环保科技会带来下次的商业景气：阿省有机会变成全球领导
Sydney Sharpe
Special to The Edmonton Journal
Monday, November 05, 2007
Despite our provincial wealth, Alberta often seems beset by the turmoil American historian William Leuchtenburg famously labeled as “the perils of prosperity.”
The many challenges of growth, from homelessness to environmental degradation, sometimes make wealth seem more a burden than a blessing.
We fret that it will all end with a sudden crash, plunging us into provincial poverty even before we’ve come to grips with prosperity.
But these challenges mask a stunning opportunity for the province. Alberta has both the wealth and the duty to become the world leader in the planet’s next boom industry — environmental technology. To achieve this, the province needs to invest wisely and focus clearly on the specific goal of stimulating environmental industries.
Our knowledge of many kinds of specialized carbon production from coal, natural gas, conventional oil, and now the oilsands, gives us the world’s best chance to find ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions by perfecting clean coal, carbon sequestration and other technologies.
The effort should also be extended to environmental leadership in many other areas, including the science and management of watersheds, land use and boreal forests.
Alberta companies could then export the knowledge and technology, creating a sustainable prosperity that will make today’s provincial boom seem primitive by comparison. There will be huge markets for such solutions when countries like India and China inevitably see the need to limit their own rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions.
Alberta already has a successful model for public stimulation of a major industry — the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA). With a mandate to reduce costs, increase recovery and improve environmental acceptability, the authority was given
$1 billion in government money
between 1976 and 1999.
That seed money eventually helped generate $140 billion in oil sands investment — making AOSTRA, arguably, the most successful industry-creating agency in Canadian history.
AOSTRA’s main mandate was to make oilsands production commercially
viable. Now the same kind of effort should immediately be directed to environmental technology.
The government is groping toward an approach to this. Initial efforts are promising, but so far there is no coherent public strategy.
Last spring, the province passed legislation to penalize heavy greenhouse gas emitters that produce more than 100,000 tonnes per year. The money — $15 per tonne over missed targets — will go into the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund. Ottawa and the province are also funding an effort to research carbon sequestration.
This revenue will all be helpful, but the emitters’ fund is not sustainable because it’s basically an incentive for companies to lower emissions. Initial payments might reach the government’s prediction of $177 million a year, but they will decline.
The companies will surely come up with some ingenious solutions of their own, but there also needs to be a steady stream of research money channeled into a unified provincial effort.
The most logical source is the earnings generated by a permanent non-
renewable resource revenue fund.
With this money, the province should create a centre of excellence for
energy, environment and growth.
Its job would be to research current and future energy sources, develop emission solutions, and ensure a healthy, productive dynamic among industry, academia and the province.
The University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE) should be a major player, as should the Energy Innovation Fund. The core goal would be to
research and discover new environmental technologies and reward best practices in every environmental area.
To move industries in that direction, the province also needs a regulatory
system with the clear goal of protecting the environment while stimulating investment, both in resource development and environmental technology.
To guide all this, the province should also establish a blue-ribbon Premier’s Panel on Environmental Progress (PPEP), with a mandate to propose policy and advance the agenda. PPEP’s key tasks would be to demonstrate Alberta’s leadership by massively reducing emissions at home, and fostering the world-class industry that will arise from this
effort. The panel should not be a debating forum on global warming or any other highly-charged issue; rather, it should be a practical body that identifies and encourages technologies and practices that protect the environment.
Most provinces and even countries rarely if ever have such an opportunity. Alberta now has this one in the palm of its hand, but must seize it quickly.
Sydney Sharpe is a Calgary-based author
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INVESTING WISELY
This is the eighth in a series of articles commissioned by the Canada West Foundation on ideas for investing part of Alberta’s current boom in resource royalties. In November, the CWF will publish longer versions of the articles in a book entitled Alberta’s Energy Legacy: Ideas for the Future.
It will be available for free download at www.cwf.ca on Nov. 22.
© The Edmonton Journal 2007
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