Riddle me this Batman…
How does President Obama go about eliminating U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and at the same time discriminate against “dirty” petroleum from the Alberta oil sands? The U.S. president visits Canada on Thursday and environmentalists are aiming to get this message across: Oils-sand oil is dirty and the U.S. should impose tough emission standards on the final product before it’s allowed to be imported into the United States.
The Canadian government, single-mindedly focused on oil-sands development, will no doubt argue for an exemption from any kind of U.S. climate policy or continental cap-and-trade regime. The multibillion-dollar question is: What will an Obama administration do? Can he possibly achieve both objectives or, in need of energy security, will he give Canada a get-out-of-jail free card?
Curious to hear your thoughts, particularly from my friends south of the border.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
February 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am
One has to be very careful about penalising dirty technology elsewhere. Do we ened up trying to calculate the environmental impact of everything we buy?
If (its an important if) Canada is dealing with its emissions on a holistic basis (ie making enough savings elsewhere) then the emissions from tar sands are not an issue for US customers.
The idea that everyone must cut emissions, and then attacking certain bogey men, rather than focusing on overall cuts, is a bad move. It means that we do not follow a cheapest possible solution, which in effect means that you will end up cutting emissions less for any given amount of expenditure.
Here, as always, I support a carbon tax, to enable everyone to understand the true cost of their emissions.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
In response to Clean Future Energy;
Pollution from the tar sands affects everyone. The tar sands would be in the future Canada’s bogey man when it comes to GHGs because they are expanding with no oversight and at lightning speed. Only the price of oil has slowed it.
I agree that there should be no scapegoats and that we need a policy that universally attempts to protect the environment through industry, energy, transportation, urban intensification etc. etc. Unfortunately we have our biggest federal political parties colluding to ensure nothing is done.
America can do whatever it chooses and we will have very little affect. The electrification of the vehicle over the next 10 years spells the end of North American oil consumption. Alberta and Canada would be well served to wipe off our dirty glasses and read the writing on the wall or we will find ourselves pretty lonely and at the back of some very long queues.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
One additional comment;
Everyone talks about making the tar sands more environmentally friendly. Exactly how are they going to get rid of the massive tailings ponds?
Exactly how are they going to stop surface stripping massive swaths of land?
Exactly how are they going make machines the size of buildings and make them cleaner?
This is a red herring. Tar sands oil will never be anywhere close to clean and when all these companies disappear, Alberta is going to have a severe liability on their hands. They may have to drain away their royalty reserve to repair half their province so it doesn’t look like Mordor.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
A few thoughts from South of the Border:
First, the electric car will not end oil consumption, or “dirty fuel” consumption, as oil and coal are where most of our electricity comes from here. We’ll just be using it to make the new juice that powers our electric cars.
Second, we do have technologies and techniques that are much “cleaner” in practice to extract oil from challenging sources like sands and shale.
Third, we also need to exploit Alaska’s oil and natural gas. Those new technologies and techniques can also minimize damage to ANWR by drilling down and out from one surface location instead of ravaging thousands of acres.
Fourth, there has never been an off-shore accident in US oil operations that released any significant amount of oil. Certainly any amount greater than the natural surface of the ocean/gulf floor. Legislating that we do not have access to drill off-shore, in the same areas where Cuba is actively contracting to have China drill, is a major mistake.
Finally, we have Senators (Kennedy) who won’t allow a Wind farm miles from his Cape home because he’s afraid he might be able to see it on the horizon, while pretending to be an Alternative Energy Advocate?!? We need to be able to use all reasonable sources of energy: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geo, Nuke, Oil, Clean(-er) Coal… the kitchen sink!
Summary, we continue to restrict our own options for political reasons even when, in many cases, environmental issues are minimized or mitigated.
Pray for us down here, and we’ll try to help you guys up there, too.
Chad