Building green: the International Energy Agency says its recovery plan could create nine million … [+] sustainable jobs per year.
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The International Energy Agency has outlined a $3 trillion plan to restart the global economy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, saying that governments have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to create jobs while decarbonizing infrastructure.
Released today, the IEA says its three-year roadmap for clean energy and efficiency investment would create nine million jobs every year and additional economic growth of 1.1% annually. The agency claims its plan will eliminate 4.5 billion tonnes (5 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gas emissions by 2023.
Including macroeconomic analysis from the International Monetary Fund, the plan is likely to attract the attention of policy makers facing an unprecedented economic challenge: earlier this month, the OECD policy forum forecast the most severe global peacetime recession in a century as a result of the pandemic.
But the world also faces an even larger, potentially more deadly challenge in the form of man-made climate change. And while restrictions caused by COVID-19 worldwide caused a temporary drop in greenhouse gas emissions, recent research has shown that, as lockdowns are loosened, those emissions are already rebounding.
“Global carbon emissions flat-lined in 2019 and are set for a record decline this year,” IEA noted with the release of the report. “While this drop, which results from economic trauma, is nothing to celebrate, it provides a base from which to put emissions into structural decline.”
The report assesses six sectors of the economy—electricity, transport, buildings, industry, fuels and innovation—to home in on over 30 measures it says would generate the most value in terms of economic recovery and decarbonization. These include retrofitting buildings for better efficiency, accelerating renewable energy projects like solar PV farms, expanding rail infrastructure, and reforming fossil fuel subsidies.
Of crucial concern for treasuries, the IEA report presents the abatement cost for each measure analyzed, which is a measure of the financial cost or savings associated with reducing emissions by 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Many energy efficiency measures, the report notes, have a negative abatement cost, which means they can save consumers and industry money while reducing emissions.
Among the other benefits accrued, the IEA says its plan would result in a 5% reduction in air pollution globally, give 420 million people in developing countries access to “clean cooking solutions” such as biogas and electricity, and provide electricity access to an additional 270 million people.
In remarks accompanying the report, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said governments should take the opportunity to invest in sustainable solutions, or risk baking-in economic and environmental failure.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol says governments have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to put … [+] their economies on a sustainable course.
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“As they design economic recovery plans, policymakers are having to make enormously consequential decisions in a very short space of time,” Birol said. “These decisions will shape economic and energy infrastructure for decades to come and will almost certainly determine whether the world has a chance of meeting its long-term energy and climate goals.”
The remarks correspond closely with those of climate advocates and veterans such as Christiana Figueres, the climate diplomat who last month explained that the recovery from coronavirus had the potential to make or break the fight to reduce global emissions.
Indeed, the IEA is not the only agency to have presented a green recovery plan: in April, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) unveiled a comprehensive, longer-term roadmap for reconfiguring the economy in the wake of coronavirus. And this month, management consultants McKinsey unveiled a strategy it says governments could use as a framework for deploying stimulus packages in a sustainable way. Such measures are supported by the available science: research by the University of Oxford indicates that investing in green infrastructure will not only lead to robust economic recovery but also to long-term positive outcomes for societies worldwide.
For its part, the IEA, a Paris-based organization which for many years was chiefly concerned with the supply of crude oil, has in recent years become something of an evangelist for sustainability. Last month the agency claimed that the European Green Deal would prove to be the “motor for the recovery” of the EU.
Introducing today’s report, Birol was unequivocal about the significance of the current moment. “Governments have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reboot their economies and bring a wave of new employment opportunities while accelerating the shift to a more resilient and cleaner energy future,” he said.
“Policy makers are having to make hugely consequential decisions in a very short space of time as they draw up stimulus packages. Our sustainable recovery plan provides them with rigorous analysis and clear advice on how to tackle today’s major economic, energy and climate challenges at the same time.”
OTTAWA – The federal government is expected to boost the minimum hourly wage that must be paid to temporary foreign workers in the high-wage stream as a way to encourage employers to hire more Canadian staff.
Under the current program’s high-wage labour market impact assessment (LMIA) stream, an employer must pay at least the median income in their province to qualify for a permit. A government official, who The Canadian Press is not naming because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the change, said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault will announce Tuesday that the threshold will increase to 20 per cent above the provincial median hourly wage.
The change is scheduled to come into force on Nov. 8.
As with previous changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the government’s goal is to encourage employers to hire more Canadian workers. The Liberal government has faced criticism for increasing the number of temporary residents allowed into Canada, which many have linked to housing shortages and a higher cost of living.
The program has also come under fire for allegations of mistreatment of workers.
A LMIA is required for an employer to hire a temporary foreign worker, and is used to demonstrate there aren’t enough Canadian workers to fill the positions they are filling.
In Ontario, the median hourly wage is $28.39 for the high-wage bracket, so once the change takes effect an employer will need to pay at least $34.07 per hour.
The government official estimates this change will affect up to 34,000 workers under the LMIA high-wage stream. Existing work permits will not be affected, but the official said the planned change will affect their renewals.
According to public data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 183,820 temporary foreign worker permits became effective in 2023. That was up from 98,025 in 2019 — an 88 per cent increase.
The upcoming change is the latest in a series of moves to tighten eligibility rules in order to limit temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers. Those changes include imposing caps on the percentage of low-wage foreign workers in some sectors and ending permits in metropolitan areas with high unemployment rates.
Temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector are not affected by past rule changes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
