Open Letter on Carbon Pricing READ

Complementary Policies

Nov 28 2019

Can we improve the efficiency of carbon pricing and regulations?

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Climate and Energy

The release of our final report yesterday highlighted Canada’s options for bridging the gap to its 2030 targets. Bottom line? There are only a finite number of approaches. We have regulations, subsidies, and carbon pricing. But the details of how governments design and implement those policies matters just as much as the choice of approach. […]

Jul 17 2019

The worst kind of climate policy is an uncertain one

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Climate and Energy

Smart policy can help Canada reach its GHG emission targets with minimal economic costs. But even if we use the most economically-efficient tools available, there’s a factor that can still increase costs: policy uncertainty. When the direction of future climate policy is unclear—or worse, when policy reversal is a significant risk—the costs of meeting Canada’s […]

Jul 10 2019

So, about that “trillion trees” study…

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Climate and Energy

Last week, the journal Science published a new study on forest restoration and the role it could play in reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases. The findings generated a lot of eye-grabbing headlines, many of which were incomplete, hyperbolic, or downright misleading. It’s a complicated study with important findings and caveats. This blog will dig into a […]

A dragon sits on a hilled landscape, polluting factories to its left and clean technologies to its right
Jun 12 2019

China’s sprawling approach to climate policy

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Climate and Energy

It is indisputable that getting global emissions under control requires getting China’s emissions under control. So what is China doing about it? Not only is the nation of 1.4 billion getting serious about climate change, its policy approach often resembles Canada’s. The details warrant careful unpacking. Here is the present and future of China’s climate […]

Jun 5 2019

Switching GHG accounting systems is not a solution

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Climate and Energy

Is Canada’s greenhouse gas emission problem just an accounting issue? Is the GHG measurement system used by the UNFCCC fundamentally flawed, unfair to Canada, or both? Would switching systems make achieving our targets easier and solve concerns around emissions leakage? Short answer: not so much. The status quo: “territorial-based” GHG inventories Let me start by […]

May 14 2019

Arguments for and against “supply-side” climate policies

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Climate and Energy

Our April blog about supply-side climate policies generated some online discussion. Some comments focused on the bigger, global picture. Others focused on the nuts and bolts. In particular, we got questions about our “leakage” assertion—namely, that if Canada cut back its production of fossil fuels there would just be an offsetting increase elsewhere that more or […]

© Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission

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