Source: The Globe and Mail

Alberta’s refusal to take part in a western climate change scheme is facing a back-door assault from carbon market enthusiasts.

Today in Salt Lake City, the increasingly powerful alliance of the Western Climate Initiative is gathering to fine-tune a plan that aims to put a price on electricity imports – including energy from Alberta’s coal-fired power plants.

The New Zealand Herald

President-elect Barack Obama has inherited the inbox from hell, but you could practically smell the fear in some quarters as he listed his top priorities in his victory speech in Chicago: “Two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

The Toronto Star

Alberta and Saskatchewan are determined to clean up coal and pump carbon dioxide back into the ground, two achievements that would turn the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels – coal and tar-sands oil – into a climate-friendly source of energy.

The Guardian

Shell and BP have been warned by investors that their involvement in unconventional energy production such as Canada’s oil sands could turn out to be the industry’s equivalent of the sub-prime lending that poisoned the banking sector and triggered the current financial crisis.

The Globe and Mail

Steve Snyder, chair of the ecoEnergy Carbon Capture Task Force, stresses the importance of carbon capture and storage technology.

The Alberta government announced a historic $2-billion initiative to help lead the development of carbon capture and storage technology. Along with large-scale renewables and nuclear energy, CCS is essential if Canada and the world are to address the carbon challenge.

Greenpeace

An important message from Greenpeace, reminding of the importance for action to be taken to ensure that proper care gets taken in considering environmental impact of the massive oil sands campaign in Alberta.

Encourages visiting a parody site, http://www.travelingalberta.com/, that spoofs a tourist brochure highlighting some of the not so attractive features created by dirty oil developments in Alberta.

A poll by Environmental Defense shows that 79% of Canadians and 81% of Albertans agree that carbon emissions should be regulated and frozen at 2007 levels.

Climate change will put a strain on Alberta’s availability of freshwater, as the province is already experiencing higher average rates of evaporation compare to precipitation. Alberta only shares 2.2% of Canada’s freshwater but 80% of that is in the north where the big water consumers are the oil-sand producers.

Reuters

The Canadian province of Alberta, the country’s biggest oil producer, would welcome a continental accord on climate change but would demand a role in any negotiations, the province’s environment minister said Thursday.

According to the Alberta Journal, that province’s heavy carbon dioxide producers can now start offsetting using Alberta’s nascent registry system.

Alberta’s heaviest emitters are required to reduce their emissions intensity – their carbon dioxide emissions per unit of production – by 12 per cent below a baseline set between 2003 and 2005.