We would like to thank all of those who came to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario’s booth at the Green Living Show last weekend to learn about your rights under the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993 (EBR). Many of those who came to our booth had questions. Here are some of the typical queries and their answers.

1. What do you do? What is this all about?
2. Are you part of the Ministry of the Environment?
3. How many people are in your office?
4. Are these books on your rack free?
5. You say we can comment on proposed government decisions. How do you ensure the ministries consider our comments?
6. There is a litter problem in our neighbourhood park. My mom and I have to pick up garbage there every two weeks. How do I stop this littering problem?
7. I am a high school teacher. What are some great resources for my students?

1. What do you do? What is this all about?
Required by a law called the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993 (EBR), the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) is an independent officer appointed by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. His role is comparable to the Auditor General, the Ombudsman, and the Information and Privacy Commissioner, in that he is non-partisan and is an arms-length officer of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The ECO oversees 13 Ontario ministries’decision making as those decisions relate to the environment.The ECO monitors and reports on the 13 ministries’ compliance with the EBR, the government’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its actions towards achieving greater energy conservation at all three levels of government. The current Commissioner is Gord Miller, who is in his third 5-year term.The EBR allows residents of Ontario to participate in environmental decision making in three main ways:

• The Environmental Registry: The Registry is a website database where the government is required to post for public notice information about proposals, decisions and policy changes that affect the environment. You have the right to comment on these proposals and the ministries must explain the effect your comments had when making their final decision.
• Application for an Investigation: Any two residents of Ontario who believe that a prescribed Act, regulation or instrument has been contravened may apply to the Environmental Commissioner for an investigation of the alleged contravention by the appropriate ministry.
• Application for Review: Any two residents of Ontario who believe that an existing policy, Act, regulation or instrument of Ontario should be amended, repealed or revoked in order to protect the environment may apply to the Environmental Commissioner for a review of the policy, Act, regulation or instrument by the appropriate ministry. Any two residents of Ontario may also request a new policy, Act regulation or instrument in order to protect the environment.

2. Are you part of the Ministry of the Environment?
No, the ECO is not a part of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. In fact, the Ministry of the Environment is one of 13 ministries, prescribed under the EBR, which the ECO oversees.

3. How many people are in your office?
There are 24 staff in our office including the Commissioner.

4. Are these books on your rack free?
Yes. The ECO releases three annual reports each year: the Annual Report, the Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report and the Annual Energy Conservation Progress report. The ECO also releases special reports as he sees fit. In 2012, the ECO released two special reports:  Biodiversity: A Nation’s Commitment, an Obligation for Ontario and Ready for Change? An assessment of Ontario’s climate change adaptation strategy.All of the ECO’s publications are available free of charge to the public. There are a limited number of paper reports and USBs (containing PDF versions of our reports) available. EPUB and PDF reports are always available for download on our website.

5. You say we can comment on proposed government decisions. How do you ensure the ministries consider our comments?
A minister who gives notice of a proposal on the Registry must consider the comments in reaching a decision. It is the ECO’s role to ensure ministries prescribed under the EBR comply with these rules by way of monitoring the Registry and reviewing all comments.

6. There is a litter problem in our neighbourhood park. My mom and I have to pick up garbage there every two weeks. How do I stop this littering problem?
Congratulations on helping to preserve the environment through your individual action. Litter and waste management are a municipal issue so you want to contact your local councillor and/or your local Public Works department to see what can be done.

7. I am a high school teacher. What are some great resources for my students?
You might start by looking through our Annual reports, Energy Conservation reports or Greenhouse Gas reports which are available on our website. There are many articles that relate to your curriculum. Sample articles from the 2010/11 Annual Report are:
Snapping Turtles: To Hunt or Protect?
What a Waste: Failing to Engage Waste Reduction Solutions
Less and Less: Budgets for MOE and MNR not Meeting Needs
Shale Gas and Hydraulic Fracking
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A recent study published in Nature Climate Change by University of Victoria climate scientists Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart is being seized upon by fossil fuel advocates as proof that the oil sands (or more technically the bituminous sands) are not as bad for the environment as previously thought.  The study calculates the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions that would occur if the world’s entire reserves of oil, gas, and coal were consumed.  Its unsurprising finding that burning all proven reserves of coal or gas would release more CO₂ than burning all the proven oil reserves in the bituminous sands of Alberta is touted as proof that the industry has been unfairly targeted by activists and regulators in the U.S. and E.U.

The more nuanced analysis found in the paper (but ignored in mainstream press) starts by looking at how much the climate can warm before we can expect to start experiencing catastrophic impacts such as sea level rise, agricultural failure and ecosystem collapse.  Climate scientists have pegged this number at 2°C above pre-industrial times, or about 1.2°C above today’s temperature, a figure which has been accepted by the international community as a target in ongoing negotiations.  In order to have a shot of limiting temperature rise to 2°C and thus potentially stabilizing the climate, total cumulative global CO₂ emissions over the next several centuries must remain below 2.2 trillion tonnes. This is the ‘atmospheric budget’ that, because CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for a long time, must be shared amongst present and future generations.  If this amount is apportioned equally across the world’s population today (ignoring for a moment that pesky moral imperative of leaving space for future generations), allowable per capita emissions of CO₂ are on the order of 312 T over an individual’s lifetime.

