The federal government is scaling back the scope of its carbon pricing plan, and that likely won’t impact Albertans, according to Environment Minister Shannon Phillips.

“The federal government’s system is just replicating ours. That means companies already know the rules of the game because they’ve been playing by them here in Alberta.

“Apologies to the feds, but we’re leagues ahead of them on this,” Phillips said.

The new plan allows industries to emit more pollution before they have to pay.

The feds had initially proposed taxing companies for emissions over 70 per cent of an industry’s average emissions. The new threshold is 80 per cent.

The limit for some sectors will be even higher and allow emissions up to 90 per cent of the industry average.

UCP leader Jason Kenney said the move shows the carbon taxes could hurt an industry’s ability to compete.

“[The Trudeau Liberals and their NDP allies] argued higher taxes would make Canada more competitive. But now we have an acknowledgement from Ottawa that carbon taxes do indeed hurt competitiveness - and along with competitiveness, jobs,” Kenney said in a statement.

Trevor Tombe, an associate economics professor at the University of Calgary, said Alberta’s carbon tax system for industry has been supported by parties from the right and left.

“It’s interesting to watch the politics of this, certainly. Jason Kenney is on the record repeatedly as supporting the large emitter system that Alberta has. It was not the NDP government that brought this in, we’ve had it for about 10 years now,” Tombe explained.

Tombe said industries will still face costs when they pollute, but government subsidies could lower how much they pay.

“What was decided today is how much output is going to be subsidized. So think about cement in Alberta: 100 per cent is the rate that we set our benchmark at, but this doesn’t mean zero per cent of emissions face the carbon price, it’s just the government takes all the revenue and turns that around as a subsidy,”

Alberta, B.C., Manitoba and Quebec all have carbon pricing plans that are expected to meet federal requirements for 2019. Nova Scotia’s cap-and-trade system kicks in next year and could meet federal government’s requirements.

Ontario and Saskatchewan are challenging Ottawa’s jurisdiction to impose a carbon price on provinces.

With files from Jeremy Thompson and The Canadian Press