Shawn Graham was in New York this week selling New Brunswick’s energy wares.


Provincial Energy Minister, Jack Keir was in Scotland studying the feasibility of offshore wind energy. Federal Energy Minister, John Baird was flying into Saint John to meet with the Irvings to discuss oil refineries while the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency was announcing that its environmental impact assessment of the refinery project would be restricted to the impact of marine construction at the site.


A spokesperson for the agency quantified that announcement by saying an examination of air emissions would not be required because the refinery would be subject to strict federal laws on greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Harper was in Afghanistan selling the troops on our Afghani mission while in Washington, the state of California was making its case to the federal government for permission to impose tough new limits on greenhouse gas emissions by cars and trucks.


The state called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to end 16 months of delays on California's application for permission to go beyond federal standards on vehicle emissions – specifically carbon dioxide, considered to be a major contributor to climate change. The Bush administration views the connection between greenhouse gases and global warming with some skepticism.

CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the 1990s, according to the Global Carbon Project, a data clearinghouse set up in 2001 as a cooperative effort among United Nations-related groups and other scientific organizations.


From 2000 to 2004, CO2 emissions rates almost tripled to 3 percent a year - higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Developing countries have accounted for about 23 percent of accumulated emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution but in 2004, they accounted for 73 percent of the growth in global emissions. This was largely driven by China's explosive growth and its unprecedented construction of coal-fired electricity generating plants.

Christopher Field, a scientist with the Carnegie Institution in Washington, says population growth and rising per capita economic growth have fueled the increase in emissions rates.


He says two global trends appear to be taking hold: first the amount of energy used per unit of gross domestic product is increasing (this could mean that gains in energy efficiency are slowing or it could mean that growth of heavy industry in developing countries is offsetting the shift to less energy-intensive activities in developed countries); second, the energy sources that countries are using are more carbon-intensive than in the past (read China, India and coal).

Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and chief editor of the Journal of Climate characterizes the Global Carbon Project's report "as very disturbing. He says that we need to get down to a level of 90 percent reductions by 2050" to have a decent chance of warding off the strongest effects of global warming. He should talk to John Baird.

Shawn Graham’s self-sufficiency strategy is keyed directly to the export of energy to customers in New England. The definition of export energy is electricity and natural gas. A second refinery would also make it possible to increase our exports of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil.

Electricity will come from a variety of generating sources including: nuclear, (clean) coal, oil, hydro (water), wind and natural gas. Natural gas will come from the gasification of imported liquefied natural gas and some local production near Sussex.

Nuclear energy is carbon-free but not waste-free.


Clean coal appears to be an oxymoron but new technology suggests that it is possible for coal-burning to be environmentally friendly. I’m not aware of any clean oil-burning technology.


Natural gas is the cleanest of fossil fuels. The combustion of natural gas releases very small amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, virtually no ash or particulate matter and lower levels of carbon dioxide and other reactive hydrocarbons.

Wind energy is much cleaner than the burning of fossil fuels but it is capital intensive. An offshore, 600 megawatt wind farm would cost something in the order of $2 billion, the cost of a second nuclear plant of comparable size. It occurs to me that a 200 unit, offshore wind farm twinned with an underwater wave farm might produce double or triple the energy for less than double the price.


If feasible, it would be sustainable and clean. There might be issues with bird and fish kills but one might assume they could be managed more effectively than carbon dioxide.

If the export of energy is the ticket to New Brunswick’s self-sufficiency, then we need to build an environmentally friendly energy hub, not a traditional generating resource. In a few years or sooner, the world is going to turn its back on air polluting fossil fuels. More fuel-efficient automobiles, hybrids, electric cars and new fuels will reduce the demand for oil unless new technology can make its use environmentally clean.

The Irvings are considering construction of a second oil-refinery. I suspect today’s business case would justify the investment.


The current Administration in the United States is wedded to oil and U.S. refining capacity is stretched to the limit. The fly in the ointment is that carbon will soon be recognized as a business expense. When that happens, the demand for oil will decline, perhaps dramatically. If I was in control of the Irving’s money, I wouldn’t be investing it in a second oil refinery.


I would be looking at investments with the potential to replace oil or to “clean” oil. Maybe they should just get outside of the box and turn their heads towards Labrador and the development and importation of hydro power from Churchill Falls.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.

A couple of weeks ago, a business colleague of mine was guest speaker at an American conference of First Nations people in Arizona.

