Revealed: Ontario’s ‘climate change action plan’ – by Robert Benzie (Toronto Star – June 7, 2016)

https://www.thestar.com/

Queen’s Park will start a “cash-for-clunkers” program to encourage motorists to switch to electric cars, subsidize free overnight electrical charging at home, and make garage plugs mandatory in all new houses and condos, the Star has learned.

Those are some of the 28 key measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in “Ontario’s Five Year Climate Action Plan 2016-2020” to be introduced Wednesday in Toronto.

The 85-page plan will also “increase the availability and use of lower-carbon fuel” to convince truckers to switch from diesel to natural gas, propane, or gasoline mixed with ethanol. That’s being done in conjunction with the Ontario Trucking Association, Union Gas, and Enbridge.

“When my grandchildren ask me what we did to help our planet I want to be proud of what we accomplished,” Premier Kathleen Wynne writes in the introduction to the long-awaited strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Together, we will build a greener, more prosperous future for them and for generations to come,” she says.

While there had been speculation the climate change action plan might somehow mandate the eventual phasing out of natural gas in home heating, it in fact just calls for “all new homes to be net zero carbon homes” by 2030.

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