Ontario's Climate Action Plan from 2016 to 2020

Ontario’s Five Year Climate Change Action Plan 2016-2020 (Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, Jun. 8, 2016)

Also discussed here: Five things you need to know about how Ontario’s climate change action plan will affect your life (Financial Post, Jun. 8, 2016)

And here: Ontario's climate change action plan: what it needs to succeed (Mike Crawley, CBC News, Jun. 8, 2016)

Today we review Ontario’s first climate action plan with targets for the period 2016-2020. The planned GHG reductions fall within a plan to reduce overall emissions by 15% by 2020, 37% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 with most of the reductions coming from three sectors with 85% of current (2013) emissions: transportation (35%), industry (28%) and buildings (19%). Although Ontario is approaching carbon pricing in a different way (Cap and Trade) than British Columbia did 8 years ago using a revenue-neutral carbon tax, a similar approach is to require all municipalities to produce a climate mitigation and adaptation plan. The BC approach is expected to reduce B.C.’s emissions in 2020 by up to three million tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually, roughly the equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions created by 787,000 cars per year. Revenue from carbon tax itself $500M/year, was returned to taxpayers who pay less than any other provincial taxpayers in Canada. In addition, the serious way that Ontario is approaching the need for electric vehicles through incentives for new e-cars and for many new charging stations gives some assurance that both the carbon pollutants and toxic air emissions from today’s cars and trucks will be reduced.

1. Under Transportation:

• incentives for e-vehicles ($140-160M)
• more charging stations ($80M)

1. Under Buildings

• Incentives for heat pumps and geothermal ($500-600M)
• Free energy audits ($200-250M)

1. Municipal Land Use Planning

• greenhouse gas pollution reduction challenge fund or program.($250-300M)
• make climate change mitigation and adaptation mandatory in municipal official plans.”

1. R&D

• Create a Global Centre for Low Carbon Mobility ($100-140M)

Other actions are planned for agriculture, industry and in collaboration with the federal government..  

Key Quotes:

“The plan…calls for government spending of $5.9 billion to $8.3 billion on climate change initiatives over the next five years. The money would come from the $1.9 billion the Liberal government expects to raise each year by auctioning off pollution emission credits when Ontario joins a cap-and-trade market with Quebec and California next January.”

 “The plan calls for spending of up to $1.1 billion to help businesses switch to more low-carbon technologies, reducing costs and emissions. Up to $290 million will be used to provide incentives for businesses that want to buy low-carbon commercial vehicles and technologies to reduce emissions, including electric and natural gas-powered trucks, anti-idling devices and electric trailer refrigeration.”

1. Transportation

“The action plan establishes a province wide electric and hydrogen passenger vehicle sales target of five per cent in 2020. This target will be reviewed and increased appropriately every five years thereafter. For context, about 284,000 passenger vehicles were sold in Ontario in 2015. Five per cent of annual sales on that number represent about 14,000 vehicles.”

“Maintain incentives for electric vehicles($140-160M): Ontario intends to extend the rebate program to 2020 for leasing or buying an eligible electric vehicle (up to $14,000 per vehicle), including rebates for purchase and installation of home charging stations (up to $1,000 per station).”

 “More charging stations($80M): The province intends to invest in the rapid deployment of charging in workplaces, multi-unit residential buildings, downtowns and town centres. Ontario will encourage ONroute locations to equip themselves with high-speed chargers. It will further encourage the federal government to invest in high speed, fast-charging infrastructure on inter-provincial highways and highways that connect Ontario to the United States.

 “Electric-vehicle-ready homes: Ontario intends to require all new homes and townhomes with garages to be constructed with a 50-amp, 240-volt receptacle (plug) in the garage for the purpose of charging an electric vehicle.

“Electric-vehicle-ready workplaces: Ontario intends to establish a requirement that, as of 2018, all newly built commercial office buildings and appropriate workplaces must provide charging infrastructure.”

“Commuter cycling: Ontario will revise provincial road and highway standards to require commuter cycling infrastructure be considered for all road and highway construction projects where it is safe and feasible. Ontario will do the same for major transit corridors.”

