Canada – Page 71 – a sibilant intake of breath

The oil sands, coal, and new regulations

The sheer determination of Canada’s current government to protect the oil sands by undermining Obama’s climate policy is considerable. Most recently, they have been arguing that oil sands extraction operations should be treated in the same way as American coal plants, and thus partially or fully protected from expensive new regulations.

For one thing, an ideal climate policy would drive the rapid replacement of existing coal plants with renewable sources of energy. For another, coal plants that were given free credits in some kind of ‘grandfathering’ system would be pre-existing facilities, built before climate concerns were as acute as they are now. A decent climate policy absolutely needs to prevent the construction of new coal power plants. If someone demonstrates safe, effective, and economical carbon capture and storage, that requirement may relax somewhat but, for the moment, we cannot assume that coal has a place in our next-generation energy mix.

Given the ambitious plans for expansion, the oil sands are much more like new coal plants than like old ones. As such, they should face the same tough rules as new facilities. Special exemptions may serve the short-term interests of some individuals and companies, but allowing the oil sands to develop along their present course is very much against the long-term interests of Canadians.

Optimism / pessimism survey

If you were given the following options, which would you choose:

An absolute guarantee that the Canadian material standard of living in 2200 will be identical to what it was in 2009 – that is to say, the same number of computers, lightbulbs, sandwiches, appendectomies and everything will be consumed.
For the material standard of living in 2200 to be determined by the economic and technological development that occurs between now and then?

For those who believe that long-term growth in wealth can be maintained, the level of prosperity in 2200 can be expected to be much higher. For those who are fearful or either stagnation or catastrophe, the certainty of present levels is more appealing.

Note that I am not saying anything about the distribution of the material standard of living. For the purposes of this survey, please ignore the question of whether the top 10% of the population end up consuming 10%, 30%, or 50% of the material goods and services consumed.

Carbon capture cannot redeem the oil sands

Set aside, for the moment, the very reasonable doubts about whether carbon capture and storage (CCS) is safe and effective, affordable, and capable of rapid deployment. Even if CCS could be implemented rapidly and cheaply, it would not render the oil sands acceptable from a climatic perspective. The reasons for that are as follows:

CCS can only be used to capture greenhouse gasses emitted in concentrated form from large facilities. Not all oil sands emissions are of this type.
Even at large facilities, CCS is only expected to capture about 80-85% of emissions.
The emissions from burning the fuels being produced will not be captured. Even with fuels originating from oil sands bitumen, these are the bulk of total emissions.

The oil sands are touted as a resource equivalent to a second Saudi Arabia. This is the last thing the world needs. There are only so many fossil fuels we can burn while still having a decent shot of avoiding catastrophic climate change. As a result, fossil fuels are an industry with no long-term future. This is indirectly demonstrated by the shamefully weak greenhouse gas mitigation targets adopted by Alberta. They know that even if CCS development progresses perfectly, it will not let them bring their emissions in line with what is sustainable. That’s why they can only hope to have reduced emissions to 14% below 2005 levels by 2050, when the world as a whole needs to have cut them to around 80% below 1990 levels, and rich places like Canada will need to have cut by even more.

There is also the issue of declining energy return on investment (EROI) and the perpetuation of oil dependency. Right now, the global economy is a fossil fuel junky. This cannot be sustained. Starting to depend heavily on alternative sources of oil, such as the oil sands, is the equivalent of starting to shoot up between your toes, because the veins in your arms have collapsed. It is not a far-thinking or effective way to deal with your quandary. The solution is to find a new way to sustain yourself. At best, the oil sands are a significant distraction from doing that.

[Update: 8 March 2010]. BuryCoal.com is a site dedicated to making the case for leaving coal, along with unconventional oil and gas, underground.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

This series of lectures, published in book form, shows Margaret Atwood at her lively best. It is reminiscent of James Burke’s series ‘Connections,’ in which he traces a seemingly random path through history, choosing the most interesting and unexpected road at every juncture. In some ways, Atwood’s consideration of debt occurs in an even richer world, since it includes literature, mythology, and religion among the kind of paths that can be followed.

The first section of the book examines debt in a historical and conceptual way: considering different kinds of debt (financial, moral, spiritual, etc) as well as different modes of repayment. It considers the ethics of being a borrower and a lender, as well as the consequences that can arise for those who happen to be near either. Atwood’s examination highlights how lenders can err both in being too harsh on their debtors and in being too stingy with their money – both the vicious loan shark and the penny-pinching miser are culpable. The book discusses revenge as a special form of debt repayment, as well as the complexities that arise when debts are being incurred by states and princes. All this is made quite entertaining by the cleverness of the connections being identified, and the teasing and humorous tone of the narration.

The second section is an exposition of our current state of deep indebtedness, and a recognition that the greatest and most threatening of those debts are ecological. While Atwood’s updated Scrooge story includes asides on the unjustness of the World Bank and IMF, as well as the risks associated with fiat currencies, her primary concern is with the wanton destruction of the natural world that has been accelerating since the industrial revolution. She singles out overfishing, biofuels, deforestation, overpopulation, soil depletion, and climate change as examples, painting a general picture of extreme human recklessness. The redemptive vision is one based around neo-hippie victory: renewable power, an international agreement to stop climate change, and organic food for all.

The concluding story feels a bit trite, really. Any corporate baron paying the slightest bit of attention would already be jaded about the messages from the ghosts Atwood’s Scrooge Nouveau receives. That said, and while the literary merits of the first section exceed those of the second, it is appealing that this is a book of action as well as contemplation. It is hard not to agree with the thrust of Atwood’s argument. By all means, let’s increase the fairness of the global financial system and curb humanity’s self-destructive ways. This book contributes to that project by provoking a great deal of thought about the symbolism and meanings of debt. We will need to look beyond it for concrete ideas about how to overthrow or convert those who favour the status quo and thus bring about a sustainable (appropriately indebted) new order.

I say ‘appropriately indebted’ because the book makes a strong case that we can never really be out of debt. As social entities, there are always tallies of obligation between us, and nobody can ever be said to be sitting perfectly at the balance point of these transactions. Indeed, given the way they are denominated in different currencies (honour, favours, wealth), seeking such an outcome is hopeless. What we can attain is the position of borrowing and lending rightly, with forgiveness and an awareness and concern about the consequences for those around us and the wider world.

In any case, the book is highly topical, informative, and makes for a quick and rewarding read. It is telling that, while other books have been sitting around my apartment for months, I received this one in the mail yesterday and finished it today.

The budget and federal environmental policy

The Globe and Mail has a fairly lengthy article about the recent federal budget, oil sands policy, and environmental policy integration with the United States. It highlights the speculative nature and unknown costs of emissions reductions associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology:

However, this week’s federal budget provided little sense that Ottawa is preparing the country for a shift to a green economy, or even that it is concerned about the slump in the oil sands, which extends to the oil and gas industry generally.

Rather than any direct measures, the federal government provided $69-billion to ease access to credit in the economy generally — admittedly, an important problem for a capital-intensive oil industry — and vague promises of funding for carbon-capture-and-storage technology.

CCS is the fig leaf of the oil sands — an untested, hugely expensive technology that governments and industry claim will be critical if oil-sands emissions are to be reduced to acceptable levels. The idea is to divert CO2 emissions from smokestacks and store it permanently underground, but skeptics doubt it will ever be commercially viable.

A lot of talk these days surrounds a joint North American approach to climate change and energy security. Few people seem to have publicly considered the jurisdictional difficulties associated with such an approach. If I were Barack Obama, trying to get a cap-and-trade bill through Congress, I really doubt that I would want to have to deal with ten provincial governments, a second federal government, a separate legal and constitutional arrangement (including, for instance, aboriginal issues), and all the other complexities associated with jumping straight into a two-state system. That being said, having a North American strategy that is at least poised for integration could be important for securing the support of private firms worried about cross-border competition.

Without a doubt, these are interesting times for the emergence of climate policies.

Obama visiting Canada

President Barack Obama will be visiting Canada on February 19th. Presumably, that will include some sort of large public gathering, hopefully with an appearance from the man himself. In preparation, it seems fitting to contemplate what sort of message it would be most valuable to convey to the new president.

With that aim in mind, I propose that people submit their best ideas for a message that could be put on a placard for the media (and maybe even the President) to catch a glimpse of. Text versions and images would both be welcome. The former can be posted as simple comments. In the latter case, people can email images to me for possible posting. My immediate idea would be something along the lines of:

The oil sands are a trap!
Choose zero-carbon energy!

These days, it seems that the best hope for an aggressive shift towards decarbonizing the global economy comes from the possibility of new US leadership and the destruction of the reckless approach to energy the world is using at present. The challenge of expressing that general necessity in a compact statement is a considerable one.

Norway: green ambitions and oil exports

This Economist article on Norway should make interesting reading for Canadians interested in questions of energy, environment, and politics. It highlights how Norway is both progressive on climate change – with a carbon tax and a grid almost completely dominated by hydroelectric power – and a major indirect emitter on account of its large exports of oil and gas. Oil and gas sales produced 413 billion kroner ($75 billion Canadian) in revenues in 2008, and such exports have allowed Norway to build up an oil-revenue fund worth 2.1 trillion kroner ($382 billion Canadian).

