That's a great question. There are many people who are thinking about this now because infrastructure is recognized as being vital to meeting our climate goals, and yet we don't actually have a lot of experience in building infrastructure while knowing that we have to have a price on carbon that will increase over time.
Germany, for example, has full life-cycle cost accounting for its infrastructure. I'll give you an example. For water infrastructure, in some cases they now have a shadow price on carbon. It's not a rising price in the way we probably need to do it, but when they look at new water purification infrastructure, they're including a price on carbon that is like a proxy for energy. They're thinking about energy efficiency, then, when they're looking at water purification. The energy that goes into the water purification actually causes carbon emissions, so if you approach it in this way, you get a better understanding of the cost.
The world, not just Canada, is at a stage right now of trying to understand how to make smart investments in infrastructure. By “smart” we mean that the infrastructure really serves the purposes of the community. It achieves the social goal and also address the environmental goals, and they're done it in a way that yields value for money.
