courtesy Suncor

At least one Canadian oil company has come out to tell the Canadian government that without clear stance on Kyoto, it could not calculate the cost of climate-change policy on its business.

“Without clear legislation, Suncor is unable to determine the financial impact of any climate change policy on its business and the time it would take to achieve regulated commitments,” company sustainable development VP, Gord Lambert, said in a statement.

Suncor Energy of Calgary had only just given testimony to a parliamentary committee studying Canada’s Clean Air Act.

Lambert said meeting Canada’s Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels cannot be achieved by 2012 without buying “substantial carbon dioxide credits”.

“There isn’t the time available to implement the technologies required to make those reductions in emissions,” he said.

The Conservative Canadian government partly backed out of Kyoto without offering Canadian industry rules for living in the world of Kyoto emissions trading. European trading is mandatory this year ahead of worldwide trading next year.