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Title: Carbon Markets After Paris: Trading in Trouble
Description: Since the early 1990s, "putting a price on carbon" has been, perhaps, the primary policy proposal for fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Whether through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade emissions trading schemes (ETS), proponents of carbon pricing see it as a way to guide investment toward green solutions without the need for governments to intervene directly in the economy. ETSs, in particular, have been favored by businesses and neoliberal policy makers seeking to limit emissions without disrupting business-as-usual. For these reasons, great expectations are being placed on ETSs. The climate agreement, signed by the nations of the world in Paris in December, enshrines ETSs as a key mechanism for limiting emissions. But are ETSs effective instruments for reducing emissions? And how should trade unions approach debates around cap-and-trade policies? It has been a decade since the European Union established the world's largest ETS, so there is plenty of evidence available for a reevaluation of trade union positions on cap-and-trade. In the long aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crisis, the price on greenhouse gas emissions in the EU cap-and-trade emissions trading schemes has been too low to incentivize investors to move away from fossil fuels. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)—a supporter of the EU ETS—has called for policies that would raise the cost of emissions while also expressing concern about "carbon leakage," where companies move polluting activities (and associated jobs) to jurisdictions without price constraints on pollution. Such a position threads the needle of trade union debates around the EU ETS without resolving the underlying tensions—nor, it should be noted, shifting EU policy in any appreciable way. With the Paris Agreement giving an even more prominent role to cap-and-trade, unions around the world are likely to face similar debates. In this TUED Working Paper, Sean Sweeney, the director of the International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment at CUNY's Murphy Institute, argues that it is time for unions to reevaluate their stance on cap-and-trade policy. Market-based solutions may be appealing to business interests and their political allies, but it's going to take direct governmental action to guide a transition to a just, democratic, and sustainable energy system. The now battered neoliberal consensus finds public and democratic ownership and control of a key economic sector to be anathema, but it is precisely what is needed if we are serious about combating climate change.
Identifier: TUED-Working-Paper-6.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156041

Title: An Insecure Future: Canada's biggest public pensions are still banking on fossil fuels
Description: Two of Canada's biggest public pension plans could lead the way toward a global transition to a greener, more sustainable economy, but their commitments to climate action may be more talk than walk. The Canada Pension Plan and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec say they are serious about tackling climate change, however, they continue to bank on fossil fuels, this Corporate Mapping Project report shows. The Canada Pension Plan has increased its shares in fossil fuel companies since Canada signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 and while the Quebec plan has slightly decreased its fossil fuel shares in the same period, it has over 52 per cent more fossil fuel shares than the Canada Pension Plan. The investment patterns of both plans do not reflect the urgent action needed to address the scale of the climate crisis. Both are heavily invested in member companies of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which has a history of obstructing the necessary transition away from fossil fuels required for Canada to meet the targets set out in the Paris Agreement. The authors question why the fund managers of these public pension plans are investing in companies that are actively derailing necessary climate action. The report includes recommendations for Canadian public pension fund trustees and investment boards and for the federal and provincial governments regarding how Canadians' pension funds should be invested.
Identifier: ccpa-bc_An-Insecure-Future_FINAL.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156051

Title: Energy scenario: Employment implications of the Paris Climate Agreement
Description: This report explores the potential employment and economic impacts of an EU transition to a low-carbon economy by 2030 – on the EU, and on other regions of the world. It analyses the impacts across sectors and occupations, with a particular focus on manufacturing. The report highlights that the impact of such a transition is positive for the EU as a whole, although with considerable variation between sectors. The positive impact on employment is largely due to the investment required to achieve this transition, along with the impact of lower spending on imported fossil fuels. The consequent shift in production has implications for labour market demand. The analysis provides information on sectoral impacts, together with the Warwick Labour Market Extension model for occupational analysis. Further analysis of the employment developments in Europe is undertaken using Eurofound's European Jobs Monitor.
Identifier: fomeef18003en.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156038

