Can Climate Justice Accelerate the Energy Transition in Canada?

• In Event: Politics and Tools of Climate Change in North America

Abstract

This paper takes place at the intersection of climate policy, climate justice and public opinion. The central hypothesis of this paper is the following: can climate justice reduce the social and political tension surrounding climate policy implementation, and thereby accelerate the green economy transition in Canada? The inclusion of fairness measures in the green economy transition – especially by targeting workers in the most affected sectors (e.g. those in oil and gas sectors in Alberta and Saskatchewan) – should impact the political acceptability of climate policy. This paper thus formulates just transition measures and then tests – via surveys – whether they increase the social acceptability of climate policy.
The background of this paper was given by a previous assessments of net job creation, investments projections and price-increase of carbon intensive goods in Canada between 2020 and 2030. Following this assessment, this paper proceeded to identify and formulate the fairness-based provisions which aimed to support workers and communities in the energy transition. These provisions were then included in survey questions aimed at testing the social acceptability of climate policy. This paper focuses on two key policies: carbon pricing and a fossil fuel phase-out. Survey questions (see below) will compare the social support for these two policies in Canada with and without accompanying fairness provisions for workers and communities, such as support for retraining and relocation. This will cast light on the potential role of climate justice as an accelerating device for climate action, for the idea of complementing climate policy with targeted fairness measures may or may not increase their social acceptability.
This study will be conducted and results will be displayed via the Project Quorum platform. The firm Synopsis will conduct the survey as such. Various survey techniques (list experiments, framing and trade-off sliders) pertaining to the study of hard issues will be used. A pool of 2000 people will be surveyed.


The non-charged question to have a comparison are the following:

a) Are you in favor of continuing to increase the price of carbon dioxide emissions (like the existing system in Canada)?

b) Are you in favor of progressively decreasing fossil fuels production in Canada?


The survey questions including climate justice provisions are the following:

• Would you be in favor of continuing to increase the price on carbon dioxide emissions (like the existing system in Canada) if
• the funds would be distributed back to the population, such as that households would have more money in their pockets each year than they would pay at the pump?
• Would you be in favor of continuing to increase the price on carbon dioxide emissions (like the existing system in Canada) if
• the funds would be used to created jobs in green energy, transportation and technologies?
• Would you be in favor of continuing to increase the price on carbon dioxide emissions (like the existing system in Canada) if
• the funds would be used to support fossil fuels workers – with paid training and financial support – during the transition towards a green economy?


• Would you be in favor of progressively decreasing fossil fuels production in Canada if
• more jobs (of equivalent quality) were created in green energy, transportation and technologies than jobs were lost in the process?
• Would you be in favor of progressively decreasing fossil fuels production in Canada if
• fossil fuel workers would be ensured support in the transition, such as with paid training for employment in green energy, transport and technologies?

Authors

• Alexandre Gajevic, Université Laval

• Catherine Ouellet, University of Toronto