Northeastern Ontario industries mostly silent on how much they pay in carbon tax

After fighting the federal government for years over carbon pricing, the province is now collecting carbon taxes for the first time, expected to total $131 million dollars this year.

The Ford government has yet to say how it will spend the money it collects from large industrial emitters that put out at least 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

None of the large industrial emitters in northeastern Ontario would reveal how much they've paid in carbon tax since it was introduced in 2017 under the cap and trade system of the previous Liberal government.

But at least one would like to see the province return some of the money it collects to help companies prepare for a carbon-free future.

Belgian firm Carmeuse operates a lime kiln just off Highway 17 near Blind River that has had pretty consistent emissions over the last decade, reporting that it produced some 117,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020.

Cem Gercek, the company's area operations manager, says while they do burn coal in the kiln, 65 per cent of the carbon dioxide they produce is inherent to the process of turning limestone into lime. 

"We have no means or control to reduce those emissions," he said. 

"If you'd like to produce lime, you have to produce CO2."

He says that means the ever-increasing carbon taxes will take a bigger and bigger bite out of their profits and Carmeuse could lose business to competitors from outside Ontario.. 

"The tax we pay increases significantly year over year," Gercek. 

"And this year is the worst."

Gercek says he'd like to see the Ontario government return some of the carbon tax revenue to help industry decarbonize.

At the lime kiln in Blind River, which employs about 40 people, that would mean capturing and concentrating the carbon dioxide and then storing it underground, while the fossil fuels they burn would be replaced by locally-sourced biomass. 

"So, right now what we have in place is more of a stick, but there's no carrot in place yet," he said. 

"And there's no returns on the CO2 tax where we could invest back in the business, so we could decarbonize and reduce our costs while we continue to compete."

Some of the large industrial emitters in the northeast didn't respond to CBC's questions at all, including Sault Ste. Marie's Algoma steel, by far the biggest emitter in the region and one of the biggest in the province, putting out 3.8 million tonnes of CO2 in 2020.

That is down from 4.1 million tonnes in 2017 and the greenhouse gas emissions from other large industrial plants in the northeast have also dropped in recent years.

At Vale's smelter in Copper Cliff, 346,717 tonnes were emitted in 2020, down from over 400,000 in 2011.

The Kapuskasing pulp and paper mill, now operated by GreenFirst Forest Products, has watched carbon emissions drop by more than half in that same time, reporting 121,838 tonnes in 2020.

It's a similar story at Domtar's Espanola paper plant, which pumped out over 600,000 tonnes in 2020, although most of that is from biomass generation and is counted separately by the province. 

Emissions at Glencore's Falconbridge Smelter have been pretty steady over the last decade, between 110,000 and 130,000 tonnes per year.