As the calendar flips to July, a long-awaited federal policy will kick in aimed at cutting the amount of pollution from cars and trucks, while trying to keep prices at the pump affordable.
The clean fuel regulations were first proposed in 2016, but they’ve faced delays and revisions along the way.
Although the new policy faces political opposition, it has received support from several environmental groups. Industry likes it, too.
“I want to reassure Canadians that it is a good policy, it is a good regulation, it will deliver significant [emission] reductions,” said Bob Larocque, president and CEO of the Canadian Fuels Association, which represents companies that process crude oil and bring products to the market.
There won’t be much of a change to pump prices across the country on July 1, experts say, although there will be a noticeable increase several years down the road.
That’s in addition to existing provincial and federal taxes on fuel, which are likely to entice more drivers to make the switch to electric vehicles.
The price impacts of the regulations will largely be based on how refineries and the fuel industry decide to comply, which experts say remains a big unknown.
Industry on board
The clean fuel standard kicks in on Canada Day, but the requirements to comply are relatively easy for refiners and fuel importers.
Add in the fact that many provinces already have clean fuel or fuel-blending regulations in place, and experts aren’t predicting an immediate change to pump prices.
Fuel companies have different ways of complying with the new federal clean fuel regulations, including the installation of carbon capture and storage facilities at refineries. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
“The policy has a pretty soft start because what it’s requiring is to some extent even less than what is actually being required of other pre-existing policies,” said Michael Wolinetz, a partner at Vancouver-based Navius Research, which provides consulting services on energy and the environment.
“We’re not expecting the policy to have any real bite until around 2025.”
One of the reasons industry likes the policy is because the federal government isn’t mandating a specific method to reduce pollution from the transportation sector, but instead leaves it largely up to individual companies to choose how they want to comply.
Companies have to achieve carbon emission reduction targets each year by earning credits through improvements to production facilities (such as building a carbon capture and storage facility at a refinery), lowering the carbon intensity of the actual fuel (by adding more ethanol, for instance) and by offering electric vehicle charging and hydrogen vehicle fuelling.
There’s also a credit trading system that allows companies to spend money to comply.
Adding more ethanol to gasoline and diesel is likely the most common way that industry will comply, say experts, because it’s already being done, just in smaller quantities.
Pain at the pumps
As the clean fuel requirements ramp up, so will prices at the pump as fuel companies face higher expenses, such as the purchase of more biofuels.
By 2030, the Parliamentary Budget Office predicts a price increase of 17 cents per litre — although it warns this is considered an upper limit. Experts agree, saying that estimate is likely the maximum price impact.
“There’s a zero per cent chance it would be worse than what the Parliamentary Budget Office is saying,” said Wolinetz, who predicts a cost impact of under 10 cents a litre by 2030.
The increasing cost of gasoline and diesel, in addition to existing provincial and federal taxes on fuel, could push drivers to switch to electric vehicles. (Sara Frizzell/CBC)
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates a price increase at the pumps by 2030 of anywhere between six and 13 cents per litre for gasoline. That’s on top of the 37 cents the carbon tax could add to a litre of gasoline by 2030, as well as all of the other federal and provincial (and some municipal) taxes charged on the purchase of gasoline and diesel.
There’s also the volatility of oil prices to consider and the cost of producing and transporting fuel. Add it all up and experts say the pain at the pumps could drive a large rise in electric vehicle sales over the next decade.
“[On] July 1, people aren’t really going to notice anything. But every year, as that target begins to bind more and more, then the cost curve starts to get pretty steep,” said Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who has co-authored a study modelling the economic effects of the clean fuel regulations.
Ottawa is OK with high pump prices down the road, he said, because “they just want to try to get people to switch over to EVs.”
Tailpipe emissions on the rise
The federal government’s focus on reducing the carbon intensity of fuels is understandable, considering how emissions from the transportation sector have increased by 16 per cent since 2005.
Overall, tailpipe emissions from all of the cars, trucks, SUVs and freight vehicles are a major obstacle toward Canada reaching its climate targets.
The transportation sector is the second-largest source of emissions in the country — behind the oil and gas sector — accounting for about 25 per cent of total emissions.
To lower the carbon intensity of fuel, experts say adding ethanol is usually the most affordable option, followed by biodiesel and renewable diesel. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
“If we actually want to reach our emissions reductions targets, this is the kind of policy that we need to be implementing,” said Michelle Coates Mather, executive director of the Canadian Transportation Alliance, a not-for-profit think-tank that researches the future of road transportation.
Producing more ethanol in Canada seems like a natural fit, considering the amount of canola and soy that are grown. However, the country is already having to rely on imports to meet existing federal and provincial requirements.
“We will be importing. We have long imported ethanol from America, so that’s not a change,” said Ian Thomson, president of Advanced Biofuels Canada, an industry association.
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Still, Thomson said, the clean fuel regulations could substantially change the country’s biofuel sector because of the increased demand in the years to come.
“It is changing the face of the industry,” he said.
Ottawa defends implementation of clean fuel regulations
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says the federal government will help Atlantic Canadians ‘get off home heating oil.’
Canadian companies have largely relied on importing U.S. ethanol produced from corn. In the past, imports have come from as far away as Brazil, where ethanol is produced using sugar cane.
As the clean fuel regulation requirements increase each year, the amount of ethanol, biodiesel and renewable diesel will rise.
Canada needs to increase the amount of biofuel production or else “we could be reliant on the United States by 2030 for up to 15 per cent of our fuel, which today we are not,” said Larocque, with the Canadian Fuels Association.
The demand for ethanol could soar, especially as more U.S. states adopt their own clean fuel policies.
“You do face the difficulty that all of a sudden, everyone is looking for the [same] product at once,” said the University of Guelph’s McKitrick.
“Most of the risk here is in the direction of cost surprises to the upside, rather than the downside.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
