Climate Change And The Canadian Energy Sector

Energy Efficiency (EE) has been recognized since the early 1970s as the most relevant mechanism to optimize the way we meet our energy needs. The rationale behind this book is to present where the Canadian EE sector stands today to all Canadian stakeholders and those interested around the world. The Canada Energy Efficiency Outlook aims to outline the different environments that support EE development in our highly diversified provinces and territories, as well as at the national level, and consequently allow the reader to better understand the complexities involved. More globally, this book serves as an important reference for all interested parties on how Canada has variably innovated and developed mechanisms to achieve the goal of making this country more energy efficient.

This book will provide: -The most updated information on the Canadian energy resources; demand, supply and future projections; -Updated information on historical climates, climate variability and change in Canada; -Climate and energy demand and supply relationship; -Assessments of impacts of past and future climate change, variability and extremes on various components of the energy sector; seasonal energy demand; -The results of vulnerability and adaptation analysis of case studies of extreme weather events, energy generation and supply; -Sustainable energy development under a climate change regime; -Adaptation measures and strategies to meet the challenges of future climate change and associated sea level rise; -Constraints and opportunities -Mainstreaming adaptation into the Canadian energy development policies.

In recent years, energy policy has been increasingly linked to concepts of sustainable development. In this timely collection, editor G. Bruce Doern presents an overview of Canadian energy policy, gathering together the top Canadian scholars in the field in an examination of the twenty-year period broadly benchmarked by energy liberalization and free trade in the mid-1980s, and by Canada's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. The contributors examine issues including electricity restructuring in the wake of the August 2003 blackout, the implications of the Bush Administration's energy policies, energy security, northern pipelines and Aboriginal energy issues, provincial changes in energy policy, and overall federal-provincial changes in regulatory governance. They also demonstrate that, since per capita energy usage has actually increased in the past several years, sustainable development remains very much a struggle rather than an achievement. When the Kyoto Protocol and its requirements for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are factored in, the Canadian record is especially dubious in basic energy terms. Canadian Energy Policy and the Struggle for Sustainable Development is key to understanding many of the issues in Canada's endeavour to live up to its energy-related environmental responsibilities.

Why has Canada been unable to achieve any of its climate change targets? Part of the reason is that emissions in two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have been steadily increasing as a result of expanding oil and gas production. Declining emissions in other provinces, such as Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, have been cancelled out by those western increases. The ultimate explanation for Canadian failure lies in the differing energy interests of the western and eastern provinces. How can Ottawa possibly get all the provinces moving in the same direction of decreasing emissions? To answer this question, Douglas Macdonald explores the five attempts to date to put in place co-ordinated national policy in the fields of energy and climate change - from Pierre Trudeau's ill-fated National Energy Program to Justin Trudeau's bitterly contested Pan-Canadian program - analyzing and comparing them for the first time.