VANESSA PURDY: This past Wednesday, the Saskatchewan government announced its plans to extend their program that offers incentives to homeowners making their residences more energy efficient, called EnerGuide. It was set to be finished at the end of March, but is now extended until Oct. 31, 2013. This decision comes after the program met with great success in the province, says Dustin Dunca, the Cabinet Minister responsible for the program.

EnerGuide offers of up to $5,000 to participating homeowners who make improvements such as better insulation, or furnace equipment. It is reported that 38,000 people made use of the program since its start six years ago. The province estimated that the yearly cost of EnerGuide grants will be $4 million and $8 million. The extension of the plan is a positive sign that the province is recognizing the importance of long-term sustainability on the micro level, and is willing to continue to invest in it, for the direct benefit of its population. [ index ]

MELISSA SHAW: The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline project was approved by Ottawa on March 10th. The pipeline will carry 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the Arctic Beaufort Sea to Northwestern Alberta daily and will cost 16 billion dollars to construct. Also included in the project is the development of three natural gas fields, a gathering system, processing plant, and another 457 km pipeline from Inuvik to the Norman Wells pipeline in the Northwest Territories.

The National Energy Board has issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity which allows construction to begin on the pipeline before December 2015. Several oil companies including Shell, Imperial Oil, and Exxon Mobil are backing the project but would still need to have over 6,000 permits from other boards and agencies to proceed.

Another major obstacle to the pipeline construction is the poor price of natural gas in the market which is forecast to increase by 2015. The project has been in planning stages since the 1970s. [ index ]

VANESSA PURDY: Ecojustice, a non-for-profit environmental law group, has formally called for Canada’s Parliament to strengthen the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). The group submitted a brief to the House of Commons Environment Committee earlier this week, capitalizing on the fact that the Committee is scheduled for it’s seven year review of the CEAA later in March.

The brief calls for stronger legislation regarding the assessment of disaster scenarios such as tar sands dam breaches and nuclear meltdowns. Will Amos, the director of the uOttawa Ecojustice branch, says there is a need to “reverse the Harper government’s systematic dismantling of environmental assessment law,”  As it stands, CEAA often does not adequately assess projects that have important environmental effects—and our protection against such scenarios is not even as good as U.S. law.

Some of Ecojustice’s recommendations in the brief include: focusing assessments towards overall project sustainability, not only adverse environmental effects; increasing and funding public participation in these environmental assessments on a federal level, and establishing an environmental assessment permit system which would prohibit projects from proceeding  without said permits. [ index ]

MELISSA SHAW: March 14th marked the 20th anniversary of the Canada-U.S Air Quality Agreement. Cross border cooperation has resulted in a decrease in harmful emissions which cause smog and acid rain. According to Environment Minister Peter Kent the emissions that are known to cause acid rain have decreased by half and emissions that cause smog have decreased by one third since 1991. U.S Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson added that these joint efforts have protected American and Canadian families from asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Canada added the Ozone Annex to the agreement in 2000 which resulted in a reduction of nitrogen oxide emissions by a third in the area of southern Ontario and Quebec. The U.S national Acid Rain Program has effectively decreased sulfur dioxide emissions by 67% from 1990 levels. These changes have also led to a 34% reduction in emissions of particulate matter which has been linked with health problems such as bronchitis, asthma, cardiac arrest, and premature death. [ index ]

VANESSA PURDY: The Pew Environment Group, an American research centre, published a report on Wednesday calling on Canada to preserve its boreal forest on the grounds that it provides about $700 billion dollars of global value annually, by absorbing greenhouse gas emissions. The report cites this preservation as a global priority and calls the forest the “World’s Waterkeeper” . Canada’s boreal forest spans 60% of the country’s land mass, and is home to contains 25% of the world’s wetlands, 81 million hectares of surface water and the largest remaining body of unpolluted fresh water, Great Bear Lake.

PEG argues Canada needs to strengthen its controls on developments such as oil and gas extraction, mining, hydroelectric projects and logging in the region. PEG is citing a value figure arrived at by the Pembina Institute, from their 2009 analysis. The $700 billion figure includes its reported $401-billion value as carbon storage, $5.4-billion for natural pest-control provided by birds, and $110-billion for flood control, biodiversity promotion, and water filtering.

PEG is recommending that Canada protect at least 50 per cent of the forests from industrial activity, and mandate high quality sustainability practices on the remaining areas. As well, they call for reformation to mining legislation, the development of a national peatlands stewardship strategy, and a stay on developing new hydroelectric facilities until they are assessed as having minimal impact on ecosystems. [ index ]

MELISSA SHAW: Statistics Canada has released their 2009 Households and the Environment survey which finds that an increasing number of Canadians are going green. Over 14 thousand households across the country were surveyed over the phone about their purchasing decisions and energy consumption.

Saskatchewan scored slightly higher then the national average with 84 percent of households reporting that they purchasing green cleaning products compared to 80 percent of Canadians. Residents of Saskatchewan were also more likely to unplug electronics when leaving home and close the blinds during the hottest part of the day. The number of households in Saskatchewan that were energy audited was 21 percent while the national average was only 12 percent. Gordon Dewis is a research analyst for Statistics Canada and he suggests that an energy efficiency grant program that was being offered at the time of the survey in Saskatchewan could explain the increase in the number of households being audited. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE (read by Vanessa Purdy): The unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan is causing other countries to reconsider nuclear energy. Last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan have caused catastrophic failures at the Fukushima nuclear plant, where work is ongoing to avert a partial meltdown. This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany will close its seven oldest nuclear reactors. Germany has also temporarily suspended plans to extend the life of 17 other reactors while it re-considers the decision.

This comes as the EU announced that it will conduct stress-tests of European nuclear reactors. The disaster in Japan has also caused concern in China, where the Chinese State Council has suspended approval for new nuclear plants until further notice. China is also conducting safety checks at its existing power plants. The debate over nuclear energy has split opinion among environmentalists, with some arguing that it is too dangerous and produces too much toxic waste, while proponents argue that nuclear energy is necessary for a carbon-free future. [ index ]

BRYANT BOULIANNE (read by Vanessa Purdy): Black soot from cooking stoves and diesel engines may be a culprit in the melting of Tibetan glaciers, suggests a new study by scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the United States. The glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau hold the more ice than any other region outside of the poles, and have been affected by increasingly warming temperatures. But to some scientists, the rate at which these glaciers were melting was too quick to be attributed to global climate change alone.

Using computer modelling, the researchers show that black soot can deposit on top of ice and absorb sunlight, thereby speeding the melting of the ice. Scientists caution, however, that the model is only preliminary, and is unable to simulate the effects of black soot and global warming at the same time. Black soot is a major concern in China, where more than half of electricity is generated by coal. [ index ]