Bloomberg are reporting that Ontario plans to raise C$1.9 billion a year from its proposed cap-and-trade program starting in 2017, as it joins with Quebec and California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ontario projects it would generate about C$18 per carbon t in the joint market where businesses buy carbon-emission allowances in an auction. Proceeds will be directed toward boosting energy efficiency, public transport, geothermal projects and clean technology.
Ontario is the latest Canadian province to introduce a regime to reduce greenhouse gases, which it’s aiming to cut by 15% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 37 percent by 2030.
Industries with high emissions and facing international competition, such as cement, would get free allowances until 2020 when the government will review the program.
Cement shipments and clinker production levels increased in the first nine months of the year in the US and Puerto Rico, according to the USGS’s latest monthly report.
Portland-limestone cement, a new cement that produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions during its manufacturing and in its application, is now included in Canadian building codes and available to the marketplace.
In Jamaica, local media is reporting that Canadian company Cemcorp plans to build a 1.5 million tpa cement plant in St Catherine at an investment of US$340 million.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has imposed new air pollution rules on cement plants in South Carolina and elsewhere across the country in a bid to reduce mercury emissions.