B.C. producers expect $66 million in additional costs over the next five years as a result of the carbon tax announced earlier this year by Finance Minister Carole Taylor, according to Jeorg Nixdorf, vice-president of manufacturing for Lehigh-Hanson Canada.
That amount represents a near-doubling of energy costs to produce Portland grey cement, Nixdorf said.
British Columbia’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, with 1,028,455 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalents in 2006, according to Environment Canada.
The cap and trade system, so far, is just a concept - the legislation introduced last week only provides a framework to allow the province to participate with other western states and provinces in a regional cap-and- trade system now under development.
The system would fix, or ’cap,’ the amount of carbon dioxide a large industrial operation can annually pump into the atmosphere - and set up a trading regime in which companies getting credits for lowering emissions can swap them to companies that need additional credits.
