On June 22nd, 2007, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act (KPIA) received Royal Assent. This is the third iteration of the Plan required under the Act, the previous having been released on May 31, 2008.
As per the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, this Plan fulfills the following legal requirements:
Section 5 of the Act provides that “Within 60 days after this Act comes into force and not later than May 31 of every year thereafter until 2013, the Minister [of the Environment] shall prepare a Climate Change Plan that includes:
Two additional requirements under section 5 of the Act are addressed in the 2009 Plan. Paragraphs (e) and (f) of section 5 (1) stipulate that the Government must publish:
Section 9 requires that the Minister of the Environment prepare, within 120 days after the Act comes into force, a statement setting out the greenhouse gas emission reductions that are reasonably expected to result for each year up to and including 2012 from each regulation and measure. No similar requirement exists for any of the Plans following the 2007 Plan. To review the Statement, please see the 2007 Climate Change Plan.
This document constitutes the Climate Change Plan for 2009 that the Government is required to publish under Section 5 of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
Section 10 of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act requires the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) to review each annual Climate Change Plan within 60 days after it is published. Additionally, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) is required to prepare a report on the Plans at least once every two years. At present, the NRTEE has provided reviews of the 2007 and 2008 Plans and the CESD’s first review was recently completed. While the Government has not agreed with all of the recommendations made in these reviews, it has adapted each Climate Change Plan and improved reporting based on a number of the recommendations.
In the first KPIA Plan in 2007, the Government provided individual emissions reductions for each measure as required by the Act. In its first review, the NRTEE recommended that the Government also report on the measures in an integrated fashion to account for any interaction effects between programs that could result in an overstatement of reductions. The Government responded to this recommendation in the 2008 Plan by providing an integrated reporting of measures using a modeling approach, as well as reporting the expected reductions for each measure consistent with the requirements of the Act. As a result, the Plan’s overall integrated estimate will be different from the aggregate of the individual measures because it accounts for interaction effects. NRTEE welcomed this methodological change by noting that the 2008 Plan was a “significant improvement” from the 2007 Plan.
The cycle of improvement continues in the 2009 Plan with the inclusion of further refinements as suggested by the CESD. For example, greater detail is provided on the implementation status of the measures to which emission reductions are attributed during the Kyoto Protocol period. The Plan also provides greater detail in support of the Government’s positions on two of the Act’s requirements – provisions for a just transition for workers affected by measures in the Plan, and efforts to ensure an equitable distribution of emission reductions across sectors of the economy. Finally, the 2009 Plan provides uncertainty analysis for the reduction numbers for most of the measures, including a range of emissions reductions outcomes.