It was widely expected that BC’s budget announcement - tabled on February 18th - would involve an announcement on fiscal changes surrounding Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) revenues in the province, and the budget contained just that. Specifically, BC Finance Minister Mike de Jong announced a new tax in BC’s bourgeoning LNG industry – a tax on LNG liquefaction income.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"1519","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"202","style":"color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; width: 134px; height: 202px; float: left; margin: 5px 15px;","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"134"}}]]In Slow Death by Rubber Duck, authors Bruce Lourie and Rick Smith became guinea pigs in a series of experiments to determine how to increase their blood and ur

Staff members (and colleagues) of Sustainable Prosperity are pretty keen readers. And it’s not just policy briefs and research reports. We like books too. And there are so many great environment-economy books available right now — call it 50 shades of green, but there’s something for everyone. Interspersed with our regular blog posts, we’ll be adding to our blog site some reviews and discussions about what we’re reading.

Green bonds are back in the news. On January 23rd, squeezing its way through the news maelstrom provided by first Justin Bieber (in jail!) and Rob Ford (in an elevator!), came news of a green bond issue by Export Development Canada.

With Sustainable Prosperity’s report “Suburban Sprawl” released last October and our upcoming forum on sprawl in Vancouver on January 20th (link to registration here), a recent paper by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley on the carbon footprint of US households by zip code is well timed.

A concern often expressed about carbon taxes is that they tend to hit hardest the income groups that spend a bigger proportion of their income on electricity and fuel. This tends to be people in lower-income groups, who normally also have fewer options when it comes to reducing their use of electricity and fuel. For instance, if you’re worried about paying your bills and making ends meet, you’re not likely going to be able to find the funds needed to better insulate your home in order to save on energy costs, or to buy a new more fuel-efficient vehicle.
Here at Sustainable Prosperity (SP), we like markets. We like markets because, when they fully account for environmental and social costs, they can be an incredibly powerful tool for protecting the environment, growing the economy, and enhancing prosperity.

Recent research on the City of Toronto’s water pricing system illustrates just how useful markets can be.

Today, Sustainable Prosperity released a new Policy Brief on how residential energy savings can be encouraged with innovative financing programs. You can read the full Policy Brief for the details on how these programs work, in theory and in case study examples.

The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity (ICP) has just released a report on Ontario’s economic future, and it delivers a pretty simple and clear message: Ontario needs a kick in the pants.

Ask any analyst or economist what would make their day, and apart from the obvious (genie in a bottle, world peace, their team winning the cup, etc.), the answer to the question will likely include “data”. It’s not sexy, it’s not exciting, and it won’t win you friends (except among those economists and analysts) but data is really important to the people whose jobs are to answer questions. And for that reason, we should all care about it.