The annual report grades each G8 country on the progress made on mitigating climate change, and asserts that emissions need to be reduced by more than 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. That would keep the average global temperature from rising more than 2°C each year and avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Action in all countries is “by far insufficient” to meet that goal, but the report, ironically released on Canada Day, contends our nation has done the least out of its peers. We’re chastised for bailing on our agreements under the Kyoto Protocol—emissions are now 26.2% higher than the base year of 1990—and the federal government is attacked for failing to implement its 2007 “Turning the Corner” climate plan.

Canada scored positively on only one of the 13 indicators used in the report. Canada releases the lowest amount of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, thanks to the country’s large supply of hydropower. Even so, we’ve got the highest emissions per capita of any G8 country after the U.S., at 24 tonnes of CO2 per person.

Meanwhile, former British Chief Scientific Advisor David King told an audience of science journalists in London that “Copenhagen is faltering at the moment” because some countries are refusing to play ball. Chief among them are Canada and Japan, according to King, who said both nations had recently gotten rid of their scientific advisers and are “stepping into the breach and blocking progress.”

On the domestic front, there is currently a bill in the works (Bill C-311) to reduce Canada’s emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. An earlier version of the bill already passed the House last year but didn’t quite make it through the Senate before the federal election was called.

The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development finally resumed discussion of it on June 18. Some MPs rightly want the economic impact of the bill to be assessed before it’s presented to the House for a vote. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth berated Bruce Hyer of the NDP (who drafted the bill) during the last committee meeting for not having assessed the potential costs. Another Conservative MP sent a request in April to Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page to conduct a full cost analysis of bill, but the Hill Times reported he was unable to do so because his small shop is strained for funding. (Page is dealing with his own problems at the moment.)

But while Canada needs a clear position on its climate change goals in advance of the Copenhagen talks in December, the committee deferred further discussion of the bill until Parliament resumes in September, leaving a short window of time. “This bill is being given short shrift and has been put at the bottom of the pile,” complained Linda Duncan of the NDP during the standing committee meeting. “Instead of completing a review by now, we are only going to start it in September.”

Bloc Quebecois MP Bernard Bigras echoed her concern. “We cannot study climate change forever and ever amen; the climate change conference is taking place in December. The negotiators need a clear message from the Standing Committee,” he said. “The longer the study of Bill C-311 drags on, the less clear the mandate will be that the government will have to come up with.”

But targets are just a start, and they’re largely symbolic. If they’re not met, as in the case of Canada and the Kyoto Protocol, well, that appears to be no biggie, given the doddling of federal politicians on the issue. At the same time, emissions continue to rise and businesses have little clarity on how best to adapt their operations to a newly CO2-averse world. More important is a coherent plan for how to meet those targets, and that hasn’t been presented by any Canadian political party. Until that time, we’ll likely languish at the bottom of the G8 when it comes to climate change.

Suncor, which has been self-reporting its climate change initiatives for years, says it reduced greenhouse gas emissions intensity (a meaure of emissions per unit of production) at its oilsands operations by 45% since 1990. Sounds impressive, but this does not mean a reduction in absolute emissions, as the report itself clearly indicates: Suncor will release 26% more CO2 by 2011, for a total of about 14 million tonnes. But the company then predicts emissions will drop in both 2012 and 2013, precisely when it will be producing more oil.

The company produced 228,000 barrels of oil in 2008, spewing out 9 million tonnes of CO2 from its oilsands operations. By 2012, Suncor wants to more than double production to 550,000 barrels per day, a 141% increase. Its sustainability report predicts emissions from the oilsands will increase by only 23% during the same time period, and will actually fall by 3.5% between 2011 and 2012. (This is in contrast to last year’s report on climate change, which shows emissions increasing beyond 2011.)

How is this possible? The company doesn’t specifically address how it intends to abate absolute emissions while boosting production, and a spokesperson wasn’t any more specific with me over the phone:

“The majority of the improvements that we project are going to come from improved performance efficiencies, and efficiency gains through our internal operational excellence initiatives that we’re doing. Then on top of that, Suncor is in the process of constructing a sulphur recovery unit. It’s an $800-million investment up at our Firebag operation. So in addition to the efficiency gains we expect to achieve, we would also expect that we would realize some gains in our GHG reductions coming from that sulfur recovery unit.”

