This article is part of the Reality Check series by Canada's National Observer. Have a question for us? Reach out at [email protected].
The claim: Canada can lower its emissions while increasing oil and gas production
Origin: Liberals
At a press conference in Victoria on Monday, the Liberal leader was asked about how he can meet environmental goals and lower GHG emissions, while still increasing oil and gas production.
In his response, Carney said about 30 per cent of Canada’s emissions come from the production and transportation of oil and gas, saying, “We need to get those emissions down. We can get those emissions down with Canadian technology. The example and one of the great opportunities for Alberta, Canada, and ultimately for the world, is to advance carbon capture and storage — the principal opportunity there is in the Pathways Project.”
That is how Carney proposes to “produce more” and “push out foreign supplies” while making “Canada richer” and “paying for our social programs.”
The verdict: Misleading
First, let’s look at the terms used here. What is carbon capture and storage? Well, what it sounds like. It’s capturing the C02 produced in large quantities, like in power generation, and storing it somewhere, like injecting it into depleted oil reservoirs. Oil companies often do this to extract even more oil (a process called enhanced oil recovery), which leads to even more emissions. So it’s good to be careful here. Not all carbon capture projects are created equal.
Generally, the point of CCS is that it lowers the emissions intensity of a fossil fuel. That basically refers to the amount of emissions it takes to produce something, like a barrel of oil.
Does CCS work? That’s a complicated question for Canada.
First, it’s questionable how well carbon capture actually works. Existing carbon capture projects routinely fail to meet their targets, and even if they work as advertised, climate experts rank carbon capture among the most expensive and least effective options to address climate change. That’s because the majority of emissions from fossil fuels come when the fuel is burned. From a planetary perspective, it doesn’t matter much if the oil is made cleaner using carbon capture, if more oil is still ultimately burned.
What it comes down to is this: Canada can technically lower its emissions under the Paris Agreement by using carbon capture and storage, if we assume equal or lower oil and gas production. But if carbon capture is used to justify higher levels of oil and gas production, global emissions will continue to rise.
Read more about exported emissions here.
Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre has been talking about repealing Bill C-69, which he calls the “No New Pipelines” Bill. The bill requires that new energy projects get assessed at various levels, including environmental, economic, and the rights of Indigenous people. (Under this “no pipelines” bill, the Liberals bought, expanded and operated the Trans Mountain pipeline.)
Poilievre plans to repeal the bill, along with Bill C-48, which regulates oil tankers and transportation off the British Columbian coastline. By axing these two pieces of legislation, Poilievre aims to get approvals for new energy projects within six months.
Mailbag
Our reader question this week comes via email, and with a picture of some election mail attached.
Our reader wanted to know if Canada’s economic growth was really the worst of all the G7 nations?
Verdict: Misleading.
There are several ways to look at economic growth, but one of the most common is by tracking the growth of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP). GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced by a country.
In terms of straight numbers, Canada’s GDP is good. For the past five years, we’ve had the second-strongest GDP growth in the G7. The International Monetary Fund predicts Canada will lead the G7 in GDP growth this year, and we’ve had steady growth year over year, with household spending up in 2024 from the year before.
However, our population has also risen over the last decade, by about 16 per cent. That’s why many economists look at per capita GDP, using it to gauge average living standards in a given country.
According to Statistics Canada, our per capita GDP began to stagnate around 2015, and (along with most countries) took a big dip in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic. We’re now below our long-term trend. In order to return to pre-pandemic rates, our GDP would need to grow at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent — last year it rose by about 1 per cent.
So, Canada's growth in per capita GDP is the lowest in the G7, not in our straight GDP.
Do you have a burning question in need of a fact-check? Get in touch! [email protected].
Comments
Article: "First, it’s questionable how well carbon capture actually works. Existing carbon capture projects routinely fail to meet their targets, and even if they work as advertised, climate experts rank carbon capture among the most expensive and least effective options to address climate change. That’s because the majority of emissions from fossil fuels come when the fuel is burned."
Non sequitur. Even if downstream emissions were zero, CCS attached to upstream facilities would still be expensive and ineffective.
Particularly in the oilsands. CCS is expensive and ineffective because of high R&D and operating costs, reliance on first-of-a-kind designs, scalability issues, low concentration streams, wide geographical distribution of facilities, and high energy requirements. To say nothing of the risk of transporting and storing CO2 forever.
CCS is effective only in applications with high concentration streams. Not the case for the oilsands industry, apart from upgraders.
