Every week, as part of my job, I read hundreds of articles that show where the clean technology and renewable energy industries are heading. And every week, Canada lurches off in the opposite direction. Every week, billions of dollars flow through the European Union, Obama’s America, China, South Korea, India, Japan — in fact, every major economy in the world. And every week, that money ignores Canada because the federal government has put all our eggs into the Alberta Tar Sands basket.

But Nova Scotia now has an intelligent, pragmatic leader, faced with just the slimmest chance to reposition our province for the coming century. Darrel Dexter must be bold, visionary, and decisive. It will be a difficult road, but our energy-rich natural bounty and the resourceful nature of Bluenosers give me reason to hope.

To begin, we have to transform Nova Scotia into Canada’s renewable energy capital.*

So we need money, fast. Dexter should raise consumption taxes this instant, and only offer rebates to the poorest — short term pain on the road to prosperity. Bump the HST back to 15 percent, implement a temporary 10 cent surcharge on gas while it’s still cheap, and, toughest of all, impose a carbon tax of $10 per ton for fossil fuel CO2 emissions, rising by $10 every second year.

And then we work tirelessly to make those taxes irrelevant. In so doing, we’ll develop a stable growth industry, so that our sons and daughters can find clean energy jobs right here at home, rather than reluctantly working dirty energy jobs out West.

Offshore Energy: Make Mine Renewable

Firstly, Premier Dexter needs to court — and win — a major wind turbine manufacturer. Whatever it takes, he needs to convince General Electric, Vestas, or another high-quality producer to make us, not Ontario, Canada’s turbine manufacturing hub. Then we strive to ensure those turbines never leave the province, because we’re perfectly positioned to sell renewable wind power to the United States. Under Obama’s climate change agenda, the U.S. will impose onerous renewable energy requirements on utilities over the next decade. It’s already begun in New England and New York. Those states — heck, the whole eastern seaboard — will soon be crying for wind and wave power, and if we’re ready, Nova Scotia can sell almost every kilowatt we produce from our massive onshore and offshore wind farms. We’ll keep some for ourselves, and shoot the rest across the Bay of Fundy on high-energy direct current cables.

The minutia will matter. Siting the factory in Shelburne or Sydney, areas that need an economic boost, will offer the advantage of deep, open harbors, so we can easily deploy turbines offshore. The next generation of turbines are enormous and difficult to transport over land, so our natural resources will work in our favor. We’ll ramp up turbine manufacturing and repair programs at Community Colleges province-wide, giving Nova Scotians the chance to work at home in high-paying green jobs.

Depose King Coal

Secondly, we put Nova Scotia Power to work. Without any competition, the corporation has been slow to implement low-carbon policies. A carbon tax will encourage NSP to stop burning coal, which contributes massively to global warming, and as we phase out the coal, consumers pay less carbon tax. Coal hurts everyone, emitting a cocktail of mercury, sulphur, radon and more, even with top-quality scrubbers in place. If NSP needs a nudge, we can educate consumers about coal’s inefficiency and NSP’s numerous energy options: geothermal, combined heat and power, tidal power, and many more crucial low-carbon technologies.

To force the issue, Dexter must stand firm on his 25 percent renewable energy standard for NSP by 2015. Yes, it can be done. A flurry of new construction will follow as we sprinkle the province with turbines — some in less populous areas, some offshore — and build facilities to store excess energy. Dozens of solutions can overcome wind power’s intermittency, from fuel cells to thermal energy, and we’d be wise to become experts in their deployment.

Cutting Power Bills

Thirdly, Dexter must decouple profits at NSP, so the power company makes more money by selling less electricity, as in California and Oregon. NSP would have incentive to install smart meters in every home, so consumers can see and modify their energy use, and offer consumer rebates to install insulation, solar panels, and other devices that are repaid over time from energy savings.