2. Heating Buildings

“Boost low-carbon technology in homes($500-600M): Ontario intends to help homeowners purchase and install low-carbon energy technologies such as geothermal heat pumps and air-source heat pumps, solar thermal and solar energy generation systems that reduce reliance on fossil fuels for space and water heating. This will include an increased benefit for low-income households and vulnerable communities.”

“Provide free energy audits for pre-sale homes($200-250M) Energy audits would be required before a new or existing single-family home can be listed for sale, and the energy rating will be included in the real estate listing.”

3. Land Use Planning

“Require electric vehicle charging in surface lots: Municipalities would be able to require installation of electric vehicle charging stations in surface parking areas.”

“Eliminate minimum parking requirements: Minimum parking requirements would be eliminated over the next five years for municipal zoning bylaws, especially in transit corridors and other high-density, highly walkable communities.” “Establish a Challenge Fund($250-300M): The government will establish a greenhouse gas pollution reduction challenge fund or program.”  

“Put climate change in official plans: The government intends to consult and propose amendments to the Planning Act to make climate change mitigation and adaptation mandatory in municipal official plans.”

4. R&D

"Create a Global Centre for Low Carbon Mobility($100-140M): Based at a post-secondary institution in Ontario, a Global Centre for Low Carbon Mobility will be set up to advise the government on low-carbon transportation, and to direct funding for research, development and low-carbon manufacturing. The Centre will focus on industry research and development needs and support development of low- and nocarbon transportation technology such as electric automated vehicles.”

5. Public Service

“Ontario will spend $160 billion over 12 years on public infrastructure, including $31.5 billion through the Moving Ontario Forward plan that invests in, for example, transit projects. Over the next five years, the OPS will lay the foundation to reach its new target of reducing emissions by 50 per cent below 2006 levels by 2030. These reductions will have the added benefit of reducing the cost to Ontarians of government operations.”

6. Agriculture

“($20-30M) reduce the amount of organic materials going into landfills, which would reduce emissions. Potential targets are 40 per cent of organics diverted by 2025 and 60 per cent by 2035.”

 “Increase tree planting($ 0.5-1.5M): Ontario will continue to support tree-planting programs, including its commitment to plant 50 million trees across the province by 2025.”

7. Reporting

“establishment of a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Account to track cap and trade proceeds and ensure they are invested in green projects and programs that reduce or support the reduction of greenhouse gas pollution.”

Related articles

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• What are the Provinces Doing to Decarbonize Canada's Energy Systems?
• Priorities Needed to Achieve a Low Carbon World
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What Links Urban Metabolic Energy Flows and Urban Ecosystems – a literature review.

Eight energy and material flow characteristics of urban ecosystems (12 page pdf, Xuemei Bai, Ambio, Apr. 22, 2016)

Today we examine a review of current literature about two apparently conflicting urban concepts: one that is concerned with the material energy flows, the other with the ecology of wildlife and plants in a city environment. As cities become more complex and larger these concepts become more important in themselves, as well as between each other with intercity distributions and the regulation of processes across large urban areas and estimating the capacity of a city when to comes to the flow of materials, such as waste Approaching cities in this way also allows for a better defined environmental footprint, as demonstrated in one example in Barcelona, where a park designed for carbon sequestration was found after analysis to be one twelve the size needed to produce the desired absorption of carbon emissions from the city. The concluding words are worth noting: “A better understanding of the interactions between anthropogenic material and energy flows and ecosystem processes can help reduce unintended consequences of narrowly focused policy and management decisions.”

   

Key Quotes :

 « The concept of urban metabolism has been widely used to study energy and material flows into and out of cities… recent urban energy and material flow studies have extended far beyond the original metaphor of cities as organism, and started to reveal important characteristics of urban system features and interactions.. Urban energy and material flow efficiency can be defined as how much social/economic services per unit of resource consumption or waste generation can support. It shows how efficient the urban system is in supporting its function, and is an important system performance indicator.”

“The input part of the urban metabolism includes various tangible materials such as food, water, construction and other materials, products, energy, as well as inflow of energy, capital, information, and people. Such input supports societal activities and drives urban functions within a city; forms urban stocks such as housing, building, infrastructure, and green parks; and produces products and services, as well as managed and unmanaged waste and emissions.”

