Report blames nat gas strategy for falling behind GHG target
Posted October 10, 2012 12:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says BC has made progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but that progress is in jeopardy.
The target for the province this year was to cut emissions to six per cent below 2007 levels.
Report author Marc Lee says we only achieved a reduction of 4.5 per cent, and he blames the new Natural Gas Strategy enacted earlier this year.
“The government has set us on a very different path by pursuing a natural gas development. [It’s a] significant expansion that would essentially make it impossible to obey the law and reach those targets,” explains Lee.
He tells us the new strategy will pump a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. “That aims to basically double or even triple natural gas production. And that takes up so much space, in terms of the target for 2020.”
The legislation calls for a 33 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Lee says if BC wants to achieve that goal now, the rest of the economy will have to make an 81 per cent cut in the next eight years to accommodate growth in the natural gas industry.