In that vein, Dexter’s government should update our building code so that future construction doesn’t overburden the grid. Buildings account for 40 percent of global CO2 emissions The UK has adopted legislation ensuring that homes built after 2016 will be carbon neutral, tight as a drum, and powered by renewables. If they can do it, so can we.

Saving Kilowatts

Fourthly, energy efficiency is king everywhere but Canada. Just this week, McKinsey & Company reported that investing $500 billion in energy efficiency will save U.S. businesses and consumers more than $1.2 trillion over the next 11 years.

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel; Cambridge, Massachusetts has done the work for us. There, the Cambridge Energy Alliance works with banks to offer businesses simple, one-step, low-interest loans to improve their equipment’s efficiency. The loan is paid back exclusively through the business’s energy savings. Here, too, existing energy efficiency technologies could easily cut business’s utility costs, and lower overhead costs mean more money for growth.

Peak Oil

Finally, peak oil is upon us, and gas will likely cost $2 a liter in 3 years. Automakers are building plug-in hybrid cars that can travel 40+ miles on electricity alone, and EVs that can go twice that distance. Let’s plan ahead, like cities, states and countries around the world that are now creating the electrical infrastructure needed to charge EVs in 15 minutes or less. Consumers merely pay a subscription fee, cutting annual transportation costs by 50 to 80 percent. If we follow suit, most of that saved gas money will stay right here, in Nova Scotia, supporting our province.

Even better, if we tie our EV network to the tourism industry, we can create low-carbon vacations for visitors. If we’re smarter still, we’ll plow profits from our lucrative renewable energy sector into an electric rail system to connect and rejuvenate our small cities and towns as they grow flush from long-term wind farm lease revenues. An inexpensive, reliable rail system would open up the province to both city and country mice. With the option of catching a train to see an evening performance of the symphony and dinner at Fid, we could easily attract more doctors and professionals to rural areas.

Our choice now is to rise to the greatness of our forebears who made Nova Scotia a prosperous and promised land in the 1800s, or fall into high-carbon obscurity. Until now, both our national and provincial leaders have been perfectly happy to trot blindly along the same economic and energy path we wore out in the twentieth century. The past thirty years haven’t been kind to this province, but now is our chance to turn things around and show Canada and the world just how profitable a low-carbon economy can be. Let’s start today, and maybe tomorrow Alberta’s youth will be going-down-the-road to a work in clean, green, prosperous Nova Scotia.

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*A much shorter version of this commentary appeared in The Chronicle-Herald this week. I cut it by one-third to make it fit the op-ed format.

** Nova Scotia’s has an exceptional capacity for wind energy; a Université de Moncton professor rates our wind energy resources as among the best in the world.

Ed Milliband, Secretary for Climate Change, has unveiled the UK government’s comprehensive plan for cutting GHG emissions and heralding in a new era of renewable energy in Great Britain. The measures will affect most areas of UK society, from home energy use to power generation, and from electric cars to high-speed rail — all in an effort to cut UK emissions by 34 percent by 2020. In fact, every government department will be required to present carbon and financial budgets in tandem.

Milliband contends that this plan will create 1.2 million green sector jobs. He’s rare among politicians in suggesting that electrical rates will rise slightly over the mid-term during the transition, but adds that the government will help consumers and small businesses cut energy usage, and offer tax credits to the nation’s poorest. It will offer pay-as-you-save plans for home renovations, and feed-in tariffs (called clean energy cash-back) for micro-generation.

The government’s white paper on energy and climate, called the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, suggests that half of the proposed carbon cuts to 2020 would come from changes to the power sector, 15 percent from energy efficiency, 10 percent from workplace improvements, 20 percent from transportation, and 5 percent from agriculture and land use.

“The proposals published today are the first time we have set out a comprehensive plan for carbon across every sector — energy, homes, transport, agriculture and business,” said Miliband. “Our transition plan is a route map to 2020. It strengthens our energy security, it seeks to be fair in the decisions we make, above all it rises to the moral challenge of climate change.”

Other notable measures include: