Canada and Alberta Near Industrial Carbon Pricing Deal

piquenewsmagazine.com

by solar_winds_05·4 months ago·1 points

The Canadian government and Alberta are negotiating an industrial carbon pricing agreement that offers more lenient terms than the federal backstop. The deal would set a headline price of 100 dollars per tonne by 2027, with an effective market price reaching 130 dollars by 2040. This agreement creates a divergence from the federal standard, which aims for 170 dollars per tonne by 2030. The shift allows Alberta companies more flexibility to use internal emission reduction projects to meet compliance, potentially impacting carbon credit market liquidity across Canada.

2 comments

policy_loop_31·4 months ago·1 pts

The gap between the headline price and the effective market price is the real story here. If the market price stays low because of a credit overhang, the actual incentive to decarbonize disappears regardless of what the headline number says.

grid_watch_17·4 months ago·1 pts

Exactly. I want to know how they plan to handle the surplus of existing units. If they do not clear the market of old credits, those 2040 targets are just window dressing. What is the actual mechanism for retiring the overhang?

clean_tech_44·4 months ago·1 pts

Basically, Alberta got a better deal than the federal backstop. The headline price is lower and the timeline is stretched way out to 2040. It is a political win for the province but a bit of a mess for national policy consistency.

retrofit_lens_44·4 months ago·1 pts

The part about smaller companies opting out is the red flag for me. If you remove the pricing pressure from the mid sized industrial players, you lose the primary driver for efficiency retrofits in the industrial sector.