Title: Fossilized Finance: How Canada's banks enable oil and gas production
Description: Despite Canada's climate change commitments, the country's "big five" banks continue to finance and support the expansion of fossil fuel industries. In fact, the extent of the banks' support since the oil price collapse in 2014 shows that this backing hinders Canada's progress on reducing emissions. These banks are perhaps the most powerful corporate entities in Canada, certainly among the largest and most profitable. They could be playing a crucial role to help Canada achieve its Paris Agreement commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. The banking sectors in many other countries have committed to helping the world meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, but the big Canadian banks did not join in. This report explains why: Canada's big banks continue to rely on profits from financing the fossil fuel industry despite the danger those investments pose for the future of our planet.
Identifier: ccpa-bc_Fossilized-Finance.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156034

Title: A Just and fair transition for Canadian coal power workers and communities: Final Report of the Task Force
Description: The devastating impacts of climate change are becoming clearer each year. More frequent and intense floods, storms, fires, heat waves, and droughts are destroying communities and homes, and putting the lives and futures of Canadians at risk. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2018 report on global warming of 1.5°C shows that our window to prevent the worst-case scenario is quickly closing. We do know what is causing climate change and we can do something about it. We need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released into our environment. There are several ways in which we can accomplish this, including wasting less energy and investing in cleaner energy sources. Businesses, scientists, governments, communities, and individuals in Canada and around the world are beginning to prove that you can reduce GHG emissions, invest in reliable and affordable clean energy, create decent jobs, and have stable economies. Although coal-fired electricity has contributed significantly to Canada's economic past and present—and provided Canadians with affordable and reliable electricity and heat for many generations—it produces significant amounts of air pollutants and GHG emissions. It has well documented costs to human health and is a major contributor to climate change: approximately 20% of all GHG emissions in the world came from coal-fired electricity in 2013. Recognizing these facts, and supported by commitments in the 2015 Paris Agreement, Canada and other countries are intent on replacing coal-fired electricity with cleaner sources of fuel over the coming years and decades. In 2016, Canada committed to the phase-out of traditional coal-fired electricity across the country by 2030.
Identifier: En4-361-2019-eng.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156029

Title: Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change: Third Annual Synthesis Report on the Status of Implementation - 2019
Description: The Government of Canada has released the Pan-Canadian Framework Third Annual Synthesis Report outlining progress made over the past year by federal, provincial, and territorial governments in implementing Canada's climate plan, the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Collaboration between federal, provincial, and territorial governments as well as with Indigenous Peoples, businesses, and civil society remained a high priority to ensure the success of actions spanning all sectors of the Canadian economy. The Pan-Canadian Framework is built on four pillars: pricing carbon pollution; complementary actions to reduce emissions across the economy; adaptation and climate resilience; and clean technology, innovation, and jobs. The Pan-Canadian Framework includes more than fifty concrete actions that cover all sectors of the Canadian economy and puts Canada on a path toward meeting our Paris Agreement GHG-emissions-reduction target of 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In 2019, significant progress continued to be made across the four pillars of the Pan-Canadian Framework: Carbon-pollution pricing is in place across Canada. Governments continued to: fund programs focused on energy efficiency to help people and businesses save money while reducing their emissions; make progress on a number of adaptation initiatives to manage risks, build resilience, and help ensure that Canadian communities thrive in a changing climate; and take action to support the development, commercialization, and adoption of clean technology in Canada; promote collaboration across jurisdictions; and establish a clean-technology data strategy.
Identifier: En1-77-2019-eng.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156028

Title: Trade Unions and Just Transition: The Search for a Transformative Politics
Description: For more than a decade, trade union responses to the unfolding climate and ecological crisis have mainly focused on the idea of "just transition." This idea has brought much-needed attention to the serious disruptions facing many workers, and the need to minimize those disruptions where possible, or provide alternatives where necessary. Unions have generally affirmed the findings of climate science and recognized the urgent need for dramatic transformation of our societies, but this affirmation has mostly found expression in echoing broader social calls for "more ambition" from governments. At the international level, and especially in Europe, union discourse and engagement around the need for a "just transition" has been shaped profoundly by the fate of social democracy, and the related ideas of "social partnership" and "social dialogue." However despite their origins in what could be seen as a true "social contract" between roughly equal partners, the erosion of political power for unions in recent decades has largely hollowed out these terms, leaving unions and workers increasingly dependent on appeals to governments and private companies to "do the right thing" for workers and the planet. This state of affairs calls for critical reflection. It is vital that unions ask not only whether existing approaches to the crisis are sufficiently ambitious, but whether they are even aimed correctly at the target.
Identifier: TUED-WP11-Trade-Unions-and-Just-Transition.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156023

