Motorists are not the only ones who will be saving on energy costs with the carbon tax being repealed.
With the recent cancellation of the consumer carbon tax at the federal and provincial levels, FortisBC customers should see their bills reduced over the next couple of months.
FortisBC says that the average customer of theirs uses around 7.5 gigajoules (GJ) per month.
According to the gas company, these customers will be seeing around 23% savings on their bill going forward, which equates to around $29.89.
Individual bills may see more, or less savings depending on their energy usage.
Additionally, FortisBC says that the reduced bills may not arrive until May. As customers are billed monthly, their April energy usage statement will include the carbon tax that was officially ended as of April 1st.
With customers seeing the savings start to roll in over the next handful of months, the BC government will be assessing how to ensure big industrial polluters still have to pay for their emissions.
Last April, the Province initiated a new output-based pricing system (OBPS) for large industrial emitters, which effectively puts a price on emissions that exceed provincially set limits.
The Province says this OBPS will ensure emissions reductions for industry continue while also providing some flexibility.
Meanwhile, motorists have begun seeing savings at the pump already.
The consumer carbon tax imposed a charge of around $0.17 per litre of gasoline, which has been removed from gas stations throughout the province, bringing the price of gas down.
As of this publication, the average price of gas is around 160.6 cents per litre, with the cheapest gas being at Costco, where gas is currently 156.9 cents per litre.
However, despite consumers seeing immediate and delayed savings at the pump and on their FortisBC bill respectively, the cancellation of the tax has left a hole in the BC budget of around $2 billion.