The average Ontarian emits somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 T/yr which means that his/her entire budget is used up within 20 years.  So, just as we run deficits on the fiscal front, compromising the ability of future Ontarians to access quality health care and education, we are running massive deficits on the carbon front that threaten to destroy the very ecosystems upon which we depend for existence. This is the critical message that is missing from debate.

In order to have a shot of avoiding a catastrophic ‘carbon downgrade’ in living standards, the global community needs to immediately begin the transition towards renewable energy sources and aggressive energy conservation, ultimately reaching near zero emissions sometime this century. Within this context it is clear that massive investments in long-lived fossil energy infrastructure (be it upstream in coal-fired power plants and pipelines or downstream in the form of new highways or airports) are not consistent with the goal of avoiding dangerous interference with the climate system. The Ontario government has embarked on the path towards a lower carbon economy with its phase-out of coal-fuelled power plants from the provincial electricity grid which largely removes the dirtiest fossil fuel from the energy mix.  But Ontario is still heavily dependent on oil and natural gas.  While there is a policy framework for natural gas conservation, programs lack adequate funding and so easy opportunities for demand reduction have not been seized. With respect to oil consumption, the province lacks any policy framework for efficiency or conservation despite the fact that oil represents 40% of final energy demand. The ECO has recommended in the past that the government develop a comprehensive energy conservation strategy that encompasses all major energy sources used in Ontario.  Such a strategy will need to address the risks posed by climate change.

For years, discussions on climate change have focused primarily on carbon dioxide. As the most prevalent greenhouse gas, it lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, trapping heat. Recently, however, scientists have been highlighting the significant role played by other, shorter-lived pollutants such as methane and black carbon (or soot). While these gases don’t remain in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, they nevertheless have a high global warming potential (GWP). In my most recent Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report, I discussed this as the “tyranny of the near term”; the concept that what we do – or don’t do – about a warming planet over the next few decades will ultimately determine our fate. The near-term challenge arises because the global warming potential of carbon dioxide is one (1), regardless of whether the time horizon is 20, 100 or 500 years. In comparison, the GWP of methane is 72 over a 20-year period, and the GWP of black carbon soot is a whopping 1,600 over the same time frame. In addition, soot is a particular problem in the northern hemisphere because when it lands on ice or snow it increases the absorption of sunlight and thus hastens the warming (and melting) process. While the residency time in the atmosphere for each of these pollutants is much shorter than for carbon dioxide (12 years for methane and only days or weeks for black carbon), the near-term release of these gases poses a much more significant threat than the equivalent release of carbon dioxide

With this preamble for context, I note with some optimism today’s announcement by Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, that the U.S., along with Canada and four other countries, has launched a program through the United Nations Environment Programme to reduce the release of methane and black carbon, as well as hydrofluorocarbons, worldwide. It has been estimated that these gases have an outsized impact on climate change; accounting for 30 to 40 per cent of global warming. While many of the initiatives will focus on activities that should be undertaken in the developing world, such as replacing traditional cooking stoves with more efficient models, there are several measures that can be taken here at home. As I pointed out in my report, increased attention could be given to reducing emissions from diesel engines, equipment and locomotives – the main sources of black carbon in the province. As well, one of the main sources of methane in the province is due to the decomposition of organic materials in landfills. While steps have been taken to capture these emissions, I raised several questions in my report about the efficacy of such measures and would reiterate that the best control method is to divert organic waste from landfills altogether. Given that the lens is now focused on these gases internationally, I would suggest it is time for the province to similarly sharpen its sights.

Looking for ways to save money, lessen the wear and tear on your car, help reduce traffic congestion, and contribute to cleaner air? Why not consider setting up or joining a carpool?

There are 5.6 million commuters in Ontario and 71 per cent use a personal vehicle to travel to work. Depending on the type of vehicle you drive, and the amount you drive it, the Canadian Automobile Association has estimated that owning and operating a vehicle can range from $8,000 to $15,000 each year. As well, emissions from passenger vehicles contribute to smog, and are a key source of greenhouse gases. As I reported in my 2011 Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report, personal vehicles account for about 57 per cent of Ontario’s transportation emissions. Given the future growth predictions for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, strong efforts will be needed to help stabilize and, ideally, reduce these emissions.

Fortunately, there are organizations out there that can help you reduce your costs and emissions. One of them is Smart Commute, a program of Metrolinx and the municipalities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. This week is Carpool Week, an annual event designed to encourage sharing a vehicle, cutting your costs and helping the environment. Check it out at http://www.smartcommute.ca/en/whats-happening/carpool-week

The government of Canada has announced the end of the ecoENERGY home retrofit program, effective immediately, citing fiscal constraints. The popular program (which was previously matched by the Ontario government) helped homeowners cover part of the cost of energy efficiency retrofits such as a more efficient furnace or improved insulation.

