Report estimates NDP climate policy impact on jobs
Mark Jaccard, 604.521.8317; mark_jaccard@sfu.ca (note: Jaccard will be away April 13 – 18)
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.4323
Correction made, April 12, 2009: loss of over 30,000 direct jobs and over 30,000 indirect jobs
Climate policy proposals of the BC NDP would cause unnecessary economic harm and job losses according to a report released April 10 by a researcher in SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management.
Professor Mark Jaccard, who specializes in sustainable energy modeling and policy, estimated the policies’ likely effectiveness by simulating their effect with the CIMS model.
The model is used by researchers, governments and interest groups in Canada and internationally to assess the effectiveness and economic impacts of alternative climate policies.
Compared to the current government policies, reaching the 2020 target using the NDP policies would cause the loss of over 30,000 direct jobs and over 30,000 indirect jobs, concentrated in communities that are dependent on high-emission industries. Jaccard calls the estimate conservative.
Jaccard cautions that the results are preliminary because they are based on the limited information on the NDP website. “However, the NDP has been quite clear about several elements that drive the results,” he says, noting the NDP claims:
That with its policy package it will achieve the same 33 per cent emission reduction by 2020 that the BC government expects to achieve;
That it will do this without directly pricing emissions from use of final fuels by households (gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, natural gas) – thus, no carbon tax and no cap and trade for fuels used by final consumers;
That it will apply a cap and trade to industry, auctioning the permits and using the revenues to subsidize energy efficiency and fuel switching by final consumers. (Jaccard notes that a great deal of research on the past 20 years of failed climate policies shows that this approach is mostly ineffective in reducing emissions.)
Jaccard says because of these elements, the cap on industry must get increasingly stringent in order to reach the 33 per cent reduction, with dramatically rising emissions prices for industrial emitters. This will force the most significant industrial emitters to reduce or halt production.
Download the report here (PDF - 154 KB)
Comments
Comment GuidelinesI note that this report was published before the NDP released their election platform.
Kevin Ginnell
Hi there,
Are we seriously presenting such a garbage piece of research on the front page of our web interface with the public? Since when did this interface become a political soap box? Please stick to stories, etc. that feature interesting people within the community and their acheivements (there are a lot) rather than publishing very questionable "research" based on a political party's website. If you are going to continue publishing this type of fiction either place this particular interface elsewhere and permit me to access an SFU home site with a page that does not embarass the university. Failing that, I would suggest you take this useless dribble off the site or present a balance by including a story of how many jobs have been lost and how many poor, homeless, seniors, mentally challenged, aboriginal, etc. people that have had their lives seriously affected by the policies of the provincial Liberals over the past eight years. A little more thought prior to putting this type of crap out there in the future would be appreciated. THANKS.