Canadian and U.S. officials are respectively discussing impending regulation to cut down carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Businesses in both nations are slowly getting the message and working together to prepare for – and perhaps help mold – the change.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives reached an “unprecedented consensus” last week when they officially called for action that included “absolute” emissions cuts. A national strategy is needed, they argue, rather than the patchwork of provincial regulations that have cropped up. Furthermore, they acknowledged that government regulation may be needed to raise fossil fuel costs, drive efficiency measures, and instigate greater cuts.

Being open to regulation and the need to fight global warming also opens the door for the business community to be involved in the policy planning. The Globe and Mail explained that a “key goal” in the group’s declaration is to stop any measure that would hurt the economy or penalize certain sectors.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his administration are still piecing together a national global warming strategy. In addition to government regulation, the business group recognized its customers and consumers for also driving the message that the private sector needs to change for the greener in order to slow global warming.

In the States, large businesses have made similar declarations as the Canadian coalition, and small businesses are also taking the lead. With 26 million small businesses in the U.S., they make up half of the economy and about half of all energy used for commercial and industrial purposes. This means that huge strides could be made in efficiency and emissions cuts if they work together.

A recent example is the National Automobile Dealers Association’s (NADA) Energy Stewardship Initiative: About 500 auto dealers have pledged to cut energy use by 10 percent, thereby saving about $193 million and cutting more than a million tons of global warming pollution every year. The National Small Business Association is working with the Energy Star Small Business program and has issued a similar efficiency challenge to its members.

Businesses large and small will be needed to fight global warming, and they’ve begun doing just that. Now, with pressure from voters and the business community, it’s time for Canadian and U.S. policymakers to take decisive steps and implement national policies to curb CO2.

Globe and Mail
CNN

Here’s an example of a global warming consequence that wasn’t exactly on my radar, and some strange news from our neighbors to the north.

The Canadian navy has traditionally had a good relationship with the garbage on board its ships: the cold Arctic temperatures have kept the mess frozen, allowing refuse and olfactory senses to live harmoniously.

Then came global warming. The increased temperatures have caused quite the stink on Canadian naval ships, so much so that the navy is relaxing regulations and allowing ships to dump the garbage and even raw sewage at sea. A portion of an internal navy memo was reprinted by The Canadian Press:

The changes ‘help alleviate our COs (commanding officers’) concerns (with regard to) accumulated food remnants stored in garbage bags on decks during ever-increasing global warming summers…These food remnants may decay or putrefy and generate an occupational health and safety issue on board ships (that) our COs can ill afford while striving to enforce Canadian sovereignty in our internal Arctic waters."

The orders – part of the more relaxed provisions in the Arctic Water Pollution Prevention Act – allow for dumping if there are "operational" or safety reasons, or if capacity is exceeded.

These provisions, and the increased number of ships being sent north on sovereignty patrols, have many people arguing that taking the smelly garbage to a port for unloading is the worth the inconvenience, especially when the alternative is dumping it at sea.

However, navy officials say dumping would be worst-case-scenario, and that navy ships are still much more restrictive in their environmental stewardship than the law requires them to be.

The Canadian Press

A joint goal among eight western U.S. states and Canadian provinces was formalized this week when the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) announced a goal to cut global warming emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

The goal is the cumulative total of individual reductions goals for each state and province: for example, Washington has a more ambitious goal of reducing levels of the gases to 1990 levels by 2020.

California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Manitoba, and British Columbia have agreed to the cuts, which were conceptualized in February as a “Memorandum of Understanding” between five of the states.

The next step is for the WCI to propose a regional carbon emissions trading system with a year, complementing California’s Global Warming Solutions Act that calls for a cap-and-trade system of global warming pollution. Each state will determine its own method for cutting emissions; the agreement doesn’t require any states or provinces to do anything to which they aren’t already committed.

Janice Adair, Washington state’s representative to the WCI, doesn’t anticipate easy negotiations when eight entities come together to set up a market-based system for trading carbon credits: "How we do all that and come to the table — eight very different (states and provinces) — and try to negotiate the best deal we can, and not have anyone go away feeling they got rolled, is going to be very difficult.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a brighter outlook: "Our collective commitment will build a successful regional system to be linked with other regional efforts across the nation and eventually the world.”

Other states like Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and Wyoming are closely watching the proceedings, as are Ontario and Quebec in Canada and Sonora in Mexico. The potential – or at least the serious interest – is there for other states to get involved in a regional emissions compact and carbon trading agreement. With meaningful energy legislation not coming fast enough from federal governments, states and provinces are reaching across borders to make the real change we need on this side of the world.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Yuba Net

A group of 13 Canadian companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have launched a pilot program in British Columbia (BC) to help the 370,000 small and medium-sized businesses there cut their global warming pollution.

