So the federal government wants to mandate Carbon Capture and Storage for coal-fired power plants and oil sands projects…
I think that this is a foolish attempt to hide the real cost of reducing GHG emissions from Canadians. Consumers will pay something for this requirement, be it with reduced economic growth, higher gasoline and heating oil prices, etc. But they won’t see it directly as a tax on the individual consumer the way the BC Carbon Tax is being applied.
This is what is wrong. Any move by the Government to reduce GHG emissions by industry must also apply similar restrictions on the consumers of energy products. We should either impose these or raise the prices of gasoline, heating oil and electricity to reduce GHG emissions from these sources by reducing the demand for fuel itself. We cannot apply Carbon Capture to cars. But we can try to reduce people’s insistence on driving. We can make it acceptable to Canadians to lower their thermostats to 16°C and spend money adding insulation to their homes.
But we should not continue to charade that industry is the only ones who have to clean up. As I showed previously, consumers are by far the larger problem when compared to oil sands producers. They should share the burden with industry.