His subject was economic development and he had a good story to tell about a native band in Nova Scotia that has developed a hundred million dollar a year economy. He was not prepared for the story he heard from an Arizona Apache tribe located about twenty miles northeast of Phoenix.

The 40-square mile reservation is home to 600 community members and another 300 who live off the reservation, a community comparable in size to the Nova Scotia First Nation.

The Arizona group operates twelve businesses and employs thirty thousand people. It generates an average $10 million dollars a day in revenue. All twelve members of its Council are MBA graduates. The tribe operates a casino, two hotel resorts, an RV resort, a commercial citrus farm, a construction materials firm, a gas bar and convenience store, two golf courses and more.

The Arizona tribe pays each of its members $50,000 a year. Funds payable to children under eighteen are held in trust until they reach age eighteen. Now here’s the kicker. Every child is expected to attend and graduate from university or a post-secondary institution of learning.

Any child who misses class or drops out of school before graduation is fined $350 a day until he or she returns to school. I’m told they have a graduation rate of 94%.

That’s not to suggest that New Brunswick could afford such a program but it does prove that if you offer the right incentives, kids will go to school, they will study and they will graduate. In New Brunswick, we have a huge drop-out rate, something in the order of 30%. We have a population that includes a factor of 63% who are functionally illiterate. We have a serious problem with education and I suggest that traditional methods of addressing it are not working and will not work.

A couple of weeks ago, we were presented with Francis McGuire and Gilles Lepage’s Task Force Report on Self-Sufficiency.

It offered some 90 recommendations, most of them process related in the area of:

• branding,


• population growth,


• immigration,


• governance,


• better coordination of government services,


• incentives for business,


• taxation,


• capital and risk tolerance,


• policy and regulatory frameworks,


• the labour market,


• the engagement of aboriginal peoples,


• recognition of the environment,


• smarter government,


• municipal consolidation,


• strategic infrastructure development,


• electronic health services,


• a new deal with the federal government,


• partnerships with business and labour, and,


• a reliance on energy to drive exports.

There was little strategic in the document unless you extrapolate population growth, energy exports and municipal consolidation as strategic.

On the most important subject of education, the document is strangely silent, relying on motherhood objectives like outcomes orientation, knowledgeable students, access to vocational training, joint programs, new partnerships and credentials recognition for immigrant professionals.

Nowhere in the document, that I could see do they address the fundamental problem of school dropouts, literacy and cost of post-secondary education but they assume a $500 million self-sufficiency contribution from a federal government that cuts funding for student’s summertime employment.

Their definition of self-sufficiency is an economy that can fund a provincial government without need for equalization payments from the federal government. This is an admirable and worthwhile goal but with all due respect to the authors, they do not provide us with a fundamental roadmap to get us to the point of self-sufficiency.

New Brunswick has been a federal dependent for the last eighty some years. That will not change with tinkerings to a few business, regulatory and government processes.

Radical change is essential if we are to break the mold. To grow our population, we may have to buy immigrants and bribe our young people to finish their education and stay in the province. We have to set, achieve and maintain national standards of literacy and education. We have to turn our education system upside down.

On the matter of energy, we have to think green and we have to think innovation. We cannot afford to vest our futures in tired energy policies and traditional methods of production.

Efficiency must become the watchword for development.

Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days in Newfoundland. One of them was spent with an Indian band in a remote area of the province. It was a remarkable experience. Less than a thousand people populate the community but they are largely self-sufficient.

They have their own system of justice, their own healthcare system, a wellness program, an economic development program and a state-of-the-art K to 8 school system. They own and operate their own construction business, an eco-tourism business, a waste-treatment plant, a lumber yard, a fishery and a few other enterprises.

They have a near 100% employment rate and they do that with out oil or casino revenues.

Their Council is university educated and I suspect they have more trained professionals per capita than the entire Province of New Brunswick. These are not free-loading outsiders, they are locals who have been educated and trained off the reserve and returned home to serve their community.

They have succeeded in spite of their location. Their success is clearly a combination of leadership, education, community involvement and positive attitude. It would seem these are the pillars of economic self-sufficiency.

Shawn Graham has shown leadership in his advocacy of self-sufficiency. It’s time for New Brunswickers to get involved in that pursuit.

It’s time to get rid of our negative and often parochial attitudes. It’s time to challenge the negativity of this newspaper.

