Category Archives: Aldyen Donnelly

In my opinion, the science on climate change is now irrelevant—even though I’m a believer.

Every time the US has implemented a cap and trade regulation—the first one was in1977—its primary political objective was trade protectionism. And every time the US has done so, the measure has successfully drawn investment capital away from nations on which Americans have traditionally relied for imports into the US.

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No. This is a gasoline versus diesel fuel story.

Note that 100% of the transportation sector GHGs realized in Europe between 1990 and 2007 derive from the shift of the passenger vehicle fleet from gasoline (‘petrol") to ultra low sulphur diesel fuel. Alberta’s oil sands are relatively high (but not the highest) GHG generators if they are used to make gasoline.

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The Canadian government’s "low carbon economy" strategy should mobilize private capital and not rely heavily on new investment that is, effectively, 100% public debt, or electricity rate-base financed. Unfortunately, this is the corner that both BC and Ontario policy strategies appear to be based on—even though they are different policy sets at first glance.
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It appears that a few key federal policy advisors finally understand the very dangerous trade implications of both US- and EU-style cap and trade. The styles differ, somewhat, but are equally protectionist in orientation.  
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Two effectively bankrupt provinces—Ontario with its out-of-control debt and BC, home to 1-in-every-4 jobs permanently lost in Canada over the last 18 months—are chasing each other’s tails to increase subsidies to big business. They are competing to see who can back-door the largest subsidies for multi-nationals into the home-owners’ utility bills.  

The multi-national business lobby could not be happier.

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I just looked at US EIA website and noted that they have now posted 2008 data for all nations. I have attached the whole dataset. These new numbers differ, slightly, from numbers from my own analysis that I distributed a few months ago.

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In regards to biofuels, I have gone on record for years that once we fully consider the impacts of ethanol—not just from corn, although corn ethanol is the worst of the ethanol options—it will become socially unacceptable to deal in ethanol at all. Biodiesel is a different story. 
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I recently entered into a dialogue with a Canadian business journalist about lessons Canada can learn from European energy and environmental market regulations.
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I use the UNFCCC GHG data for sector and national GHG estimates. Download the CRF reports for the countries you are interested in to get the best GHG stats for power sector.  Download the CRF zip file here. 
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