A plan for cutting emissions with more than a carbon price

Mark Jaccard, an expert on the intersection between environmental policy and the energy economy, argues that carbon pricing isn’t politically practical on its own

By John Geddes

September 21, 2016

Pumpjacks at work pumping crude oil near Halkirk, Alta., June 20, 2007. With Canada's premiers poised to meet next week in Quebec City to discuss energy strategy and climate change, forces are girding for battle - with Alberta's oilsands the figurative no-man's land that lies between the warring world views. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougal — Pumpjacks at work pumping crude oil near Halkirk, Alta., June 20, 2007. With Canada’s premiers poised to meet next week in Quebec City to discuss energy strategy and climate change, forces are girding for battle – with Alberta’s oilsands the figurative no-man’s land that lies between the warring world views. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougal

If there’s one thing that seems to have become clear about the debate on climate change in Canada, it’s that pricing carbon has to be the key policy aim. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is in the spotlight this week for declaring that Ottawa will impose a national carbon price, even against opposition from some premiers, led by Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall.

But a report released this week by three researchers at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, intriguingly titled, Is Win-Win Possible: Can Canada’s Government Achieve Its Paris Commitment… and Get Re-Elected?, argues the tight focus on carbon pricing is wrongheaded.

The best known of the authors is Mark Jaccard, arguably Canada’s most prominent expert on the intersection between environmental policy and energy economics. Jaccard argues that pricing carbon—usually by taxing carbon dioxide emissions or by creating a “cap-and-trade” system under which companies buy and sell the right to release CO₂ emissions—isn’t politically practical on its own.

Consider the pledge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made last fall at the United Nations climate summit in Paris to cut Canada’s emissions 30 per cent in a mere 14 years. To make good on it, Jaccard and his co-authors estimate Canada would need to set a $30 price per tonne of CO₂, and then raise it every year until it hits $200 by 2030. They argue that experience in other jurisdictions—notably their home turf of British Columbia, which has a $30 per tonne carbon tax now—shows that trying to make this single mechanism do the heavy lifting in combatting climate change just carries too high a political price.

So they argue for regulatory options that experience shows more voters will accept, even though many economists and climate change activists regard these sorts of regulations as a clumsy, inefficient alternative to pricing carbon. In this interview, Jaccard starts out talking about the basic policy tools available to curb emissions, and goes on to advocate for a mix that would lean heavily on regulations like requiring a lot more zero-emissions cars and trucks on a road a lot sooner.