PCs confident emissions goal the easier one in reach without carbon tax

New Brunswick's emissions-reduction goal remains a moving target as the Progressive Conservative government claims it can reduce provincial greenhouse gases without Ottawa's carbon tax.

Premier Blaine Higgs and Environment Minister Jeff Carr both say New Brunswick doesn't need a price on carbon because it's "on track" to hit a carbon-dioxide reduction target for 2030.

"We are reaching our emissions levels, and no one in this room can dispute that because the numbers are there," Carr told the legislature last week.

But the target he was talking about is the easier of two targets even though the Tories recently opted not to eliminate the harder of the two from provincial law.

Carr was referring to the goal of reducing emissions to 14.1 megatons, far easier than getting them down to the 10.7 megatons identified in the province's climate-change law.

Not on track, says Coon

And even progress toward that easier target stopped in 2016, the last year for which figures are available. In that year, emissions rose after several years of reductions.

"They say we're on track," said Green Party Leader David Coon. "We're not."

It's a mantra for Tory politicians that New Brunswick is trending toward hitting its 2030 goal. They say it proves the province doesn't need tougher climate action such as a price on carbon to deter the consumption of fossil fuels.

The province is "meeting our environmental standards and doing it proudly, and doing it not on the backs of taxpayers," Higgs said last week in the legislature.

2030 reduction goal

He was referring to the goal of reducing emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. It takes Canada's promised reductions under the Paris climate agreement and applies them provincially.

In New Brunswick, emissions in 2005 were 20.1 megatons, so a 30 per cent reduction would be 14.1 megatons.

The province hit a low of 14.3 megatons in 2015. But the following year, the number "shot up" to 15.3 megatons, Coon said. New figures for 2017 are expected soon.

Coon said the trend is consistent with projections by the provincial environment department given to a committee of MLAs in 2016.

The "business as usual" projection said if government did nothing, emissions would start to rise again and hit 16 megatons in 2030.

Carr said the increase in emissions in 2016 was "a blip but we believe we are still on track to meeting our emissions targets for 2030."

And he said with initiatives in areas from wind power to energy efficiency retrofits, the province is not following a business-as-usual approach. "We're still doing more and more," he said.

The Higgs government is challenging the federal government's carbon tax backstop that was imposed on New Brunswick and three other provinces without carbon prices of their own.

On Monday, customers started paying 4.4 cents more per litre for gas. The tax will also apply to home heating fuels.

The PCs also plan an industrial-emissions levy featuring weaker standards than the federal version.

The other, more ambitious goal

Even if New Brunswick does get back on track to meet the 14.1-megaton target, that's still a far less ambitious goal than what the province's climate law says.

In 2015, eastern Canadian premiers and New England governors set a goal of reducing emissions to 35 per cent below 1990 levels which translates as 10.7 megatons.

The previous Liberal government wrote that number into legislation as an "objective" in the Climate Change Act.

While PC officials never mention the tougher target or claim to be trying to reach it, they opted to leave it in the law rather than repeal it when they amended the act last month.

"That 10.7 target is a target we're trying to hit," Carr said. "It is aspirational but that is still a target we'll strive for as well. I think we're on target to get there."

Coon said he's glad the PCs left the tougher goal untouched even if their rhetoric claims they're on track to meet the easier one.

"It's something that New Brunswickers who are concerned about can raise with their MLAs and say, 'This is our commitment in legislation as an objective. We're not doing much at all to meet that,'" he said.