Learn English with Robert Lyman, Director at the International Climate and Science Coalition Canada, and Principal at the Entrance Policy Research Group. Mr. Lyman has spent 37 years in the Canadian Public Service as a diplomat, economist, and policy advisor, and also spent 10 years as a consultant on energy, transportation, and environmental policy issues. And tonight we have the pleasure of having Robert present to us the need to rethink the Ottawa Climate Plan.
00:00:00.000So we're a little bit behind schedule, so we're right into the introduction of our first speaker.
00:00:07.000Our first speaker is Robert Lyman. He is the Economics Policy Advisor and Director at the International Climate and Science Coalition Canada.
00:00:18.000He is an Ottawa-based energy policy consultant and principal at Entrance Policy Research Group.
00:00:25.000Mr. Lyman has spent 37 years in the Canadian Public Service as a diplomat, economist, and policy advisor.
00:00:33.000And also spent 10 years as a consultant on energy, transportation, and the environmental policy issues.
00:00:40.000And tonight we have the pleasure of having Robert present to us the need to rethink the Ottawa Climate Plan.
00:00:48.000The need to rethink the Ottawa Climate Plan. Please welcome Mr. Robert Lyman.
00:00:55.000Thank you. I must say I'm extraordinarily pleased to be here and I received such a warm welcome.
00:01:07.000I want to thank Action for Canada for this opportunity to talk about an issue that I'm sure all of you appreciate is a controversial one.
00:01:17.000It is so controversial that most of the time when people like me want to discuss some of the facts and analysis that we bring to bear on the topic, we're not really allowed to do so.
00:01:31.000There's a real intolerance for dissent on this topic.
00:01:36.000But in the remarks I make today, I'm not going to attack the views of those who believe that climate change poses a catastrophic threat.
00:01:48.000What I want to talk about is what are the consequences of some of the actions that are being promoted by those who claim that this is justified.
00:02:00.000Particularly those at the Ottawa City level.
00:02:04.000If later on you want to talk about national issues, I'll be quite happy to do that.
00:02:09.000I'll start by making one general comment about the national climate policy in Canada.
00:02:19.000You may not be aware of this, but over the last seven years, the Canadian federal government has spent $120 billion on climate change measures.
00:03:12.000And the costs of the Ottawa Climb Master Climate Plan are unconscionably high.
00:03:18.000The benefits, which ultimately can only be measured in terms of the environmental effects that result from reduced emissions, are too small to measure.
00:03:31.000And the entire plan needs to be rethought.
00:03:35.000I have talked to a few of the new councillors that have been elected as a result of the most recent urban election here in Ottawa.
00:03:44.000And I was really struck to find out that many of the people who approved the climate plan never read the document.
00:03:52.000They had no idea what it was that they were approving.
00:03:56.000And they certainly had no idea what it would cost.
00:04:03.000So what are the main elements of the plan?
00:04:06.000First, they want to phase out all uses of oil and natural gas.
00:04:11.000You may not be aware of this, but in Canada, about 77% of all of our energy needs are served by oil and natural gas and coal.
00:05:34.000The city of Ottawa wants to increase municipal expenditures on the climate plan by something that would be
00:05:54.000something that would be in the range of $52 billion to $57 billion over the period for 2050.
00:06:03.000Now there's about a million people in the city of Ottawa.
00:06:07.000So $52 billion over a million people is about $52,000 per person that they propose to spend directly on the climate plan.
00:06:22.000And they want to fund all of these expenditures partly through federal government funding, provincial funding, but also through increased taxes and fees that are imposed upon the citizens of Ottawa.
00:06:39.000So first in terms of urban design, the central goal is to make Ottawa a much denser city.
00:06:48.000We're already a fairly dense city in terms of certain areas.
00:06:52.000But they want to make it more so by changing the regulations that apply to the size of buildings, the height of buildings, and by changing the zoning within the city.
00:07:09.000And the goal basically is to go to a situation where typically now there's about 16 residential units per square kilometer to one where there's about 89 units per square kilometer.
00:07:27.000So about a four-fold increase in the density of the city.
00:07:34.000Part of that will be, and our counterpart to that, surprisingly, is to essentially eliminate the use of gasoline-powered vehicles, but also to, frankly, significantly reduce vehicles altogether.
00:07:50.000So, for example, they want to completely ban parking in the by-ward market area.
00:07:57.000They want to completely ban parking in the core of Ottawa.
00:08:01.000They want to change regulations so that it will no longer be required for a developer that is building a new residential area to install, you know, have a minimum requirement for the number of parking spaces.
00:08:17.000So typically what would happen is that we'd get to the point where people would be moving into houses or even whole regions of the city where there was no parking available.
00:08:27.000You'd have to be reliant upon public transit, such as it was.
00:08:32.000And they want to prioritize what is called active transportation.
00:08:38.000That is walking and cycling or skating to work if you can do that in the winter.
00:08:45.000Let me just give you some numbers about that.
00:08:48.000Currently, what's called active transportation represents about 5% of the commuters in Ottawa.
00:08:57.000The city that has the highest percentage of people involved in active transportation in Canada is Victoria, British Columbia, where the climate makes that perfect.
