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Moving to a low-carbon future will create challenges for Canada's fossil-fuel industries, but opportunities in the form of a new market for low-carbon goods and services. The challenges for the resource sector will vary across commodities. Competition in the new market for low-carbon goods and services will be tough; sustained competitive advantage will be difficult to maintain due to capital mobility. With these challenges in mind, this article proposes three questions for Canadians looking ahead to a low-carbon future. First, how large will the market for low-carbon goods and services be? Second, where are Canada's advantages likely to lie in serving these markets? Finally, what are the roles for Canada's existing natural-resource industries in a low-carbon economy, and what are the strategies to maximize the value of these resources?

Frederick Hugh Newman is considered as the key architect of the New Zealand public works. His ideas archived in writings and lectures produced from the mid-1940s to the early-1960s which describe the issues and concerns Newman saw as influencing the work that he and his colleagues were engaged in.

AbstractWe evaluate the impact of internalizing the carbon emissions externality on new oil sands projects. Using data from recent oil sands projects and estimates of both the social costs of carbon and carbon prices consistent with meeting global climate change targets, we estimate the potential impact of action on climate change on the economic viability of oil sands investments. Our results indicate that oil sands are a marginal resource before they incur any carbon costs. Incorporating carbon costs, we find that the viability of oil sands depends on the coverage of carbon pricing across the life cycle emissions from oil sands and on the equilibrium incidence of carbon prices on producers. We show an important interaction between resource royalties and carbon charges that implies that the impact carbon pricing depends on not only the stringency and coverage of the carbon price but also its point of application of a carbon price. Finally, we explore the potential for technological change to mitigate the impacts of carbon pricing on oil sands investment viability.

By now, any Albertans who follow the news are probably aware of something called a Power Purchase Arrangement (PPA). Up until a few months ago, the PPA holders — which included TransCanada, ENMAX, and Capital Power — were responsible for buying electricity from legacy power plants at pre-determined rates and selling it into the grid. But with power prices falling and costs rising, the PPAs are no longer profitable. So, early in 2016, they backed away from these arrangements and handed the money losing PPAs over to an entity known as the Balancing Pool. With the electricity bills of Alberta households and business in the balance, it's been a high-stakes dispute between the companies and the government ever since. The government estimates losses to Alberta ratepayers may be up to $2 billion and alleges the regulations under which the companies terminated their PPAs are invalid. They're going to court to try and prove it. The companies counter with substantially lower cost estimates and point to changes in government policy as a permissible reason for termination. How did we end up here? How costly will the PPA terminations really be? Given the importance of this issue, we cut through the politics and see what data has to say. There are three key pieces to the puzzle. First, in June 2015 the province strengthened rules around emissions from large industrial facilities. The new rules gave more ambitious targets to facilities and increased the charge on greenhouse gas emissions above their targets from $15 per tonne to $30. Second, in November 2015, the Climate Leadership Panel recommended leaving the price on emissions at $30 per tonne but changing the targets to treat all power producers equally regardless of their emissions intensity. For coal, this was a big hit, and the industry was recommending — and hoping for — a better deal that they didn't get. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, electricity prices collapsed. Despite the fears of many, the new climate policies are unlikely to increase electricity prices. This makes it difficult for coal power to cover its now higher costs. Overall, we find policy changes account for roughly half the drop in PPA values, while falling prices account for the other half. The good news for Albertans is the drop in value appears to amount only to $900 million, and since one of the PPAs is already owned by Alberta's Balancing Pool the real cost of these changes is closer to $600 million. All in, that amounts to about $2.25 a month for a typical household, but it will only show up if power prices remain very low. So, while there is a chance consumers will pay it, they will only end up doing so if they are saving far more on power.

In this paper we discuss the potential for future electricity market restructuring in Quebec. In particular, we consider the political economy of the abolishment of the Heritage Pool requirement, which caps wholesale prices. Its elimination is challenging since it would result in higher retail prices. However, if the extra revenue that would be earned from selling at the market price is properly redistributed, a majority of voters could benefit. We also examine the possibility of establishing a competitive wholesale market. The usual model of forced divestiture may not lead to a competitive outcome since most of Quebec's electricity is produced at large hydroelectric complexes cascaded on a few individual river systems. Consequently, Quebec might consider adopting the approach taken by Norway and join an expanded production pool.

