Without more timely and granular data about emissions by specific companies and their facilities, investors and lenders can’t accurately evaluate an individual company’s true financial exposure to carbon pricing.
The consequences are significant: It will take a herculean effort to reduce Canada’s emissions by the targeted 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 – let alone decarbonize the economy by 2050.
The decisions by investors – whether institutional or retail – and the terms for credit available to companies will determine what emissions-reduction investments are made, or if they are made at all.
The questionnaire includes detailed responses on a company’s emissions targets, investments in abatement projects and technology, emissions subject to different carbon pricing regimes, and the breakdown of Scope 1 and 2 emissions by geography, business unit and facility.
Data with the kind of detail and granularity required by the CDP is what the CSA should require companies to disclose.
The federal OBPS applies in provinces and territories that the federal government considers to lack strong enough carbon-pricing regimes of their own, or who request the system.
For example, if a facility’s emission intensity exceeds its benchmark by around 10 per cent, it would pay only $5 a tonne, even though the headline carbon price is $50 per tonne.
The OBPS benchmarks were purportedly based on the national, production-weighted average emissions intensity for each product.
Howe Institute, I used facility-level production data to show that federal carbon pricing regulations for electricity generators were biased in favour of coal and that Alberta’s carbon pricing regulations for the oil sands actually made lower-emissions facilities less economically competitive.
Unless governments in Canada make more data available, they are letting us fly blind on the implications of decarbonization and the energy transition.