The View from the West

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Ottawa squanders energy economy

By: Frances Russell

3/02/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 4

More and better carbon capture and storage, not renewable energy, is the silver bullet Ottawa, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the oil industry are touting to solve Canada's soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

The three governments are shelling out a total of $3 billion to finance CCS "demonstration projects" while funding for renewables has stagnated.

The Harper Conservatives are glued to Washington when it comes to setting CO2 emission reduction targets but have no interest in copying its major investments in green energy. The U.S. now spends four times more per capita on renewable energy than Canada.

The situation is so bleak for renewable energy research and development that Canadian Wind Energy Association president Robert Hornung predicts the program may run out of cash before the end of the fiscal year, crippling the industry's ability to draw investment amidst a super hot U.S. market.

"At a time when the U.S. has made measures to support renewable energy deployment a key component of its plans to stimulate the U.S. economy, Canada is moving in the opposite direction," he says.

Environmentalists are giving up on the Harper government. The executive director of Alberta's prestigious Pembina Institute says that after a decade of consultations with government that have produced virtually no action on climate change, environmentalists are wondering whether it is worth their while to keep lobbying Ottawa.

"It is questionable how valuable those meetings are when you have no tangible action," Marlo Raynolds told The Hill Times this week. "This really is a case where we've had four years, three ministers and literally absolutely nothing on climate policy. It just seems more like ragging the puck instead of deciding to go for a goal of any kind."

Canada's politics and government newsweekly goes on to report the environmental movement is suspicious the Alberta oil industry is writing Canada's energy and environmental policy. Not only do the Conservatives not listen to environmentalists, there is increasing evidence they don't trust and so ignore advice from the federal bureaucracy.

"The dirty little secret about this government is that its relations with the bureaucracy are very, very poor and particularly with the policy side of the bureaucracy," the paper quotes one longtime Ottawa insider as saying. "It doesn't trust it, and it doesn't trust the options and the policy prescriptions it's being given. There really is an imperative for them to reach out to players in the private sector for expertise, for policy help, for analysis, because of the fundamental distrust (the government) has with the bureaucracy."

Montreal author and investigative journalist William Marsden warns that CCS is "too expensive, is untested and it won't store enough carbon." His book, Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada, a national bestseller and winner of the National Business Book Award, argues that the tar sands are destroying both Alberta and Canada.

"It's fair to say our federal government is run by the oil industry," he continued in an interview. "These guys come in, many of them are foreign companies, they get all sorts of tax breaks, they take away all the profits, the royalties are almost nothing, and then we (Canadians) pay to clean it up... We have attached ourselves to a monster and it will destroy this country. It's destroying Alberta ... (destroying) our industries, what we've got left. We are putting so much of our tax dollars into this one thing we don't have the money to look at all sorts of alternatives."

The federal government claims Canada can make a lot of money selling CCS technology, but Marsden says the technology is very simple. "You take (the CO2), transform it under great pressure to liquid form and stick it in old well holes." Alberta is a pincushion of over 304,000 bore holes, up to 80 per cent of which already leak.

"In most of the areas you have large leaks," Marsden continues. "It's almost impossible to go down 2,000 to 3,000 feet and abandon a well and think that it's never going to leak... How much carbon can you capture? And how much do you have to spend to capture one tonne?"

Alternatively, CO2 under pressure can explode. In 1986, a CO2 explosion in western Cameroon suffocated 1,800 people, 3,000 cattle and countless birds and insects in a death zone that covered 19 kilometres.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 3, 2010 A11

Rate this
This article is currently rated an average of 5 out of 5 (3 votes).

We want you to tell us what you think of our articles. If the story moves you, compels you to act or tells you something you didn’t know, mark it high. If you thought it was well written, do the same. If it doesn’t meet your standards, mark it accordingly.

You can also register and/or login to the site and join the conversation by leaving a comment.

Rate it yourself by rolling over the stars and clicking when you reach your desired rating. We want you to tell us what you think of our articles. If the story moves you, compels you to act or tells you something you didn’t know, mark it high.

4 Comments

Posted by: drek

February 8, 2010 at 7:31 AM

Thautikus
I'm not thinking so much about death by greenhouse gas as I am by, say, for ONE THING death by toxic tailing pond, poisoned groundwater and soil, death by leaching, death by leaking

see the video called Toxic Alberta

Report abusive comment

Posted by: Thautikus

February 4, 2010 at 4:25 PM

@drek: A million love canals - "21,000 tons of toxic waste that had been buried beneath the neighborhood by Hooker Chemical." Your comparing apples to cow pies, the Oil sands area of Alberta where the oil is being extracted is actually naturally unlivable. Nothing of use can grow there and you certainly could not put a housing development on that land. The entire area is already a toxic wasteland and spews methane and other greenhouse gases regardless of man's influence.

Our own Bhopal: "The Bhopal disaster was an industrial catastrophe that took place at a pesticide plant owned and operated by Union Carbide India Limited" As one of the biggest industrial accidents in history it was a direct result of completely inadequate safety protocols combined with employees who not only ignored company regulations but the every legal requirement. The oil sands project is one of the most highly regulated and inspected industrial projects on the planet and in no way can be compared with a poisonous gas cloud that killed over 15,000 and poisoned another 500,000.

I challenge you to find even one death directly linked to greenhouse gas exposure.

Get a grip.

Report abusive comment

Posted by: Rigel

February 4, 2010 at 3:57 PM

If funding for renewable energy projects is running out, it merely reminds us that these alternates can't stand on their own; they require huge subsidies. The proof is to examine the American wind energy program. The country has 26,000 windmills, every one of which would have to close down if subsidies were to be removed. Funding renewables might be OK in times of economic growth and rising fossil fuel prices; but as we've seen during the past two years, when that growth and those prices start dropping, support for renewables evaporates very quickly largely because wind, solar and biomass are very inefficient. If the environmentalists are so gung-ho about clean energy, they should be throwing their support behind nuclear, but chances of that are slim to none.

Report abusive comment

Posted by: drek

February 4, 2010 at 1:04 AM

What has become of us.
Northern Alberta has become the world's most toxic landscape.

A million love canals.

Our own Bhopal.

But the tide will turn for the CONS in Alberta when the people start to suffer for it. In fact they are already (and the CON hypocrite Rahim Jaffer got turfed).Unfortunately it will be too late for many people.