I have to thank Elizabeth May for pointing this out last Friday at the Green Party of Canada Economic Summit in Toronto.

Please turn to page 102 of your copy of Budget 2010. You do have one, right? If by some oversight your copy hasn’t arrived yet, you can download it here.

Read with me, if you will, the first paragraph of the creatively titled section: Green Jobs and Growth.

Canada has established itself as an energy superpower, being the third-largest global producer of gas, seventh in oil production, and the world’s largest supplier of uranium. Our international reputation as a safe and reliable energy supplier creates unprecedented opportunities for exporting our energy products within an integrated North American energy market and to the rest of the world. Our substantial reserves of oil, natural gas and other energy sources make Canada an increasingly attractive destination for global investment. These major new investments will allow us to tap our abundant energy potential while contributing to faster economic growth, creating a significant number of high value jobs and rejuvenating communities, especially in remote and rural areas.

Awesome! It really convinces me that our government is on the right track with Green development. Gas, oil and uranium – it just doesn’t get greener than that. Okay, I’m totally kidding. The second paragraph is no better but the third paragraph is very promising with a discussion of renewable energy sources leading up to these bullet points.

Bullet 1: A billion dollars for “clean energy technologies” through the Clean Energy Fund. Since they’ve already allotted $800 million to carbon capture and storage (CCS) there really isn’t any doubt that it is actually a CCS Fund.

Bullet 2: A billion dollars over 5-years for the Green Infrastructure Fund. No idea? Me neither. So I looked here and, ohmigosh, this is brilliant.

Eligible projects are those that promote cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and cleaner water and fall within any of the following categories: wastewater infrastructure; green energy generation infrastructure; green energy transmission infrastructure and solid waste infrastructure, and carbon transmission and storage infrastructure.

Looks great right up until the end… do you see it? CCS! “The fund will focus on a few, large scale, strategic infrastructure projects.” Definitely something to keep an eye on. To be fair, almost half of the Fund has already been allocated and none of it is for CCS so far. Here are the projects so far – mostly water treatment and energy transmission. I stand corrected.

“But it has to get better!” you say. All right, let’s move on. After some discussion on transforming the forestry sector the Budget moves on to Modernizing the Regulatory System where we find efforts to streamline major projects (insert oil sands and CCS joke here) and this nugget: “Responsibility for conducting environmental assessments for energy projects will be delegated from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for projects falling under their respective areas of expertise” (p104).

No. Seriously. The government is moving Environmental Assessments away from CEAA to the National Energy Board. Say good-bye to any attempts at oversight. Getting angry now? I am.

But it gets better. There is some good ideas on page 105 about Forestry and Accelerated Capital Cost Allowances for renewable energy projects. Good, good, things are looking up. Projects for Great Lakes and Arctic monitoring and the development of Environmental Sustainability Indicators. Not sure how those will provide jobs or grow the Green Economy but they are nice. I’m starting to feel a bit more hopeful. And then…

The section finishes with Nuclear Energy on page 107. The section basically says, and this is a heavy paraphrase, “It’s losing lots of money but we’ll continue to support it!”

Just a reminder that if you want to see Green Economics then you had better Vote Green.

After taking a more careful read through the new Budget I’ve been able to add a few more numbers to my prior post on oil and gas subsidies.

I’m still not up to Mr. Duceppe’s $3.2 billion in subsidies but I’m getting closer.

First off, we have the temporary 15-per-cent Mineral Exploration Tax Credit (METC), first implemented in 2003 and now extended until 2011. (At least they didn’t increase it to 30% as they were lobbied to do by PDAC last August.) The METC is mentioned on page 97 of the 2010 Budget but is only supposed to cost $65 million over the next two years so that can’t be the main item (p338).

The METC is a tax-incentive that investors and companies involved with renewable energy can not hope to match because you don’t have to explore for the sun and wind, nor do you have to damage the Earth to harvest them because they are above ground, not buried in a rock. It is part of the Green Party of Canada platform to change the Income Tax Act to level the playing field between renewable and non-renewable energy development.

Or, Mr. Duceppe could have been referring to the 5-year, $1 billion Clean Energy Fund “to support research, development and demonstration of promising clean energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage technologies” (p103 Budget 2010). $800 million has already been given to various carbon-capture projects including the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL).

This one is a total joke, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an unproven technology at this scale that our government is relying upon to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry to acceptable levels. If they invested directly in Green technologies, this would be unnecessary.

But that still doesn’t get us to $3.2 billion – I’m stalling out at less than $1.1 billion. Numbers that I’ve run into around the internet are $1.4 billion. Still pretty uneven.

There is particular concern about the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance program which allows tar, excuse me, oil sands developers to write off capital expenses faster than normal. Apparently, though, the government is planning to phase this out by 2015.

I have to agree with PDAC on one thing – if you are going to have a tax incentive, or any investment incentive, it needs to be predictable. Investors do not like temporary programs.