00:09:10.000The plan, Ottawa Climate Plan, wants to have at least 21% of the people of Ottawa commuting by active transportation.
00:09:19.000So far higher than is currently the case in Victoria.
00:09:24.000In terms of buildings, buildings are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, because people need to heat them and cool them in the summertime.
00:09:38.000And so what they have proposed is that there be new energy retrofit standards that would require that all buildings, residential, commercial, industrial, be upgraded to much higher standards.
00:09:53.000They want complete changes in the building codes by 2030 that would require an investment of at least $100,000 per house to improve the energy efficiency of those houses.
00:10:08.000Now, there's no way that you're going to save that amount of money over the time that you're likely in the house.
00:10:14.000So this is kind of a deadweight loss from your perspective.
00:10:19.000They also want to fund an extensive expansion of the use of heat pumps.
00:10:24.000Now, heat pumps can be effective in terms of reducing the needs for heating, but they tend to be expensive.
00:10:34.000And so the cost of this would fall upon the homeowner.
00:10:37.000They also want to have endorsed the ending of all natural gas use in furnaces and stoves.
00:10:45.000Now, if you're familiar with areas of Canada where people have to rely upon electricity for home heating,
00:10:57.000you'll know that it typically is quite a bit more expensive than natural gas heating.
00:11:02.000In the world that we're talking about, where they're proposing not only to change the uses of electricity,
00:11:12.000but their demand for it, the price of electricity is likely to increase further still.
00:11:18.000In the province of Ontario, over the course of the period since 2009, electricity rates have generally gone up by at least 100%,
00:11:29.000almost directly as a consequence of what was called the Green Climate Plan of the province initiated in 2009.
00:11:37.000This is just, in a sense, a duplication of what the province is already doing.
00:11:42.000So, the consequence of that would undoubtedly be higher house prices.
00:11:47.000Now, any of you who are at this stage in life where you're buying your first house are already very much aware of what the cost of housing is in Canada.
00:11:56.000All of these measures that are being proposed would simply accelerate those increases.
00:12:03.000With respect to transportation, the federal government has already announced that as of 2035, you will not be able to purchase an internal combustion vehicle in Canada.
00:12:21.000And what the city of Ottawa is saying is, we want to accelerate that schedule.
00:12:28.000Now, so in other words, by probably around 2030, you would not be able to purchase an internal combustion car, SUV, or pickup truck in the city of Ottawa.
00:12:40.000How that's going to make a difference, your guess is as good as mine.
00:12:47.000They want to convert the entire bus fleet to electric vehicles.
00:12:52.000Basically, the proposal is to spend just under $1 billion over the period from now to 2027 to replace much of the current Ottawa bus fleet with electric vehicles.
00:13:08.000Each of those electric vehicles cost about $1 million, and then there's an additional $1 million that's required for the infrastructure to ensure that they can be refueled.
00:13:20.000They also want to ensure that at least 40% of the commercial vehicles in the city are electrified.
00:13:28.000By commercial vehicles, I'm talking about trucks, I'm talking about taxis, I'm talking about any kind of a rental vehicle would have to be electrified by 2030.
00:13:40.000And they would set it as a goal that at least 50% of the people that commute to work in Ottawa must go by either rapid transit or by active transportation.
00:13:57.000Now, it's very interesting to look at the statistics of what has happened to the trends in commuting as a consequence of COVID.
00:14:10.000Basically, pre-COVID, the number of trips taken by transit in Ottawa was about 96 million annually.
00:14:22.000As a result of COVID, in 2020, it went down actually to 40 million, so more than dropped in half.
00:14:31.000And in 2021, a year later, it was up to 60 million.
00:14:35.000We don't know what it'll be this year.
00:14:37.000If OC Transport is fortunate, they may be able to get 70 million trips back.
00:14:44.000But as a result of the concerns about people, continuing concerns by many people about COVID,
00:14:54.000as a result of the tendency of many federal government departments to allow people to work from home,
00:15:00.000the demand for transportation services has been significantly reducing.
00:15:06.000And yet, we're talking about significantly increasing the cost of the remaining transit services.
00:15:17.000We talked a little bit about electricity, and one can talk about it in general.
00:15:22.000The goal of the plan is, as indicated here, to have enough renewable electricity, primarily wind and solar generation,
00:15:32.000and electricity storage, to be constructed so that it will essentially replace all use of hydrocarbons
00:15:39.000that we use for electricity generation.
00:15:42.000Now, in Ontario, most of our electricity is already produced by hydroelectricity and nuclear,
00:16:35.000So when you're increasingly dependent upon those types of electricity generation,
00:16:41.000you either have to have a significant additional backup generation from other sources,
00:16:47.000or you have to have electricity storage.
00:16:50.000Electricity storage is incredibly expensive.
00:16:55.000And electricity storage could all by itself drive the cost of power up by two to three times.
00:17:03.000Specifically, they're seeking to have an increase in the solar photovoltaic generation to up to 1,060 megawatts by 2050.
00:17:18.000That would cover about 36 square kilometers of rooftops with solar input PV.
