Canadian province to implement carbon tax

The province that’s home to Canada’s oil sands industry is planning to implement a tax on all carbon dioxide emissions.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, leader of the province’s New Democratic Party that came to power in May, announced Sunday the plan for a C$20 ($14.97) tax per metric ton of carbon emitted, starting in 2017, the Globe and Mail reported.

{mosads}The package of reforms to fight climate change also includes a 15-year phase-out of coal-fired power plants, restrictions on methane emissions and renewable energy incentives.

“Alberta is leading again,” Notley said in Edmonton, according to the Globe and Mail. “The government of Alberta is going to stop being the problem and we are going to start being the solution.”

The plan makes Alberta one of the leading jurisdictions in the world on fighting climate change, a unique position given the province’s dependence on oil sands, one of the most carbon-intensive petroleum varieties in the world in terms of lifecycle emissions.

The oil sands industry will have specific emissions caps under the plan.

Notley credited the recent rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil sands petroleum from Alberta to the United States’s Gulf Coast, with her government’s drive to move forward on climate.

“We got a major wake-up call a few weeks ago in the form of a kick in the teeth from the government of the United States,” Notley said. “Unfairly in my view, the president of the United States claimed that our production is some of the dirtiest oil in the world. That is the reputation that mistaken government policy in the past has earned for us.”

The leaders of four of Canada’s largest oil sands producers put out a joint statement Sunday praising the climate plan and saying they support it.