“The output part consists of industrial products, services, knowledge, and various wastes and emissions. The magnitude, distribution, and internal interactions and feedbacks are regulated by policy, governance, culture, and individual and collective behaviour of the urban system.”

 “Understanding biogeochemical budgets of ecosystems, in particular nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, has been one of the crucial elements of urban ecology” “The metabolic budget can be used to assess the total ecological footprints of cities”

 “The total budget and pathways of material and energy flows reveal the magnitude of impacts and other important characteristics of urban system, such as the functional role of the city, development stages (i.e., mature or growing city), level of infrastructure and development, income, and other socioeconomic characteristics of the city”

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• Which Approach to Urban Development reduces Air Pollution the most - Intensification or Greenspace?
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What is the Impact of Hydraulic Fracturing?

Fracking Communities (22 page pdf, Colin Jerolmack and Nina Berman, Climate Change and the Future of Cities: Mitigation, Adaptation, and Social Change on an Urban Planet, Public Culture, Duke University Press, May 2, 2016)

Also discussed here: Fracking Hits Milestone as Natural Gas Use Rises in U.S. (Bobby Magill, Climate Central, May 6, 2016)

Today we review an article that chronicles the impact fracking has and is having on rural communities and the natural forests and parks that lie among them. Although fracking natural gas (and closing coal plants) has been credited with the 12% reduction in CO2 in the USA from 2007 to 2012, the process involves over 1,000 truckloads of water for just one well and 1,020 shale wells have been approved in Pennsylvania alone. More than 15 million Americans in 11 states live within a mile of a fracked well. New York is the only state where municipal bans are legal. As methane is 20 times more radiatively active in the atmosphere than CO2, leaks of more than 3% from a well eliminate the greenhouse gas benefit that methane enjoys over emissions from coal.

 



 Key Quotes:

 “While it has long been known that vast reserves of natural gas (and oil) lay locked in layers of shale a mile or more underground, most of it remained inaccessible until this century, when the process of hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — was combined with horizontal drilling. "

“for the first time last year, natural gas contributed about the same level of greenhouse gas emissions as coal, the globe’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change…Sixty-seven percent of natural gas produced in the U.S. came from fractured wells in 2015, according to the data. That represented a total of 53 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, up from 50 billion cubic feet in 2014”

“because methane (the primary component of natural gas) is a greenhouse gas whose potency is more than twenty times that of CO2 over a hundred-year period, even a relatively small rate of methane leakage (i.e., 3 percent) from the production and distribution of shale gas could “offset or even reverse the entire apparent greenhouse gas benefit of fuel switching from coal to natural gas”

 “the proposed culprit in most reports of health impacts is air pollution, resulting from gas wells, compressor stations (which serve as nodes for area wells that pressurize the gas), and diesel engines venting volatile organic compounds — including known toxins such as benzene and formaldehyde — into the atmosphere next to residences, communal gathering places, and parks”

“more than 15 million Americans in eleven states live within one mile of a fracked well … approximately 700,000 acres of state forest are “available” for natural gas development… has approved 232 well pads (each capable of hosting up to twenty-four wells) and 1,020 shale gas wells since 2008”

 “It takes over one thousand truckloads just to deliver the water needed to frack one well, and a single well pad can host as many as eighteen to twenty-four gas wells”

“the tragedy of the commons engendered by private oil and gas leasing in rural communities works directly against the kind of collectivist politics needed to prevent our planet from lapsing into abrupt and irreversible climate change”

 “For shale gas extraction to be “sustainable,” it must do more than burn “cleaner” than coal: it should foster the resilience of common-pool resources and the communities that host it.”

Related articles

• Danger of Living Near Fracking Sites
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• Mapping Methane, the Greenhouse Gas
• How Much Coal, Gas and Coal Must be Kept Unused to Limit Global Warming to 2 deg C?

How Could the USA Become Carbon Neutral by 2050?

