California and Canada working toward joint climate change solutions

This article is part of apackage of special coverageof climate change issues by CBC News leading up to the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) being heldin Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.

"So what you're seeing there is technology that's basically a hundred years old" Glen Martin says, pointingout the tangle of poles and wires that make up the Los Angeles-area energy grid.

"We take what is effectively these 100-year-old poles and wires and we modernize them. We add intelligence to them. We add sensors, we add control systems."

Martin,originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.,is an engineer who moved south 25 years ago to work on solar power projects for the International Space Station.

Now he runs a California-based company that helps modernizeenergy gridsmakingthem smarter andable to "heal"themselves while reducingenergy consumption.

"So there's a 30 per cent reduction in actual voltage consumption across the board, efficiency gains for consumers, ways to save line losses and save on their bills on their end," Martin says.

He's one of close to a million Canadians living in and around California, andmore and more of them, he finds,are working on ways to limit climate change in the U.S. and back home in Canada.

"I think Los Angeles is the third-largest Canadian city, and so we Canadian ex-pats living and working in California obviously are exposed to fairly advanced technologies and new ideas around how projects can be developed and financed," Martin says.

• ANALYSIS |COP21 must address the trade cost of carbon pricing: Don Pittis
• Alberta's climate change strategy targets carbon, coal, emissions
• Provinces to set 'more ambitious' climate targets, Ontario premier says

That's one reason why earlier this month Ontario Premier KathleenWynneembarked on her first official mission to California.

"Everyone's looking to create jobs and allow their economies to grow, but the short-sightedness of not collaborating on a task that is as important as pollution in Beijing, or drought in California, or flooding in Alberta to notcollaborate on those is absolutely going to sound the death knell for everyone,"Wynnetold a gathering of politicians and experts,includingLos Angeles Mayor EricGarcettiand the head of California's Air Resources Board.

Cap-and-trade allies

Soon, Ontario will join California and Quebec in a massive jointcap-and-trade program.

In these jurisdictions, companies that want to emit more than their quota of greenhouse gasescan buy carbon credits from companies that burn less.

"Ontario is no small potatoes," saysTim O'Connor, a senior attorney and director of the U.S. Environmental Defence Fund. "It's a jurisdiction that has greenhouse gas emissions similar to that of California."

O'Connor says thisjoint cap-and-trade program is one step closer to a North America-wide carbon market.

"And if we can show that California and Ontario can do it together, we can see it happening everywhere," hesays.

Mary Nichols, the chair of California'sAir Resources Board, says the state is working with several provinces onother shared programs to reduce greenhouse gases.

"Once we start our linkage through the cap-and-trade program, the next step would be to establish some common programs, policies, ideas around how to make the transportation system cleaner and more efficient as well," Nichols says.

Wynnewas also onhand to witness the signing of an international collaboration between the Los AngelesCleantechIncubator (LACI) and Toronto'sMaRSDiscovery District, aimed at increasing the development and adoption of clean technologies.

"The kinds of collaborations that we're trying to foster will lead to people in Ontarioand people in Quebec who are in this field having better information, being able to understand where the failures have been and then move quickly to solve problems," Wynne said.

Glen Martin's company, Energizing Co., is a product of the L.A. incubator and one firm that will be benefiting from the growing collaboration betweenMaRSandLACI.

His companyacts as a "broker"between those who develop the technologies, the financiersand the communities. His first project will be in his hometown of Sault Ste.Marie, and he hopes to work with communities in other provinces tobuild modern grid infrastructure improvements.

"Each area's going to be dealing with certain distinct elements of the climate change challenge," Martin says. "And only through collaboration will we be able to solve the problems."