Ecotrust Canada, the Pembina Institute, the David Suzuki Foundation, and corporate partners have developed the Carbon Neutral Workgroup for Small Business, which will help companies calculate their global warming emissions and identify efficient means of reducing those emissions. Even better, the group wants to create free software for small and medium-sized business to show them how to cut their carbon footprints. The Pembina Institute, an NGO that provides education and consulting on clean energy issues, will offer one-on-one technical assistance.

The Workgroup points out that small businesses are responsible for about 30 percent of BC’s gross domestic product (GDP), making it a significant market in which to cut climate change emissions. Ian Gill, President of Ecotrust Canada, explained:

“It’s part of a growing ‘conservation economy’ driven by the dramatic change in consumer and corporate attitudes toward the environment as a result of global warming.” But no one is “talking or thinking about how” to help small businesses.

Small business owners will also learn about the emerging carbon offsets market, thereby giving them more tools with which to reinvest money into climate change projects in their local communities and offset their emissions.

Businesses involved in the Workgroup so far include an architecture firm, a bus company, fisheries, and a flooring and upholstery service.

EcoTrust Canada
The Vancouver Province

Courtesy of WillSteger.com

Will Steger, famed polar explorer whose feats include the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole without re-supply, the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history (1,600 mile south-north traverse of Greenland), and the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica, is now on a new mission. He is an eyewitness to the impacts of global warming, both in the Polar Regions and in his home state of Minnesota. A former science teacher, he has set out to educate people on global warming and the solutions needed to slow it. He returned last week from a four-month trek by dogsled across Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic to interview the Inuit people, who have had to adapt quickly to a new lifestyle because of climate change. Steger will use these interviews to produce a documentary later this year.

I spoke with Will by phone on May 15th. He was in Iglulik, Nunavut; the last stop of his expedition.

Green Options: You’ve traveled both Polar Regions extensively and have documented how climate change is drastically changing their landscapes. What was different about this trip?

Will Steger: This was a new route for me because this was a cultural expedition. We specifically planned the route so we could visit as many villages and talk with as many people along the way as possible. We know global warming is happening and we want to put a human face on it. So we spent a lot of time in villages. Our team included myself, three team members, and three 50- or 60-year-old Inuit hunters. We talked with hundreds of people.

Baffin Island, where I traveled, is like ground zero of global warming because there’s an intact culture that relies very heavily on their surroundings to survive. Changes are noticed almost immediately. Up here, global warming is showing itself most drastically out on the sea ice. As the earth warms, 80 percent of that energy goes into the ocean, which then affects the ice cover. The Inuit are seeing the ice freeze six weeks later, along with earlier break ups of the ice. Generally, the Inuit have had about 8 months where they are able to travel on the ice to hunt, and now that’s cut down to 5 or 6 months. That’s a 25 percent reduction in the amount of time they have to hunt out on the ice, which acts like an extension of their land.

GO: Are the Inuit angry? It is industrialized countries’ pollution that has caused this.

WS: Everyone is talking about global warming up here, there’s no denial about it. But the Inuit are forgiving people. Many of them aren’t worried about it because they can’t change it, and they don’t worry about things they can’t change. They understand that the polluters are industrialized nations, but in general they don’t harbor a lot of anger. They wish we would change, but they’re pretty easy going.

But we still have to take responsibility. Our way of consuming energy is really causing this, and we need to change to avoid the worst of the consequences.

GO: You’ve documented the changes up there before; did anything surprise you about this trip?

WS: Let me first say that no single event “proves” global warming. Global warming is an accumulation of changes happening over time. That said, I did see an effect that really surprised me, and everyone up there was talking about it: There is a large sound called Cumberland Sound. It’s about 50 miles wide and 125 miles long, and we were going to cross it on this expedition. But the ice broke up from the swells from a super storm in the North Atlantic. Everyone was talking about that. So we had to go around it, which was an extra 75 miles. That’s not a major hardship for the team, but it is for the Inuit communities because they depend on the sound for commercial fishing. Now it has shattered the fishing industry. It isn't just abou the environment; it’s the fact that it affects the economy and survival of this entire community.

Another impact really struck me. There’s a place up here they call the “land where ice never melts.” Well, it is melting. The glaciers are shrinking. That was incredibly powerful to see.

GO: Seeing all these impacts from climate change, was this trip depressing or invigorating?

WS: Neither. It was reaffirming: We were ground-truthing the science.

