Gord Miller, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, is hosting a Roundtable today at the University of Guelph starting at 8:30 a.m. Entitled “Soil Carbon and Ecological Services: New Opportunities for Ontario Farmers?” the goal of this by-invitation-only event is to initiate a province-wide dialogue on this important issue.

As pointed out in The Roots of Sustainability: Engaging the Soil Carbon Solution in the ECO’s 2010-11 Annual Report, earth’s atmosphere contains too much carbon and our soils contain too little. Farmers can do a lot to change this situation by adopting agricultural methods that sequester carbon, as opposed to let it oxidize into CO₂. This not only mitigates climate change, but also provides a host of other benefits, such as reduced soil erosion, flood protection, cleaner water, and enhanced biodiversity.

The Commissioner’s Roundtable hopes to create more discussion about how society can partner with farmers to share the costs and risk of transition to a richer soil carbon farming future.

The Commissioner will be live tweeting and recording these speeches at this round table.

Follow @Ont_ECO or #ecosoils to learn more.

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Below is a list of speakers

Click here to download the biographies of these speakers.

8:45 – 9:30 Dr. Paul Voroney (University of Guelph)

8:45 – 9:30 Adam Hayes and Anne Verhallen (Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)

10:30 – 11:15 Doug Weatherbee (SoilDoctor.org)

10:30 – 11:15 Dr. Johannes Lehmann (Cornell University)

1:30-2:15 Ian Campbell (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)

1:30-2:15 Karen Haugen-Kozyra (The Prasino Group)

3:15-3:30 Don McCabe (Ontario Federation of Agriculture)

In my latest Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Progress Report I recommend that the Ontario government establish a price on carbon as soon as possible to hasten the transition to a low-carbon economy. This could be done directly through a carbon tax or indirectly through a cap-and-trade system.

Unfortunately, the government recently announced that it would delay implementing a cap-and-trade program beyond 2012 over concerns about negative impacts on the province’s industrial sector and carbon leakage.  The fear that additional costs imposed on emissions-intensive industries by a carbon price will reduce domestic competitiveness and drive firms out of the province has become especially prominent in this period of economic uncertainty.  But if a provincial cap-and-trade program ever gets off the ground regulators will most certainly protect domestic emissions-intensive industries over the short term by providing them with free allowances to reduce or eliminate compliance costs.  Over time it is expected that free allowances would be gradually replaced by auctioned allowances as other jurisdictions move to put a price on carbon.

There are also those who contend that Ontario’s rising electricity costs will cause value-added manufacturing and resource industries to set up shop elsewhere.  “All-in” electricity prices for the industrial end-user, which were estimated at 8.8¢/kWh in 2010 in the Ontario Long Term Energy Plan, are projected to increase to 9.6¢/kWh in 2012. This is more expensive than electricity prices in neighboring coal-intensive U.S. states like Michigan and Ohio, but almost identical to electricity prices in New York State. And, when one considers that Ontario’s corporate taxes and health care costs are lower than neighbouring U.S. jurisdictions, it becomes clear that the province will remain a competitive jurisdiction for manufacturing, particularly if a favourable regulatory environment for next-generation manufacturing industries (including renewable energy) is in place.  I believe that a carbon price is a fundamental element of such a regulatory environment.

Thus, as the Ontario government moves forward with the design and implementation of a carbon pricing program I believe the fear that manufacturing industries will be driven to other jurisdictions should be tempered by the reality that additional costs will be minimized in the short term. Over the long term all jurisdictions will need to impose GHG controls if we are to have any hope of averting catastrophic climate change impacts.  As an early adopter of carbon pricing, the Ontario government will help domestic industries be better prepared for the point in time at which a national or international climate change mitigation policy is agreed upon and the world’s atmosphere and ecosystems are no longer treated as free dumping grounds for global warming pollution.

In my latest Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Progress Report I talk about the potential for soil carbon sequestration as a tool for mitigating climate change. In fact, one of my four recommendations is that “the Ontario government investigate and publicly report on the potential for soil carbon sequestration as a GHG mitigation strategy.”

