Climate talks target Alberta's oilsands
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
December 6, 2009
As the world works toward the most important climate change agreement since Kyoto in 1997, the Canadian delegation will walk into the Copenhagen conference with a big, black bull's-eye on its back.
The sore spot--the increasing greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta's oilsands--will be as inescapable as Danish pastries when 192 countries gather in Copenhagen for 12 days beginning Monday.
"The tarsands are the roadblock to Canada signing onto a meaningful target," said Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a climate change activist and member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
"The issue is seriously underplayed on the (Canadian) government's part because they are afraid."
Activists such as Deranger --who will be in Copenhagen to protest and who recently returned from a United Kingdom speaking tour where she campaigned against the oilsands -- and their ability to sway international opinion about Canada's burgeoning oilsands sector are what concerns some industry observers.
"God help us if this becomes like baby seals," said University of Alberta energy economist Joseph Doucet.
"There's so much negative press and so much finger-pointing at Alberta," he said.
"I don't think it's justified in the way it's being done," said Doucet.
However, it's Canada and the world's total emissions, not the oilsands, that are formally on the agenda in Copenhagen.
This United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting, from Monday to Dec. 18, is meant to work out a new agreement for controlling carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, to limit predicted global temperature increases. If successful, the pact will set climate change policies beginning in 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
More than 16,000 people are expected to travel to Copenhagen, including government officials, environmental protesters, industry representatives and at least 5,000 reporters.
Speculation in the months leading up to Copenhagen has seen many --including Canadian cabinet ministers-- predict that a detailed global agreement including all countries is unlikely. More likely, they say, is a broad "political" framework.
However, U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to attend at the same time as dozens of other world leaders, in the final days of the meetings, has been widely seen as a game-changer. The Copenhagen talks are now more consequential, and there is more pressure for a strong and detailed agreement to be found.
Heading into the talks, Canada's emission-reduction target is now virtually identical to that of the United States.
Canada's greenhouse gas reduction promise to the world would see Canadian emissions reduced to three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, according to an analysis from the World Resources Institute, an U.S. environmental think-tank.
A pledge made last month by Obama would also result in American emissions three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
But compared with the United States, Canada has been more vilified by international environmentalists. It has also been prodded by the likes of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to be more ambitious in its targets.
In some measure, it's history and higher expectations. There has been a push back against Canada's lack of action on 12-year-old Kyoto pledges.
"Part of the reason that Canada might be taking some really serious hits on this is because we ratified the protocol and the United States didn't," said Wishart Robson, Calgary-based global energy company Nexen Inc.'s senior adviser for safety and climate change, and an oil-industry veteran of climate change treaty negotiations.
Unlike the United States, Canada pledged to abide by the terms of Kyoto and reduce its emissions from a 1990 base year. But successive federal governments never followed through, and the country saw an emissions increase of more than 26 per cent between the base year of 1990 and 2007.
Canada is also getting attention for its targets, which are weaker when compared with other developed economies, such as the European Union or Japan.
But Canada will also feel heat in Copenhagen, thanks to the environmental impacts of the oilsands -- now the country's most prominent industrial symbol--which has come to the world's attention over the past three to four years.
The oilsands account for just five per cent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions--whereas a sector such as heat and energy generation accounts for 16 per cent.
The problem is as production in the oilsands is stepped up, greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow --even with production efficiencies on a per barrel basis.
Environment Canada predicts "emissions from oilsands production will almost triple between 2006 and 2020, making it the largest single contributor to Canada's medium-term emissions growth."
This week, pugnacious British environmental columnist George Monbiot added his voice to the environmental chorus. While visiting Toronto, Monbiot wrote that he broke his self-imposed ban on flying to Canada and bring attention to the fact that oilsands "strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale."
He said Canada is the major obstacle to a new climate change deal in Copenhagen, and "the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place."
Industry watchers like Doucet are concerned that such sentiments-- which are directed not only to oilsands greenhouse gas emissions, but also the damage to the landscape and water supplies, and concerns about local natives' health -- will lead to a more serious denigration of Canada's international reputation, which could hurt the flow of investment dollars.
