What about the oil sands? Harper’s goal of 90% emission-free electricity by 2020 not so ambitious
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Prime Minister Stephen Harper, recently re-elected, gave his Throne Speech today and reiterated the Conservative party’s campaign promise of having 90 per cent of Canada’s electricity come from “non-emitting” sources by 2020. The media have characterized this as “ambitious,” and while it seems so on the surface, it’s not so challenging when you look at the numbers.
In fact, what it really means is increasing the amount of power we get from non-emitting sources by 25 per cent. But using a figure like 90 per cent sounds a lot more impressive than 25 per cent. (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca