Unclear on tar sands?

A recent report by Greenpeace and Environmental Defence* gives some analyses that highlight the confusion in actions about tar sands by Canada’s government.

 

Harper’s singular devotion to tar sands oil as our mid-term economic future requires a high price for oil to give a profit margin over the high costs of tar sands oil extraction. Too low a price for oil would make tar sands not profitable and gut the economic future envisaged by Harper.

 

The extraction of oil from tar sands is driving Canada’s additions of carbon to the atmosphere and our impact on atmospheric change all by itself. Beyond that are the global additions of carbon that will come from refining and then burning that extracted tar sands oil.

 

The Greenpeace-Environmental Defence analysis shows that continuing expansion of tar sands oil extraction makes it virtually impossible for Canada to meet even weak carbon reduction targets.

 

Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution (GHG) has increased by 18% since 1990 with 73% of that net increase arising from Alberta. The oil and gas sector was responsible for 67% of the increase since 1990 and all other parts of the oil and gas sector except the tar sands have had declining or steady emissions since 2000. The tar sands project is the main cause of Canada’s GHG increase.

 

Recently Alberta, with only 11% of the nation’s population and driven by an industry representing just 2% of the nation’s GDP has caused 93% of Canada’s atmospheric carbon pollution.

 

For economic, environmental and moral reasons we need a national energy strategy that will change this unreasonable situation.

 

Although the techniques of extracting tar sands oil are changing, it is not clear that the carbon footprint will be reduced. The ecological impact is changing from destroying boreal forest by digging a big hole to a destruction of a much larger area by bulldozing a rectilinear grid of access roads and well pads and utility corridors to support a grid of steam injection wells. The bulldozed area will be orders of magnitude greater than the big hole dug by earlier methods. We must adjust our assessments of the ecological damage accordingly.

 

*Digging a Big Hole: How tar sands expansion undermines a Canadian strategy that show climate leadership-2 pdf. Environmental Defence/Greenpeace. environmentaldefence.ca

 

Sources for the Greenpeace-Environmental Defence report:

1Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 1: p. 47.

2 Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 3: p. 15-41.

3 Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 1: p. 29.

4 Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 3. p. 15-41.

5 Per capita calculated using population data from Statistics Canada. (2015a). “Population by year, by province and territory.” Retrieved from: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo02a-eng.htm. Per GDP calculated using GDP data from Statistics Canada. (2015b). “Real gross domestic product, expenditure-based, by province and territory.” Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/econ50-eng.htm.

6 Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 3: p. 29.

7 Government of Canada. (2014). Canada’s Sixth National Report on Climate Change 2014. p. 8. and Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 3. p. 17-22.

8 Environment Canada. (2013). Canada’s Emissions Trends. p. 36.

9 Calculated using Environment Canada. (2013). Canada’s Emissions Trends. p. 36, and Environment Canada. (2014). Part 3: p. 15-41.

10 Calculated using Environment Canada. (2014). National Inventory Report 1990-2012. Part 3: p. 15-44.

11 Asadollahi, A. and Dobson, S. (2014). “Fossil Fuel Subsidies: An analysis of federal financial support to Canada’s oil sector.” Pembina Institute. p. 34.

 

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