The construction of the recovery unit stems from a 2007 enforcement order by Alberta Environment about hydrogen sulphide emissions (which produce that rotten egg smell) exceeding air quality guidelines, not so much to do with CO2. The spokesperson said carbon capture and storage was not a factor in the company’s CO2 projections, so Suncor must have one heck of an efficiency program underway.

The money has been collected in the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund since last year, when emissions caps for heavy emitters took effect. Facilities that produce more than 100,000 tonnes of GHGs must scale back emissions “intensity” by 12%, or pay $15 into the Fund for each tonne over their reduction targets. (Companies can also purchase carbon offsets.)

I spoke with Newell shortly after his appointment—an appointment that raised a few eyebrows in the environmental community. Newell spent 15 years at oilsands giant Syncrude, as CEO and then as chair. He sits on the board of Nexen today, received more than $230,000 in compensation last year from the energy company, and owned more than $1 million worth of shares as of March. The optics aren’t exactly great: a guy with strong ties to an industry that is one of the worst offenders in terms of emissions is now responsible for doling out cash in an attempt to curb those emissions.

And so Newell will have a lot to prove. He is still in the process of assembling a board, which will then take submissions from companies hoping to secure some of the cash to fund emissions-reduction projects. Newell wants to start accepting submissions by the end of the year.

So what does Newell have in mind? He is a big supporter of carbon capture and storage, for one, despite the ample funding both provincial and federal governments are providing for the technology. The Alberta government is already pledging $2 billion, and the federal government is committing $650 million from its Clean Energy Fund, established earlier this year as part of the stimulus package. (Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice is also now saying carbon capture and storage has limited applications in the near-term in the oilands, the fastest growing source of emissions in Canada.)

Newell is going to have to be careful about the makeup of the board. He wants to include a broad section of industry and academia, but the plan so far calls for a large presence from heavy emitting industries—coal-fired power generation, the oilsands and conventional oil and gas production. My initial reaction is that a board consisting of representatives from the traditional fossil fuel industries could have a hard time making a meaningful impact. After all, these are not businesses known to have taken bold action when it comes to the environment.

I discussed this (and more) with Newell below:

What interested you about this position?
First of all, I think technology is critical to the future of the energy industry and we need technology solutions to keep making our fossil fuels more sustainable, but also to “green” the energy mix and develop an appropriate portfolio of renewable energy alternatives.

How big of an impact do you think the fund can have?
I don’t think our role is to try to allocate money depending on what each individual industry sector or company puts in. I think our role as a board—and I’ll encourage people—is you want people to leave their hats at the door. And really we’re going to be picking the projects that are going to do the most to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s with the fossil fuels, but also with the renewables. If you went with the other philosophy, where people were in there to support their industry sector, you’d never get any renewables going. Fundamentally, my philosophy is we’ve got tremendous energy resources, but the world is going to need every form of energy it can find. Even when I ran Syncrude, I didn’t think of renewables as competitors.… But I don’t have rose-coloured glasses on here. Most of the energy growth is gonna have to be picked up by the fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal—and so we want to put a lot of effort into making them more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. At the same time, we gotta look longer-term and start developing an appropriate portfolio of renewables.

How much of a role can renewable energy can play then?
It will grow with time, but between now and 2030, if I look at what the International Energy Agency is saying, 80% of the growth during that period will have to come from fossil fuels. So yeah, renewables will grow, but they’re not going to replace fossil fuels, not in our lifetime. I’m sorry, I just have to say that. It doesn’t mean I’m against them. People just don’t understand. Mr. Obama in the south, saying he’s going to double renewables in three years, he’s leading people astray as to what they think is going to happen.

How so?
Even doubling it, it’s still a very small percentage. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it. I spent a lot of my career in the oilsands and it took 40 years from the time Karl Clark figured out how to separate the oil from the sand until Great Canadian Oil Sands was built in 1967. And then my company started up in 1978. So these things do take a long time to develop and get to a real significant level. But it’s important that we start now.

Where are the board members going to come from?
This is a bit of a debate. I do think that even though it should be predominantly industry, I think it would be critical to have a deputy minister of environment or someone like that from the government. But then, who are the big contributors to this fund? The biggest are the coal-fired power stations. They are the biggest generators, so we want to have very good representation from coal-power areas, but I also will get someone very senior from the electricity generation end, because that will bring renewables in, like solar and wind. The other key areas are of course the oilsands and conventional oil and gas.

