Infrastructure, Governance and Global Energy Futures: Regulating the Oil Sands Pipelines

摘要

Federal legislation to push the scope of NEB decision factors back to earlier largely provincial assessment and regulatory oil sands decisions, once a political nonstarter, now seems likely through the federal environmental assessment initiative. Its scope and rigor will become the issues. In their most recent strategy,208 Premiers have toyed with "transitional" policy ideas to a lower-carbon economy while meeting current and future energy needs. These include examining the potential use of appropriate initiatives that encourage the marketplace to reduce or eliminate emissions, such as carbon pricing, carbon capture and storage and other technological innovations. They acknowledge that carbon management mechanisms will vary in nature, depending on the unique needs of a jurisdiction and in that regard undertake to identify elements and opportunities to promote collaboration. They also explored various approaches to emissions reporting requirements and to apply consistent and co-ordinated approaches across Canada. Given the uncertainty, adaptive management would appear to be a viable route for any transitional policy.~(209)