This year’s federal budget includes $362 million in new spending commitments toward green jobs and growth up to the end of 2012.

Although there’s no actual budget line dedicated to the cost, clients would be interested to know about tax measures that encourage them to spend on green energy and diversify the country’s energy supply.

The budget proposes to expand the eligibility of certain items in the accelerated capital cost allowance category — Class 43.2 — that allows taxpayers to deduct the cost of certain assets at the rate of 50% a year on a declining balance basis.

Eligible equipment includes a wide variety of clean energy equipment used to produce electricity or thermal energy, such as: high energy cogeneration, wind turbines, fuel cells, photovoltaic equipment, geothermal equipment and waste energy equipment. The budget says that the measures will reduce federal revenue by a “small amount to the end of 2012.”

In terms of cost, by far the greatest weight is in the area of nuclear energy, with a price tag of $255 million in two years for the restructuring of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, the federal Crown corporation that includes the Chalk River lab, which produces medical isotopes. The cash covers “anticipated commercial losses” in the corporation throughout the restructuring, but also ongoing costs to build the Advanced CANDU reactor.

The other major item is $50 million from 2010-12 to support research and development in the forestry sector for clean energy technology, mostly to help companies in the industry make their operations more efficient and less polluting.

Smaller budget items include:

• $18.4 million to pay for programs that track environmental benchmarks such as water quality, air quality and greenhouse-gas emissions.

• $8 million per year to 2012 to clean up ecosystems around the Great Lakes, a commitment the government made in the Canada-United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in June 2009 to address pollution, invasive species and climate change.

• $4 million per year to 2012 to support community based environmental monitoring in the North: to collect and interpret data on environmental change and the impact of development through the Northwest Territories Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program and the Nunavut General Monitoring Program.

• About $1.5 a year to 2012 to pay for consultation with Aboriginal Canadians for projects included in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

IE