The challenge of being a hydrocarbon exporter at a time when future human prosperity depends on the fairly rapid abandonment of fossil fuels is an acute one. While carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies may eventually help square the circle a bit, that is by no means guaranteed. Indeed, placing excessive confidence on the rapid and economical deployment of that technology will leave states in the lurch if it doesn’t deliver as rapidly as promised.

In addition to discussing carbon pricing instruments and oil exports, the article examines the practice of ‘offsetting’ emissions by paying to have them reduced somewhere else, then taking the credit for doing so by counting those avoided emissions against your own. As discussed before, it is an idea not entirely without merit. That being said, it must be rigorously operated, or it will risk being abused.

Norway’s considerable efforts to respond appropriately to climate change deserve to be both applauded and, where appropriate, replicated in Canada. As for balancing the desire to do what’s right against the temptation of cash for dirty fuels, hopefully Norway will opt to show other oil producers that the temptation can be restrained without destroying prosperity, and that there are big opportunities to be found in alternative, renewable sources of energy. Depressingly, it may only be with strong examples of this type elsewhere that Canada will even begin to seriously contemplate such a shift.

Geothermal in Alberta

In Canada, at least, Alberta is synonymous with fossil fuel production. As such, it is nice to see that the Pembina Institute has produced a report (PDF) looking into possibilities for sustainable energy production in the province. The Clean Break blog has a summary.

In particular, the report discusses ways in which geothermal power could be an ideal match to the skills and research already present in the province. They already know how to drill deep holes into rock. Further, they are investigating new techniques in the context of carbon capture and storage. Given the province’s excessively high per-capita emissions, and ongoing dependence on coal for electricity, it would be especially appropriate to see some aggressive renewable deployment there. Doing so would also generate technologies and experience that Canadian firms could export to others: a good example of leveraging existing skills to move from a fossil-fuel backed economy towards a truly renewable one.

What it means to stabilize climate

This speech, given to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, contains a basic error about the nature of climate stabilization. In part, it reads:

Never losing sight of the ultimate long-term objective of the exercise – stabilizing the level of man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere at non-dangerous levels not in 2020, or even 2030, but 4 decades hence in 2050. Recognizing that we are running a marathon, not a sprint; and acting accordingly. (emphasis in original)

As stated, this is a very ambitious goal. Stabilizing the global concentration of greenhouse gasses by 2050 would mean reaching the point of zero net human emissions in that year. That would require either the total elimination of fossil fuel use and deforestation, or the deployment of technologies that capture greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere and sequester them.

Right now, greenhouse gas concentrations are about 385 parts per million (ppm), and rising at 2 ppm per year. Even if they kept up that rate between now and 2050, concentrations would ‘only’ rise to 469 ppm – a figure not enormously higher than the commonly cited target of 450 ppm. Of course, it is unlikely that emissions per year would stay completely flat until 2050, then drop instantly to zero.

Given the other contents of the speech (such as affirming that 80% of North American electricity will come from oil and gas in 2020), I don’t think the literal meaning of the passage quoted is the one intended. I fear, instead, that rather than talking about stabilizing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, the speaker may have been talking about stabilizing emissions. If so, this is a disastrous suggestion. If we are to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, global emissions almost certainly need to peak between 2015 and 2020, declining sharply after that.

A simple analogy to personal debt easily explains the difference between concentration and emission stabilization. If you are going into debt because you are spending more each year than you earn, stabilizing your level of spending is not going to get you out of debt. It will just leave you in the position where your level of debt increases by the same amount every year. Stabilizing your debt requires that your expenditures match your income every year. While your level of wealth is lower than it was when you started, it is still stable. So too it will be when humanity reaches the point of zero net greenhouse gas emissions: what we already put in the atmosphere will stay there for hundreds of thousands of years, but at least we will no longer be adding to it.

Armchair iceberg tracking

In July 2008, a 27 square kilometer iceberg calved from the Petermann Glacier: between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Scientists from the CCGS Amundsen placed radio beacons on the iceberg, which has subsequently shifted position and lost some volume. You can actually track the beacon online. The larger piece remains 22 square kilometers in area, and thus may pose a risk to the offshore oil industry in spring of 2009.

Apparently, with an iceberg of this size normal ‘iceberg management’ techniques cannot be employed. You just have to hope it doesn’t run into something.