Green Ribbon Panel Establishes Guiding Principles

Environmental and economic leaders advance key priorities to help address climate change. 

The Green Ribbon Panel, formed in February of this year, has developed four principles it believes are necessary to change the conversation around climate, energy, and the economy. These principles will guide the Panel’s work and a series of reports to be released throughout
the summer.

The primary goal of the Panel is the advancing of practical and executable solutions, including the role that nuclear and Canada’s other clean energy technologies can play in addressing climate change while growing our economy.

The Principles include:

  1. Embracing the urgent need to address climate change is the foundation for action;
  2. Ontario is well-positioned to build the clean electricity system that can be a cornerstone of Canada’s future low-carbon economy;
  3. Low-cost, low-carbon emission energy represents a competitive economic advantage for Ontario and Canada; and
  4. The enabling policy frameworks must be diverse and require participation from all levels of government and public-private partnerships.

“The consequences of global warming changing our climate are real and severe, from extreme weather events such as droughts and floods to substantive impacts on human health due to toxins from GHG pollutants,” said James Scongack, Chair of the Green Ribbon Panel. “That’s why this panel of experts was created to mobilize business and civic leaders to participate in the climate policy discussions and to provide a forum for sharing ideas, lessons and best practices.”

The agreed-upon principles are the result of a consultative process with panel leaders and individual interviews. With these principles, the panel hopes to contribute to the climate change discussion by providing policy guidance to all levels of government through recommendations which demonstrate that economically-beneficial climate change mitigation will require multi-faceted policy options to support behavioural change, financing, regulation, labour force capability and infrastructure development.

The panel will conduct outreach and research activities to contribute to its report series, which will help develop public policy recommendations for all levels of government on real solutions on climate change. The first report of the Green Ribbon Panel will be released in early August and will demonstrate why clean air and climate change are issues that must be addressed in planning now and provide practical, innovative solutions to lowering electricity costs and reducing GHG emissions in Ontario.

About the Green Ribbon Panel

A collection of environmental and economic leaders from across Canada have established the 2020 Green Ribbon Panel to advance practical and executable solutions enabling the economy to continue to grow and prosper while addressing the realities of climate change using proven solutions.

The Panel will focus on the role nuclear with other technologies that anchor Canada’s energy sector can play in fighting climate change and growing the economy at home and abroad. The Panel, which will issue a report on its findings later this year, will evaluate successful and unsuccessful initiatives from around the world; Canadian learning’s including the phase-out of coal in Ontario, and integrates new data on the impacts of electrification and climate change and hydrogen.

For more information:
Andrew Thiele
Sr. Manager, Policy and Energy Innovation – Corporate Affairs
Bruce Power
226.930.1869
Andrew.thiele@brucepower.com