As part of my statutory role in reviewing conservation initiatives in Ontario, I have previously reviewed the results of the home retrofit program. In its first three years, the program raised awareness of conservation among homeowners, with more than 150 000 Ontario households undertaking at least one energy efficiency action through the program and reducing their energy bills. Most retrofits led to a reduced use of natural gas for space heating, therefore the program also had an impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, I did note that the bulk of Ontario’s buildings had yet to be retrofitted (the program had reached only 4% of Ontario’s housing stock), and that the Ontario government’s lack of analysis as to the benefits of the program made it vulnerable to cancellation.

While disappointing, the federal government’s action is not surprising given the hints of restraint from Ottawa and Queen’s Park: a daily shock doctrine to prime taxpayers for release of the governments’ spring budgets. The Ontario government had already withdrawn its contribution to the home retrofit program, as well as cancelling energy conservation programs in other sectors. In this time of fiscal deficits, there will be pressure for further cuts, despite the very small percentage of public spending devoted to the environment (for example, the combined budgets of the Ministries of the Environment and Natural Resources accounted for less than 1% of Ontario’s budget in 2010/11). The former Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure also accounted for less than 1% of the Budget (and a fair portion of this was money spent on infrastructure as opposed to energy programs).

I expect more environmental programs to come under threat in the near future, regardless of the long-term consequences. As I have said previously, at some stage we will reach a tipping point. Beyond this threshold, we will lose meaningful policy and program capacity in these ministries for the sake of spending reductions that can really have no substantive impact on the deficit.

November, a month where conversations tend to lament the long lost days of summer, has seen a remarkable number of conversations about a similarly depressing topic: overcrowded transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area (GTHA).  At the beginning of the month, the Canadian Urban Transit Association held its fall conference. Sponsored by TTC and Metrolinx, the title was Public Transit: Investing in Quality of Life. This was followed up with Toronto Talks Mobility, a session organized by the Pembina Institute, Councillor Joe Mihevc and the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre. Coming up later this month is a “Mobility Pricing Stakeholder Forum” sponsored by Transport Futures.  These conversations are driven by projections that the GTHA will add close to 3 million new people in the next 20 years. Given current car ownership trends, this will result in an additional 1 million automobiles trying to access roads that are already hopelessly congested.   But isn’t the GTHA already at “peak car” with traffic congestion rates among the worst in North America? And aren’t vehicles already the largest sources of greenhouse gases in Ontario (see chart below)? Can we afford to put all these additional vehicles on the road, you ask? Good question.

The message emerging from these conversations is that we need to get serious about moving people out of their cars and onto mass transit. But with the GTHA’s public transit system in its own state of chronic underfunding, significant investment – $80 billion dollars was the amount being tossed around at the Toronto Talks Mobility session – is required to make it a viable alternative.  That is a huge sum of money for cash strapped governments in a time of fiscal austerity, and so innovative funding mechanisms will be required. Metrolinx is required to release an investment strategy to find the money by no later than 2013; why the delay? Let’s get this strategy released for public discussion sooner so that it can influence and inform transit planning and decision-making in 2012. The longer we wait, the greater the chance that we’ll continue to make planning decisions that will lock-in our commuting patterns for decades to come.

While I have pointed to the potential for road pricing to bridge the funding gap in both my 2010 and 2011 annual greenhouse gas progress reports and in a recent blog, most decision-makers in the region are reluctant to entertain it as a possibility. Most of the speakers at the Toronto Talks Mobility session danced around the issue of road pricing. Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion did suggest, however, that road tolls and related road pricing will have to be evaluated as a funding option. She stressed repeatedly that this will be tough to sell to the commuting public, especially those traveling to work in single-occupancy vehicles. She conceded however, that if the monies were put towards funding rapid transit – and only rapid transit – this would be an easier sell.  The elephant in the room is making its presence known.

The Australian Senate passed its carbon tax legislation this past Tuesday as a key component of its Clean Energy Legislation Package. It’s the first stage in the country’s plan to reduce carbon emissions to five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent below 2000 levels by 2050. It will fix a tax of A$23 ($24 CDN) per tonne on the country’s top 500 emitters starting in July 2012 with a plan to transition to a cap-and-trade system from July 2015 onward. Industries including mining, airlines, steel and power generation are covered. After July 2015, companies in these industries will need a permit for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit.

As the title of the legislative package suggests, the Australian government has linked the emergence of a clean energy economy with the establishment of a price on carbon. I’ve taken a similar position in my most recent Greenhouse Gas Progress Report as well as in a recent blog. For one thing, pricing pollution is one surefire way to ensure a more level playing field so that renewable energy can compete in the marketplace.

South Africa is also considering legislation to place a tax on carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the Ontario government has indicated it won’t move on pricing carbon until at least 2013. While Ontario continues to delay, other jurisdictions are taking a leadership role while kick-starting their green economies. If Ontario wants to accelerate the growth in green energy and a low-carbon economy, putting a price on carbon will need to happen sooner rather than later.

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