Is this just giving money back to heavy emitters?
There is the view, and I don’t totally share it, that this is the industry’s money and they should therefore get to spend it the way they want to. That’s not quite what I’m saying. I know we’ll get criticism. But I’d rather do it this way, where you have that strong knowledge base with people actually making the best picks, so that we do a good job and get a good end result in terms of the impact of this technology fund.

How do you get people to leave their hats at the door, as you said?
People are quite willing to work together. In fact, what you find is a lot of the technology platforms cross over. If you think about whether it be clean coal or the oilsands, it’s all about carbon capture and stuff like that.

How are you going to decide how to allocate the money?
There was work done by Alberta Environment, and the way they think the fund will likely break down is about 20% would go to energy efficiency projects, and maybe 30% will get directed to carbon capture and storage—because that’s so expensive, we just have to find ways to do it cheaper. But about 50% of it would be to greening the energy mix, and that includes more fundamental breakthroughs in the fossil fuel areas, as well as developing an appropriate portfolio of renewables.

What do you mean by fundamental breakthroughs?
There are some areas in which applying genomics to the oil business will lead you to fundamentally different technology paths to upgrade the product, and it would be a lot less energy intensive if we make them successful. But the one that has the biggest potential in the short-run is carbon capture and storage. The reality is it’s very, very expensive. So we need to think up better ways of doing it that are more cost effective.

But is carbon capture really any closer to being a commercial reality than renewable energy?
Yeah, it is closer. If you use the big fund that the Alberta government put in place, the $2 billion, they’re looking at trying to come up with 5 million tonnes of reduction by 2015, and not that that’s a panacea, but if we could actually demonstrate that, that would give people a lot of base to move that technology a lot faster from there.

The Alberta government is using “intensity” targets, which means overall emissions can rise if production increases. Is that really doing enough?
The answer to that is no, and that’s what’s driven carbon capture. It’s the only thing on the plate that can make a significant overall reduction in the short run.… These things are going to take time. I’m not just trying to get the monkey off the back of industry. Industry has to perform too, but people have to realize that if we’re going to really be successful with the targets that have been set, the whole society is going to have to rally together and find ways to reduce our use of energy.

Critics have thrown the animal casualties issue at the wind industry from time to time, and some commentators griped last year that the 500 dead ducks (later discovered to total more than 1,500) found in Syncrude’s tailings pond in Alberta caused a PR nightmare for the oil sands giant, while comparatively little attention has been paid to the flying wildlife felled by wind turbines each year. (One study found 2,092 bats were killed over seven months at a single wind farm in West Virginia, along with more than 200 birds.)

The question of why bats are more susceptible than birds was a bit of a mystery up until last year. Wind farm operators for TransAlta in Alberta had noticed an abundance of dead bats, and the company initiated a study with the University of Calgary to find out why. The research team found that the sudden drop in air pressure created by wind turbines causes bat lungs to balloon and blood vessels to burst. Bird lungs can more easily withstand changes in air pressure—although they still cannot contend with the turbine blades, which can spin as fast as 80 metres per second.

But the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative in the U.S. (yes, it’s for real) released a report recently about how to avoid this problem. Unsurprisingly, the method is simple: turn the turbines off. The group undertook a three-month long study at a wind farm in Pennsylvania and experimented with raising the “cut-in speed,” the minimum wind speed necessary for turbines to become operational. That means they don’t spin at lower wind speeds, which reduced bat deaths by 53% to 87% during the study period.

The trade-off, of course, is that wind energy producers have to contend with lower output—and profits. But the study found that annual energy output would be reduced by 1% at most, not an unbearable inconvenience to help alleviate an unpleasant effect of wind power. BWEC is also investigating other ways to mitigate fatalities without have to reduce operations, such as installing devices that interfere with the echolocation bats use to navigate in order to deter them from wind farms altogether.

Different interpretations of the study have been bandied about for at least the past month, and the issue is particularly important in light of the debates in the U.S. last week over the draft Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill. America’s cap-and-trade proposal also has a particular relevance for Canada since policy-makers here will likely follow suit with whatever is decided down south.

Republicans claimed the MIT study, originally published back in 2007, showed a cap-and-trade system would cost a family of four more than $3,000 per year. John Reilly, an MIT professor and one of the authors of the study, wrote a letter earlier this month to House Republican leader John Boehner to express dismay that his report was being misrepresented. The average cost per family of four is $340 per year between 2015 and 2050, according to Reilly:

“This $340 includes the direct effects of higher energy prices, the cost of measures to reduce energy use such as adding insulation to homes, the higher price of goods that are produced using energy, and impacts on wages and returns on capital.”

