• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Ontario Votes: Metal Entrepreneur Says Carbon Pricing Saved His Business

June 5, 2018
Reading time: 3 minutes

Alfred Palmer/Wikimedia Commons

Alfred Palmer/Wikimedia Commons

 

With tomorrow’s provincial election too close to call, and one of the leading candidates for premier committed to phasing out the province’s carbon cap-and-trade program, a Cambridge, Ontario entrepreneur is crediting carbon pricing with keeping his metal fabrication business afloat.

“To politicians who propose to dismantle government initiatives that help prepare Ontario’s businesses for the low-carbon economy, I say it would be folly to stamp them out. It only exposes Ontario businesses to greater risk,” writes VeriForm Inc. President and founder Paul Rak in a Toronto Star op ed. “In many ways, I owe my company’s survival right now to a definitively low-carbon advantage.”

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

Rak credits the steps he took to prepare for a low-carbon economy with protecting his company from the aluminum and steel tariffs imposed by the Trump administration last week.

“The cost-saving innovations that VeriForm introduced to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to the low-carbon economy, beginning in 2006, are a big part of why we will weather the current Trump storm,” he writes. “It’s also what puts me firmly in favour of environmental regulations, including Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, which has been putting a price on carbon since January 2017. These initiatives push businesses to become competitive in the fast-evolving low-carbon economy, and to develop a low-carbon advantage that can make them more resilient.”

The changes at VeriForm began in 2006, when Rak introduced $46,000 in equipment upgrades and energy efficiency improvements—not because carbon pricing was driving the decision, but because government incentives made it easier.

“The outcome was astonishing,” he writes. “In the first year, our energy costs dropped by 58%. The equipment improvements paid themselves off in six months. Over the following 11 years, we instituted another 100 small and large efficiency upgrades to cut our utility costs even further,” while an in-house green team found “simple, low-tech solutions” to save energy and money.

All told, “these investments have added up to more than C$2 million in cost savings, helping to keep the business afloat during the recession and positioning us to grow our work force by 25,” Rak writes. Along the way, the company cut its carbon emissions 77%, from 262 to 60 tonnes per year.

“If every polluter in Canada achieved this level of reduction, we would meet our 2030 targets under the Paris Agreement twice over,” he notes. “VeriForm managed to achieve this in just 12 years, with the majority of our financial returns materializing in the first three to four years.”

VeriForm’s analysis based on that experience showed that every tonne of carbon the company emitted cost it $900. “That’s a startling figure, considering that Ontario charged just $18 per tonne through its 2017 cap-and-trade auctions,” he notes.

Meanwhile, environmental lawyer Lisa DeMarco of the Toronto law firm DeMarco Allan is attaching a high big-picture price tag to any effort by a future premier Doug Ford to withdraw Ontario from its cap-and-trade relationship with Quebec and California, calculating it would cost the province $2 to $4 billion to leave the market.

“That is in addition to a loss of some $2 billion in annual revenue the program raises from polluters,” National Observer notes. “Those funds are earmarked for further emission-reducing initiatives such as home and business retrofits, and electric vehicle subsidies and charging infrastructure.”

DeMarco told Observer the down sides of ending cap-and-trade would include the cost of buying back allowances Ontario has already bought to cover emissions past 2020, plus up to $100 million in litigation. “You can imagine our neighbours to the south are not as conciliatory in general as Canadian companies, and I imagine there will be significant litigation associated with that,” she told Observer’s Alastair Sharp.

With the election in the offing, Rolly Montpelier at Below2C is out with a comparison of the four major parties’ positions on carbon pricing, fossil subsidies, greenhouse gas emission targets, and more.



in Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr
Clean Electricity Grid

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
EcoAnalytics
Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
326
Climate Denial & Greenwashing

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
229

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

February 4, 2023
331
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
326
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
123
openthegovernment.org

BREAKING: U.S. Senate Passes Historic $369B Climate Package

August 8, 2022
541
Sam Balto/YouTube

Elementary School’s Bike Bus Brings ‘Sheer Joy’ to Portland Neighbourhood

February 5, 2023
262

Recent Posts

Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Next Post
Mark Klotz/Flickr

Pipeline Backlash Grows, Ignoring McKenna’s Advice That It’s ‘Time to Move On’

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}