Olivia Woods
On Tuesday, Deloitte Canada released a new report, which claims that the government of Canada won’t be able to meet its emissions reduction target by 2030 without a stronger strategy for developing and using clean tech.
According to Deloitte’s partner in financial advisory and national clean technology leader, Karen Hamberg, Canada’s climate plan ignores this.
“There’s been incredible analysis and activity around our net-zero 2050 target, around the 2030 emission reduction plan,” said Hamberg. “They’ve analyzed ‘is it feasible, what’s it going to cost, what type of investment is needed,’ but one piece that’s always been missing is the degree to which made-in-Canada clean technology is going to be part of our solutions and how it’s going to be deployed domestically as part of our 2030 and 2050 goals.”
The report states that Canada has several companies and programs developing clean technology, but to reduce emissions, this technology must go beyond visions and pilot projects.
However, as Hamberg pointed out, this will require a significant overhaul of many of our industries, which will call for a large variety of logistics currently being overlooked.
“There’s a whole commercial ecosystem that needs to be built up for the successful deployment of these clean technologies at scale,” said Hamberg.
“Until we actually think about the whole commercial ecosystem that needs to come to be put in place, we’re just not going to make the progress that we need in time for 2030 or 2050.”
According to Hamberg, it will take another 12–15 years to completely commercialize some of the clean tech that is only entering the market now.
“2030 is seven years away,” she said. “It is the technology that’s commercially available today that’s going to get us to that 40 to 45 per cent emission reduction target.”
Deloitte’s report also addressed the problems and possible solutions in each of the seven economic sectors that contribute to Canada’s total greenhouse gas production.
The oil and gas industry, responsible for 26% of Canada’s emissions, faces challenges to the transition to clean technology due, for example, to infrastructural bottlenecks and the potential reluctance of companies to risk losing production.
She hopes the federal government’s Regional Energy and Resources Tables will take this report into account as it sorts through key objectives for carbon reduction and economic growth related to reducing emissions, and she also hopes that this report will encourage companies and governments to begin thinking more on how to grow clean tech in Canada.
“I’m certainly hopeful and very optimistic that the public sector — so whether it’s federal or provincial — continue to look at the demand side of the equation, as well as the supply side, and … recognizing that there have been significant investments made in clean teach for the last 20 years, that tech is now ready to be commercially deployed today.”
Original source material for this article taken from here
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings