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Credits where credit is due: LNG exports and carbon credits

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From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Jerome Gessaroli

Canada should announce its intent to use Article 6 as a tool to help meet its emissions reduction targets

In this new paper, LNG exports and carbon credits: Credits where credit is due, MLI Senior Fellow Jerome Gessaroli makes the case that Canada can earn ITMOs ( Internationally Transferable Mitigation Outcomes) based on exports of British Columbia-sourced Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). With the potential to significantly lower global carbon emissions and displace coal power in the Asia-Pacific region, such a strategic move by Canada to harness BC’s LNG offers a transformative solution.

Executive Summary

Under the basic current climate accounting rules to which Canada and all other UNFCCC parties have agreed, countries are responsible for reducing GHG emissions within their own national borders. If a country supported a project in another country, it would receive zero credit, no matter what help it may have provided. Therefore, countries have a big incentive to fund projects only within their own borders to help meet their own national carbon reduction goals. That is unfortunate for the planet’s emission reduction efforts. The focus on emission targets within national borders is a shortfall in the nationally based climate accounting system.

To address this shortcoming, the UNFCCC has adopted a framework covered in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement enabling countries to cooperate and share emission reductions. This framework allows carbon credits (known as internationally transferable mitigation outcomes, or ITMOs) to be transferred from the country where the reductions occurred to the country that helped undertake the emissions reduction project.

Sharing emissions reductions through Article 6 is possible when liquefied natural gas (LNG) replaces coal in power generation. This substitution is especially important because coal-fired power plants are expected to produce large amounts of the world’s energy (and GHGs) over the next several decades, even though coal emits much more carbon than other primary fuel sources. Even more troublesome is that new coal plants are still being built in significant numbers. Those new plants alone are expected to emit over 1,415 Mt CO2e (mega tonnes of CO2 equivalent) per year, which dwarfs Canada’s national targeted reductions of approximately 310 Mt CO2e per year by 2030.

Canada, meanwhile, is preparing to become a supplier of LNG. New LNG projects within British Columbia are amongst the least carbon-intensive sources of LNG in the world. BC’s LNG exports could lower global carbon emissions by displacing coal power, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Developing markets in Asia would welcome rapidly rising LNG imports. Realistically, BC LNG should be fully used as a substitute fuel to mitigate the carbon emissions impact of existing coal-based power plants, especially those currently used for heating.

While the concept of Article 6, where carbon credits are shared for collaboratively developed projects, is straightforward, the criteria and rules for implementing it are complex. This paper makes the case for how Canada can earn ITMOs based on exports of British Columbia-sourced LNG. An important criterion for making projects ITMO eligible is that the project would not have gone ahead without carbon credits being available. This suggests deals should be structured involving LNG exports along with some other value-added Canadian participation that assists a developing country in switching from coal to LNG as a fuel source. The ITMOs Canada receives could offset any incremental costs we would incur.

If Article 6 is used, the assertion that British Columbia’s pursuit of LNG production would prevent the province from meeting its emission reduction becomes inaccurate. Just over half of LNG Canada’s Phase 1 production capacity in British Columbia would result in approximately 1.2 Mt CO2e emissions annually. Using the same production capacity to replace coal for power generation in Asia has the potential to significantly reduce emissions, ranging from 14.9 to 35.2 Mt CO2e per year. Such outcomes underscore the importance of international collaborative efforts.

Canada should announce its intent to use Article 6 as a tool to help meet its emissions reduction targets. The federal government should then work with industry to identify candidates for bilateral agreements. Common methodologies for measuring, tracking, and verifying carbon mitigation outcomes would all need to be developed as would a registry for tracking and transferring ITMOs. These are complex issues, but we can learn from other countries that have already established processes for managing such projects.

Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and is the project lead for the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Sound Economic Policy Project. He writes on economic and environmental matters, from a market-based principles perspective.

PDF of paper

 

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Maxime Bernier warns Canadians of Trudeau’s plan to implement WEF global tax regime

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

If ‘the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.’

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier has warned that the Liberal government’s push for World Economic Forum (WEF) “Global Tax” scheme should concern Canadians. 

According to Canada’s 2024 Budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is working to pass the WEF’s Global Minimum Tax Act which will mandate that multinational companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15 percent.

“Canadians should be very concerned, for several reasons,” People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier told LifeSiteNews, in response to the proposal.

