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tar sands
Canada Must Switch Its Loyalty From Big Oil to Renewables
The only real hope of avoiding climate disaster lies in dramatically ramping up the transition to clean energy by building new wind and solar farms at breakneck speed.
May 22, 2024
The opening of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion this month—widely celebrated in the media—reminds us that Canada is still very much in the grip of Big Oil.
That $34 billion expansion was financed by Ottawa, and it amounts to a massive public subsidy for the oil industry—at a time when we should urgently be financing renewable energy, not fossil fuels.
The renowned U.S. climatologist James Hansen famously said the oilsands were such a “dirty, carbon-intensive” oil that if they were to be fully exploited, it would be “game over” for the planet.
Over the past four years, Ottawa has provided $65 billion in financial support for oil and gas, but only a fraction as much for renewable energy.
Yet here we are, applauding the tripling of the pipeline’s capacity to carry oil from the oilsands, even as that moves us closer to “game over.”
A report this month revealed that the world’s top climate scientists believe the world is headed in a frightening direction—toward more than 2.5°C degrees of warming, charging past the international target of 1.5°C, beyond which fires, floods, and heatwaves become seriously unpredictable.
Today, we’re at just 1.2°C of warming, and look at the mess we’re in. Already this season, wildfires are burning out of control in B.C. and Alberta.
Climate scientists have been clear: The only real hope of avoiding climate disaster lies in dramatically ramping up the transition to clean energy by building new wind and solar farms at breakneck speed.
But this isn’t happening, even though the price of wind and solar power has become very competitive. That was supposed to be the trigger point at which the market would begin working in our favour, with renewables cheaper than fossil fuels, facilitating the transition to clean energy.
Renewables keep getting cheaper. The price of solar power has plunged by 90%, yet Big Oil remains dominant.
That’s because, with its long-established monopoly and extensive government support, Big Oil is far more profitable—and therefore more attractive—to major financial investors than the struggling, competitive firms that make up the budding renewable sector, notes Brett Christophers, a political economist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Clearly, given the climate emergency, we can’t just leave the vital task of transitioning to renewables up to the whims of financial investors, whose only interest is maximizing their returns.
Governments must become a lot more involved, and they have to switch their loyalty from Big Oil to renewables.
The Biden administration has moved in this direction, with sweeping measures aimed at doubling renewable capacity in the U.S. over the next decade. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government is locked into serving the immensely powerful oil industry.
Over the past four years, Ottawa has provided $65 billion in financial support for oil and gas, but only a fraction as much for renewable energy. Its main program for subsidizing renewables provides less than $1 billion a year, says Julia Levin, an associate director with Environmental Defence.
The extent of Ottawa’s willingness to accommodate Big Oil became clear in 2018 when it took over the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, rather than let the project collapse after its original backers threatened to pull out amid intense environmental opposition.
Now Ottawa is planning to spend $10 billion, possibly much more, subsidizing Big Oil’s futile but costly efforts to reduce its carbon emissions through “carbon capture and storage”—despite ample evidence the technology is highly ineffective at reducing such emissions.
This enables Big Oil to pretend it’s serious about reducing emissions, lulling Canadians into believing we’re making progress on climate, when we’re really just spinning our wheels and wasting a lot of public money in the process.
For years, there was the comforting thought that, when the horrors of climate change truly became clear, humans would be smart enough to figure out a solution. That turned out to be true. It’s just that we haven’t figured out how to override the powerful so we can implement the solution.
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Air Pollution From Canadian Tar Sands Up to 6,300% Worse Than Industry Reports
"In quantifying the astonishing and largely unreported levels," said a Greenpeace campaigner, "these scientists have validated what downwind Indigenous communities have been saying for decades."
Jan 26, 2024
Aircraft measurements of pollutants over the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada show levels exceeding industry reports by 1,900% to more than 6,300%, scientists revealed Thursday, underscoring the need for humanity to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.