Pembina Institute: In the oilsands sector, "most CO2 is emitted in low concentration streams, and the efforts to capture it will be challenging and expensive."
The oilsands has many small, diffuse emission sources. Which makes CCS neither economical nor practical. Low-concentration CO2 streams incur high compression costs. In situ projects distributed over a wide area also incur high transportation costs. In situ projects are at a double disadvantage.
CO2 from small or diffuse sources like vehicles, heavy diesel powered machinery and trucks, tailings ponds, and exposed mine deposits cannot be captured at all.
Basically, emissions from everything in the oilsands not connected to a central power- or heat-source cannot be captured. To say nothing of fugitive methane emissions from upstream fossil gas operations, which fuel in situ projects.
CCS is simply unable to address our global emissions problem at scale:
American Petroleum Institute: "Some estimates suggest that the amount of infrastructure necessary to perform geologic storage on a meaningful level is equivalent to the existing worldwide infrastructure associated with current oil and gas production."
"The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions" (IEA, 2023)
"A productive debate about the oil and gas industry in transitions needs to avoid two common misconceptions.
"… The second is excessive expectations and reliance on CCUS. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage is an essential technology for achieving net zero emissions in certain sectors and circumstances, but it is not a way to retain the status quo.
"If oil and natural gas consumption were to evolve as projected under today’s policy settings, this would require an inconceivable 32 billion tonnes of carbon captured for utilisation or storage by 2050, including 23 billion tonnes via direct air capture to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
"The necessary carbon capture technologies would require 26,000 terawatt hours of electricity generation to operate in 2050, which is more than global electricity demand in 2022.
"And it would require over USD 3.5 trillion in annual investments all the way from today through to mid-century, which is an amount equal to the entire industry’s annual average revenue in recent years."
"The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions" (IEA, Nov 28, 2023)
Energy ecologist Vaclav Smil: "Mark my words, there'll be no massive sequestration of carbon. There hasn't been any, and there'll not be any next year, or 2025, or 2030.
"…The scale. We now make about 37 billion tons of CO2. 10% of that is 3.7 billion tons. Say 4 billion tons of C02, just to control 10% of the problem. This is almost exactly the amount of crude oil we produce. It took us 100-plus years to develop an industry, which is taking 4 billion tons out of the ground and with the gradient, and then taking it up and refining and using it. Now we would have to develop a new industry, which would take 4 billion tons, and store it, push it against the gradient into the ground, and guarantee that it will stay there forever. Something like this cannot be done in 5, or 10, or 15 years. And this is 10%. So, simply on the matter of scale, carbon sequestration is just simply dead on arrival."
"Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind" (Intelligencer – New York Magazine)
Scientist and inventor Saul Griffith: To store even one quarter (c 10 Gt/yr) of global carbon emissions, we would need infrastructure larger than current fossil fuel infrastructure. (CBC Radio, What On Earth, 2021)
Here is what AI has to say:
"While many carbon capture projects are initially 'first-of-a-kind' designs, the industry is evolving, and the goal is to move towards more scalable and commercially proven technologies, rather than solely relying on bespoke solutions.
"Early Projects are Often Bespoke:
"Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects are often considered 'first-of-a-kind' because they involve combining various components and technologies in unique ways, especially at large scales.
"Need for Scalability:
"To achieve net-zero emissions, CCUS technologies need to be scalable and commercially proven, meaning they can be replicated and deployed at a large scale efficiently and cost-effectively.
"Challenges and Opportunities:
"Technical Challenges: The technology requires significant investments in research, development, and infrastructure, which can be prohibitively expensive.
"Learning Curve: As the industry matures, there's an expectation that costs will decrease and technologies will become more efficient through learning and innovation."
"CCUS projects are generally still first-of-a-kind and therefore unproven, not because the technology is unknown but because the various components have not yet been combined repeatedly at scale.
"… Projects are large and unproven. CCUS projects take a long time to stand up, and there have been many early failures. According to one study, 263 CCUS projects with the ability to process at least one ton of CO₂ per day were undertaken from 1995 to 2018. Of those with a project size greater than 0.3 MT CO₂ per year, or about half the sample size, 78 percent have been canceled or put on hold. Essentially, every CCUS project to date has been unique, creating all the delivery challenges of first-of-a-kind projects, but they are also commercially fragile, making success all the harder to achieve.
"… Most CCUS business cases assume that captured CO₂ will be transported to a local site and sequestered, meaning the CCUS industry is effectively a waste-disposal business. This is an expensive process that involves complex infrastructure and ongoing measuring, monitoring, and management.