The Republicans’ inflated figure, on the other hand, includes revenue collected from industry through the auction of permits—revenue that will be returned to the public under the proposed legislation.

But the latest development comes from a Weekly Standard article in which Reilly explained to the author that the actual cost is closer to $800 per household:

“I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet. I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error (and to others.)”

The Environmental Protection Agency may have cleared the air (or further obscured things, depending on your viewpoint) with an analysis of the proposed cap-and-trade system in the Waxman-Markey bill. Its report finds cap-and-trade will have a “relatively modest” impact on the U.S. consumer. The bill will only cost households between $98 and $140 annually from 2010 to 2050, provided the bulk of revenues are returned. (The importance of how that is done can’t be overlooked, of course.)

But such widely diverging analyses are probably doing little to help the public, likely already bewildered by the complexities of cap-and-trade legislation. And as the U.S. inches closer to a decision, expect similar partisan debates about cost up here. Just recall how former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s Green Shift plan was trashed by the Conservatives as a tax on everything.

Ultimately, the numbers may mean little, at least in the American context. The New York Times quotes Karlyn Bowman, a fellow from the American Enterprise Institute, who astutely points out:

“Americans draw their conclusions about issues based on their values, not in terms of numbers the way social scientists and journalists do.”

The issue du jour? How protectionism has crept into draft climate change legislation in the United States. How it’s likely to affect Canada. And how best to head it off—before it becomes law, and real damage is done to our economy.

Last week, Page’s round table released a new report on how Canada needs to tackle the issue of climate change. Entitled Achieving 2050—A Carbon Pricing Policy for Canada, it sensibly rejected much of the Canadian federal and provincial governments’ efforts to date—including the piecemeal provincial approach and the federal government’s favouring of “intensity” targets on only the largest emitters.

Instead, Page’s report favours one clear national standard to price carbon across the country. (This is a solution Canadian Business’s editorial board has long preferred.)

Page has been at pains to stress that Canada’s future economic health depends on making these changes—as quickly as possible. And it comes not a minute too soon.

Like Page, everyone who exports energy and manufactured goods to the U.S. should be paying close attention to the wording of draft legislation tabled by Congressmen Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts on March 31 of this year.

That’s because the current wording of the new bill, titled the American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009, has major implications for Canada.

Under the segment titled Transportation Efficiency, for example, the bill proposes what amounts to a low-carbon fuel standard across the United States. If implemented in current form, that move would likely cut exports of oilsands syncrude out of the U.S. marketplace.

Worse yet, says Page, is the creeping protectionism embedded in the bill’s current wording—particularly the segment titled Ensuring Domestic Competitiveness. “The gist of the bill is that if any U.S. company complains that this program puts them at a competitive disadvantage, it will become eligible for rebates from the U.S. government that will allow it to continue to compete,” Page explains.

The bill goes on to state that if…

….the President finds that these rebates do not sufficiently correct competitive imbalances, he would be directed to establish a “border adjustment” program, under which foreign manufacturers and importers would be required to pay for and hold special allowances to cover the carbon contained in U.S. bound products.

What this amounts to is new tariffs on goods from countries whose climate change legislation is deemed by the U.S. to be somehow inadequate to its own standards. Explains Page: “This represents both a direct threat for products from the oilsands, and a threat to any Canadian product that represents a high fuel intensity — steel, cement, auto parts.” You can read a draft summary of the bill here.

Page acknowledges that we don’t yet know what kind of an economic hit this legislation is likely to represent. And it’s also important to stress that the legislation remains in draft form. Powerful entrenched constituencies in the United States — ranging from the coal mining industry, to advocates for those on low incomes, to consumer groups, to the Department of Defence—will be working overtime to get these bills changed.

But Page insists that the threat is real. “The protectionist elements of this are really aimed at China,” he says. “Canada’s getting caught in the downdraft.”

In Page’s view, the best way to head off the impact of this legislation is by bringing Canada’s climate change legislation in line with what the U.S. is considering. But that, of course, is likely to mean major economic pain and dislocation for businesses and consumers right across the country. So his report recommends a series of measures to offset that pain.