100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States (Abstract, Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark A. Delucchi, Guillaume Bazouin, Zack A. F. Bauer, Christa C. Heavey, Emma Fisher, Sean B. Morris, Diniana J.Y.Piekutowski, Taylor A. Vencill and Tim W.Yeskoo, Energy and Environmental Science, May 27, 2015

Also discussed here: Here's what it would take for the US to run on 100% renewable energy (David Roberts, Vox Energy and Environment, May 3, 2016)

Today we review a report that details how the USA could reach 100% renewable energy sources by 2050 and what cost and benefits would be needed to accomplish that. 80-85% of existing carbon energy sources would be replaced by 2030 and the rest by 2050 with 49% wind power, 45% solar power and the remainder hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and wave power. Benefits include $7.1 trillion per year in avoided climate impact losses due to US emissions and $600 billion per year in avoided health costs. The approach includes more emphasis on public transit and safer walking and cycling, mandating battery electric vehicles for short and medium distance driving, an expansion in the number and distribution of electric charging sites as well as a time of use that favours night time charging, and electrification of freight rail.

Key Quotes:

“This study presents roadmaps for each of the 50 United States to convert their all-purpose energy systems (for electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) to ones powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). The plans contemplate 80–85% of existing energy replaced by 2030 and 100% replaced by 2050.”

 “Year 2050 end-use U.S. all-purpose load would be met with ∼30.9% onshore wind, ∼19.1% offshore wind, ∼30.7% utility-scale photovoltaics (PV), ∼7.2% rooftop PV, ∼7.3% concentrated solar power (CSP) with storage, ∼1.25% geothermal power, ∼0.37% wave power, ∼0.14% tidal power, and ∼3.01% hydroelectric power.”

“Converting would further eliminate ∼$3.3 (1.9–7.1) tril. per year in 2050 global warming costs to the world due to U.S. emissions.”

“These plans will result in each person in the U.S. in 2050 saving ∼$260 (190–320) per year in energy costs ($2013 dollars) and U.S. health and global climate costs per person decreasing by ∼$1500 (210–6000) per year and ∼$8300 (4700–17600) per year, respectively.”

“Switching from liquid fuels to renewable electricity would also virtually eliminate air pollution, thus avoiding health costs to the tune of $600 billion a year by 2050.”

 “ moving everything to carbon-free electricity would avoid about $3.3 trillion a year in global climate change costs of US emissions by 2050.

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Limits to Growth – a critique after 40 years

Limits Revisited - A review of the limits to growth debate (24 page pdf, Tim Jackson and Robin Webster, Apr., 2016)

Today we review a report card on the 1972 Club of Rome report that looked ahead in 12 scenarios for the century ahead to examine the links between and among population, the economy, consumption of resources and pollution of the land, water and air. The indication that oil production would peak in 2015 if no corrective action were taken is strikingly accurate, given the shift now taking place in renewable energy production. On the other hand the report did not take into account the following ecological processes in regulating the environment: climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, interference with global nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, ozone depletion, global freshwater use, land system change, atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution. Of these, four have deteriorated into an uncertain future: biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use.

Although there are hopeful signs that economic growth may be decoupling from the environment with respect to reduced carbon emissions though technological innovations, the social burden continues to get worse with more than 3 billion people trying to live on less than $2 per day, as underlined by the encyclical by Pope Francis. An uncontrolled collapse is still possible, not from consuming all remaining natural resources but because of the degraded quality of those resources. As the report concludes: “an early policy response matters”.

   

Key Quotes:

 “Limits Revisited outlines the contents of the Club of Rome’s report, traces the history of responses to it and dispels some of the myths surrounding it.”

 “The 1972 report articulated for the first time the dynamic nature of our dependency on physical resources and on ecological systems. It illustrated the processes of ‘overshoot and collapse’ that can occur when these limits are approached and suggested that, without a shift in direction, adverse consequences would become obvious “within the next century””

“The MIT team presented and analysed 12 scenarios, each with a different pattern of world development from 1900 to 2100…Only four scenarios avoided overshoot and collapse. These scenarios combined stabilising the human population with measures to restrict industrial output per person, as well as technological solutions like resource recycling and pollution control… One scenario which didn’t introduce these measures until 2000 managed to reached equilibrium, but not permanently…The diversion of more and more capital to extracting them [natural resources] leaves less for investment in industry, leading to industrial decline starting in about 2015. Around 2030, the world population peaks and begins to decrease as the death rate is driven upwards by lack of food and health services.”

