Alberta has much on the line as UN climate conference gets set to begin
Global News
Alberta will be watching closely as the most significant global climate change summit since Paris in 2015 gets underway in Glasgow.
As world leaders descend on Glasgow this week for the start of the 2021 UN Climate Conference, Alberta, the Canadian jurisdiction with perhaps the most on the line, will be watching.
COP26, as it is known, will be the most significant global climate change summit since Paris in 2015.
At that time, Canada committed to reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, with the aim of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That target led directly to a number of actions taken by the Trudeau government, including the introduction of a federal price on carbon and a clean fuel standard that is on the way.
The federal government has since raised the bar for its own emissions reductions ambitions, saying it now aims for a 40 to 45 per cent reduction by 2035. To help meet that target, the government has announced five-year emissions reductions targets for the oil and gas industry as well as regulations around methane.
These types of policy implications are the reason why many in Alberta — home to Canada’s oil and gas industry — will be closely watching to see what comes of the Glasgow summit.
“It’s important. It does have influence on policy and the development of the resources,” said Tristan Goodman, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, a lobby group that represents oil and gas companies.
Goodman said while in the past, the oil and gas industry may have looked to the UN climate summits with a sense of trepidation, that’s no longer the case. Since Paris, Goodman said, the industry has undergone a sea change in its understanding of the climate change issue, with many companies making net-zero commitments of their own and investing in everything from hydrogen to carbon capture and storage to wind power.
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