While the Canadian government requires air quality monitoring around oil sands operations, industry figures focus on certain compounds. For this research, published Thursday in the journal Science, experts from Yale University and Environment and Climate Change Canada, a department of the Canadian government, accounted for a wider range of emissions.
After collecting data from 30 flights around 17 tar sands operations in 2018, "what we saw were very large emissions of total gas-phase organic carbon from these facilities," said co-author and Yale professor Drew Gentner in a statement. "On average, the majority of the total gas-phase organic carbon was from often overlooked compounds, which are typically outside of the scope of routine monitoring."
"This report backs up what the communities living in these areas experience—it is so bad they cannot open their windows because it hurts their lungs to breathe—especially at night."
Co-author John Liggio of Environment and Climate Change Canada noted that "the magnitude of the observed emissions from oil sands operations was larger than expected, considering that it was roughly equivalent to the sum of all other anthropogenic sources across Canada when including all the motor vehicles, all the solvents, all the other oil and gas sources, and everything else reported to the inventory."
Nadine Borduas-Dedekind, a University of British Columbia atmospheric chemist who has worked with Liggio but was not involved with this study, toldNature that "I'm concerned by how big this number is."
"You want to be measuring all this carbon. For air quality, for health, but also for climate," she said, explaining that some of the molecules are oxidized to planet-heating carbon dioxide.
Thanks to the tar sands deposits across northern Alberta, which are estimated to contain 1.7-2.5 trillion barrels of oil, Canada trails only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in terms of total known reserves.
As Inside Climate Newsdetailed Thursday:
The deposits do not technically hold crude oil, but instead a heavier hydrocarbon called bitumen, which must be heated and treated in order to form a liquid that can be piped and refined like oil. That process requires sprawling industrial operations of open pit mines, ever-growing waste ponds, and refinery-like "upgraders." The waste ponds have leached toxic chemicals into groundwater, and a heavy, sulfurous stench often settles over the region. The mines have stripped away an area larger than New York City, lands that had long been occupied by people from several Indigenous First Nations. One of those First Nations, Fort McKay, is now surrounded by mines.
Jean L'Hommecourt, an enrolled member of the Fort McKay First Nation, told Inside Climate News she wasn't shocked by the new findings.
"I was just like, eh, I knew all along," said L'Hommecourt, who has worked to clean up nearby operations. "We feel the physical effects here."
Jesse Cardinal of the Indigenous-led group Keepers of the Water similarly said to The Guardian, "We are told this is all within the limits and OK but this report backs up what the communities living in these areas experience—it is so bad they cannot open their windows because it hurts their lungs to breathe—especially at night."
Asked to comment on the research, Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist for Greenpeace Canada, wrote in an email to The Independent, "I suppose 'Holy s***' isn't printable."
"In quantifying the astonishing and largely unreported levels of health-damaging air pollution coming out of oil sands operations, these scientists have validated what downwind Indigenous communities have been saying for decades," Stewart added. "This is making people sick, so our governments can and should require these companies to use some of their record-breaking profits to clean up the mess they've made."
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Why Did Alberta Put the Breaks on Its Booming Clean Energy Industry?
For any other jurisdiction, diversifying the economy away from fossil fuels while building a thriving renewables sector would be a good news story to celebrate and accelerate—not pause.
Aug 23, 2023
In western Canada, the province of Alberta is poised to become a renewable energy superpower. Sadly, Alberta’s leadership wants to destroy that prospect, threatening billions in renewable energy projects currently in development.
Without consulting the renewables sector, Alberta announced a pause of new approvals of renewable projects over one megawatt for the next six months.
Criticism of the moratorium was swift and ongoing. It’s not just Canadian companies impacted. U.S. investors are taking a hit. Texas-based Proteus Power Developments LLC has spent millions on plans to build three solar farms in the province. Like other leaders in the renewable sector, its CEO was given no warning about the moratorium. “We got screwed,” he told reporters. Other U.S. companies with projects at risk include a subsidiary of Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources LLC and EDP Renewables, a firm with headquarters in Texas and Spain.