For example, it suggests the government continue with an idea Alberta is already implementing: that the proceeds from the sale of pollution credits at auction go towards a technology fund. That fund would then invest in technologies—carbon capture and storage, thermal power, energy-efficient technologies and renewables—that can help bring down the carbon content of Canada’s fuels and products.

Another likely offshoot: spiking oil prices, as high-carbon fuels are legislated out of the fuel supply. So Page’s report recommends some funds from the sale of credits be spliced off to help low-income Canadians most at risk from higher oil prices.

As for possible job losses: though the report doesn’t comprehensively tackle job training, Page says his group is closely following initiatives such as the Green Jobs corps currently championed by the White House’s green jobs czar Van Jones (see yesterday’s blog post—Meet Mr. Jones.) “The infrastructure program in the last federal budget should be looking at the green jobs area,” Page says.

Toronto-based cleantech investor Andrew Heintzman has also been watching these developments. He applauds Van Jones’ green jobs training idea in theory, but points out “you can’t put training for green jobs in place without clear markets for those jobs in the first place.” That’s why he’s been investing in cleantech start-ups.

Heintzman also serves on Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s task force for greening Ontario’s economy. He acknowledges when it comes to finding clear leadership on climate change policy, Canada’s approach has been a bit of a mishmash. Ontario has feed-in tariffs to encourage the use of renewable energy. B.C. has a carbon tax. Alberta’s working with a form of cap-and-trade — capping emissions on the largest polluters and investing the sales of pollution credits into a tech fund. And as for booming Saskatchewan, well, according to an article published this morning in the Globe and Mail, that province’s environment minister Nancy Heppner said recently that it just doesn’t make economic sense for the province to attempt to meet its climate change targets— at least not for this year.

It adds up to a policy of madly off in all directions. And with Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions continuing to skyrocket, it clearly isn’t working.

“What amazes me is that we aren’t further along with this process yet,” Heintzman says. “We’ve known this was coming.”

Pragmatists hope that Page’s recommendations—which some in the oilpatch applaud for their clarity—will help Canada get its act together on the climate change file. For as Page sees it, some form of emissions reduction is going to have to happen in Canada, and it’s going to be painful anyway. Might as well figure out a clear policy now, to help businesses and consumers mitigate the pain—before the economy gets slammed with new green tariffs down south.

A plant stands in front of piles of waste paper being shipped to mainland China for recycling, at a collection site in Hong Kong on Earth Day April 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)

This is a bit outside of my usual focus, but this image (one of a series of stunning photos compiled by the Boston Globe’s Alan Taylor in honour of Earth Day) is, for me, a striking reminder of the environmental costs of that supposedly green act of recycling. After the collectors empty your blue box at the curb, where does that recycling go? If you’re an Ontario resident, some stuff, according to this Toronto Star story, goes to China. (How’s that for a flat world?)

When grappling with environmental issues, like with most complex problems, people are apt to fixate on solving isolated aspects with complex solutions, and not see the forest for the trees. Recycling, in theory, is great; if it’s not done well, though, it creates new problems. Sure, innovation is messy. But how messy is it to just focus on those other two neglected cousins of recycling, “Reduce” and “Reuse”? Recycling is a complex, costly solution and ought to be the last of those “Three Rs” we consider doing in our daily lives, but it’s often the first.

Canadian Business first wrote about Jones back in January 2008, when he was running the Ella Baker Center, a non-profit he set up in Oakland to help the urban poor find ways to participate in what Jones envisioned as the new green economy. A tall, charismatic man with a talent for boiling complex ideas into street-rhyme sound bites, Jones talked of a national training program to help the recently incarcerated and recently-laid-off find jobs weatherizing homes, installing solar panels, helping construct new public transit networks, and installing a new smart grid across the country.

Jones is also the author of The Green Collar Economy, a book that came out last fall. A bestseller on this side of the border, it set out Jones’ vision of training the underemployed as green tradespeople. Jones sees the green-collar economy as a way to solve urban poverty through making the United States more energy efficient. Think of it as a Green New Deal.

Now, Jones is on the inside, with the clout to make his vision a reality.

As Obama’s green jobs czar, Jones is directly responsible for deploying US$500 million in recovery funds for green-collar job training. The U.S. federal government’s Employment and Training Administration estimates—probably overly optimistically—that the US$787 billion stimulus Congress authorized in February in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could result directly in 3 million green jobs. Jones is the guy responsible for making those jobs happen.