Mining jurisdictions around the world are grappling with the significant environmental harms and costs associated with orphaned mines, i.e., mines whose owners are financially unable or otherwise unwilling to remediate and reclaim their mine sites. Numerous Canadian examples, including the notorious Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories, have significantly harmed water, soil, air, and wildlife, as well as human health, safety, and well-being. Such impacts can be particularly devastating for Indigenous peoples, who continue to rely on their traditional territories for cultural and other purposes.
Canadian governments have gradually developed remediation and reclamation liability regimesto ensure that mine operators remediate and reclaim in a timely manner, or to at least ensure that governments have access to sufficient funds to carry out this closure work themselves. While they differ in various ways, the basic logic of such regimes is the same: by requiring mine owners toset aside some funds (e.g., in the form of cash or a letter of credit), they act as a kind of insurance that the public will not bear the costs of remediation and reclamation.
Unfortunately, Alberta has refused to develop an effective regime to protect Albertans from bearing the costs of oil sands mine remediation and reclamation. The regime in place today will not ensure that there are sufficient funds set aside to complete this closure work in the eventthat operators fail to do so. In some respects, this is not news. It has been over two decadessince Alberta's Auditor General first identified serious deficiencies in Alberta's regime. Continued mismanagement has left Albertans with a significant risk that they will be responsible for cleaning up oil sands mines that threaten potentially irreversible environmental harm, including a growing inventory of nearly 1.6 trillion litres of toxic tailings.
Alberta's Mine Financial Security Program (MFSP), which applies to both coal and oil sands mines, is a misnomer. While it allows mine owners to post full security against their closure liabilities, it also allows them to rely on the estimated value of their assets (proved andprobable reserves) as collateral to avoid posting meaningful security. This is essentially themining equivalent of the province's failed asset-to-liability approach in the conventional oil and gas sector. The results are staggering. While the coal mining sector has chosen to secure nearly the entirety of its estimated closure liabilities (approximately $700 million), oil sands companies have posted less than $1 billion in security against an official estimate of approximately $46 billion in total closure liabilities. This is less than two percent of official estimates, and less than one percent of internal estimates leaked to the media in 2018, which suggested that total closure liabilities could be as high as $130 billion.
Finally, following two critical reports from the Auditor General (2015 and 2021), Alberta undertook a year-long review of the MFSP in 2022. The results of this review, however, are currently unknown.




Significant reforms are necessary. The MFSP rests on a series of unrealistic assumptions about asset values, future oil markets and prices, and the development of effective but also low-cost remediation and reclamation technologies. The MFSP's asset-to-liability approach, which allows oil sands companies to avoid posting security where their assets are deemed to be worth at least three times more than their liabilities (3:1), is also counter-intuitive and counter-productive: instead of collecting security when operators can afford it, operators would be required to post security when profitability is declining — precisely when operators are least able to afford it and resulting in further financial distress. Simply put, the MFSP will not provide insurance precisely when it is needed most.
Correcting the MFSP asset calculations, requiring annual security deposits, and opening the process for estimating remediation and reclamation costs to independent scrutiny are three reforms that could be instituted in the short term and that would go some way towards ensuring the fulfillment of the polluter-pays principle upon which all such regimes are ultimately based.
In the longer term, the MFSP exposes Albertans to far too much risk and uncertainty. Our primary recommendation is for Alberta to convene an independent and transparent expert panel,with opportunities for public participation, to recommend a regime that adequately incentives progressive remediation and reclamation and secures outstanding oil sands liabilities while not exacerbating the near-term risk of default. No matter the specific structure that is adopted for security, the assurance of independent, transparent assessment of the degree to which potential liabilities are fully funded, perhaps in the style of pension fund reporting, is essential.