If a band of less than a thousand people can be self-sufficient, surely a population of 750,000 with a wealth of resources and a location near millions of people can do the same.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

A few months ago, the U.S. Magazine Sierra assembled a group of scientists, politicians, chief executives, policy experts, and venture capitalists in San Francisco to discuss what steps America could take to combat global warming.

Their conclusions are instructive and serve as fodder for policy development in New Brunswick and indeed Canada.

To put the relevance of the Sierra discussion in context, you will know that our federal government recently unveiled its “Action Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gases” claiming it will force industry to reduce emissions by 150 million tonnes by 2020. Environment Minister, John Baird boasts that “Canada now has one of the most aggressive plans to tackle greenhouse gases in the world".

His plan offers business a range of compliance options including a choice of in-house gas reductions, dollar contributions to a capped technology fund and domestic emissions trading and offsets. New developments will be exempt from target reductions for three years.

Nearly 50% of Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from large industrial facilities in sectors like oil and gas, electricity generation and chemicals. It’s notable that our Government’s reduction target(s) consist only of a promise to reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions not total emissions (6% a year from 2007 through 2010 total 18%).

Emission intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production such as a barrel of oil. Growth can produce a reduction in intensity even as it produces an increase in the growth of emissions. For example; between 1990 and 2004, Canadian industry reduced its GHG intensity by 6% while its actual emissions grew by 13%, according to the David Suzuki Foundation.

Notably absent from Canada’s Action Plan is mention of the Alberta and Saskatchewan oil sands.

Oil sand operations stand out because of their tremendous pace of growth in both production and emissions. Oil sand emissions are set to increase more than threefold from 2003 to 2012 and fivefold between 2003 and 2020. By 2011, annual emissions from the oil sands are expected to be more than 80 million tonnes of CO², according to the Pembina Institute.

The San Francisco Sierra discussions produce food for thought. They suggest that the federal government assign a cost to carbon emissions. They indicate that energy efficiency is the cheapest, fastest and cleanest option for carbon reduction.

They conclude that energy efficiency must be tied to a strategic imperative that says “we can no longer rely on cheap energy for all". They remind us that the “cheap energy” approach goes back to the 1950s when we decided to build a highway system that would employ trucks instead of trains; to build sprawling cities where people would drive to their jobs instead of living close to their jobs in high-rise residential units.

They conclude that we won’t solve our environmental problems unless we assign a cost to energy that's commensurate with the damage it does to the planet. They challenge politicians to speak out by saying "My goal is to make energy more expensive”.

They advocate a carbon tax, a value-added tax, based on carbon content. The rationale – carbon is not an asset, it’s a liability. A carbon tax would exempt no one. It would promote new technology development, cause people to change old equipment and switch fuels.

They are adamant that you don't subsidize poverty with artificially low prices of commodities that are not sustainable. You target money toward projects that help advance sustainability.

Most poor people don't live near their work. It's not because they don't want to but because of housing prices. They don't drive 15mile-a-gallon cars because they like old clunkers; they drive them because that’s all they can afford.

If the price of energy should be increased through a carbon fee, people will need help but rather than give them gasoline subsidies the Sierra discussion group would offer them $10,000 vouchers to help them buy a better-than-40-mile-a-gallon car.

• 
  The corn ethanol process reduces greenhouse gases by about 20 percent.
• Brazilian ethanol reduces it dramatically more.
• A hybrid car improves efficiency by about 20 to 25 percent on average.
• Getting that efficiency improvement costs consumers between $3,500 and $5,000 more per car because of the extra batteries and drive-train costs.
• Sugarcane ethanol adds nothing to the cost of a new Brazilian car and reduces greenhouse emissions per mile driven by about 60 to 80 percent!

A modest investment in home-weatherization which insulates people's homes could reduce home energy use by more than 30 percent. By upgrading a home's furnace, sealing leaky ducts, fixing windows and adding insulation, we could cut energy bills by up to 40 percent.

By adding energy-efficient appliances and lighting, the savings are even greater. Replacing a 1970s-vintage refrigerator with a new energy-efficient model will cut an average home electricity bill by 10 to 15 percent.

NB Power is a natural to weatherize homes, yet the utility is rewarded for producing more energy and building more power plants. If NB Power were to come up with a plan to cut energy use by 20 percent and was willing to give half of the benefit to the customers and half of the benefit to its shareholder, everyone would benefit.

California has the lowest-CO2-emitting per capita in the U.S. It legally mandates energy-efficiency standards - better windows, lights, refrigerators, air conditioners, and automobile performance standards, that pay for themselves in less than 11 years. This generates an equivalent 7 percent return on investment.