You have to understand that this Inuit culture does not think the way we do. Their world is close to the land. They talk in minute details of the changes in the salt in the sea ice, details that aren’t even in the climate change models. You rely on a lot of satellite info up here, but there aren’t a lot of scientists.

GO: How do the Inuit talk about global warming?

WS: Many of the elders will say the earth’s axis has changed because the sun is rising in a different place. But what’s really happening is that, because our warming planet causes more water to be absorbed up into the atmosphere, they are seeing a diffraction of the sun. It’s like an optical illusion caused by global warming. They also say that the sky color has changed: it’s now a whitish blue in the winter rather than a deep blue. In the wintertime up here, the sun doesn’t rise. But now the Inuit say the light is getting brighter in the winter. Again, the water vapor is diffracting the light in the atmosphere, making it seem lighter.

GO: What are your next steps after you return to the States?

WS: We have a lot of film from our expedition up here. We’ll be heading out to Los Angeles to start producing the documentary. In the summer, we’ll be back up to Baffin Island to do more interviews with the elders.

I’m also back on the global warming campaign trail in November, along with Fresh Energy, an energy policy organization with which I partner. We’ll be educating folks on solutions, specifically speaking a lot with congregations in the faith community.

Governor Tim Pawlenty appointed me to sit on Minnesota’s Climate Change Advisory Group. I’m working with about 50 other people from industry, environmental groups, local and tribal governments, transportation, and agriculture to develop a climate change action plan for the state.

I’ll also be working more with high school students, which I’m very excited about. They must feel empowered to fight this. They’re not taking on the challenge yet, but I think it’s going to happen soon, and I want to be part of it. I want to do now what we did 30 years ago during the Vietnam War; create a movement with young people. That’s when we’re going to see real change.

Cross posted at Maria Energia 

Ontario, Canada is building one of the largest solar power plants in the world. More than a million photovoltaic solar panels will be constructed near Sarnia, Ontario, about 70 miles northeast of Detroit, MI. The 40 megawatt (MW) project – with panels erected as high as 23 feet off the ground – will power around 6,000 homes.

OptiSolar Farms of Canada, a subsidiary of California-based Opticsolar, Inc. was awarded the 20-year contract. The Ontario Power Authority will purchase the solar energy for 42 cent per kilowatt hour, a premium price that contributed to OptiSolar choosing Ontario for the massive project over its home base of California.

The company wouldn’t talk about the cost of the project for proprietary reasons, but they claim to have developed a way of mass-producing solar cells to dramatically lower the cost of the technology. Solar still isn’t cheap: some estimates put the cost of the plant at around $300 million. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and Ontario’s provincial government wants to make solar – typically a low-maintenance technology - a common energy source. From the Toronto Star:

“Deborah Doncaster, executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, said the premium may seem high but is justified given the environmental benefits. She said it's often forgotten that solar-generated electricity tends to offset natural gas during peak periods when air conditioners are blasting and electricity rates are at their highest.”

This is a big solar step for Canada. The Sarnia project is 400 times larger than the country’s next biggest solar system. But even this project won’t be the world’s largest for long: Germany is planning a similar sized plant, and Australia announced funding for a proposed 154 MW solar plant to be online by 2013.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Toronto Star, via Slashdot

As a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has committed to cutting global warming emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But emissions have climbed, and the northerly nation is nervous about forest fires that release carbon dioxide (CO2) back into the air when the trees burn, thus increasing CO2 emissions even more. As a result, Canada has decided to cut its forests from global warming emissions calculations completely.

This also means that Canada won't count forests as a CO2 absorber or "sink," either. That's just fine for some scientists: According to the Toronto Star, for three years between 1990 and 2004, trees were a net source of emissions rather than a CO2 sink.

“Government scientists made the call after learning of the damage that could come to forests from 2008 to 2012 and realizing the forests could become another source of emissions, pushing Canada even further from its Kyoto targets.”

Insect infestations have contributed to forest fires also: an insect like the mountain pine beetle burrows into a tree and prevents it from drawing water, killing it and turning it into kindling.

The Kyoto Protocol gives nations the option of using agricultural land and managed forests (ones that are regularly cut down and replanted) in their emissions calculations. Although forests should theoretically be a great source of storing carbon in such a forested country like Canada, a hotter planet has changed that assumption.

Some environmentalists are angry about the decision, saying Canada is skirting its Kyoto responsibility.

A spokesman for Environment Minister John Baird said that the decision to not count forests only applies to Kyoto’s first commitment period, which ends in 2012. After that, Canada may reassess its decision.

The Toronto Star, via the Daily Canuck