PRESS RELEASE

NS Greenhouse Gas Reductions Can Save More Than $200m/year – Report

GPI Plan Would Make Province First to Reach Climate Change Targets

August 2001, Halifax, Nova Scotia—Nova Scotia could avoid more than $200 million a year in energy costs and global climate change damages by cutting its greenhouse emissions, says a new 230-page report released today by GPI Atlantic. If the province acts on the report’s recommendations, it could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 17% below 1995 levels by 2010 and become the first province in Canada to take decisive action on the most serious environmental challenge of the century – climate change.

Prepared by six researchers over more than two years, the GPI report describes cost-effective measures that would save between $17 and $31 in avoided energy costs and global climate change damages for every dollar invested. GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group that is building a Genuine Progress Index (GPI) for Nova Scotia as a pilot project for Canada, calls the 17% reduction target a key indicator of "genuine progress" for the province. The target exceeds the Kyoto Accord target for Canada, recently confirmed at Bonn, which commits the country to reduce emissions to 6% below 1990 levels (the equivalent of 15% below 1995 levels.)

At a news conference today at Dalhousie University, former Clean Nova Scotia executive director, Meinhard Doelle, who has just returned from Bonn as a member of the Canadian delegation to the international climate change negotiations, hailed the GPI results as a model for all of Canada. "Climate change has been referred to by the Canadian government as the greatest challenge facing us since World War II," said Doelle. " At a time when the U.S. has pulled out of the Kyoto climate change agreement and is isolated, the world is looking for a model of innovation and responsibility."

"Nova Scotia’s waste reduction success proves we can be leaders in reducing our environmental impact and benefit economically at the same time," said Doelle. "Just as officials from around the world are coming to see how we have reduced our waste by 50%, they will look to us for help on how to deal with climate change."

"But we’re not on target yet," warned Doelle, pointing to GPI results that Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions are now 15% higher than they were in 1995, and that Nova Scotians emit an average of 22 tonnes of greenhouse gases per person each year, twice the West European average. "To turn it around, we have to do what this report recommends – conserve energy and change the ways we travel and produce heat and power. The GPI study shows we can do all this, and still save money and improve the quality of our lives."

Kyle McKenzie, of Dalhousie University’s School of Resource and Environmental Studies, and Atlantic Region Coordinator for the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network, says scientists agree that global warming has already begun, with potentially devastating consequence for human society. "The 1990s was the warmest decade on record," said McKenzie. "Snow cover has declined by 10% since the 1960s alone, mountain glaciers are retreating, and sea level is rising."

Hurricanes and floods predicted for Nova Scotia

McKenzie notes that a consensus of 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that temperatures will rise by up to 5.8°C this century and that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will more than double from pre-industrial levels. These rates of increase are unprecedented in history. "The scientists have identified the fossil fuels burned by power plants, cars, industry and homes as the most likely cause of global warming," says McKenzie.

McKenzie notes that predicted impacts of climate change in Nova Scotia include an increase in extreme weather events, particularly hurricanes, floods and droughts, as well as adverse impacts on the province’s fisheries and agriculture industries. Low-lying regions around Yarmouth, the Bay of Fundy and Halifax Harbour have been identified by Environment Canada as particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, higher tides, increases in storm intensity and frequency, and storm-surge flooding.

The Truro flood plain and Tantramar Marshes are also susceptible to flooding, and sections of the southern and eastern shores may experience erosion and increased coastal instability. In other parts of Nova Scotia, saltwater infiltration of groundwater, threats to communication links and overtopping of dykes due to storm surges are also predicted, along with falling lake and groundwater levels.

The GPI researchers used a wide range of estimates by climate change economists to conclude that Nova Scotia’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions will cause between $760 million and $21 billion worth of future global damages due to climate change, depending on which climate change and costing models are used. "Carbon dioxide has an atmospheric life of more than 100 years," says McKenzie, "so every tonne of greenhouse gases we emit now continues to cause damage for a very long time."

Cutting GHG emissions can save money

By contrast, the GPI report cites successful examples of business investments in energy efficiency and conservation that have reduced greenhouse gas emissions at little cost and produced long-term savings that have helped companies’ bottom line. Simple household energy conservation measures, like turning down the thermostat, washing clothes in cold water, and cleaning furnace filters regularly, could cut residential emissions by up to 50% and save households more than $800 a year.

Cutting fossil fuel consumption also produces a range of other benefits, like reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter and other air pollutants. Switching just 10% of freight from road to rail on the Halifax-Amherst corridor alone would save Nova Scotians more than $10 million a year when the impacts of reduced pollution, accidents and road repair are included in the equation, says the GPI report.

Reducing single occupant auto commuting by 50% through carpooling or mass transit would reduce Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 228 kilotonnes and save more than $12 million a year in avoided damages, quite aside from savings to motorists through reduced fuel costs. Sport utility vehicles have half the fuel efficiency of a mid-sized car and produce twice the greenhouse gas emissions. Sales of SUVs and light trucks are forecast to increase by 46% in Canada between 1997 and 2020. But taxing car sales according to fuel efficiency and GHG emissions, as in the UK, can make smaller cars cheaper and big ones more expensive, and encourage a switch to smaller cars.

Electricity generation accounts for 39% of Nova Scotia’s total emissions and provides the best opportunity for large reductions in greenhouse gases. Currently Nova Scotia’s thermal power stations are less than 40% efficient, so that 60% of fuel burned is discarded as ‘waste’ heat. District heating, increasingly widely used in Europe, turns this discarded ‘waste’ heat into space heating and hot water for residences. This combined heat and power generation can sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money, since less fuel is consumed to perform two tasks.

Investment in renewable energy sources, like the Western Valley Development Authority’s exploration of wind energy for the Annapolis Valley, will also allow major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The GPI study concludes that Nova Scotia has the potential to become a market leader in the development of renewable energy sources, creating new business opportunities for the region.

As a transitional fuel, natural gas provides opportunities for the province to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions quickly. A $24 million investment by Nova Scotia Power that enabled its Tufts Cove boilers to burn natural gas will avoid climate change and pollutant damage of at least $16 million a year, or $560 million over the life-span of the generating unit, according to GPI estimates. A more ambitious conversion to "combined cycle" (gas fuel, steam injection) generating units could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by more than 50% compared to coal and 44% compared to oil. Most electricity in the province is currently produced by coal (80%) and oil (10%).

Considered together, the GPI study finds that a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in just three sectors that account for 70% of all emissions – electricity generation, land transportation, and residential energy use – can cut emissions by 4 million tonnes in 2010 compared to a "business as usual" scenario. With similar reductions in agriculture, waste, commercial and industrial emissions, Nova Scotia can cut emissions by 5.2 million tonnes by 2010.

The GPI report recommends shifting some of the tax burden from labour and wages to carbon and pollution as the most efficient and cost-effective way to implement greenhouse gas reductions in practice. "If tax shifting is revenue neutral, it imposes no excess burden on business, saves money, and aids economic development," says GPI Director, Ronald Colman. "In the Genuine Progress Index, ‘less’ is sometimes ‘better.’ Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions improves long-term wellbeing and prosperity and makes the GPI go up."

The Nova Scotia Greenhouse Gas Accounts are the fourth in a series of natural resource accounts and the tenth major data release for the Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index that will consist of 22 social, economic and environmental components. It follows the release of a report on Income Distribution in July, and will be followed in the coming months by the release of the Fisheries, Soils and Forest resource accounts.