Canada will establish “equivalent” regulations for major polluters if the Obama administration in the United States goes ahead with a plan to demand greener technology in new industrial plants, Environment Minister John Baird says.
It now appears that efforts to pass a U.S. bill that would create a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse-gas emissions are doomed, so the Obama administration has taken steps toward regulating polluters with its own executive power, through the Environmental Protection Agency.
In Canada, where the Harper Conservatives have insisted that moving faster than the United States to cut emissions would damage the economy, Mr. Baird said in an interview with The Globe and Mail that federal officials will try to match U.S. steps with equivalent measures, but won’t be able to completely harmonize with state-by-state enforcement of new EPA rules.
Canada, the United States and other nations are convening at an international climate-change conference in Cancun, Mexico, this week, where hope for progress is dim. The Conservative government’s insistence that it will not move out of step with the United States has brought intense criticism from environmentalists, who say it is a recipe for slow action at a time when the U.S. Congress faces gridlock over any major climate-change plan.
The EPA measures would require major new industrial plants to use the best available technology to limit emissions as of Jan. 2. But the system is supposed to be implemented by each state when it issues permits for plants, so it is unclear what it will mean in practice. Moreover, there are political and legal challenges to the EPA measures.
Mr. Baird said Canada won’t be able to harmonize its own regulations with that kind of complex system, but will look to impose equivalent regulations.
“As things progress, we’ll be establishing equivalents,” he said. “If the EPA has a plan that can be successful and can actually regulate large final emitters, we have every interest in the world to have equivalencies that go as far or farther than them.”
In areas where the United States adopts a national standard for emissions regulations, Canada can harmonize its regulations, but in others, it will have to hammer out a different but equal measure, Mr. Baird said.
“Obviously, in some areas we can have full-on harmonization, like for automobiles, for light trucks, where we can adopt the same tough standards to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. We’ve done that in those areas. In other areas, we’re going to have to have equivalencies, because the Canadian system and the reality is different.”
The EPA regulations still face a political battle in the U.S. Congress, where some senators want to block them for two years.
Mr. Baird noted that the new regulations apply only to new plants and major expansions. To be effective, regulations will have to require that existing plants start to adapt to the best available technology, he said.
“The U.S. is signalling [that] with new plants they want the best available technology, and that’s something we strongly support for new plants. But let’s underline the fact that we’ve got to tackle the existing large emitters. We can't give them a pass, that would be a huge mistake.”
