Media Clipping – Saturday October 22, 2005, The Halifax Herald

GPI and the need for a better energy policy

By Ralph Surette

ENERGY Minister Cecil Clarke’s announcement on energy strategy on Thursday – more windmills, more natural gas, more combined electric-and-heat generation, less pollution – sounds good, but the critics are calling it a non-specific wish list.

In a timely fashion, in fact, Clarke has likely proved the conclusions of a large report by GPI Atlantic, also released this week, which states dryly that Nova Scotia “does strive in intention.”

Other than in intentions, the report shows, energy policy is basically a mess – lacking targets, data, follow-up, updates of old laws and so on. As an example, GPI points to the recent rebate and retrofit program for low-income people – launched with only the broadest indication of where the money’s going or whether it will do any good. It points out that there’s a whole science of measuring “fuel poverty” that’s particularly advanced in Great Britain – just one of many international “best practices” the report says Nova Scotia could be profiting from.

In another example, the GPI researchers found data so non-existent that they couldn’t make a judgment as to whether the province’s energy-related subsidies are good or bad.

The GPI report got very little media coverage. At 400 pages and with long discussions of methodology, perhaps it’s too complex for our short deadlines. Or maybe saying that Nova Scotia is trailing the pack in something is not news. Whatever the case, this report deserves better.

It is the biggest effort yet at placing Nova Scotia into the world energy picture, drawing on a huge body of international work on energy indicators, targets and measurement methods. Its main intention is not, in fact, to show that Nova Scotia is deficient, but to underline the urgency of acting as absolute decline in oil production is only a decade or two away and, more important, to indicate how to get our act together.

In that regard, it outlines the needs for data, targets, results and evaluation in 10 areas – including not only energy use and conservation, but pollution, and social (affordability) and economic (employment) effects. It offers this as a starting point for a necessary, broad discussion involving all public and private interests in the picture, with the intent of establishing targets and mobilizing the population. This is a long way from what we get now, including from Clarke’s announcement – which merely raises suspicions of political posturing and seat-of-the-pants policy-making.

The report looks at best practices around the world, which throws light on some intriguing possibilities. For example, the city of Barcelona, Spain, has enacted a regulation requiring all new buildings and retrofitted ones to include solar panels for hot water. Suddenly, Barcelona is a solar hot spot. Why not here? (Despite fog stories, Halifax has more sun than is average among Canadian cities). San Francisco is giving tax exemptions to renewable energy businesses. Why not here? P.E.I. is determined to get off fossil fuel for electricity, and mostly onto wind, within 10 years. Germany aims for 50 per cent with 45 years. Denmark has ocean-based wind farms. Starting out with a temporary subsidy program, it has become the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines. Nova Scotia has made only small and inadequate steps.

GPI (which stands for “genuine progress index”) is part of a broad international effort, to which Canada subscribes and which was given its major boost at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992, to give a true accounting of economic activity – mostly, to include the costs of pollution. For example, the report proposes that Nova Scotia change from coal to natural gas as a transition to a future of sustainable alternatives and conservation. Off the top, natural gas costs more than coal. But if you count the cost of the pollution that coal causes – on human health, forest, agriculture and water productivity – natural gas is cheaper in the long run. According to the report, Nova Scotians are high energy users and high polluters, and indirectly pay from $900 to $6,000 a year per person in air pollution and greenhouse gas costs.

“By setting more ambitious targets, Nova Scotia could potentially mobilize its populace behind the concrete actions needed to expand renewable energy,” the report says. But “without a vision for change and clear goals, it’s hard to make progress.”

This report deserves a wide circulation among the influential. It’s available at www.gpiatlantic.org.

Copyright © 2005 Ralph Surette, All Rights Reserved