Title: When Green doesn't grow: Facing Up to the Failure of Profit-Driven Climate Policy
Description: After more than a decade of speeches and assurances from global elites, the "green growth" approach to climate protection has failed to make any meaningful progress in addressing the climate crisis. Renewable energy is on an upward course, but overall energy consumption has continued to rise even faster; as a result, fossil fuel use continues to expand, emissions continue to rise, and nearly every major country is off-track to meet their Paris commitments. It is time for us to collectively confront these stark realities and formulate a radical, independent, and internationalist trade union alternative based on a "public goods" approach. One way or another, rising emissions hurt everyone, and reducing emissions would benefit everyone. Considerations of private profit must be taken out of the equation. Emissions reductions must therefore be regarded as an absolute necessity and a collective human right. And since most emissions come from how we generate and use energy, energy systems must be radically reshaped by needs-based and pro-public policies. This means reclaiming energy to public and social ownership, and democratic control.
Identifier: TUED-When-Green-Doesnt-Grow-COP24.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156016

Title: Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change: Second Annual Synthesis Report on the Status of Implementation – December 2018
Description: On December 9, 2016, Canada's First Ministers adopted the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change (PCF). The PCF is built on four pillars: pricing carbon pollution, complementary actions to reduce emissions across the economy, adaptation and climate resilience, and clean technology, innovation, and jobs. The PCF includes more than fifty concrete actions that cover all sectors of the Canadian economy, and positions Canada to meet its Paris Agreement greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. Implementing PCF actions will not only spur GHG emissions reductions and increase resilience to climate change impacts across the country, but will provide additional benefits for Canadians. Households will have opportunities for cost-savings, such as through energy efficiency upgrades that lower utility bills, and communities will benefit from infrastructure that is resilient to a changing climate. Canadians' health will be improved through reduced air pollution from the phase-out of coal fired electricity, and through reduced risk of illnesses associated with extreme heat and infectious diseases. New job opportunities, such as those in clean technology innovation, will emerge as Canada's participation in the global clean economy grows. This second annual Synthesis Report summarizes the significant progress achieved in 2018 by federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in partnership with Indigenous Peoples and with engagement from stakeholders, in implementing the PCF.
Identifier: En1-77-2018-eng.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156015

Title: Can Canada Expand Oil and Gas Production, Build Pipelines and Keep Its Climate Change Commitments?
Description: This study assesses the consequences of several scenarios of expansion in the oil and gas sector in terms of the amount that the non–oil and gas sectors of the economy would need to reduce emissions to meet Canada’s Paris commitments. It finds Canada cannot meet its global climate commitments while at the same time ramping up oil and gas extraction and building new export pipelines. The study also reviews existing pipeline and rail capacity for oil exports under the cap on oil sands emissions announced last year by the Alberta government (set at 100 million tonnes (Mt) per year) and finds Canada has enough capacity to handle the 45% increase in oil sand production this would entail. It also takes a close look at oil price trends, and finds that new pipelines with tidewater access are unlikely to confer a significant price premium, as is widely believed.
Type: technical report
Date: June 2016
Identifier: 978-1-77125-289-8
Identifier (PID): yul:1156012

Title: Climate Plans Must Include Just Transition for Environment and Economy to Thrive
Description: This press release coincides with the First Ministers' meetings in Vancouver, to encourage the politicians to follow through on the Just Transition provisions negotiated in the Paris Agreement. It provides a policy statement on necessary components of Just Transition, including the need for industry-supported transition funds and inclusion of all parties in crafting programs.
Identifier (PID): yul:1122020