Steven Guilbeault needs to call the oil industry’s carbon capture bluff

First, they didn’t reduce their greenhouse gas emissions because they didn’t believe climate change was real. Then, they didn’t do it because they didn't think climate change was their fault. And now, to hear the oil and gas industry and its proxies tell the story, they just can’t reduce their emissions quickly enough. They’d like to, you see. They really would. But they just don’t have the time or money to meet Canada’s 2030 target without hurting a bunch of people in the process.

This might have a fig leaf’s worth of credibility if it wasn’t for the fact that they’ve been talking about carbon capture technology for decades now. As environmental economist Andrew Leach noted back in 2015, the Harper government’s “Turning the Corner Plan” from 2008 included a policy that would “effectively require putting into place new carbon capture and storage technologies to prevent the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.” That never happened, of course. Neither did the same plan’s proposed 33 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity relative to 2006 levels by 2020. In 2023, they’re a mere 13 per cent lower.

This is the conundrum facing the Liberal government’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and anyone else who actually wants to see some walking on this file instead of just more talk. The latest stalling mechanism is the release of a report by S&P Global that claims Canada’s oilsands would have to cut as much as 1.3 million barrels a day of production to meet proposed 2030 federal emissions targets. That would apparently lead to a loss of between 5,400 and 9,500 jobs, a figure Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre conveniently rounded up to 10,000 in his predictably overwrought tweet.

It’s not yet clear what assumptions were fed into this report, although it’s a very safe bet that they align with the oil and gas industry’s interests — and were perhaps even informed by their funding. Either way, the theoretical job losses are a useful bargaining chip for both industry and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan in their ongoing efforts to slow-roll federal climate policy and delay the imposition of any meaningful new regulations.

Those efforts include Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s ongoing refusal to even entertain the idea of a net-zero electricity grid by 2035, or an emissions cap on Alberta’s oil and gas sector. Scott Moe went even further, suggesting Guilbeault’s call to phase out unabated fossil fuels — that is, those not paired with carbon capture technology — amounts to a declaration of war. “If it wasn’t clear before, it is now,” the Saskatchewan premier tweeted. “The Trudeau government doesn’t want to just reduce emissions in our energy sector, they want to completely shut down our energy sector.”

That’s pretty hard to square with its ongoing support for LNG Canada (the biggest energy infrastructure project in Canadian history) and its $30-billion-plus investment in building the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline. But what is becoming abundantly clear is that industry and its political champions aren’t actually serious about building carbon capture projects. Both Alberta and Saskatchewan have ponied up mere pittances compared to what the federal government put on the proverbial table for new carbon capture projects, while oil companies and lobby groups like the Pathways Alliance keep declining to put much money where their increasingly big mouths are.

But for all their talk, it’s the lack of action here that really says the most. After all, given the projected path of carbon prices (up to $170 per tonne by 2030) and the carbon credits the companies can receive under the TIER program when they reduce emissions, they’re effectively admitting one of three things: oil prices are going much lower than they are today, the next federal government won’t uphold the current carbon pricing system or carbon capture technology will be much more expensive — and much less effective — than anyone thinks.

Either way, it’s time for Guilbeault to call this bluff once and for all. He should publicly dare the Smith and Moe governments to match the federal investment in carbon capture technology. He should challenge the Pathways Alliance and its network of oil companies to start putting some real money into play. Heck, the federal government could even offer to match investments in any offset credits needed to cover the 29 million tonnes of emissions they apparently can’t reduce by 2030, provided those offsets occur somewhere else in Canada.

And yes, if these companies won’t make the investments required to reduce their emissions, then the federal government will have to do it for them through a legislated emissions cap. Sure, the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan would howl at that prospect. But they’d howl at almost anything short of a blank cheque made out to the status quo and signed by Justin Trudeau. Guilbeault and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson need to summon their nerve, gather their forces and put an end to this charade. After more than a decade of playing for time on carbon capture technology, Canada’s oil and gas industry has run out of it.