Assessing Canada-British Columbia climate policy design and interaction

This study tests alternative climate policy scenarios to provide useful information to decision-makers. The first component of this project evaluates how Canada, when viewed from a national perspective, can best achieve a greenhouse gas target. This was done by using the hybrid energy-economy model CIMS to simulate and compare policy approaches. For the second component, I modeled British Columbia to explore policy designs for integrating provincial climate policy with the broader national targets and efforts. Special emphasis was placed on designing policies that could gradually align initiatives by all regions and all levels of government in Canada with a similar, nation-wide marginal cost of emissions reduction. To account for the uncertainty of future natural gas production, I incorporate a sensitivity analysis by modeling each scenario in British Columbia twice, either under the assumption that liquefied natural gas is developed or absent in the province.