In its Climate Change Action Plan published June 8, the provincial government refrains from pushing natural gas out of home heating by 2030.
That idea was part of a draft circulated in the cabinet of Liberal Prime Minister Kathleen Wynne and published May 16 in the Globe and Mail. The plan caused such an uproar that provincial officials had to make the rounds disavowing the gas phase-out (OGJ Online, June 3, 2016).
The final version of the plan ambiguously prescribes building-code updates with energy-efficiency and greenhouse-gas emission targets by 2030 and alludes to changes due by 2020.
Otherwise, it remains the declaration of environmental authoritarianism indicated by the leaked document.
The plan includes a renewable fuel standard, mandates that new residential garages have recharging outlets for electric vehicles, requirements for "energy audits" of homes, and $8.3 billion in spending, much of it for efforts to cut the use of fossil energy.
One antigas measure is smirk-worthy: "Establish a low-carbon content for natural gas." By that chemically impossible formulation, the document means to increase the use of methane from renewable sources.
More important is the economic death spiral the plan will accelerate in a province already burdened by high tax rates, heavy regulation, and green-energy experimentation already in progress.
The new plan proposes to use $1-1.32 billion from the province's cap-and-trade system to "offset costs."
But cap-and-trade systems deliberately impose costs by creating shortage. That's what the "cap" part does.
So proceeds from a system that imposes cost are supposed to offset costs imposed by other manipulations of energy choice.
Such programs turn economies hollow. They do cut greenhouse-gas emissions, though-by stifling work and driving businesses and people to more-affordable jurisdictions.
"We are establishing ourselves as global leaders in the fight against climate change," Wynne boasts in the plan.
Will the last leader to leave Ontario please turn-never mind; the lights already will be out.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted June 10, 2016; author's e-mail: [email protected])
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.