A recent McKinsey report estimates governments and private enterprises could leverage already-existing technology to generate thousands of green collar jobs. The report, Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy, lists more than 200 opportunities, spread across ten sectors and twenty-one geographical regions. It claims they have the potential to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, a reduction of 70 percent from the business as usual scenario.

There are plenty of problems with what Jones is trying to do. The most obvious is how to define a green job. Arguably the most successful green job initiative in North America to date has been the Bush-era corn ethanol subsidy — which scientists and environmentalists charge isn’t exactly green. (Studies from Cornell University and elsewhere show producing a barrel of corn ethanol requires significant inputs of traditional fossil-fuels. There are also major economic and ethical issues involved in diverting land from growing food to fuel.)

This issue, however, isn’t going to go away. According to a piece in Slate by Michael Levi, a senior fellow on energy and the environment at the Council of Foreign Relations in D.C., a recent United Nations report estimated that the heavily subsidized U.S. ethanol industry provides employment for 154,000 Americans. That’s about five times as many as the wind power industry and nearly 10 times as many as the solar industry. Argues Levi:

At its base, corn ethanol is not a green policy so much as a jobs policy—and its success in that respect has made it almost impossible for the government to change course.

What’s more, as David Pellow, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota who specializes in environmental conflict, points out, given the toxins and carbon footprint involved in manufacturing solar panels, for example, it’s likely other supposedly green initiatives of the green-jobs revolution may not seem quite so green once run through a rigorous filter.

Asked to explain how corn-ethanol-related jobs might fit into his green-collar vision for America on a White House conference call yesterday, Jones dodged. “We’re in a transitional stage with this,” he said. “Definitions are going to be fought over. What was once acceptable as environmentally sound may not be in the future.” The problem is, Jones’s boss, President Barack Obama, is a vocal supporter both of ethanol subsidies and of the clean coal constituency — the group that believes that it is possible to create a form of emissions-free coal-fired electricity, through carbon capture and sequestration. How those green-job definitions evolve will likely be more a matter of politics than anything else.

The second sticking point with Jones’s plan is, how to encourage the private sector investment necessary to fund demand for the green collar jobs the Administration is touting. From this point of view, it’s hard to see developers or under-water homeowners lining up to invest in expensive retrofits in the current economic environment.

Working in Jones’s favour, however, is new support at both the federal and state level for massive incentive programs encouraging developers to build green. Consider the generous system of tax credits to offset the upfront costs of green homes currently being piloted by the Republican state administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. The first home built to standard under this new system is a single-family-dwelling constructed by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right foundation in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. According to New Orleans, LA-based architect Gerry Billes, whose firm designed the home, that homeowner’s energy bill last month was US$3.

This raises one last question around Jones’s initiative—one that’s well known to those in Canada’s oilpatch. What happens to those employed in polluting industries, whose jobs may well be threatened or made redundant by a more energy-efficient America? As Levi points out:

… Every unit of energy generated from alternative sources displaces a similar amount generated by traditional means, so forgoing those other energy sources means giving up whatever jobs they were providing. This doesn’t mean that greening the economy will have no net impact on jobs, but it muddies the math considerably.

Right now, and perhaps unsurprisingly, given the questions it raises, there are few equivalent Canadian initiatives to Jones’ green-jobs effort. Andrew Heintzman is the chief executive officer of InvestEco,  a Toronto-based fund that invests in green businesses. He’s also a member of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s task force on greening Ontario’s economy. Speaking off the cuff, Heintzmann pointed me to Ontario’s new Green Energy Act, which, among other initiatives, offers funds to match those of private investors interested in seeding technology start-ups.

Green jobs will, of course, result as part of these efforts, as Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star points out in this report on EverBrite Solar’s new plant near Kingston, Ontario. And there’s a few other efforts—according to Jane Almeida, a spokesperson for the premier’s office, Ontario has invested recently in a training program for wind technicians. However, a comprehensive jobs-training effort aimed at ensuring those at the bottom of the economic food chain can participate in the new green economy is not part of the equation. It all adds up to an approach of wait-and-see.

We may not have to wait long, however. Recent developments in the U.S. indicate Jones may find his green-jobs programs deployed at scale—rather faster than he anticipates.

First, there’s the eye-popping unemployment numbers of the past few months. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, non-farm employment fell by another 663,000 in March. That’s 5.1 million people out of work since the recession officially started in December 2007. Clearly, the number of Americans in need of employment is piling up faster than Jones can generate the support to get his Green Jobs Corps set up.

