Energy Onslaught

The greenhouse-gas emissions rules - designed to fit with measures already set in the United States - will come into effect starting with the 2014 model year. They will apply to full-size pickups, heavy trucks and buses as well as to cement, garbage and dump trucks.

"The new standards are expected to reduce emissions from 2018 heavy duty vehicles by up to 23 percent from those sold in 2010," Environment Minister Peter Kent said in a speech announcing the rules.

"We expect this to translate into total greenhouse gas emissions reductions of about three megatons annually in 2020 - equivalent to removing about 650,000 personal vehicles from the road," he said.

The right-of-center Conservative government said in May 2010 it would produce new emissions standards for heavy duty vehicles within months but failed to do so.

Last August the Obama administration in the United States unveiled its own similar measures.... Read more »

OTTAWA — The federal government has confirmed Canada will follow the Obama administration's efforts to reduce pollution from the trucking industry through new proposed regulations introduced Friday.

The Canadian plan to introduce regulations to cap emissions from new heavy trucks comes nearly eight months after the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States finalized their own standards.

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OTTAWA, April 11 (Reuters) - Although Canada's output of greenhouse gases was almost unchanged in 2010 from 2009, the major oil producer will find it tough to meet its 2020 emissions-cut target, government figures signaled on Wednesday.

Conservative government officials hailed the data, which showed emissions in Canada rose by just 0.25 percent in 2010 from the year before, hitting 692 megatons. The economy grew by 3.2 percent in the same period.

Canada has committed to cutting emissions to 607 megatons by 2020, a goal that critics say will be very hard to meet due to big increases in production in the oil-rich tar sands of northern Alberta. Tar sands output generates more greenhouse gases than conventional oil production.
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ST. JOHN'S, NL -- The federal government is working towards changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, but according to a lawyer with Ecojustice, those changes will be irrelevant to an ongoing court challenge to the environmental review of the Lower Churchill project.

Ecojustice is representing Grand Riverkeeper Labrador and the Sierra Club of Canada in the court case. A third participant in the case, the NunatuKavut Community Council, is being represented separately.

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