EvC Bonus - Hot Topic: Carbon Tax

New BONUS Podcast Episode
Canada's consumer carbon tax policy has been getting a lot of press attention of late, especially following the $15/T increase that took affect on April 1, 2024. Much has been said about it across the political spectrum, some of it accurate, and some of it just plain wrong. David's away this month, so it's just Sara and Ed talking all things carbon tax with special guest Mark Jaccard.  

About Our Guest
Mark Jaccard has been a prof at Simon Fraser University since 1986 save a couple of sabbaticals serving as Chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission. Mark has served on the IPCC, domestically on the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, and he’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and CD Howe Institute. His most recent book is the “The Citizen’s Guide for Climate Success,” published in 2021.

Show Notes:
(00:06:20) – Low Carbon Fuel Standards in Canada
(00:08:37) – Designing flexible regulations to mitigate climate change: A cross-country comparative policy analysis
(00:12:37) – Top Runner Programme
(00:14:36) – Choose Wisely - Options and Trade-offs in Recycling Carbon Pricing Revenues
(00:16:55) – Bridging the Gap: Real Options for Meeting Canada’s 2030 GHG Target
(00:19:13) – Assessing climate sincerity in the Canadian 2021 election
(00:23:25) – Independent Assessment: 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan
(00:32:22) – Rebates rise as carbon price increases to $80 per tonne
(00:33:37) – Designing flexible regulations to mitigate climate change: A cross-country comparative policy analysis
(00:36:57) – The Political Costs of Oil Price Shocks
(00:39:50) – Exploring Citizen Support for Different Types of Climate Policy
(00:54:07) – Inside what ‘axe the tax’ means to Pierre Poilievre’s supporters: ‘He understands Canadians’

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Transcript

EvC Bonus - Hot Topic: Carbon Tax

[00:00:00] Ed: Hey EVC listeners and viewers, it's Ed here. We've got some special bonus content for you. Canada's consumer carbon tax policy has been getting a lot of press attention of late, especially following the 15 per ton increase that took effect on April 1st, 2024. Much has been said about it across the political spectrum, some of it accurate and some of it just plain wrong.

[00:00:25] Ed: So we at EVC thought it worthwhile to try to cut through the noise and hype on this hot topic. And who better to help us to do that than Canadian economist Mark Jaccard. Mark has been a prof at Simon Fraser University since 1986, save for a couple of sabbaticals when he served as chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.

[00:00:45] Ed: He's actually on one of those sabbaticals right now. Mark has served on the IPCC, domestically on the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, and he's a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the C. D. Howe Institute. His most recent book is The Citizen's Guide for Climate Success, published in 2021.

[00:01:04] Ed: Dave is away this month, so it's just Sarah and me talking all things carbon tax with Mark Jackard. Enjoy this special show. Mark Jaccard, welcome back to Energy vs. Climate. Happy to be here. Well, let's start off. This is like an ask Mark anything session to do. With, uh, carbon pricing with a particular focus on the consumer carbon tax, but let's start at the broadest level.

[00:01:30] Ed: Are carbon taxes really essential? And the follow up to that would be, how much impact does carbon pricing truly have on emission reductions? To the degree that we know when we're still relatively early in this grand experiment with carbon pricing in Canada. 

[00:01:47] Mark: I mean, I have to say that, and this is almost blasphemy as an energy economist, But actually carbon taxes are not essential.

[00:01:57] Mark: And in fact, even carbon pricing is not essential, which would be, uh, including cap and trade, uh, along with carbon, um, carbon pricing. Or maybe I should say explicit carbon pricing is not essential because if you put in certain kinds of regulations that allow trading among people to achieve the regulatory targets, And you can actually work out an implicit carbon price, but I'm, I'm probably overcomplicating.

[00:02:22] Mark: And I think the point I just want to make is you, you can get there, you can get down to zero greenhouse gas emissions in an economy by using carbon pricing alone, by using a combination of carbon pricing with regulations and maybe subsidies. And, and by using, um, regulations alone or regulations alone with subsidies.

[00:02:44] Mark: So to me, the carbon price is, uh, is not essential. Well that's, that's good to know. We'll want to probe 

[00:02:49] Ed: that. Uh, Sarah? 

[00:02:50] Sara: Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll, I'll throw in my two cents on that since I'm not a, not an economist, although people sometimes say that I play one on TV. I agree with what you're saying with the, with the big caveat though of sort of the time element, right?

[00:03:04] Sara: And like, once we've gone down this road of carbon pricing in Canada. I think there is some question of like, okay, so is it, is it necessary, you know, could we have designed a climate plan in Canada five, 10 years ago that didn't have carbon pricing and, you know, achieved emissions reductions? You know, I don't think there's any reason the answer to that is no.

[00:03:25] Sara: Do we have time to now roll back carbon pricing as we have it and replace it with those regulations given, you know, the, the relatively short runway we have left to meet our targets? I guess there, I'm more, I'm more question, I have bigger question marks about that, right, in terms of how long that would actually take and, uh, you know, which, which you do first.

[00:03:45] Sara: So, but I'm, I'm curious your, your thoughts on that too. 

[00:03:48] Mark: There's been much talk about, uh, how carbon pricing was, it's been the key thrust now of the Canadian federal government and therefore sort of through the Canadian confederation since about, uh, you know, 2000, 2000. A government arriving in 2015, finally getting this in in 2017, 18, and it becoming official and so on in 2019.

[00:04:10] Mark: But at the same time, before, 20 years before, we were doing regulations. Um, and so those regulations on vehicles and fuels and how you generate electricity. Um, those have all been there and they've also been reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that, that's just at the federal level. And then of course at the provincial level, all sorts of stuff, Ontario saying we're going to close down all our coal plants and they didn't use carbon pricing to do that.

[00:04:37] Mark: So, I guess, I guess my point is I'm always going to want to look at what were the other regulations we had and I'll just give you one extreme here. When, uh, when the Rachel Notley government. put out its climate policy plan in whatever that was, maybe 2000, 2015, 2015, we, my group, somehow she got talked into a carbon tax.

[00:05:05] Mark: I would have never suggested that in that jurisdiction at that time. It was a baby carbon tax. We, and then she had also various things like putting a cap on oil and gas emissions and so on. And, but also other policies that she called her climate plan. And so my group laudled that and we found that of the reductions that would be caused, you know, the moving from business as usual down, that would be caused by her policies, that the carbon price was less than 5%.

[00:05:35] Mark: So it was in the, it was in the, uh, uncertainty bounds of the effect of any policy, the other things were doing it all. And so I just think, Oh my goodness, you know, would we say that she was on a carbon pricing path? Because she wasn't in my view. And so, um, but of course this did a good job, I think, of ensuring that she wouldn't get re elected.

[00:05:55] Ed: Notley, actually, on the carbon tax, when she first had an idea, she won a surprise victory in May 2015, um, that she said, okay, well, the one thing that we want to do that wasn't in our platform is a carbon tax. And she actually looked at the model, the Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark, like the B. C. Liberal Party model, because Horgan, and said, okay, well, we're going to do that.

[00:06:19] Ed: And folks like us, including Andrew Leach, uh, convinced her to do that. And a whole lot more. We stuffed a lot into that climate leadership plan. But what, people often compare and contrast Canada and the U. S. And they'll say, look at what the U. S. is doing. It doesn't have a carbon tax, you know, and the Congress knows it's going to spend its way to its emissions reductions target, including through IRA.

[00:06:44] Ed: But then, and this is a question to you, You have low carbon fuel standards in three states that I'm aware of in Washington, Oregon, and California. So those, correct me if I'm wrong, are those not a form of, of carbon pricing, and therefore, it's obviously a hybrid approach in the United States? So the low 

[00:07:03] Mark: carbon fuel standard, I call a flex regulation, and we can get into that, uh, in a minute.

[00:07:08] Mark: I would call that an implicit carbon price, not an explicit carbon price. And, um, and yes, the United States Well, I would argue it doesn't have a lot of carbon pricing at all. I think you'd agree with me on that, but we can debate that. Um, it, it's got a lot of regulations though. So when it, when people say, Oh, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of subsidies, is the thing that's going to flip the U.

[00:07:30] Mark: S. economy. As a modeler, I'm really nervous about some of the modeling that says just how much is going to reduce. Uh, how much emissions are going to fall in the United States because of all those subsidies. It's a great industrial policy, and I think it will have a significant effect on emissions. But the Americans have, you have all these states with renewable portfolio standards in the electricity sector, you do, the federal government in the United States has always had like these efficiency, which are also efficiency and greenhouse gas regulations in transportation, um, light duty vehicles, but right up the line.

[00:08:04] Mark: And then you've got states, as you said, Ed, who are. Um, well, again, states doing renewable portfolio standards, um, feds have had the, the federal government, the United States has had emissions regulations were to do with acid emissions, but some efforts there regulatory. And then you've got states that are doing, I think it's more than three, the low carb fuel standard, but anyway, whatever.

[00:08:26] Mark: And then the ZEV mandate, um, and so on and so forth. So it's a mishmash. Uh, in most jurisdictions of regulation, explicit pricing, and implicit pricing. 

[00:08:37] Sara: So you've started to answer it a little bit, I think, already, but, but you mentioned flexible regulations or flex regs before. Can you say a little bit more about, you know, specific examples and also how they compare in terms of cost to the carbon tax?

[00:08:52] Mark: What I mean by flexible regulations, and the reason, um, I started to use a term like that and some other colleagues is because. A lot of, again, my economist brothers and sisters and thems and others, um, you know, have a tendency to say, Oh, there's over here is carbon pricing and it could be cap and trade or a carbon tax.

[00:09:16] Mark: And then over here is regulations. And they're all just this one amorphous thing and regulations are inefficient and that economists have shown that over and over and over again. And I think a lot of. I think that's, that literature is, um, is indisputable and it's literature related to regulations that are very prescriptive.

[00:09:38] Mark: Regulations that are picking technology, this technology and that technology. You have to have an efficiency of a device of this amount. Um, so these are, you know, the traditionally called command and control or prescriptive regulations. Well, that approach to reducing acid emissions, local air pollution, uh, and other kinds of pollutants.

[00:10:00] Mark: Um, is tends to be more expensive than if you can use a pricing instrument, you know, there's a regulation you have to hit. 30% sales of zero emission vehicles. Tesla hits a hundred percent. It's got 70% extra credits that it can sell to someone else. So there's trading going on. That would be one attribute, uh, a key attribute of a, of a, of a flexible regulation.

[00:10:26] Mark: It's not the same regulation applied to each entity. Then another thing is it can have flexibility within itself. So it says, it doesn't say. You have to have an electric car. It says it has to be a zero emission car. So maybe it's hydrogen, maybe it's electricity. And then there are ways to do it. Banking and borrowing and timelines.

[00:10:46] Mark: And I won't go into all of that, but that's the main point is that it's a regulation. That has a certain amount of flexibility to it. Now, back to your question though. Does, uh, is that really improve things in terms of cost? Um, or is it still just as costly as those, you know, technology picking, uh, regulations?

[00:11:05] Mark: Well, I've been involved, There are, I've been involved in both speculative analysis of this as an energy economy modeler. I'll model the effect of these things. Uh, and then there's also hindsight analysis of these kinds of policies. Those of us who model it and say you use that regulation to get all the way there, to get to a zero mission with a whole fleet, all the sails are zero mission vehicles, or you're moving to renewable electricity generation or zero mission electricity generation.

[00:11:35] Mark: We find that while these things are a bit expensive early on, um, they actually can be almost as cheap as carbon pricing in getting to a given target. When we say they could be inefficient, first of all, um, we're trying to make this as efficient as possible within the sector where the regulation is. So, say it's a, a methane cap in oil and gas production, or it's a zero emission vehicle mandate, or it's a low carbon fuel standard.

[00:12:01] Mark: Um, we're It covers a few sectors, maybe, but you try to make, but then the challenge is, have you set the stringency for each one of your flexible regulations in each sector? So that, you know, the, what we call the marginal costs are roughly equal across sectors. You could have intra sector inefficiency or inter sector inefficiency.

[00:12:24] Mark: So, I'm not saying this thing's perfect. Um, actually, if you look at carbon pricing, we do different carbon prices in different sectors as well. Um, and you're seeing a lot of that. Sorry, and thanks for your patience. 

[00:12:37] Sara: No, that's great. I got to throw in my favorite flexible regulation, uh, because I think, you know, everybody has to have a favorite flexible energy efficiency regulation.

[00:12:44] Sara: Mine's the Japanese Top Runner program, which I think has been around since like the late 90s. And it basically is a sort of automatically updating energy efficiency, uh, program where they set minimum energy efficiency standards across product categories on the basis of, uh, and I'm going to get the details wrong, but you know, it's something like the top quartile performers inform the future regs.

[00:13:08] Sara: And I think that's such a neat, um, policy for a couple of reasons, both because it has this inherent sort of Continuous improvement built into it, so it's not like you pass the policy one time and then it sits there static kind of forever. Um, but it's also very informed by what is possible, right? And sort of a race to the top if you want to.

[00:13:27] Mark: Yes, make them, make them flexible. Absolutely. So, um, uh, but for me, I'm, that takes me one step further away because I'm thinking of flexible regulations that really go after getting us from something that burns oil, coal, or natural gas to something that doesn't burn it. And so that the challenge with efficiency is always that whole all about rebound effect and the actual total effectiveness of it.

[00:13:52] Mark: But yes, they're designed flexibly. So great point. 

[00:13:57] Ed: Mark, I want to ask you just, well, we're going to differentiate between the consumer carbon tax and industrial carbon pricing, but there was this gotcha moment that hit the press when Scott Mo premier of Saskatchewan made his committee appearance I think late last week.

[00:14:12] Ed: And he was, you know, he's, he's part of the band that is beating the drum against the, the raid hike that went into effect yesterday. And of course he's gone as far as telling his finance minister to stop collecting revenue and at the, you know, potential peril of, of, of going to jail. And, and his finance minister has funnily quipped saying, yeah, send me to carbon tax jail.

[00:14:36] Ed: But Scott Moe, the gotcha moment was, he said, We have modeled other approaches that our government could take, and they all turned out to be costlier than the carbon tax. And that's, that's, so as someone who's been looking at it, I've had that drummed into me by economists, by the Eco Fiscal Commission, by the Chris Reagans of the world.

[00:14:57] Ed: This is the lowest cost instrument, but you're saying that that is not necessarily the case. Well, I have a great 

[00:15:04] Mark: story there, um, so don't send this to Chris Reagan or let him look at it, but, um, yeah, yeah, just hold your ears for a little bit and then we'll, we'll wave Chris and you can listen again. In sort of the, the last days of the Ecofiscal Commission, I, they had, they had put stuff on their website that said carbon taxes are essential and I really pushed back on them and I was like, come on, they're not essential.

[00:15:29] Mark: You got to tell the truth in this world. Um, so they finally removed some of that and their executive director, who I have a lot of time for, Dale Bugin, former grad student of mine, we're very close. So we were having lots of fun fights. And finally, they came to Vancouver and they said, Mark, okay, there was something went, Oh, I know Doug Ford got elected and, um, and you know, so I'm tearing up carbon pricing and he got Ontario out of the, uh, the so called Western Climate Initiative, which is just the Quebec, California cap and trade system.

[00:16:00] Mark: Um, And they said, you know, we're getting a lot of pushback on carbon pricing. So let's, let's do some modeling for the last stage of the eco fiscal commission. So they hired Navius again, um, my former students, Jonathan Peters and the team. And they, um, and they, and I said, well, why don't you do a jacquard run?

[00:16:20] Mark: And so the jacquard run will be, we're going to use, uh, in each key sector, we're going to have a flexible regulation. And then we'll compare that to, uh, the carbon tax, uh, runs. And I still have all that saved. Um, and Dale said to me, when I sent it to him, uh, like a year or two ago, he said, You still saved that.

[00:16:39] Mark: We thought we got rid of everything. Because after they saw these results, It turned out the flexible regulations, now remember this is us modeling it, so it could be a function of how we model, I'm not trying to say we've, it's definitive, but the modeling showed that the carbon tax was, was only slightly more efficient.

[00:16:55] Mark: Then the Eco Fiscal Commission wrote out its last report, and it expunged all the results related to the, uh, the flexible reg, uh, Side of it. Um, and so Jotham and I have been planning to publish an academic paper or something, not pointing fingers at anyone, but just showing. The results, and I said to Dale Buget, I said, why didn't Ecofiscal put in all the results from all the modeling he did?

[00:17:22] Mark: And he said, we couldn't get it past our board or something like that. I don't know. So it's a classic case of, you know, if you, you don't really want to hear something, then you'll find a way not to hear it. Um, so that's my story. 

[00:17:35] Ed: That Dale, Dale and Chris the truth comes to light and a shock you Everyone you heard it here on energy versus climate first.

[00:17:43] Ed: These are good friends And so I hope they'll stay good friends, but I had to say that Don't worry. Only eight people listen to this podcast, Mark, and they're all good friends. Sorry, Sarah. What are you? 

[00:17:54] Sara: Oh, I just, I was going to jump in with a bit of a defense and a bit of a broader context here. And I think this is actually sort of, to me, reflective of part of the challenge of, you know, climate and energy policy outside of, uh, outside of a discussion on a, on a podcast like this, which is, uh, Twofold, maybe.

[00:18:11] Sara: So one is, you know, we're talking about do you need a carbon price and can other regulations, you know, take their, take its place. That's, of course, very much not the conversation that's going on, uh, across Canada right now with the act, well, I'm putting quotes, air quotes, axe the tax, uh, campaign, right, which is very much not, You know, get rid of the tax and bring in a set of smart, flexible regulations, but axe the tax because it's the, you know, cause of, uh, unaffordability and all these problems.

[00:18:38] Sara: Um, and so, yeah, I guess I just, I wanted to sort of recognize that point and, and say that, and, and it's a little bit maybe reflective of also what we try to do on this show, which is to say that there are You know, when you get into the weeds of the policy design and the questions, there is a lot of nuance there, but there's just not a lot of nuance then in that discussion that's happening at that other level.

[00:18:58] Sara: And, and I think the, you know, the, the discussion of axe attacks and the unaffordability and the just complete disregard for the consumer facing rebates is like Orders of magnitude, of course, more problematic than, you know, flexible regs versus, versus carbon pricing. 

[00:19:13] Mark: I use a term in the, the last book of mine, The Citizen's Guide to Climate Success, climate sincere and climate insincere politicians.

[00:19:21] Mark: And, um, so, you know, you could have a politician who says, I'm not going to do a carbon tax anymore. So here are the stringent regulations. Here's where their levels will be. Here's the mechanisms to help low income people who might be more effective than others or how I'm designing them. And so they do that all in one package.

[00:19:42] Mark: Um, as opposed to a politician who might say, Um, this is going to destroy the economy, it's making poor people poorer, and I'm going to get rid of it, and doesn't really tell you how they're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Absolutely. Um, you know, and, and that's, and, and it's an interesting thing because, um, we might at some point get back to the big battles we had in British Columbia with the carbon tax where the, the, the political positions were reversed, which is kind of fun.

[00:20:12] Mark: But it was the. NDP provincially in 2008, 9, and 10, who launched a giant Axe the Tax campaign. And me and my PhD student, Nick Rivers, spent all of our time, um, doing op eds in the Vancouver Sun to counter the NDP misinformation. So I've been able to be, to prove that I'm nonpartisan because, um, but I was going to talk about, uh, Aaron O'Toole.

[00:20:39] Mark: So, as leader of the Conservative Party, gets in, gets in as leader, is going to run an election campaign and, um, and he knows that in his own party, he's got to figure out the carbon tax and how are we doing this and how are we going to call it? Can I stay alive in my party and also still win federally?

[00:20:56] Mark: And, and he didn't start an Axe the Tax campaign. He said, We'll keep it at 50, and then we need to blend in flexible regulations. So, they approached me, they approached Navius, and then, um, I worked for free, of course. Navius was in a consulting contract to the Conservative Party of Canada, um, and did, and did a bunch of scenarios for, for, um, Aaron O'Toole.

[00:21:22] Mark: So, I, I'm just saying that, um, you know, I'm not trying to say that Pierre Poiliev is insincere. I mean, I, I would like to see some policies by now that he intends to put in instead of the carbon tax. And to Aaron O'Tooles credit, uh, he was very serious about that. So we had to, we did runs and we had to keep changing the stringency of the flex regs until they would finally achieve, um, Canada's target.

[00:21:45] Mark: 'cause he said, I'm still gonna achieve Canada's pairs of commit commitment, but I'm not gonna have a continually rising carbon tax. 

[00:21:52] Ed: Yeah. And here we are now, pining for the good old days of Aaron O'Toole in the way that many in the US are. With, uh, with Donald Trump back on the scene pining for the good old days of, uh, you know, George W.

[00:22:03] Ed: Bush. And so, Pierre Polyev is not Aaron O'Toole, uh, meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss, and certainly on things like his climate plan. I attended a talk that he gave to the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference, it would have been about this time last year, and the only bigger applause line he had than axe attacks was, I'm gonna defund the CBC.

[00:22:27] Ed: So I think that might actually be act one, or an attempt at it, where he'd become prime minister, which the polls say is likely, uh, you know, 18 months from now. That brings up, brings me back to the question I want to ask, is just industrial carbon pricing versus the consumer carbon tax. Because people are worried.

[00:22:45] Ed: That when Poliev and Scott Moe and others say axe the tax, that if they do successfully axe the consumer carbon tax, then they will keep on going. And the assumption in some circles is that the consumer carbon tax is a nice to have in an overall approach to, uh, reducing emissions. And, and you talked about some of the, the, uh, the other approaches that a government or a politician could take.

[00:23:15] Ed: But industrial carbon pricing is a need to have, and it's doing the heavy lifting in terms of emissions reduction. Is that the right, is that the right assumption? So let's be 

[00:23:26] Mark: nice and crude and say half of our emissions are from emission intensive trade exposed industries. I think you're referring to something that I looked at just recently as well, which was from our friends, well, Dale and company at the Climate Institute.

[00:23:38] Mark: Um, And so I think that would have been a scenario in which they ran the carbon price backstop in the output based pricing system to continue on up to 170 and then said, like, you know, while they did the same on the residential side and said, look at this, this output based pricing system policy is going to get this, you know, 50 percent or 60 percent of our reductions And so make sure you don't get rid of that policy.

[00:24:08] Mark: When we first came up with the output based pricing system, the federal government, and some of this is copied on what, um, what Alberta started, um, in 2005, an intensity based, what I call an intensity based regulation on large industry, um, you know, when, when they, when they, you know, When the federal government did that, I called it a flex reg with a penalty at a carbon price or whatever.

[00:24:36] Mark: If we want to call it now an output based pricing system, it's really a bunch of carbon intensity regulations on individual sectors. And, you know, like tons of CO2 per ton of steel or whatever per barrel of oil. Um, what really matters is if those carbon intensities keep getting more intense over time.

[00:25:00] Mark: So the stringency improves. Otherwise, then you might say, Oh, great. We kept the output based pricing system and it has the rising carbon price as, as what's still incentivizing any kind of reductions. Cause if you do those reductions, you can sell credits to some other industry, but that's only if everybody's up against their constraints.

[00:25:25] Mark: It, um, and so they need to buy credits from someone cause maybe they're getting offsets and maybe they're trading among each other. And so maybe your stringencies aren't so much that your output, the price, the backstop price, uh, in the output based pricing system is not really a binding price, then it wouldn't get all the reductions that were shown in that recent modeling.

[00:25:50] Mark: Um, so what, what's my point here? I would love it if we. I've kept the output based pricing system, obviously, and I don't, I haven't seen anything from the conservatives to say that they would get rid of it, but I understand people would be concerned about that. So I, I share that concern. Um, at the same time though, I know the proof is in the pudding.

[00:26:13] Mark: So just keeping that thing doesn't really help you. It depends if the carbon price is still rising and if the stringencies of the intensity requirements are still falling. Uh, and this is the same as you have in any kind of. Either whether a regular cap, absolute cap and trade system or an intensity based cap and trade system.

[00:26:32] Mark: Uh, and you have those, you've had those issues in Europe, you have them in California and so on. 

[00:26:36] Ed: So, um, Mark, let's, let's talk about these rebates because you hear axe the tax, spike the hike, and then you hear representatives of the federal government or their supporters Saying, yeah, but, you know, the average Canadian gets more money back than what the average Canadian, the average Canadian family pays.

[00:26:57] Ed: And that's the way that we can justify it. So why would you want to do this? Hey everyone, we're in the money. And, you're getting the price signal to shift away from, to, you know, shift, say, from, uh, internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. But then you're getting that money, and so you're being left whole, or you're being left more than whole.

[00:27:17] Ed: So, first of all, like, why do we need to give back carbon tax revenue, and does that then not negate the price signal in the end? Is it not counterproductive? Are Canadians not figuring out, oh sure, well I could move away from my I. C. E. vehicle and go EVs, but, but, you know, I'm being kept whole, I'm getting that money, and then in the end it doesn't incentivize the kind of behavioral change that, 

[00:27:43] Mark: We, we economists have just been assuming that, that a carbon tax works because enough people will figure out that the amount a, a carbon tax with a grant rebate, um, enough people will figure out, oh yeah, all of us are going to get the same amount of money back per person or per household, um, or within our income category.

[00:28:06] Mark: And yet if I am, I'm the one who just takes transit and doesn't drive my gas guzzler or cycles or has a, or I can afford an electric vehicle, I'm still going to get the same amount back as my neighbor. So I guess economists, um, you know, still think that there's enough, um, enough people out there that can, can add that up.

[00:28:28] Mark: So, but in terms of, uh, what's the survey show or behavioral like revealed or stated preference, I don't actually know the literature on that. So I can't. So, I think we, we economists just kind of believe that. I think an interesting question though is, um, and I think that was embedded in the beginning of your question, is how do you give the money back?

[00:28:49] Mark: And there's both a political side to that, but I'll just stick with the, not the political side, but just what are the options, right? So, you know, one option is you make sure you give the money back to each other and check. And they're as visible as possible, so that's the big idea. In British Columbia, when the government put in a carbon tax, I was actually doing, my, my consulting group was doing the modeling for the government, working with their finance model, and there we were, we were doing income tax cuts.

[00:29:18] Mark: They, they, they cut the basic income tax, uh, they cut the corporate income tax when they, when they introduced the, the carbon tax, uh, and then they also gave straight grants to people. Who, uh, were, um, you know, not paying income tax. So they were, they were getting a GST check three times or whatever it was per year.

[00:29:36] Mark: So they also got the carbon rebate. So that kind of thing is going on. And then the question is, so you can give people the money straight back. Then there's also the model that you could give the money back, but mostly in programs that subsidize maybe lower income people to get a heat pump, to, to get an electric bike, maybe to get a cheaper electric vehicle when those, as those start to appear.

[00:30:03] Mark: And so in other words, you can give it back targeted so that it's linked to the, the environmental objective, which was the reason for putting the carbon tax on the first place. And then finally, there's the argument, no, um, this is a great way to fund government programs. Sure, maybe a few decades down the road, you're going to have to find other funding sources for low income housing and transit and other and daycare and, and so on.

[00:30:29] Mark: But right now, this is a good way to do it. So in Sweden. Their carbon tax rate, I just looked this up in Canadian dollars would work out to about 180 per ton of CO2. They don't seem to have any big battles about, you know, affordability with this carbon tax and the, the money from it. Um, very little of it is like it's targeted.

[00:30:52] Mark: It's goes into general revenue. It's not targeted. Very little of it is actually targeted. There's been all these debates about the different ways to give the money back. Should it be progressive? Should it not? Should it, um, And, and what I think is challenging is that over my career, I've heard so many times where people said, Oh, they're, they're doing the wrong thing with the carbon tax revenue.

[00:31:14] Mark: If they did my idea, it would be politically acceptable. And I just found that, um, that's not the experience that I've seen. It's. The carbon tax is something that it's fairly easy to convince some percentage of people, and I'm not talking a huge percent, you'll have to convince 10, 15, 20 percent of people that the carbon tax money is being misspent in some way, and then you might have enough to win swing ridings in a critical election.

[00:31:43] Mark: So it's not like you have to get every Canadian to believe that the carbon price is being used in a nefarious way. But anyway, those are the three, um options, or those are my three categories. I'm sure there's a fourth or a fifth. And, and, but it's to do with, do you, do you put it in general revenue and say, look, that's what's really important.

[00:32:03] Mark: Or do you tie it somehow? Because you think, uh, first of all, make it progressive to help lower income people with this, uh, or do you straight checks? Cause you want the middle class and everyone to get that money too. Um, so that they defend the policy. These are the debates that I've, I've So many articles, but over the years, 

[00:32:22] Ed: well, and you sit in B.

[00:32:24] Ed: C. where the carbon tax there has survived multiple provincial elections. And as you say, a right of center government introduced it and fought to preserve it against the less left to center party in an election. But I want to go. So you mentioned Sweden and sort of the. The, um, the, the price of 180 bucks a ton, because now, you know, as of April 1st, we've gone from 65 bucks a ton to 80 bucks a ton, and you've got every progressive, even progressive politicians, not every, but even progressive politicians, they're stampeding for the consumer carbon tax exits.

[00:33:01] Ed: Disavowing themselves, distancing themselves, you know, um, we're listening to Canadians, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it still seems to me it's a bit unclear as to whether it's incentivizing that behavioral change, but we see it as an important revenue generating tool. But that's at 50 or 65 or 80. I would think, and this is a problem, we're heading for the exits before we get to 170, where I would think in jurisdictions that have that level of carbon price, like Sweden, we're It's unequ, I, I assume it'd be unequivocal that it really is changing behavior.

[00:33:33] Ed: But we're pulling the chute before we even get anywhere close to that in Canada. 

[00:33:37] Mark: My former PhD student, Katja Rhodes, who's a Prof at UVic, is working a lot on, you know, public perceptions. Like, where is the role for a carbon price? Like, is it a starter policy, and then you put in regulations? Or A lot of regulations and then it's a, it's a cleanup policy, like a consolidation policy.

[00:33:58] Mark: So for example, 180 in Sweden today, when they're moving, they're starting to move fast to catch up to Norway in terms of electric vehicles, all their building stock now is not burning natural gas. So in other words, the carbon tax, you can get the carbon tax pretty high. If you've gotten to the point where it's a small percentage of the population, who are still, who are still affected by it, In other words, all their other, their neighbours and family and friends have all figured out, you know, we just don't need to pollute anymore.

[00:34:28] Mark: Then you could probably skyrocket the carbon tax. But in this, this, this, Is, is it the driver for that transition that you need as you sort of go up the S curve with different critical transition technologies? And I, and I just don't know. And that's sort of what I think what you're getting at, Ed, that it's, uh, it's like, oh, man, could we really have stayed the course?

[00:34:52] Mark: And let me just give you one example, you know, April 1st, the carbon tax just went up here in Bank, uh, across Canada. I've been like, keeping my head down, avoiding the media, I'm getting continuous media calls, and I'm sure, you know, Sarah's smiling, um, over the last, like, three weeks. And that, that reminded me, it kind of gave me a cold chill, of British Columbia 2008, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

[00:35:20] Mark: And I think we increased the carbon tax every time on July 1st. And, um, and the, I was just inundated with media and the media love to accept all sorts of articles that really didn't make any sense, like didn't really, they were very distortionary. So you're, you're gonna, and that's the media trying to be fair, like, Oh, Ben's in the Vancouver Sun.

[00:35:42] Mark: Well, we'll let them say something and then, okay, maybe this professor and it, it just like, try. I was trying to imagine. Doing that for the next 20 years and a government being able to stay in power. Um, you know, even all through economic cycles, like we had the 2010 recession. Um, you know, and the, and the, the liberals won that election in 2009 or eight in British Columbia.

