CCS worth pursuing, but not to the exclusion of surer bets
My Clean Break column today takes a shot at the Canadian government for repeatedly touting carbon capture and sequestration as a panacea for the oil sands, while at the same time refusing to recognize — and support — the role that renewable energy can play. It comes on the heels of an appropriately critical National Geographic feature on the oil sands called “Scrapping Bottom,” and the recently yet repeatedly expressed belief of Environment Minister Jim Prentice that technology will save the day.
Perhaps technology will helps prolong our days on this planet, but it won’t be carbon capture and sequestration, which is too expensive, unproven, inefficient and, in some applications, ineffective to tackle the ghost in Canada’s climate-change closet. By refusing to acknowledge the major role that other renewables can play to avoid these carbon emissions in the first place, and to do it more quickly and economically, Stephen Harper is sending Canada’s economy down a path that’s unsustainable.
Aside from some environmental groups, nobody is asking the government to shut down the oil sands. What they’re asking is for development to be frozen while we address the environmental concerns we face today. CCS is part of the solution, and the long-term part, so we need to put more investment and attention to technologies that make oil sand operations more efficient, or which use clean alternatives to natural gas — such as geothermal and solar thermal. Canada is not doing itself any favours by broadening the path it’s currently on. Better to build a couple of new paths that will enable a less painful transition over the long term.
Oil sands supporters like to remind the rest of Canada, particularly Ontarians, that the Alberta oil industry is the country’s economic engine and creates the jobs and government revenues that keep the rest of us happy. Yeah, and it creates a lot of jobs for foreign workers as well who take that wealth out of the country, and for foreign companies that also take that wealth out of the country. Maybe if we slowed down development, we could come to a pace that’s sustainable using our own national workforce? And why can’t we pursue other paths as well? Why is it just assumed that the path laid down is the only path for employment and GDP growth in Alberta?
To quote the end of my column:
Under an Obama administration, America is no longer in denial. Having acknowledged its addiction to oil, the United States is checking itself into rehab. Canada’s steadfast position? Renovate the crack house, use cleaner needles and continue feeding a nasty global habit. Surely we could broaden that narrow, dangerous vision.
I’ll end with this: Just what is Rex Murphy smoking? His position — that Alberta’s oil sands is bringing home the Canadian bacon so we should just shut up – borderline insulting, and ignores the fact that the oil sands — despite its job and wealth creation so far – is a generational symbol of the crossroads we are at. We either choose to go down an unsustainable path or we begin creating some other paths to make the transition less painful in the long term. Attacking National Geographic for consuming fuel in the course of making its story is like blaming the dog for eating the slop that’s put in front of him. We, as average Canadians, haven’t had much say about it.
Tags: CCS, National Geographic, oil sands, Rex Murphy, tar sands
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business 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 clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
The thing that gets me about CCS is that it is just backwards, literally. Finding a place to pump carbon underground isn’t a real solution. Our energy and focus (other than trying to ditch carbon entirely) should be on how we prevent those emissions from happening in the first place.
Which of course brings about a great topic you have written about Tyler, geothermal. As you have suggested, geothermal could be a great means of diminishing/avoiding natural gas use. At this stage, isn’t this technology more of a reality than ‘pie in the sky’ CCS?
It is so frustrating to see that there are options on the table that will help reduce the environmental impact of the tar sands… some are expensive, and some are VERY expensive, but the bottom line is that many of the technologies could be valuable if commercialized at some point.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
We can read the collective writing on the wall or we can stick our heads in the carbon capture and storage storage chambers.
The US is NOT trying to ditch its addiction to oil because of some environmental epiphany.
The US is tired of being beholden to the whims of a select few who sit on vast pools of energy. Whether it is Saudis or Albertans or Texans, when the energy industry demands monopoly rents (read prices far in excess of the cost of production) for its products people get upset.
Alberta has had a red hot economy because it has been able to extract monopoly rents for its main product, oil. And anyone who is not in the oil industry is upset about it. That includes anyone who is not in the oil industry in Alberta.
In the long run people will not pay monopoly rents. They will find something cheaper.
So Alberta can remain a one industry province claiming it is invincible or it can recognize that the end of oil will come in most of our lifetimes and can try and diversify into things that are more sustainable.
CCS is merely a way for the oil industry to try and fool the public into paying excessive amounts for oil when viable alternatives exist. But hey, if they spend enough money trying to suppress information on the alternatives, maybe they CAN fool the public … for a while.
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
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:
1. 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.
2. Even at large facilities, CCS is only expected to capture about 80-85% of emissions.
3. 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.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Biochar seems a low-tech way to capture plant-inhaled carbon that doesn’t involve the possible leakage scenario hermetically-sealing gases into a chamber entails.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
[...] CCS worth pursuing, but not to the exclusion of surer bets [...]