At the press conference following the release of my report, one member of the media asked why I was recommending a strategy that was costing billions of dollars in Alberta with very little in the way of results to show for all that expense. It was clear that the questioner had confused carbon capture and storage (CCS) with soil carbon sequestration – an understandable mistake given that the former has received a great deal of publicity and the latter practically none.

A World of Difference

Yet there is a world of difference between the two. CCS is a high-tech, high-risk, costly, and as-yet-unproven approach with no co-benefits. Soil carbon sequestration is a low-tech (but quite scientific), low-risk, inexpensive, and proven approach with a myriad of co-benefits.  The table below compares and contrasts these two distinct methods for reducing carbon in the atmosphere.

Will Soil Carbon Sequestration Work?

I’ve used very conservative assumptions in my report. Projecting forward, I think it is reasonable to expect that an enhancement in recommended management practices (RMPs) could result in the sequestration of close to 10 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ per year by 2020. It’s an exciting opportunity and I look forward to the government’s response to my recommendation to investigate and report on soil carbon sequestration’s potential in more detail.

Resources:

For more detailed information on CCS, see the Pembina Institute’s Canadian Primer on the subject at http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/CCS_Primer_Final_Nov15_05.pdf)

For more detailed information on Soil Carbon Sequestration, see the Ohio State University’s Extension Factsheet entitled Soil Carbon Sequestration – Fundamentals, at

http://www.envirothon.org/pdf/CG/carbon_sequestration.pdf

In my recently released Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Progress Report, I highlighted my concerns about traffic congestion in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). It’s far more than just an inconvenience; it imposes huge costs on the economy, the environment and public health. Fully one-third of Ontario’s GHGs originate from the transportation sector, with the bulk of these emissions coming from gasoline consumption for personal vehicle use. A recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute called Congestion Relief: Assessing the Case for Road Tolls in Canada reported that congestion in the U.S. in 2005 resulted in just under 4 billion hours of travel delay and nearly 9.5 billion litres of wasted fuel that costs the U.S. economy $63 billion!

The OECD has noted that the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) suffers from the worst traffic congestion in North America, with an average commute of 80 minutes – worse than Los Angeles – while costing the Ontario economy $3.3 billion each year in lost productivity. The Pembina Institute reports that growth in the GTHA is occurring twice as fast as the supply of roads and 2.5 times faster than transit capacity. The Ontario Ministry of Finance expects the GTHA to grow by an additional 2.5 million people by 2031, bringing an additional 1.4 million vehicles with them.

These facts lead to one unalterable conclusion: Traffic gridlock in our cities is only going to get worse if we stick to the current way of moving people and goods around. Based on these facts, we have basically two choices: 1) accept more traffic and greater gridlock as inevitable; or, 2) DO something about it by pricing the commodity. We will have no choice but to price this limited resource (our road capacity) and the downtown parking that supports (encourages?) its overuse.

Road pricing need not be – in fact, it shouldn’t be – a cash grab … it’s about reducing unsustainable gridlock. Highway 407 just north of Toronto is a strong demonstration that the costs of congestion can be reduced while speeding up the flow of traffic. Road pricing has been shown to work in London, Stockholm and Singapore where average speeds almost doubled. And, local businesses are on side too. A global survey by the New York City Small Business Council called Congestion Pricing and Its Effect on Small Business reported that businesses within the City of London England’s congestion charge zone outperformed those outside, in terms of profitability, productivity and job creation once the congestion charges were introduced.

As was noted recently, paying by time and place of use rather than with fuel or property taxes sets up price signals that are more transparent while reducing congestion. I believe that a reliance on fuel taxes will continue to fail us. If you drive an internal combustion engine, for how long are you going to put up with subsidizing those who will be driving electric vehicles in the coming years?

A properly constituted “Special Purpose Fund”, with citizen oversight, can ensure that funds raised through any road pricing initiatives (gas tax, road tolls, congestion charges and/or parking fees) go to fund more transit (and, possibly, to maintaining the existing road network but, not to building new roads). When the Toronto Board of Trade suggests that we need to at least look at road pricing in their thoughtful The Move Ahead: Funding “The Big Move” that says a lot!