Trudeau’s carbon tax rebate is smart – but complicated

Climate and Energy Pollution

The federal government announced this week that its carbon tax will apply in early 2019 to those provinces without their own – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. It also announced that most of the carbon-tax revenues will be returned through the income-tax system to households. With this two-part policy, the feds have designed a […]

An explainer on the federal carbon pricing backstop

Climate and Energy Pollution

Yesterday, the federal government announced the details of its carbon pricing “back-stop.” The plan lays out an approach to filling the gaps across Canada in provinces that aren’t implementing their own carbon pricing policies.  It also considers the net impacts on people in those provinces.  The upshot? The system is a simple, transparent approach to putting […]

To avoid catastrophic climate change, we need carbon pricing

Climate and Energy Pollution

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, affirming that humanity has about a decade to hold global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees C. Hours later, William Nordhaus became a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics. His work was some of the first to describe how our climate and economy […]

A light rail transit car in Calgary on a fall day

How carbon dividends affect incentives (hint: they don’t)

Climate and Energy

Clean Prosperity and EnviroEconomics published a report recommending the federal government rebate carbon-pricing revenues directly to households. The key takeaway: Implementing a carbon price and issuing these ‘carbon dividends’ could make a majority of Canadian households better off. It’s a valuable finding. But you might ask: What’s the point if you’re just giving the money […]

Some provinces have implemented policies to reduce green house gas emissions

On Provincial Climate Policy and Early Action

Climate and Energy Pollution

When it comes to provincial climate policy, not every province is starting from the same place. Some, for example, have previously implemented policies to reduce GHG emissions. Should provinces be able to use these “early actions” to justify implementing less stringent carbon pricing policies now? In short, no. Here’s a slightly wonkish explainer. How to […]

Melting Ice due to climate change

Dealing with climate change is the ultimate long game

Climate and Energy

To decarbonize on a timescale necessary to avoid the worst of climate change, business as usual is not going to cut it. We need policies to give ourselves the necessary boost, policies that drive deep emissions reductions. And there’s an abundance of evidence that carbon pricing can do exactly that. Done right, it is most […]

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