Canadian Energy Law : Lawyers & Attorneys for Environmental Energy Law

P. Jason Kroft and Annie Pyke

With the federal election just a few days away, we thought it would be useful to our readers to identify what each major political party's published campaign platform says about climate change and Canada's role in curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is certainly fair to conclude that to the extent that there has been robust discussion of real substantive issues in this political campaign (a premise that is certainly not free from any doubt), the topics of climate change, cap and trade and implementation of international protocols to address GHG emissions (among other topics relating to the environment) have not been a focus of discourse for most of the major political parties. Whether climate change remains a topic that engages the voting public is an unanswered question for another day, but it is at least our proposition that most of the major political parties have not identified there to exist real political advantage to making the environment and climate change a major campaign focus. For present purposes, we are not questioning the sufficiency or merit of any plan, just letting you know what the plans are. Of course, we would like to hear from you as to you own views on these plans. 

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On Tuesday, April 12, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 2X, which will require all electrical retailers to procure 33% of California’s electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal by December 31, 2020.

Prior to Senate Bill 2X, California had a 20-percent renewable energy requirement for investor-owned utilities and independent sellers. As well, several municipal utilities had adopted voluntary, non-binding renewable energy targets. Senate Bill 2X now widens the scope of minimum renewable energy content to publicly owned utilities. All load-serving entities must meet a 20% target by the end of 2013, and a 25% target by the end of 2016, before reaching the 33% goal by the end of 2020.

The California Public Utilities Commission (“PUC”) will approve renewable energy contracts, and provide exemptions to utilities if the price of energy, or the difficulty of moving renewable energy into the state’s grid, makes the costs of compliance too excessive.

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Quebec and the Federal Government have entered an agreement to give the province 100 per cent of the oil and gas royalties from the portion of the Old Harry formation that lies within the province’s undersea boundary in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The Old Harry formation, which may contain up to 2 billion barrels of oil, straddles between the undersea boundaries of Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador. The agreement relies on the 1964 undersea boundary between the two provinces. Quebec Premier Jean Charest indicated the agreement contains an arbitration clause to deal with potential boundary disputes.

Quebec is under a self-imposed moratorium on offshore drilling until 2012, and will continue its course despite the signing of the agreement.
 

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The Government of Alberta has announced the release of the draft Lower Athabasca Regional Plan. According to the draft plan, approximately 16% of the Lower Athabasca region will be designated as a conservation area. This is in addition to the existing six per cent of the region already protected as wildland provincial parks. As a result of the plan, the Lower Athabasca region will contain more than two million hectares of legislatively protected lands – a 20,000 square kilometre area, three times the size of Banff National Park.

The plan states that the development of oil sands, minerals and commercial forestry will not be compatible with the management intent of these conservation areas. Therefore, certain existing leases, including leases where projects are already in development, will be revoked if the plan is implemented. Leases subject to cancellation will be compensated, including refunds for payments made to the Crown for the leases, development and reclamation costs and interest.

This plan is part of the Government of Alberta’s Land-use Framework, which consists of seven strategies to improve land-use decision making in Alberta. Thus far, only the Lower Athabasca and South Saskatchewan regions have released regional plans. The Lower Athabasca Regional Plan will now be subject to a public consultation process. For a schedule of the public consultation process, please see the Government of Alberta’s website.
 

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