Review: Business, Energy and the Greening of British Columbia

It is my pleasure to share my thoughts about an event I attended last night at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at SFU. The event included a presentation by Dr. Mark Jaccard on the past 20 years of government policies on climate change and why these policies have not prevented greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from increasing at an alarming rate, followed by a discussion between Dr. Jaccard and members of the audience. Tamara Vroomnan, CEO of Vancity and Bob Elton, CEO of BC Hydro were also asked to comment on the topic from the corporate point of view. Before I jump to the topic, let me first share my impressions of the Centre for Dialogue itself.

I had no idea we had such a presentation space in Vancouver. We might have others that are similar, but for me, this was a first. Think of the mental images you have of international leaders meeting at the United Nations to discuss policies, replace the country cards by name cards and voilà, you get the picture. OK, fair enough to add that the presentation was only in English, so we didn't get to test out the language selection controls. Next time maybe.

The evening started with a brief introduction of Dr. Jaccard. You are probably already familiar with some of Jaccard's work, including his latest book called Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge and his work on the Global Energy Assessment. The title of Jaccard's presentation was The Tipping Point? (note the strategic use of a question mark). In this presentation, four approaches (actions) to addressing climate change were introduced: energy efficiency (if using fossil fuels), renewable energy, emissions control and operational efficiency (don't quote me on that last one). Governments, not being in a position to act (although that's debatable in my mind, shouldn't we also look at the energy efficiency of our government offices?), create policies that will encourage others to act (businesses, individual citizens). Those policies can foster action by informing, subsidizing, regulating, or imposing financial penalties.

Over the past 20 years in BC (and at the federal level), the government has focused on encouraging energy efficiency. In 1998, the government was told that a carbon tax of $150 per ton was needed to allow Canada to meet the Kyoto targets. The tax was never implemented and carbon emissions have gone up since. Policies were implemented to inform and subsidize, both insufficient to reduce or even slow down emissions. Dr. Jaccard presented a few reasons that explain why these policies have failed: first, efficiency was more costly than was initially thought and we own more devices that run on energy (more or bigger devices). For example: as fridges became more energy efficient over the years, people also bought bigger fridges, separate freezers, wine fridges, and so on. Information-based policies were trying to compete with very successful lifestyle marketing messages.

The "tipping point" area of the presentation highlighted the kind of policies we need to have in place to curb emissions: command-and-control regulations (standards), financial charges (GHG emissions tax) and market-oriented regulations (cap and trade, niche market regulations such as vehicle emission and renewable portfolio standards). Such compulsory policies could reduce emissions by more than 50%, argues Dr. Jaccard. Is the carbon tax in BC a sign that we are indeed reaching this tipping point, that governments are willing to look beyond the next election and implement policies with delayed benefits?

Dr. Jaccard ended the presentation by encouraging attendees to pressure the government towards implementing compulsory policies and inviting business leaders to participate in designing realistic policies. The presentation was then followed by a response by the CEOs of Vancity and BC Hydro, both presenting their thoughts on the climate change challenge for businesses.

What became interesting at that point was that while Dr. Jaccard was insisting on the necessary involvement of businesses in policy development, the business community's response was that of uncertainty around their role in shaping policies. There was no strong resistance to the idea of compulsory policies, there was even a mention of going beyond these policies and becoming more engaged. Although this sounded wonderful, I'm not so sure the dialog would have remained so civil had it included cement producers and gas companies (top 10 emitters of GHG in BC according to a recent Vancouver Sun's article).

This was a disappointment for me. In the room, we did have business leaders and leading scholars, but nobody from the government (at least nobody who spoke) and nobody from the big polluters. The dialogue was very polite and proper, I was hoping for a heated debate on the question. Not a debate about whether climate change is a concern or not, I think we're all beyond this question right now. But a debate about real, applicable solutions and their potential impact on how we should run our businesses going forward.

Great news: Vancity is now carbon neutral, two years ahead of schedule! I'm only half celebrating, since 50% of the reduction was done through offsets. I'm not against offsets (to a certain extent), but this just goes to show how much work still needs to be done. Vancity is a sustainability leader in Vancouver, yet all their initiatives only managed to reduce their actual emissions by 50%.