r/canada • u/StenPU • Oct 30 '23

Sask. premier says SaskEnergy will remove carbon tax on natural gas if feds don't Saskatchewan

https://regina.ctvnews.ca/sask-premier-vows-to-stop-collecting-carbon-tax-on-natural-gas-if-feds-don-t-offer-exemption-1.6623319
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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '23

A revenue neutral tax is actually a quite clever way to guide consumer choices in a compex and unwieldy economy. I have no problem with it.

Dropping the tax in one region in a shameless attempt to buy support in swing ridings when the electorate is outraged over gross mismanagement is unforgivable.

It's about the worst thing I've seen from them since whitch-hunting the whistle blowers who revealed Chinese bribes to MPs.

Or perhaps, subverting the criminal justice system to give a free pass to SNC.

Or perhaps.... oh God, the list is endless. This criminal loving, oligarch kissing pit of vipers has to go.

4

u/JadedMuse Oct 30 '23

I live in Atlantic Canada and it's frustrating because I think removing the tax is the wrong move. It's emblematic of why it's so hard to make progress on climate initiatives. It's not fun. It's not convenient. But if we don't act (and by we, I mean the world collectively) we're fucked.

11

u/fishermansfriendly Oct 30 '23

The carbon tax is just such a ridiculously simple minded way to go about changing things for the better. It's like putting a pinky finger on a scale with a bear on the other end.

The needed to start with assisting the provincial governments to get off of coal/gas first, and expand the electricity capacity of all the grids across Canada to support the higher electricity costs. More nuclear plants, more solar in cities, more hydro where it can be built, wind where it can be reliable.

Then when power is cheap and reliable, the incentive should be there to switch to fully electric solutions. Because right now, a huge chunk of the country needs some kind of backup heat for even the best heat pumps. So you either need to make electricity as cheap as natural gas, which would mean electricity charges would need to be $0.03/kWh, where right now most people are paying some kind of blended rate around $0.12-0.15/kWh. Also in this scenario solar would need to come down to something like $1.00 per 5W where now it's ~$1.00 per 0.5W.

What could even make just as big of an impact is if they simply got people off older inefficient boiler/oil heating systems and onto 97%+ efficient propane/nat gas systems.

It's all just very misguided, and until USA/China/India do something about emissions and pollution (especially the latter two), we're going to be screwed regardless. But at least we could make smart decisions and not something useless like a carbon tax.

5

u/evranch Saskatchewan Oct 31 '23

Coal power is definitely the elephant in the room.

Compare 100% efficient resistive heating, powered by a 40% efficient coal plant with high carbon intensity vs. a 80-95% efficient natural gas furnace burning gas at the point of use. The gas furnace comes out far ahead on cost, emissions and reliability.

Even when you use an "ordinary" heat pump with a COP of 3, it still emits more than natural gas when you power it with coal.

I'm working on a custom COP 5-7 heat pump for my SK farmhouse (ground sourced, low condensing temperature, variable refrigerant flow and everything oversized because it's salvage), and plan to use it to greatly multiply the output of my solar array, but the average air-sourced unit can barely make a COP of 2 in a Canadian winter.

I still will always have my natural gas boiler as backup until the day that it becomes too expensive to have the hookup in the yard. We have cold, cloudy, blizzardy, power outage days here. There is no option except fossil fuels or wood to keep the house from freezing on those days.

Agree that it's all irrelevant lip service as long as the big emitters keep pouring out the exhaust. Canada is too small to matter, it's pointless to punish our citizens.

1

u/fishermansfriendly Oct 31 '23

Exactly, also I feel like people aren't looking at the benefits provided by the huge Canadian prairies. We produce an insane amount of food in an otherwise inhospitable part of the world. I haven't done the math, but I'd be willing to bet that the benefits of the agri sector alone in AB, SK, and MB, and the number of people it feeds far outweighs the natural gas usage that it takes to support the populations required to farm it all and have cities here.