Sask. Party’s climate change defence is hot air
From the standpoint of responsible government, there’s no value at all ... in having spent money with a poor return on investment.
As Saskatchewan’s legislature has reconvened under new leadership, one of the main flash points has once again been the issue of climate change. And for the moment, the main point of dispute seems to involve allocating responsibility for the impending imposition of a federal carbon pricing scheme.
Every other province in the country has developed at least some plan to reduce emissions — whether through a carbon tax, capand-trade or other measures. Until recently, Manitoba had been the other holdout. But it has decided to act for itself rather than facing the inevitable implementation of a federal backstop.
Saskatchewan thus stands alone in refusing to even attempt to put together a coherent picture of our carbon emissions, alongside a plan to reduce them over time. (And of course, that lack of action is paired with our embarrassing standing as the province which emits the most pollution per capita.)
Unfortunately, the broad picture of emission regulation is abstract compared to the noticeable impact of a carbon price. And the Saskatchewan Party is trying to stoke outrage at the latter to paper over its utter failure at the former.
But as we debate our options around climate change, we can get a hint of the implausibility of the Saskatchewan Party’s position by reviewing the readily available facts about its main claim to past action.
Faced with the entirely accurate observation that his government hasn’t offered any overall plan to reduce carbon emissions, Scott Moe is arguing that the past price we’ve paid for carbon capture and storage at Boundary Dam should insulate us from joining in the effort to rein in the global threat of climate change.
So with the benefit of experience, let’s consider the reality of carbon capture and storage in Saskatchewan — and how it fits into the twin priorities of energy production and greenhouse gas emission reduction.
On the energy side, Alberta’s recent push toward cleaner power generation has resulted in wind power prices averaging 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour — compared to SaskPower’s wholesale generation price of about six cents. That means readily available renewable sources are cheaper than our province’s baseline even in terms of power generation.
And that’s before considering the cost of fitting a CCS unit onto a coal station, which roughly doubles the price of generation. The use of CCS then results in an implicit carbon price of $57 per tonne of emissions reduced — compared to a gradual movement to a $50 price which Moe rails against within the federal scheme.
So when Moe tries to substitute CCS for a full emission reduction system, his message is effectively that since the Saskatchewan Party has forced us to pay more for less in the past, it considers itself entitled to refuse to lift a finger in the future.
Needless to say, we shouldn’t accept that spin. From the standpoint of responsible government, there’s no value at all — and certainly nothing to brag about — in having spent money with a poor return on investment. So any attempt to claim credit for the cost of carbon capture and storage without acknowledging its poor results merely shows utter disregard for making sure our government works, rather than merely trying to put up the appearance of action.
But even more importantly, in the fight to preserve a habitable planet, it’s plainly futile to try to declare victory and leave. And the more Moe tries to claim that his government’s past failures are somehow a substitute for the action needed to contribute to climate sustainability, the more obvious it is that his government has nothing to offer for the future. Greg Fingas is a Regina lawyer, blogger and freelance political commentator who has written about provincial and national issues from a progressive NDP perspective since 2005.