“First, the WEF is a globalist institution that actively campaigns for the establishment of a world government and for the adoption of socialist, authoritarian, and reactionary anti-growth policies across the world,” he explained. “Any proposal they make is very likely not in the interest of Canadians.” 

“Second, this minimum tax on multinationals is a way to insidiously build support for a global harmonized tax regime that will lower tax competition between countries, and therefore ensure that taxes can stay higher everywhere,” he continued.  

“Canada reaffirms its commitment to Pillar One and will continue to work diligently to finalize a multilateral treaty and bring the new system into effect as soon as a critical mass of countries is willing,” the budget stated.  

“However, in view of consecutive delays internationally in implementing the multilateral treaty, Canada cannot continue to wait before taking action,” it continued.   

The Trudeau government also announced it would be implementing “Pillar Two,” which aims to establish a global minimum corporate tax rate. 

“Pillar Two of the plan is a global minimum tax regime to ensure that large multinational corporations are subject to a minimum effective tax rate of 15 per cent on their profits wherever they do business,” the Liberals explained.  

According to the budget, Trudeau promised to introduce the new legislation in Parliament soon.  

The global tax was first proposed by Secretary-General of Amnesty International at the WEF meeting in Davos this January.  

“Let’s start taxing carbon…[but] not just carbon tax,” the head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, said during a panel discussion.  

According to the WEF, the tax, proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “imposes a minimum effective rate of 15% on corporate profits.”  

Following the meeting, 140 countries, including Canada, pledged to impose the tax.  

While a tax on large corporations does not necessarily sound unethical, implementing a global tax appears to be just the first step in the WEF’s globalization plan by undermining the sovereignty of nations.  

While Bernier explained that multinationals should pay taxes, he argued it is the role of each country to determine what those taxes are.   

“The logic of pressuring countries with low taxes to raise them is that it lessens fiscal competition and makes it then less costly and easier for countries with higher taxes to keep them high,” he said.  

Bernier pointed out that competition is good since it “forces everyone to get better and more efficient.” 

“In the end, we all end up paying for taxes, even those paid by multinationals, as it causes them to raise prices and transfer the cost of taxes to consumers,” he warned.  

Bernier further explained that the new tax could be a first step “toward the implementation of global taxes by the United Nations or some of its agencies, with the cooperation of globalist governments like Trudeau’s willing to cede our sovereignty to these international organizations.”   

“Just like ‘temporary taxes’ (like the income tax adopted during WWI) tend to become permanent, ‘minimum taxes’ tend to be raised,” he warned. “And if the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.”   

Trudeau’s involvement in the WEF’s plan should not be surprising considering his current environmental goals – which are in lockstep with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – which include the phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.    

The reduction and eventual elimination of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum – the aforementioned group famous for its socialist “Great Reset” agenda – in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.     

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Taxpayers criticize Trudeau and Ford for Honda deal

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Jay Goldberg

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing the Trudeau and Ford governments to for giving $5 billion to the Honda Motor Company.

“The Trudeau and Ford governments are giving billions to yet another multinational corporation and leaving middle-class Canadians to pay for it,” said Jay Goldberg, CTF Ontario Director. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending small businesses bigger a bill with his capital gains tax hike and now he’s handing out billions more in corporate welfare to a huge multinational.

“This announcement is fundamentally unfair to taxpayers.”

The Trudeau government is giving Honda $2.5 billion. The Ford government announced an additional $2.5 billion  subsidies for Honda.

The federal and provincial governments claim this new deal will create 1,000 new jobs, according to media reports. Even if that’s true, the handout will cost taxpayers $5 million per job. And according to Globe and Mail investigation, the government doesn’t even have a proper process in place to track whether promised jobs are actually created.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has also called into question the government’s claims when it made similar multi-billion-dollar handouts to other multinational corporations.

“The break-even timeline for the $28.2 billion in production subsidies announced for Stellantis-LGES and Volkswagen is estimated to be 20 years, significantly longer than the government’s estimate of a payback within five years for Volkswagen,” wrote the Parliamentary Budget Officer said.

“If politicians want to grow the economy, they should cut taxes and red tape and cancel the corporate welfare,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Just days ago, Trudeau said he wants the rich to pay more, so he should make rich multinational corporations pay for their own factories.”

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