US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper were to agree plans on Thursday to work together on environmentally friendly energy technology, as both move forward to tackle climate change. Obama arrived in Canada on his first international trip as president seeking to quell Canadian concerns about US trade protectionism and discuss the global economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan.
`The two leaders met for about half an hour privately before heading to lunch with top advisers at the Canadian parliament. A White House official said the two countries would announce an agreement to cooperate on "clean energy" technology that Obama said this week would let both countries use fossil fuels such as oil and coal while generating less pollution.
"It will include elements like carbon capture and sequestration and the smart grid," the White House official said of the agreement. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for warming the Earth. Carbon sequestration, which is not yet commercially viable, involves capturing the gas and storing it underground before it enters the atmosphere.
The official said the two countries aimed to co-ordinate research and demonstration projects as the technology gets off the ground. Environmentalists want Obama to press Canada to clean up its "dirty" oil sands in the western province of Alberta, where oil is extracted in a process that spews out vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Canada supplies a large proportion of US energy needs.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach said he was glad the leaders focused on technology, saying a tax on tar sands would have damaged his province's competitiveness. "I'm very pleased that the president and the prime minister are looking at technology as a way of dealing with the issues tied to climate change," he said on CTV. In an interview this week with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Obama also stressed that his country had its own share of dirty energy sources with vast resources of coal.
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