"Scaling the CCUS industry to achieve net-zero emissions" (McKinsey, 2022)
Carney's support for CCS is unconscionable. Clearly, he has not done his homework.
Tens of billions of public dollars wasted on projects that merely provide political cover for fossil-fuel expansion. Funds far better spent on renewables, energy-efficient housing, and public transit.
Amen.
And as for the opposition, it's the only way, really, that his platform strongly resembles that of Mr. Trudeau -- and the only one that Mr. Poilievre seems to be on board with.
Poilievre's great at trashing everything, and talking a big line about getting rid of everything. But it soon becomes clear that with all the taxes he'd wipe out, there'd be nothing with which to run government. I guess politicians could continue to be handsomely rewarded by lobbyists, but you can't educate your kids with that, or once retired, put maintain the roof overhead, heat and light the premises, and put food on the table with it.
Thanks again, Geoffrey. I'm bookmarking this one so I can find it when I need to refute the concept as friends and relatives bring it up.
Carbon Capture Technology is a smoke screen and nothing more. It has been already proven to not meet expectations or even achive any claims made in 13 EU projects. Carney needs to research this more before claiming or suggesting this is a solution.
For Pierre Poilievre, he knows it is just an oil & gas smoke screen already, and will only push that solution to appease one of their largest donors.
Carney's acceptance of CCS is very disappointing, even more so to those who have read his book where his main thrust is to focus on the energy transition, and watched his extensive interviews over the years. His promotion of CCS as an exportable technolgy is not viable given the exorbitant costs and very few -- if any -- short term successes. There are no proven long term successes in CCS projects.
The greatest disappointment would be if he subsidizes CCS and pipelines even as they fail from a technological and financial feasibility standpoint, thus taking public funds away from electrification, energy conservation and other climate policies and programs. Public money will be increasingly scarce as various governments extend financial assistance to people affected by Trump's stupid trade war.
By comparison, while Carney's sop to oil & gas is a big let down, Poilievre's total capitulation (pipes to the four cardinal directions, oil is forever, etc.) will bankrupt the country and violate the Constitution, and that's after he caves to Trump early and "negotiates" a trade deal on Trump's terms, namely throwing in a big slice of Canadian sovereignty.
Meanwhile, Carney is walking the walk on a national housing program (A+) and, as the result of the economic illiteracy down south, is reorienting Canada's economic relationships in several directions, starting internally and continuing with our non-US democratic allies (A+). And he is vowing to protect the Arctic (B+).
Despite his kowtowing to magical thinking in oil industry tech, Carney is the only leader so far who has extensively promoted clean electricity before he entered politics. I suspect he's not being forthcoming on that during the campaign because that would alienate moderate conservatives at a time when they are swinging in substantial numbers toward voting for the Liberals under the deep crises management experience of Carney while Trump bumbles over the landscape.
I hope I'm right. I also hope my assumption that Carney is too smart economically to continue deeply financing the fossil fuels that he himself has said have a limited shelf life. He says he knows balance sheets. He'll have to prove it with the oil industry as prime minister, or he will lose a big chunk of his progressive support.
I hope you're right, too.
No one seems to be mentioning that we already *do* have cross-country gas transport. If he wants to do something to reduce imports from the US (mainly re-importing what we've already exported, or partially replacing in the east what we've already exported in the west) ... all he'd have to do is require the *Canadian* entities to meet Canadians' demand before exporting. The world does't need our oil and gas: it needs us -- and everyone else -- to transition ASAP *off* of oil and gas!
The other thing is, in line with the per capita reasoning around GDP, we already have both the highest per capita carbon footprint among industrialized nations -- meaning, basically, in the world -- AND we are the only country to have continued to increase our emissions over the past decades, and the only one to not have met our stated reduction goals. And that's all while we chose 2009 as our baseline, at the time our year of highest emissions, while the rest of the world got on with a 1990 base year upon which the 1.5 C reduction targets were based.
The mind boggles with the mealy-mouthed-ness and mushy-brained-ness of it all.
Chances are if Poilievre loses this election, the Cons will find another leader. I'm not sure any could be worse from the POV of climate change. Or democracy. Or human rights. Or sovereignty . . .
Last time I checked a while back our per capita emissions were third highest after the US and Saudi Arabia. Now we're Number One.
Clearly, we're not only heading in the wrong direction, but the world is also passing us by. CCS is already financially ruinous, but it becomes ludicrous considering the ever steepening rise in renewables in our export markets.