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Neither NDP nor Libs have green vision for BC: Cleantech CEO

Neither of B.C.'s two major political parties will transition the province to a truly green economy, a local cleantech executive said Thursday.

"The NDP and the Liberals really have lost the plot when it comes to establishing a [sustainable] vision," said Jason Bak, CEO of Finavera Wind Energy, a Vancouver-based wind farm developer.

Christy Clark's Liberals support a massive expansion of the province's liquefied natural gas industry, "which is going to make B.C. a huge carbon emitter," Bak said.

Clark has compared the future scale of the industry to Alberta's oil sands, but describes natural gas as a "clean energy" source.

Adrian Dix's NDP doesn't fare much better in Bak's opinion, for his party's equivocal position on the controversial Site C dam in northern B.C.

NDP energy critic John Horgan recently said he's "confident that in the first two years of an NDP government we won't be building Site C," but hasn't ruled the project out completely.

"Neither party has really found the mechanism to help bring their focus to clean energy," Bak said.

His comments came as a coalition of groups supporting clean energy announced a new proposal for B.C.'s carbon tax. Seen as world-leading five years ago, the province's climate initiatives have since lagged behind initiatives in Norway, California, China and other jurisdictions.

"We're calling on all parties to step forward and restore British Columbia's climate leadership," Merran Smith, Clean Energy Canada director at Tides Canada, told a press conference Thursday morning.

Tides Canada, along with the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, the David Suzuki Foundation, Organizing for Change and the Pembina Institute, would like to see B.C.'s carbon tax raised from its current rate of $30 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

They also want the tax expanded to include CO2 vented by B.C.'s natural gas industry, as well as uncovered emissions from aluminum, cement and other sectors.

"There's no reason the carbon tax can't be applied to them," Pembina Institute climate change program director Matt Horne said.

A higher, more comprehensive carbon tax could raise between $800 million to $1 billion in additional revenues for B.C. by 2016, the groups said, a portion of which could be invested in creating a greener economy.

The groups recently presented their proposal to the Liberals, NDP, Green Party and Conservatives. The Conservatives outright rejected it. Green leader Jane Sterk said it's "fairly closely aligned" with her party's policies.

Liberal environment minister Terry Lake, meanwhile, told the Vancouver Sun "I think the whole discussion of increasing the tax, of broadening the tax is a difficult one to have." The NDP has not yet issued a public response.

Finavera's Bak called the proposal a "really interesting mechanism," but said "it needs to be adopted by [B.C.'s political] parties to get any weight."

Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee.


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