00:17:25.000The wind generation would get all the way up to 3,218 megawatts,
00:17:31.000which is approximately, as I say here, 710 large-scale turbines.
00:17:37.000And by large scale, I'm talking about turbines that are 600 feet high.
00:17:42.000And they basically restrict the amount of development that can occur within a half a mile of each one of them.
00:17:54.000And of course, as I mentioned, 310 megawatts of local energy storage and 612 megawatts by 2050.
00:18:03.000In terms of, you know, what is the effect on that, on consumer?
00:18:11.000One thing is to hear those numbers about, you know, windmills and solar photovoltaic facilities.
00:18:18.000If you live in the rural areas of Ottawa, you'd be very aware of that because of the impact that windmills in particular have upon property values.
00:18:28.000But the main way in which it affects us, the average citizen is through electricity rates, and also the electricity security of supply.
00:18:45.000Throughout North America, the reliability of electricity supply has been declining for the last 20 years,
00:18:55.000largely because of the difficulty in adding a new generation capacity,
00:18:59.000but also the difficulty in funding and getting approval for the new transmission lines that deliver power from the new generation plants
00:19:09.000to the homes and buildings and industry where the demand exists.
00:19:16.000And that problem will only intensify the more that we overbuild in terms of the renewable energy supply.
00:19:34.000So, fundamentally, the question is, if the province of Ontario is already doing this,
00:19:39.000why is it necessary for the city of Ottawa to do exactly the same thing,
00:19:44.000to essentially duplicate the programs of the province?
00:19:52.000Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, one of the key issues here is what it costs.
00:19:59.000And the estimate that was in the city's plan is between $52 billion and $57 billion over the period from now until 2050.
00:20:13.000The revenues for that might come from the federal and provincial government,
00:20:18.000and the federal government has certainly been spending, as I mentioned before, billions and billions of dollars
00:20:24.000on its emission reduction programs, much of which goes to other levels of government.
00:20:30.000But there's no way that the federal government will be prepared to spend this amount of money for every single major city in the country.
00:20:38.000So, the council recognized that they would have to come up with new sources of funding.
00:20:57.000Now, in the preparation of the plan, there was an attempt by the consultant that prepared it to identify a number of things that might be used.
00:22:38.000So that's the highlights of what the city is proposing to do.
00:22:42.000But I want to talk to you, what is the global context of all this?
00:22:46.000Because whatever one thinks of climate change, it is fundamentally a global issue.
00:22:55.000The emissions that are occurring are at the global level, and the consequences of those emissions are at the global level.
00:23:02.000No one country produces enough emissions to significantly alter the level of emissions or the climate effects of those emissions.
00:23:11.000So the only way that it can change is if the countries of the world agree to reduce emissions and actually take the steps to do so.
00:23:23.000What's going to be the current situation is indicated in this graph, which shows that the amounts of energy that are currently consumed in the world.
00:23:38.000The green is oil, the red is natural gas, the gray is coal, the light blue is hydroelectricity, and the yellow is renewables.
00:23:53.000Renewables are about 5% of the world's energy usage.
00:23:59.000And what we're being told is that the 5% must become 100% in all within 27 years.
00:24:08.000The systems of energy supply and consumption that have been developed over 100 years are supposed to be completely eliminated in 27 years.
00:24:22.000It's not happening not only because of the cost, it's not happening because the countries of the world are not reducing their emissions in accordance with the announced plans.
00:24:37.000Governments have been setting standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions targets, if you will, since 1990.
00:24:45.000But by 2019, greenhouse gas emissions globally were 60% higher than they were in 1990.
00:24:56.000So after 30 years of government setting emissions targets for reduction, we're 60% higher.
00:25:04.000The most authoritative source of information and analysis regarding energy supply, demand and emissions in the world
00:25:12.000is the United States Energy Information Administration.
00:25:16.000And in their International Energy Outlook document for 2021, they projected that global greenhouse gas emissions will increase from now until 2045, which is the end of their projection period.
00:25:34.000It's because they're growing in countries largely of Asia, but other other countries of the developing countries,
00:25:41.000where the priorities of the governments in those countries are to increase the standard of living of their people.
00:25:49.000And increasing the standard of living inevitably includes using the most affordable, reliable sources of energy supply, which continue to be hydrocarbons.
00:26:01.000So those countries will not sacrifice the standard of living of their people in order to pursue the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, whatever the merits of that goal.
00:26:17.000Canada, all of Canada, produces 1.6% of the goals to greenhouse gas emissions.
00:26:26.000And so basically, if Canada ceased to be, if we all somehow committed suicide and didn't produce a single ton of greenhouse gas emissions,
00:26:41.000global emissions would only decline by 1.6%.
00:26:48.000The other important point is that the other 98% is going on increasing anyway.
00:26:55.000Ottawa, the city of Ottawa, produces 1% of the 1.6%.
00:27:03.000So if you reduce all of the emissions for the city of Ottawa, the consequence would be so small that it would be not possible to measure it.
00:27:19.000So we would be spending $57 billion and we would get zero effects in terms of changes, in terms of global emissions, or temperatures, or time.