

2004: 191,910

% change: 29.7

SOURCE: NATIONAL INVENTORY REPORT, GREENHOUSE GAS SOURCES
AND SINKS IN CANADA,1990-2004, ENVIRONMENT CANADA

Globe and Mail's Climate for Change series

1. Can B.C. make U-turn to green?, 26-Mar-2007
B.C.'s uncharted path to a green future. Plus, one Vancouver family goes on a carbon diet to slim its greenhouse-gas emissions, Part 1.

2. The dirty little secret of importing power, 27-Mar-2007
B.C. is a province of green power -- or is it? Plus, the limits to alternative energy and conservation.

3. How urban sprawl goes against the green, 28-Mar-2007
The battle to cut B.C.'s greenhouse gases will be fought on the lawns of suburbia. Plus, economics powers a green revolution in Vancouver's taxi industry.

4. From carbon steam to cash flow, 29-Mar-2007
How B.C. businesses could turn their pollution into profit. Plus, the province's dirtiest dozen.

5. A greener getaway takes root, 30-Mar-2007
The path to green: How B.C. can slash greenhouse gases. Plus, Part 2 of the carbon diet.