Second, an Environmental Protection Agency ruling announced April 19 found that the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is directly linked to human activity. It’s the first time the EPA has acknowledged this link.  This should shore up Congressional support for cap-and-trade legislation in the United States—which is also closer than many realize. A draft version was introduced in March by Henry A. Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward J. Markey of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in the House of Representatives. This bill would establish a U.S. national cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases, one whose impact will likely be to burden polluting industries with higher costs, while making energy-efficient solutions more economic. It would also impose border duties on imports from countries deemed to have lax climate-change rules.

That news, of course, has major implications for Canada. It’s no secret our country has, to date, been behind the eight ball when it comes to figuring out the job- and wealth-creation piece of the green economy.

However, the news out of the EPA and Henry Waxman’s climate change legislation indicates Canada’s focus is also about to change. The chairman of Canada’s National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), Robert Page, strongly recommended last week that the country should also implement a national cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. Figuring out some kind of intelligent green jobs strategy will be an important piece of that puzzle.

I’ll have more on that after I speak with Page tomorrow. But his findings—in tandem with the implications of the U.S.’s green shift—could mean Jones’ ideas do have some relevance for Canada, after all.

The three co-authors, including Bryan Smith, faculty member for the Sustainable Enterprise Academy at York University, compare the Industrial Age to a bubble:

“If a bubble can last for generations, it becomes hard to imagine an alternative to it … but there are already signs that the kinds of investments of money, effort and attention that once brought success are now less likely to yield the same benefits. Investments outside the bubble, however, are another story: they will produce both more wealth and a more sustainable life, as people leave their old assumptions and practices behind.”

The authors go on to detail the efforts of a few companies attempting to improve environmental performance (General Mills selling oat hulls, a Cheerios by-product, as heating fuel; Enterprise Rent-A-Car commanding a fuel-efficient fleet) and contend such examples are not isolated cases, but instead proof of how climate change has “catalyzed a new way of thinking.”

If all of this sounds a little too sanguine, it is. The article is reprinted from a 2008 issue of strategy + business, when the world economy wasn’t in such shambles. A new way of thinking is no doubt developing, but it’s also clear the economic crisis has superseded the environmental one—which only makes sense, of course.

But it is nevertheless unfortunate that instead of the kind of initiatives highlighted in the Rotman article, we’re seeing Royal Dutch Shell abandon investments in wind and solar energy, second-generation ethanol companies announcing delays and struggling with financing, and HSBC predicting a global 20% decline in wind power installations this year.

The effect these kinds of delays will have on efforts to reduce emissions is uncertain. Climate change experts have repeatedly emphasized the urgency of acting quickly. The authors of the Rotman article note “the pace of climate changes happening already … is leading to a consensus among scientists and some business leaders that catastrophic overflow [of CO2] can be avoided only by rapidly reducing emissions.”

That is looking much more difficult these days, but governments can always devote a portion of stimulus packages to projects that benefit both the economy and the environment. British economist Nicholas Stern is advocating for more of that kind of action in a co-authored paper to be presented this Thursday at the G20 summit in London.

But just how much should be spent? Stern uses the benchmark of 20%, meaning one-fifth of a nation’s stimulus efforts should be devoted to “green” initiatives. Most G20 nations have fallen far below that level, the report shows. Canada, for example, has so far allotted 8.3%, just behind Australia at 9.3% and Mexico at 9.7%. (Such general benchmarks may only be useful to a point; each country has its own unique problems, and different levels of emissions to contend with, after all.) But whatever the case, Stern makes a strong argument for making such investments for the sake of the environment and the economy:

“It makes sense because otherwise, once the world economy recovers, sharply increasing energy prices are likely at some stage to trigger subsequent slowdowns. Without the transition towards a low-carbon global energy system, the next economic crisis is pre-programmed. ‘Green’ recovery programmes are not only an option for sound and effective crisis relief; they are a precondition.”

Participants will include greentech CEOs, business development officers, eminent researchers, venture capital and private-equity investors

At the event, the editors of GoingGreen will honor the GoingGreen 100 Top Private Companies and fifty of the top CEOs from the GoingGreen 100 will pitch their market strategies to a panel of industry experts.