 “A 2015 analysis of the remaining fossil fuel resources in China, USA, Canada and Australia, which includes unconventional resources, suggests that overall oil production is in fact peaking already… World fossil fuel production is likely to peak in around 2025, it suggests, largely as a result of Chinese coal production peaking. In short, unconventional oil seems to buy us several more decades before resource depletion starts to bite.”

“For each process, the team identified a ‘zone of uncertainty’ and a ‘danger zone’. Crossing over these thresholds could mean “non-linear, possibly abrupt and irreversible earth system responses” with disastrous consequences for society.. in 2015 found that four of these planetary boundaries had already been crossed. Biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use have all slid into or beyond the ‘uncertainty zone’.”

“»In the last two years, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and industry flattened and even fell slightly, while GDP increased by 3.4% and 3.1% respectively.… it’s essential to distinguish between what’s called relative decoupling – a decline in the material intensity of economic output – and absolute decoupling – an absolute fall in material use or emissions. Much of what is celebrated as decoupling is relative rather than absolute decoupling.”

 “key issues:

• the economic implications of declining resource quality;
• the financial market implications of low-carbon investment strategies;
• the political implications of the need for precautionary, longterm thinking;
• the social implications of inequality in the distribution of available resources;
• the macroeconomic implications of secular stagnation or degrowth.”

Related articles

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Can Nuclear Power Meet the Challenges of Global CO2 Mitigation?

Potential for Worldwide Displacement of Fossil-Fuel Electricity by Nuclear Energy in Three Decades Based on Extrapolation of Regional Deployment Data (10 page pdf, Staffan A. Qvist, Barry W. Brook, PLoS One(Public Library of Science) , May 13, 2015)

Also discussed here: The World Really Could Go Nuclear Nothing but fear and capital stand in the way of a nuclear-powered future (David Biello, Scientific American, Sep. 14, 2015

Today we review an article that concludes that all carbon fuelled power plants worldwide can be replaced in a little over 30 years with modern nuclear power plants. All that is required is public acceptance, government will and investment in the technology, making use of the experience gained over the last 50 years, as demonstrated prominently by France and more recently by Sweden. The most vocal arguments from the lay pubic against nuclear power focus on the high costs but these are expected to drop significantly as Type 4 reactors are brought onstream which can recycle spent nuclear fuel and uranium and use this as a resource. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expects nuclear power to expand worldwide by 2030 as more reactors are built in Asia and the Middle East.

   

Key Quotes:

“In just two decades Sweden went from burning oil for generating electricity to fissioning uranium. And if the world as a whole were to follow that example, all fossil fuel–fired power plants could be replaced with nuclear facilities in a little over 30 years”

“Between 1960 and 1990 Sweden more than doubled its inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) per capita while reducing its per capita CO2emissions through a rapid expansion of nuclear power production….By 1986, with the addition of 11 more reactors, half of Sweden's electricity came from nuclear power and carbon dioxide emissions per Swede had dropped by 75 percent compared to the peak in 1970.”

"The mantra 'nuclear can't be done quickly enough to tackle climate change' is one of the most pervasive in the debate today and mostly just taken as true, while the data prove the exact opposite." “from the experience of Sweden and France and scaled up to the globe, a best-case scenario for conversion to 100 percent nuclear power could enable the world to stop burning fossil fuels and start fissioning uranium for electricity within 34 years.”

“while the cost of construction is currently stable or falling in these countries, a global expansion of nuclear power would mean increased operating costs as the price of uranium ore and fuel is driven up, at least until generation IV reactors that use recycled spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium or thorium as their input, become widespread and economically competitive”

"The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does expect nuclear power to expand worldwide by 2030 as more reactors are built in Asia and the Middle East—and use of nuclear could grow as much as 68 percent by then if all proposed reactors were built.”

“Even role model Sweden is mulling over retiring its reactors, having already shut down the two at Barseback early. As a result, an additional hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO2 are being dumped into Earth’s atmosphere, as more fossil fuels are burned to replace that lost nuclear power”

“No renewable energy technology or energy efficiency approach has ever been implemented on a scale or pace which has resulted in the magnitude of reductions in CO2 -emissions that is strictly required and implied in any climate change mitigation study—neither locally nor globally, normalized by population or GDP or any other normalization parameter.”

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