Five pictures of dudes chillaxticating in L'Aquila

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is shown walking today with U.S. President Barack Obama on the second day of the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

To see more images from L'Aquila taken by Jason Ransom, official photographer to Prime Minister Harper, click on the photo gallery link at the bottom of this article.

The following statements were issued today by the prime minister's office:

************************* Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces Canada to help found global carbon capture and storage institute Canada playing leadership role in global effort to use cutting edge technology to reduce emissions and fight climate change

L’AQUILA, ITALY – The Government of Canada is building on its leadership role in the development of new, clean technologies to fight climate change by helping found a new global partnership to advance carbon capture and storage technologies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced during the G-8 summit today.

“Canada is already a world leader at using cutting-edge technology to reduce emissions and fight climate change and now, through this new partnership, we are creating more opportunities to share this expertise on the world stage,” said the prime minister. “Carbon capture and storage technology has tremendous promise to balance our need for energy with our need to protect the environment.”

Canada is joined by Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Norway, China and 13 other nations as founding members of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

The institute will be a global centre of expertise and help accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage demonstration projects worldwide.

More than 80 major companies and industry associations have also joined the institute, which will encourage developing countries to apply carbon capture and storage technology to energy production.

The development and large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage has been identified as a critical priority by leaders in the Major Economies Forum.

Clean energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage are an integral part of the Government of Canada’s aggressive plan to achieve an absolute reduction of 20 percent in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

It is estimated that Canada has the potential to store underground as much as 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, an amount equal to roughly three-quarters of Canada’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

The Government of Canada has invested $240 million in one of the world’s first full-scale commercial demonstrations of carbon capture and storage at Boundary Dam, a coal-fired electricity plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan.

Canada is also a founding partner in the International Energy Agency Weyburn–Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project.

This Saskatchewan project is one of the largest international CO2 measuring, monitoring and verification projects in the world.

In total, Canada’s economic action plan invests $1 billion for clean energy research and demonstration projects, including $650 million for large-scale carbon capture and storage projects.

The government is also investing $140 million in the ecoENERGY Technology Initiative which supports industry-led efforts to advance carbon capture and storage technologies.

************************* Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces Canadian participation in G-8 food security initiative

New agriculture development investment will help address scarcity issues made worse by the global recession

L’AQUILA, ITALY – Canada will play a key role in the international effort to address the global food security crisis, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today.

“Both before and during the current global recession, we saw a deeply troubling pattern of scarcity and price instability causing significant hardship to vulnerable people – particularly those in the developing world,” said the Prime Minister. “Whether we are talking about famines, price-spikes or lack of sustainable agricultural development, there are many clear and compelling humanitarian, economic and security reasons to address this mounting global challenge today.”

As part of the joint G-8 pledge on food security, Canada will more than double its investment in food security and provide $600 million in increased funding over three years, reaching $1.18 billion in overall funding.

In total, G-8 members pledged to mobilize at least USD $15 billion (CAD $17.4 billion) over three years.

The new funding will go to bilateral programming and multilateral initiatives.

Canada is a global leader in increasing food security, with our overall investment including food aid reaching over $580 million in fiscal year 2008-2009, a nearly 40 percent year-over-year increase.

Our long-standing commitment was recently re-affirmed by the identification of food security as one of Canada’s five international assistance priorities.

With over a billion people now suffering from hunger, food security is a critical global challenge whose effects are felt most dramatically by the world's poorest and most vulnerable.

The prime minister underlined the importance of maximizing the effectiveness of Canada’s assistance program by fully untying its food aid budget.

This benefits people in developing countries by maximizing the assistance that can be procured for each dollar contributed.

The prime minister also reinforced the point that open markets and increased trade are essential to ensuring that food and other key commodities remain available and affordable.

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