[00:36:09] Mark: And I wrote an op ed that said they won it because of the global recession. Because they were going way down in the polls as it was heading towards that election. And then they were kind of saved by a global recession. Um, where people then said, oh, we won't vote NDP, we'll vote for the NDP. And, and also, that global recession meant that oil prices plummeted.

[00:36:30] Mark: And so, the, the people who were, the NDP who were against the tax were like, isn't this horrible? And, you know, it's making, your cost of gasoline is going to go up two cents next year. And, and it, you know, the price had already plummeted 70 cents. Um, so, you know, they got lucky. Uh, and, you know, maybe the liberals will get lucky next year and the price of gasoline will plummet 25 cents or something.

[00:36:55] Mark: I don't know. 

[00:36:56] Sara: It reminds me of the strangeness that it is to watch politics in Alberta as, you know, I'm watching this start to play out in the U. S., the discussions of how the price of gasoline is, of course, going to impact the presidential election that happens there later this year. And, you know, Alberta must be one of the few places in the world where it's not.

[00:37:14] Sara: the reverse, right? That when, when oil prices are low, things go badly for the government. Um, but it's, but I think it's a good reminder of the, you know, the reality of politics and sort of the correlation, not causation of, of how, uh, politicians get rewarded or punished for What, what happens while they're in office, whether or not their policies had anything to do with it directly.

[00:37:36] Sara: Um, and I mean, I think you've sort of started already to speaking to the next question that I wanted to ask, which is about integrating political acceptability into thinking about climate policy. Um, And, and it sounds like, you know, I, I feel like there's, I've been getting more media requests than in previous years, but maybe I've just blocked them out partially from, from last year's, uh, request.

[00:37:59] Sara: And certainly the idea that you have a climate policy that, you know, every year there's a whole news cycle, or it feels like there's, there's been two news cycles worth of discussion about, uh, price increases, that certainly does seem challenging. Um, I think there is a certain element to, it feels a little bit to me like.

[00:38:18] Sara: The affordability challenges that people are facing, which are very real, of course, uh, you know, with, with inflation and with housing prices. And of course, you know, in, in a big way with the inflationary pressures of the cost of energy, uh, which, you know, kind of is the, the opposite. If we were using, uh, if we actually were reducing our emissions, we would probably be better off there, but that, that seems to be maybe driving even more of this push for, for X, the tax and that, you know, if you can.

[00:38:46] Sara: As I think politicians have been successful at sort of blaming the affordability challenges solely on the carbon tax, then it does become a very, um, you know, it's a good story to tell. I guess I don't know what's going to happen, um, when and if and when it goes away and the affordability challenges don't go away.

[00:39:09] Sara: Um, you know, how is that going to be explained? Um, I'm, I'm curious though about your thoughts about the, actually the, the piece of explaining it better and, and why the message is not getting across and, you know, as someone who tries to go and explain how this works and, um, and here's a lot of sort of claims that, well, this government has failed and it's their fault that they sort of didn't explain it better.

[00:39:31] Sara: I guess I, I get stuck a little bit on, you know, sure, you can always do better explaining. But. If you're really being, if you have a population and group of people that are just being inundated with misinformation, you're sort of almost, there's no way to explain your way out of, out of that message. So I don't know.

[00:39:48] Sara: Yeah. Curious to hear your take on that. 

[00:39:50] Mark: It's funny, you know, I should have published way more in this area, but I, uh, published a lot more of modeling, but, uh, I guess Hatcher Rhodes, I'll say her name again. She's a prophet, Vic. And her, when she did her PhD with me, um, and, uh, I'm with John Axson, who was, is very good at doing these large, um, surveys.

[00:40:12] Mark: And, um, we, we sort of looked at it and said, well, as social scientists, we love natural experiments. Like when something's happened and there's a bit of a control or, uh, What happened in British Columbia was really interesting is that, uh, in 2007 to 2009, our provincial government implemented the carbon price, a rising carbon price.

[00:40:36] Mark: It also did a clean electricity regulation, which I happened to design for it, and, and got implemented in January, 2007, which basically, which forced BC hydrated had some contracts with two coal plants that were gonna be built to abandon its natural gas plant it was gonna do on Vancouver Island. And this was a huge victory and it was basically a clean it was like the federal clean electricity regulation, although Like happening in a very short time frame, which was a luxury in a hydro based province where we could do that.

[00:41:05] Mark: And, and then the other was the low carbon fuel standard, which the government just copied. We said, copy California, just bring it in. Um, and so we had this controlled experiment where, um, we had the carbon price and then overlapping policies. We have the electricity regulation. And, and, which was, was flex, it had flexibility to it.

[00:41:30] Mark: Um, like we didn't know Runner River Hydro would win out over, let's say, um, natural gas with carbon capture and storage or whatever, but it demanded clean, um, and, and it could be, as I say, fairly demanding just because we were 95 percent hydro or whatever. And then the low carbon fuel standard, um, setting that up.

[00:41:50] Mark: And so what was interesting is as modelers, we were able to model, like, to the year 2020, so this is the year 2008, 2009, what would be the incremental effect of each one of these policies, alone or when in combination with the others, uh, in greenhouse gas reduction. So we were able to estimate the greenhouse gas reduction, and we were able to estimate the cost for a ton reduced.

[00:42:15] Mark: And so, of course, the, the electricity regulation kind of. You know, you could have been building all these natural gas plants with the, uh, without carbon capture and storage or coal plants for that matter, BC has a lot of coal. And so we estimated that the electricity regulation was about 150 per ton of CO2 reduced.

[00:42:35] Mark: Meanwhile, you're putting in a carbon tax that starts at like 12 a ton or whatever it was. And then the low carbon fuel standard came in at about 100, like our estimate of its cost. So we had this fantastic three policies, we could estimate their, uh, their amount of reduction, their cost, and then we surveyed, um, like a thousand British Columbians, and first asked them their knowledge about policies, then we actually picked 15 policies, we made up a bunch of them and tried to see if they could identify these three, and then, uh, we said, tell us which policy you prefer.

[00:43:07] Mark: Um, and then, uh, we actually picked 15 policies, we made up a bunch of them and tried to see if they could identify these three, and then, uh, we said, tell us which policy you prefer. So nobody liked the, you know, the carbon tax, actually the carbon tax had about, uh, 40 percent like or sort of like, but the not like, and then the really don't like was way bigger than you, you could, like, it was probably 30 percent or something and a smaller group.