Many believe Canada's special circumstances aren't always considered. During the 17-year period where Canada failed to meet its Kyoto targets--between 1990 and 2007-- the population of the country grew by almost 20 per cent, and the gross domestic product increased by 60 per cent. Much of that economic growth came out of the energy sector.
David Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said Canada's economic position is not fully understood.
"The Canadian circumstance is very different," Collyer said. "That needs to be taken into account."
While contributing a substantial $2 billion toward carbon capture and storage projects, the provincial government is prepared to let Alberta's industrial emissions grow for the next decade. It remains to be seen how that dovetails with a federal climate change policy that calls for a 20 per cent reduction in emissions below 2006 levels by 2020--a target which federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice has said will apply to every province and territory.
That and other interprovincial tensions might have really flared in Copenhagen, had Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach decided to attend like his fellow premiers in B.C., Manitoba and Quebec.
But Alberta will be represented only by Environment Minister Rob Renner, who has no formal standing at the talks, but will use his time to try to convince opinion leaders that the oilsands are not as portrayed by Greenpeace, and Alberta's mini-carbon pricing and emissions tracking system is having an impact in reducing emissions.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to attend the Copenhagen meetings a day after Obama announced he would go. In the days before the prime minister arrives, Canada's delegation will be led by Prentice, accompanied by Canada's chief negotiator, Michael Martin, 47 officials from relevant departments, and a handful of opposition MPs.
Prentice will also be accompanied by about 15 specially selected "advisers."
The minister's office will not yet reveal the advisers list, but said it will not include Canadian environmental non-governmental organizations. This much is known: the invited include the Assembly of First Nations, a consumer representative, and industry members--including oil and gas executive Charlie Fischer, who heads up a working group with American counterparts as part of the federal government's Clean Energy Dialogue.
Swirling into the Copenhagen mix is "Climategate," a scandal that has given climate change skeptics new momentum. Thousands of e-mails were hacked, leaked or stolen from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit in Britain, and they have led to allegations that researchers manipulated the evidence to support man-made global warming. The information in the e-mails has been serious enough to provoke the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to look into the claims.
But the UN insists it still "firmly" believes that a rise in human-caused greenhouse gases is contributing to climate change.
No matter what the outcome in Denmark, Canadians will not hear details of how climate change plans affect industrial development, the environment or their daily lives until long after the meetings.
The Canadian government is not going to reveal details of how it will get to its target until after the international talks, and Prentice is blunt about the fact Canada will not enact any plan that is not lock-step with the U.S.--no more, no less.
"If we do more than the U.S., we will suffer economic pain for no real environmental gain--economic pain that could impede our ability to invest in new, clean technologies and other innovative solutions to climate change," Prentice said in Montreal on Friday.
"But if we do less, we will risk facing new border barriers into the American market."
That strategy is not good enough for climate change campaigners who say tepid action by the Harper government doesn't help its environmental street cred.
There are real reasons why the Canadian government should be viewed separately from the current American administration, said Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.
"There's real evidence that Obama cares about this issue. There's no real evidence that Harper cares about this issue," Saul said.
He cited Obama's billions in stimulus funding for energy-efficient buildings, plug-in hybrid vehicle technology, solar, wind and geothermal power, as well as the president's appointments of people such as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who has spent much of his career on climate change issues.
Satya Das, an Edmonton-based consultant and author of Green Oil--a book which argues the oilsands should be developed with technologies that ensure a carbon-neutral footprint -- said Canada faces a greater challenge than most oil producing nations heading into Copenhagen. Major exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have authoritarian rule, and Canada is a democracy more open to scrutiny and criticism by both its citizens and outsiders.
"Of course we're held to a higher standard," Das said, adding that's a good thing.
But nothing is going to stop the development of the oilsands, he added. There's too much oil in northern Alberta to be ignored.
"Let's be real here -- without in any way diminishing the need for environmental stewardship."