Alberta Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf claims that the moratorium is motivated by complaints from rural communities and the need for policies for “land reclamation” and stability in the grid. The requirements for renewable developers could include mandatory security bonds, as well as paying for clean up of projects at the end of their life cycle. As the controversy continued, the Alberta Premier Danielle Smith blamed energy regulators for asking for the moratorium in letters—yet letters show no moratorium mentioned.
Where were these stringent requirements when oil sands tailings ponds were leaking chemicals into nearby Indigenous communities, causing damage to people’s health, the land, air, and water?
The provincial leadership’s sudden interest in checks and balances from the energy sector is curious at best, but reeks of hypocrisy. Where were these stringent requirements when oil sands tailings ponds were leaking chemicals into nearby Indigenous communities, causing damage to people’s health, the land, air, and water? Where is the concern that oil sands companies massively underpay for end of life cleanup, despite the frequency of oil spills? Internal documents from the Alberta Energy Regulator suggest cleanup of the tailings ponds alone would reach $130 billion. The regulator has only collected $1.6 billion for liabilities.
Once infamously known for its polluting oil sands industry, Alberta is now home to the fastest growth of solar and wind electricity generation in Canada. Last year, 17% of Alberta’s power came from wind and solar—exceeding the province’s 15% goal—and there are another 15 renewable energy projects before the Alberta Utilities Commission, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. A Clean Energy Canada analysis found in a net-zero 2050 Canada, jobs in Alberta’s clean energy sector would grow 10% a year out to net-zero 2050—the fastest of any province or territory—significantly more than the job decline expected in fossil fuels. For any other jurisdiction, diversifying the economy away from fossil fuels while building a booming clean energy sector would be a good news story to celebrate and accelerate—not pause.
Why is Alberta’s leadership so keen to shut this booming industry down when the moratorium is at odds with conservative free-market principles that are strongly upheld in the region? Even usual supporters of Alberta’s United Conservative Party are scratching their heads. Could the government be more interested in pursuing the ideologies of its leadership and scoring political points instead of lowering Albertans’ energy bills? Perhaps it also has something to do with the power of the oil and gas sector and their relentless lobby to ensure continued expansion of fossil fuel production. They are threatened by wind and solar being cheaper at scale now than fossil fuels and the simple fact that no one owns the sun and the wind. That means no long-term dependency on their products, no fear of scarcity to milk while they jack the price and reap record profits. Power (in every sense of the word) will be redistributed. Heaven forbid.
As we emerge from the hottest July ever recorded on this planet, every headline, TV, and radio soundbyte has a climate expert urging governments to act urgently. For countries like Canada that have never met a climate target, this is largely due to the oil and gas sector being the biggest and fastest growing source of emissions in the country. Unless the world collectively cuts emissions faster and deeper, scientists say Canada can expect more climate impacts, including more frequent wildfires and floods.
While these headlines feel ominous, they fail to demonstrate that all hope isn’t lost. A poll released in July 2023 finds a strong majority of Canadians support the federal government introducing Clean Electricity Regulations, including 64% support in Alberta. Meanwhile, nearly 9 out of 10 Canadians want the federal government to match or give more financial support to the renewable energy sector than the oil and gas sector.
Instead of making headlines worldwide for out of control wildfires blanketing skies in smoke from Washington to New York City, Canada could be known as a clean energy powerhouse. Alberta could help lead the way—but only if the province’s leadership doesn’t let rhetoric win over economics and our safety.
If Alberta’s leadership were truly credible, polluters would have to follow the same rules to ensure communities are safeguarded from all energy projects. Now is the time to uplift energy solutions that work for our economy and climate instead of doubling down on the volatile boom-and-bust cycle of the fossil fuel industry.
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