I was surprised to learn that most of these organizations don’t yet have environmental policies in place. While the environmental impact of a purely administrative organization is obviously less than a manufacturer it can and should be quantified and reduced wherever possible.

Reducing environmental impact has become one of the defining issues of our time and corporations (even those that are largely administrative such as FIs) have taken steps to measure and improve their performance in this area. They are also making environmental responsibility a KPI for their suppliers.

Non-profits who are interested in building relationships with corporations should know that demonstrating their actions to minimize environmental impact is becoming important criteria to potential corporate partners.

When asked about current resources their employers have dedicated to “green” issues, almost half (49 percent) of executives report that their companies have allocated existing staff, hired new staff, or done both. Today, this often includes introducing Chief Sustainability Officers into the C-suite. Fifty percent of executives who responded say their company has not allocated any resources to sustainability efforts.

“Clearly, the high number of executives willing to personally contribute to their company’s green initiatives signals a change in thinking around the importance of sustainability today,” said Jay Millen, senior client partner with Korn/Ferry International. “While there is room for much progress, we are seeing companies dedicate top talent and resources to promoting sustainability and corporate responsibility.”

Interestingly, 69 percent of the respondents believe that “green” initiatives will take a back seat to profit-driven activities in these uncertain economic times. However, 29 percent believe that the current economic situation will not have an effect on “going green”.

Finally, more than three-quarters of these executives (78 percent) consider their employer at least “somewhat” environmentally-sensitive, while another 18 percent do not believe their company to be environmentally sensitive at all. ]]> http://blog.canadianbusiness.com/sustainability-in-the-c-suite/feed/ 0 http://blog.canadianbusiness.com/green-marketing/ http://blog.canadianbusiness.com/green-marketing/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 Paul Klein http://blog.canadianbusiness.com/?p=58 What are the most effective ways for corporations to communicate their environmental initiatives?

In 2007, within my circle of colleagues, “authentic” seemed to be the word that best captured the desired impact of CSR communications. Authenticity, however, isn’t easy to come by – especially when consumers and other stakeholders are paying more attention than ever to what corporations are doing and what they say they’re doing.

Corporate environmental initiatives, claims, and communications are a touchstone for both internal and external stakeholders and the term “greenwashing” has become ubiquitous. Coined by environmental activists in 2004 to describe efforts by corporations to portray themselves as environmentally responsible in order to mask environmental wrongdoings, greenwashing describes misleading instances of environmental advertising and a wider range or corporate activities, including, environmental reporting, event sponsorship, the distribution of educational materials, and the creation of “front groups.”

The main objective of greenwashing is to give consumers and policy makers the impression that the company is taking the necessary steps to manage its ecological footprint. (source Business Ethics)

Recently a colleague sent me a link to the innovative Greenwashing Index “home of the world’s first online interactive forum that allows consumers to evaluate real advertisements making environmental claims”. Consumer advocacy sites like this one will become more common and more important for corporate communications executives to monitor. Here’s how Environmental Social Marketing (the authors of Greenwashing Index) advise consumers to evaluate green marketing:

1. Truth: If you see a green ad, take a look at the company as a whole. Can you easily find more information about their sustainable business practices on their Web site? Do they have a comprehensive environmental story? Is there believable information to substantiate the green claims you saw in the ad? If not, buyer beware.

2. The Whole Truth: Next, try this. Google the company name plus the word “environment” and see what pops up. This is far from scientific, but if consumers or environmental advocates have a beef with the company’s track record, something’s bound to pop up.

3. And Nothing But The Truth: “I know it when I see it.” Those are the words of Supreme Court Justice Warren Potter in a ruling on hard-core pornography in 1964. As weird as it may seem, those are words to live by for the consumer and green marketing claims. If you spot a green ad, how does it strike your gut? Does it ring true and authentic, or is it obviously hype? Smart shoppers abound globally, and your own scrutiny of green marketing claims is one more item to throw into your shopping cart.

I think these are also good considerations for people inside corporations as well.

If your company is a supplier to a larger manufacturer or to the mass retail sector, you should consider engaging a reputable 3rd party to conduct a Sustainability Audit. The Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada can connect you to a private sector consultant or you may want to consider contacting an ENGO (Environmental Non-Governmental Organization) that also offers consulting services in this area (e.g. The Pembina Institute Corporate Consulting Services). The results of a Sustainability Audit can be used to reduce operating costs, strengthen relationships with key customers, and increase differentiation from competitors.