During recent working group meetings of the Clean Fuel Standard (CFS) held on October 16 and 17, discussions focused on Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) proposals on the Gaseous Stream – Exclusions, Differentiation and Definitions as well as End-Use Fuel Switching in the Liquid Stream.

 

On November 2, the CPA provided comments to ECCC on its proposals and will be conducting a bilateral meeting with senior departmental officials at ECCC in November. In its comments, the CPA continued to maintain that it is premature to include propane, especially since propane represents less than one per cent of the domestic supply and of the targeted emissions.

 

In addition, the lack of data and information on replacement/alternatives and the costs associated with implementing a CFS for government, taxpayers and the propane industry itself is concerning.

 

In December, ECCC will be publishing a regulatory design paper that will provide more information about the design of the policy, including the proposed allocation of the overall 30 million tonne target among the three fuel streams. Also expected is the publication of a cost-benefit analysis framework outlining the proposed analytical approach (models, data and key assumptions) for assessing the costs and benefits of implementing the CFS for the liquid fuel stream.

 

The CPA will make the documents available to members as these discussion papers are published and will continue to advocate that ECCC postpones including natural gas liquids (NGLs) in phase one, as some jurisdictions have done as well as continuing our efforts to best position the propane industry.