[00:43:32] Mark: And, and then we told them about costs and, and the positions didn't really change. So, the fact that, um, the carbon price was actually an economic, it would save them money, and we explained all of this, um, it didn't move people. They didn't budge off of this. So, in other words, they didn't, it was a significant number that didn't like the I, the word tax, and, and had bought into that, and, and so we published papers on this, which are really kind of fun.

[00:44:05] Mark: And we even designed this thing that we called it. Um, the, there's the carb, there's the greenhouse, there's dollars per CO2 reduced and then we had a political cost per ton of CO2 reduced. Like we created our own little metric, uh, for fun based on that. So that's a long story, but it's telling you that even in a controlled experiment, even when people are better informed, um, and sort of try to be neutral in answering this, uh, you, you couldn't get past that word tax.

[00:44:38] Mark: And there's a book out there that I'd read about that time by an author named Brian Kaplan. And, um, he had written, and I've forgotten the name of the book, it's something about rational something. And it was this giant survey of US, um, individuals and then of people who were economists to try to say why does the average person in the public disagree with some things that seem obvious to economists.

[00:45:04] Mark: And one was on taxes. Like, they don't believe that tax changes can make things more efficient in your economy. Huge perc you know, like, significant percentage that don't buy into that. Another was on trade. Economists believe there's gains in trade. So trade deals are important. And how many people believe a significant proportion don't agree with economists on that?

[00:45:23] Mark: They're like, no, no, no, no, trade, somebody wins and somebody loses when you have trade. And there was one more like that. So, sorry, that's a long story. But I think it's an important one in terms of understanding just human psychology and how that plays out in politics. Um, I think you need that level of sophistication, uh, if you're really serious about doing what's really difficult, which is greenhouse gas reduction polls.

[00:45:49] Sara: Yeah. Well, and it comes back, I guess, to me, that central challenge of the climate sincere versus insincere politicians and the way that the, uh, price on carbon. And I mean, I think you've seen that play out in the U S and they ended up Not going down that path, but there was certainly a big group of people that I think it's fair to say are in the climate insincere space that have, uh, really, um, glommed on to a carbon price or a carbon tax as sort of a way almost to defend against other regulations and that they think that it's something that will never get passed, which is not to say that everybody that supports it is You know, climate insincere, far from it.

[00:46:24] Sara: There's many people who are climate sincere who, who, you know, want to see a price on carbon be the way that that's pursued. But it is, it is tricky when you have those two groups both supporting the same policy. 

[00:46:35] Mark: Well, and I, I remember it looks like way back when, like pre Kyoto. I think it was the head of Exxon or whatever said I'm in favor of carbon taxes and that that's when I knew it.

[00:46:49] Ed: Yeah, we knew we were in a new era. I had a couple thoughts, Mark. I mean, one, if when you ran that polling, if you'd asked people the time that the BCLCFS would be trading at 495, It would have been interesting to see, and I'm not sure if anyone anticipated the prices sort of getting up to those levels, which, um, uh, you know, supply and demand economics.

[00:47:10] Ed: The other one I do want to say is you'd reference Brian Kaplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. And, yes, yes, and unfortunately we assume that a voter is rational and a voter will vote, um, Not vote against her or his interests, and that unfortunately has been proven time and time again to not be the case.

[00:47:33] Ed: I wonder, and just to bring our conversation to a close, um, as a policy tool, if we're starting to see, if we're at the beginning of the end of consumer carbon taxes as a policy tool, that we could say we gave it a try, And for a whole bunch of reasons, and I'd say including the failure of the environmental movement, of which I am part, and I ran a national, uh, climate energy NGO, we failed to create political resilience because fundamentally we failed to use communication in a way that That would really, weren't the naysayers, and it was essentially the other side and, paradoxically, it tends to be a right left split in Canada, no longer now where you see many left or center left politicians are also running for the exits, but to date it's been this right left split, and, usually the right would be saying, we like market mechanisms, and this is a good old fashioned market mechanism, let the consumer decide, Uh, and yet they're the ones out of the very gate, out of the gate to disavow themselves of consumer carbon taxes.

[00:48:45] Ed: But my question, sorry, that's a very long preamble to a question. So let's speculate, um, it's fall, uh, 2025, uh, whether majority or minority, uh, Pierre Poliev and the Conservative Party of Canada has won, and won the federal election. Act one is to defund the CBC. Act two, God forbid, act two is to ax the tax and he does it in one fell swoop on the day that his cabinet is sworn in.

[00:49:15] Ed: Speculate what happens? What happens at that point? What does, does Canada do? Do provinces follow suit? Does the sky fall? You know, do people then go out and, and start just joy riding for the heck of it? Like what's gonna happen in Canada if the carbon tax, the consumer carbon tax is taken away? 

[00:49:32] Mark: I don't know what'll happen 18 months from now.

[00:49:35] Mark: Like, uh, even electorally. Uh, we, we, as a modeler, forecaster, one of the things I've learned from really good literature is we tend to take our most immediate experiences in recent time and we project them into the future. And that's when we make the most mistakes in forecasting. And so, um, I know you weren't, you were just wanting to give me a hypothetical and take me down that path, which I'll do, but, um, I, I wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

[00:50:06] Mark: If. A whole bunch of things that we couldn't think of. Some major environmental cataclysmic event. A world economic event or, or, heaven forbid, military event. And a whole bunch of different things are happening by the time we get to, uh, an election in which someone might be elected who's committed to kill the carbon tax.

[00:50:29] Mark: Uh, for residential, um, for households. Um, so I want to keep that in mind for, for people. And, uh, and as I say, the liberals in British Columbia, who were like, like the, they were, they're somewhere between the federal liberals and federal conservatives, the right of center. They were just, I, and it's in my book, the, the, Katherine Harrison gave me all these polls showing them just, they were heading for oblivion, uh, because of the carbon tax.

[00:50:57] Mark: And then a global economic recession came, and everybody's focus changed. So, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen over the next 18 months, but it might not be the scenario you want me to imagine 

[00:51:12] Ed: now. And Mark, just quickly on that, in 20, was it 2012 or 2013 when it looked like Adrian Dix was going to become premier in British Columbia and Christy Clark pulled it out of the fire?

[00:51:23] Ed: Partly over to do with the pipeline. With, with Adrian Dix saying, Hey, I'm against, uh, I think it was Trans Mountain at the time. Sorry, that's just that I, B. C. politics are, are always exciting. She said we were going to do 

[00:51:36] Mark: LNG everywhere, and that we were going to become like Alberta, and never, we were going to get rid of, like, sales tax, and eventually income tax, and so on.

[00:51:45] Mark: Yeah, it was crazy. Quite a brilliant campaign, but anyway, you know, it really depends. I'm thinking through a bunch of examples. I'm thinking about, um, the election in Australia where the, they put in a carbon tax, um, and then, um, the prime minister, I forget her name, was defeated. And so the conservatives got in and, you know, got rid of that carbon tax.

[00:52:08] Mark: I guess there's a lot of ways it can go, and I'm not a crystal ball type person. So what I could say is that, uh, it really depends on how Pualiev thinks of this strategically. So it was very good for me to discuss with Aaron O'Toole. You know, it's one thing what you might say before you get into power as a, as a mechanism, the wedge issue that you think will help you get into power and how you actually govern because you'd like to get reelected at some point.

[00:52:38] Mark: And I was here in British Columbia when Gordon Campbell was elected in 2001 and then reelected in 2005, both with really healthy majorities. And then a close friend of mine who worked in government said, Hey, he wants to act fast on climate. And I said to my friend, you're wrong, get lost. And, um, and, and then eventually, uh, my friend is Warren Bell.

[00:53:04] Mark: Uh, he's a long, well known, um, uh, public servant in British Columbia. And then he came to my house and said, listen, you gotta, they want your help and let's get involved. And, and, and so I was shocked. I was shocked that this right of center politician who didn't seem concerned at all about climate. So what it's taught me is anything can happen.

[00:53:26] Mark: And when it does, and that what happens can be very different. It can be someone who says, you know what, I am going to get rid of that retail carbon price affecting how, affecting gasoline and natural gas and heating oil. And um, and so I'm going to put in some regulations that phase it out over time, plus some subsidies.

[00:53:45] Mark: Um, you know, if that person feels that's in, if that politician feels it's in their interests. In order to get re elected in Canada, where there, by and large, is a pretty large swath of the population that is looking for climate sincerity and wants to see something get done. Don't, uh, slash your wrists, uh, uh, 18 months from now.

[00:54:07] Mark: There's no point. 

[00:54:08] Ed: And we'll see, because Pierre Poulierev says exit tax, but then he says tech, not taxes. But the tech part is still defined. So, we'll see. We'll see, and we'll probably get a better sense of that in the lead up to, uh, a federal election, which we know we must have by, by, uh, Q4 of 2025 at the latest.

[00:54:28] Sara: I was just going to say, I think there's a very clear differentiation, and getting back to a point we raised earlier, which is, you know, either you say axe attacks and that's it, or you say axe attacks and here's the set of policies that I'm going to bring in to replace it and to, you know, ensure emissions reductions and help Canadians reduce their dependency on, you know, global Fossil fuel markets and all of these other things.

[00:54:49] Sara: Right. So I think there's a, at least a somewhat clear litmus test around, you know, is it, is there some serious plans behind the promise of a climate plan or is it sort of the, you know, unicorns and rainbows of, of somehow tech will save us magically without any kind of actual policy to, to ensure that we adopt it?

[00:55:07] Mark: Yes. And I think that's what we should be emphasizing. So, um, like Andrew Scheer. Uh, when he ran his campaign leading the conservatives against Trudeau, he just kept saying technology will, we'll do it with technology. So he had the same kind of speech. And so my group, we've done this for a lot of elections, I guess I can't do this anymore, but uh, we would actually simulate all the different political parties.

[00:55:32] Mark: If they weren't, you know, to a same or whatever target that they, they said they were achieving. So I think what we should be, people should be working on right now, if they're worried about climate sincerity, is to continually say, tell us what are the policies that replace the carbon tax to get to where.

[00:55:50] Mark: And if someone says to you or says, Oh, we're working on that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The climate policies that will be used by any sincere climate, climate, sincere government. Are well known and have been well known for a couple of decades. So I wrote on flex regs, I called the market oriented regulations in my book, 2004 book, sustainable fossil fuels, like that, that was because I was watching what was going on.

[00:56:19] Mark: So the key message here is that don't let someone tell you, oh, we're going to work on that one. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You and your advisors can figure out the policies in an afternoon there. There's a like There's four sectors or five sectors to worry about. We know the main policies around the world that work.

[00:56:36] Mark: So tell us, tell us not only the policy in that sector, but the stringency at what year. And if you can't tell 

[00:56:43] Ed: us that, you're not sincere. It's redundant now, but I was part of a small group that, uh, advised Racky Pancholi, who is an Alberta NDP, was an Alberta NDP leadership candidate here in Alberta. And she came forward to this small group and said, Hey, I'm considering a platform that wouldn't include the consumer carbon tax.

[00:57:02] Ed: But what do I need to do? If I take that out, what kind of hole do I blow in an emissions reduction plan and how do I replace it? And, uh, I thought it was very receptive, very thoughtful. So, yes, the type of hallucination to say, Hey, I might not like this instrument, but tell me the other instruments that I should be considering, and how do we put that together in a cohesive plan.

[00:57:22] Ed: Absolutely. Well, let's wrap it up. We've gone way over time, but, listen, Mark, we could, when we, Wanted to, uh, discuss this topic. We could really think of no finer person to talk to than yourself. Uh, and so it was our great pleasure to have you back on Energy vs. Climate to unpack this topic with us. Uh, we know you're busy.

[00:57:44] Ed: You're the chair and CEO of the, uh, the BC Utilities Commission. Don't worry, everything you said, Zoom technology has a lawyer filter. We're gonna run this whole audio, and anything that might get you in hot water will be, through the magic of AI, automatically deleted. But we know how busy you are, and it's on the cusp of a well earned vacation for you, too.

[00:58:06] Ed: Thanks so much for your time. 

[00:58:08] Mark: Yeah, thanks for having me. I loved it. I would love to come back again sometime, whenever, whenever you've got a topic you think I could work on with you. Thanks a lot, you guys. Great, we'll hold you to that. Thanks a lot. 

[00:58:20] Ed: Thanks for listening to Energy vs. Climate. The show is created by David Keith, Sarah Hastings Simon, and me, Ed Whittingham, and produced by Emmett Tandon, with help from Crystal Hickey, Serena Gibson, and Talia Grunauer.

[00:58:32] Ed: Our title and show music is The Wind Up by Brian Lips. This season of Energy vs. Climate is produced with support from the University of Calgary's Office of the Vice President of Research and the University's Global Research Initiative. Further support comes from the Troche Family Foundation, the North Family Foundation, And our generous listeners.

[00:58:51] Ed: Sign up for updates and exclusive webinar access at energyversusclimate. com and review and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. This helps new listeners to find the show. We'll see you back here again soon.