On June 25, 2015, Alberta's Environment Minister announced
that the province will make changes to current climate change
legislation, including the doubling of carbon levies from $15/tonne
to $30/tonne by 2017. The government also stated that larger
emitters will be required to reduce emissions intensity of
greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2017, up from the current 12
percent reductions currently prescribed in the regulations.
To accomplish these changes, the Alberta government has renewed
the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation
("SGER") for two years. Currently,
"heavy emitters" (facilities that emit more than 100,000
tonnes of greenhouse gases a year) are required to reduce baseline
emissions intensities by 12 percent. Specifically, the SGER
requires that the net emissions intensity for established
facilities cannot exceed 88 percent of the baseline emissions
intensity for the facility for any particular year. The SGER offers
some leeway for facilities that fail to
