Campaign promises don’t always lead to good environmental policy
As a person diagnosed with ADHD, I am familiar with the concept of having my attention stolen by a shiny thing, while I am trying to concentrate and work on a larger project.
I have learned techniques to deal (sometimes not entirely effectively) with a limited attention span in order to acknowledge the shiny thing while also staying on-task with the larger project.
The crisis of climate change, as it is now being referred to (was climate change ever not a crisis?) was amongst the top three issues that were of concern to voters in the federal election which took place at the time I was writing this column.
Now that we have a Liberal minority government, and the Green Party garnered a few more seats, the NDP holds the balance of power.
If those first two paragraphs seem disparate, and indicative of limited attention span, let me assure you that there is a connection. When it comes to the issue of climate change too many, in too many of our governments, both provincial and federal seem to see the automobile as the major contributor to climate change.
Political speeches will often contain phrases like, “transportation is responsible for 24 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions” when the speaker is talking about some automotive measure or regulation that is being introduced. While that number is correct for transportation, it is incorrect for light duty vehicles — which comprise about 13 per cent of Canada’s GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.
Is 13 per cent significant? Yes, but is it one of the largest sources of GHG emissions? No. Does that mean we shouldn’t do anything because,“It’s only 13 per cent”. No.
I think any reasonable person, including those in the automotive industry believes that the industry does need to address the 13 per cent of GHG emissions it is responsible for based on the products it puts into the market. What most reasonable people do not know, however, is that the GHG regulations that have been in place in Canada and North America since 2012 extending out to 2025 will actually decrease fuel consumption by 50 per cent compared to 2008.
Fuel consumption is a general proxy for GHG emissions so you can see the significance of what the industry has been doing to reduce its GHG footprint. And this is just the beginning. Global commitments to the Paris Agreement mean that global transportation must effectively decarbonize for us to meet our target of ensuring that global temperatures do not increase by more than two degrees Celsius.
The automotive industry is fully aware of this and has been investing hundreds of billions of dollars to bring advanced propulsion technologies to the market that reduce significantly, if not fully eliminate GHG emissions. These investments have been made, and will continue to be made, to ensure the vehicle companies can be compliant with ever-more stringent GHG emissions regulations, not just out to 2025 but beyond.
Now here is the important point where politicians frequently get blinded by shiny things. Politicians see only a portion of the fruition of a lot of the hard work that manufacturers have done to comply with the GHG regulations — either in North America or abroad.
Electric vehicles are the shiny things that have enamored politicians because they have zero or near zero emissions. EVs, however, are but one arrow in the quiver of arrows that manufacturers are using to hit the GHG target, yet policy makers are focusing on the one arrow as opposed to hitting the target. Anytime I talk to policy makers I remind them that setting GHG reduction targets for the automotive industry will necessarily generate more electric vehicles, as the only way to reach those targets will be through the application of more electrification.
Focusing on the shiny thing of the electric vehicle and imposing electric vehicle sales mandates a la Québec, however, and in the near future British Columbia, will NOT result in reduced GHG emissions from the light-duty vehicle sector. Why? There are actually a few reasons, but the most obvious is that there are more than 26 million vehicles registered in Canada at the moment and adding 40,000 or 50,000 or even 100,000 EVs to the vehicle park does nothing to address the emissions of vehicles that are already on the road.
Secondly, EV sales mandates currently do not reflect the fact that the current market (i.e. what consumers are actually purchasing) is skewed about 75 per cent-25 per cent in favour of SUVs and pick-up trucks.
Now, there will eventually be more than two or three EV SUV offerings in the marketplace, but right now there are not. It is not because manufacturers do not want to offer them, it has everything to do with current energy density and battery size. This is why the majority of EVs are smaller passenger cars. It is a very difficult proposition to persuade a consumer who is interested in an EV to purchase a compact passenger EV when what they really want is an EV SUV.
So, let’s come full circle back to our federal election. With a Liberal minority government, it seems likely to me that the Liberals — who were already predisposed to things like a national zero-emissions vehicle mandate and disaggregating from the United States insofar as GHG regulations are concerned — will only be pushed down that erroneous path more aggressively by the NDP and the Green Party. The focus will be much more on the shiny things — EVs, which equate to one of the tools to achieve the goal, as opposed to the goal itself, reduced GHG emissions from the light-duty vehicle sector.
If we are really serious about the latter, we will understand that to significantly address GHG emissions from the light duty fleet we need to do something with the vehicles that are already on the road and that may mean some kind of assistance to help consumers pay for necessary changes to their fuel delivery system and engine to accommodate things like higher renewable fuel content — which decreases GHG emissions from the fuel burned.
We may also need to encourage consumers who own vehicles in the oldest quartile of the vehicle fleet, to scrap their vehicles and either purchase a more fuel efficient vehicle — or not purchase a vehicle at all.
Please don’t consider this to be a diatribe against electric vehicles. I have a pure battery electric vehicle and I love it, but my wife does not. She has some of the same concerns and fears that many express, such as range anxiety, how to use the charging infrastructure, being inconvenienced if she has to stop to charge the vehicle.
My point is that for politicians, the sexy things/shiny things are not going to be the things that reduce GHG emissions from the light duty vehicle sector. Rather, the concerted efforts of government working in partnership with industry to realistically work on GHG emissions reduction from light-duty vehicle transportation will prevail.