Europe has taken advantage of efficiency opportunities; it charges higher energy prices. It operates a much more robust system of time-of-use metering. It has more-robust building and renovation codes and it has a culture that supports energy efficiency.

We should consider their lead.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com

The United States is a strange country.

On the one hand it’s a beautiful place, blessed with great wealth and resources.

On the other, its home to millions of people without jobs or healthcare insurance. The people are friendly enough but some are hard to take. Their weather is warmer than ours but subject to wild and unpredictable storms – hurricanes and tornados.

Americans are an extremely patriotic people. A majority of them are now anti-war but they remain steadfast in support of their troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This week the President of the United States vetoed a bill from Congress that would have extended funding for the war in Iraq but at the same time set a deadline for withdrawal of troops from that country. “Setting a date for withdrawal would be setting a date for failure” said Mr. Bush.

The veto underlined the battle between the president and Democrats in Congress, who regard results of their November election as a mandate to end the fighting in Iraq whereas the president sees their efforts as an attempt to undermine his authority to conduct the war.
A few weeks ago, the world was shocked when a young student at Virginia Tech massacred thirty two students and teachers on campus.

Few people realize the same number of people are killed by guns every day in the United States. Another 47 people a day commit suicide using a gun. Even with these statistics; there is no move in the United States to control the purchase and ownership of guns except for a tiny minority of people such as convicted criminals and people who are declared mentally incapable. Americans hold fast to their belief in the right to bear arms.

Americans may also be a little paranoid about national security. They have allowed their national government to trample civil rights in the name of homeland security. Airport security requires the removal of jackets and shoes in addition to the usual list of metals and other. Bags are searched without your knowledge, the only indication being the poor re-packing and a card to tell you that visitors have invaded.

There is a wall being built along the Mexican border and the U.S. is working with Britain to impose visa requirements on Britons of Pakistani decent.

For more than five years now, the Bush Administration has authorized government spying on the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens without warrant. Mr. Bush claims the warrant law doses not apply to him as Commander in Chief.

This week, he submitted a bill to Congress that would enact changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping by removing the requirement for warrant before spying on American citizens or someone living in that country legally.

U.S. courts have rejected Mr. Bush’s contention that 9/11 gave him unchecked powers. His spy bill would grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperate in illegal eavesdropping. It would also strip the power to hear claims against the government’s spying programs from all U.S. courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.
On a broader front, the United States Administration, together with China is seeking to alter a draft report, written by hundreds of the world’s leading climate change researchers, to downplay evidence that quick action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can limit the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming.

The Bush Administration has rejected the Kyoto Protocol’s emission cuts on the grounds they would slow U.S. growth. The U.S. wants clauses inserted in the report saying the cost of available technologies to reduce emissions could be unacceptably high. Sounds very much like John Baird, Canada’s Minister of the Environment.

The Bush fight against greenhouse gas reductions contrasts with the U.S. Supreme Court which refuses to give his Administration authority to revive a rule that gives companies the right to upgrade their plants without installing new air-pollution controls.

The justices rejected appeals by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and trade representatives of the electric utility industry, the auto industry, refining, chemical and paper industries that would exempt upgrade work costing 20 per cent or less of the plant’s value. This loophole provided the exemption to an estimated 20,000 existing facilities and was an attempt by the Bush Administration to weaken the U.S. Clean Air Act, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

With all its warts, the United States continues to be a world leader in the development of technology and innovation.

Duke Energy announced this week that it intends to turn their customer’s power off to save energy and to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. The program is designed to shave 800 megawatts of power demand over a four year period. That’s equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant or perhaps two smaller coal or oil-fired plants.

The program would provide financial incentives to conserve. The conservation incentives would combine with investments to improve energy efficiency for business and residential customers.

The innovative part of their program is quite doable in New Brunswick. I

t would allow the utility to turn off power during certain times of the day or under certain circumstances but most significantly, it would allow the utility to turn off particular appliances or utilities at certain times of the day. Duke would use sensors over its power lines to contact computer chips embedded in appliances (dish-washers, washers and driers, air-conditioning units, etc.) to shut off the appliance at certain times of the day such as the early morning and late afternoon periods when demand is highest.

The shut-off program would permit customers to opt out but those who participate would be rewarded with lower off-peak electricity rates. NB Power should take note.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com