Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Apr 26 2005 (IPS) — Canada plans to shift the burden of massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions onto the public and away from its booming oil and gas sector.

Scientists blame greenhouse gases, most of which are released when fossil fuels like oil and coal are burned, for global warming.

”Project Green,” Canada’s 10-billion-dollar plan to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, makes individual Canadians responsible for at least 74 percent of emission reductions even though they are responsible for only about one-fourth of the country’s emissions, environmental organizations said.

By contrast, they added, Canada’s booming oil and gas sector, among the most pollution-intensive in the world, gets off lightly under the plan.

”Project Green is unfair and unmanageable. It shifts an impossible burden of reductions onto Canadian taxpayers,” said Matthew Bramley, director of climate change at the non-governmental Pembina Institute.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in February, Canada agreed to reduce its GHG emissions by 6 percent by 2012. This translates into a reduction of between 270 and 300 megatonnes (Mt) of GHG emissions.

”Industry could make big cuts at low cost. The oil industry had previously said it would only cost 25 cents a barrel to make significant reductions in emissions,” Bramley told IPS.

Canada’s energy and automobile manufacturing sectors are among large industrial emitters of GHGs collectively responsible for nearly half of all GHG emissions. Under Project Green, Canada’s largest emitters are expected to reduce emissions by just 36Mt.

The plan spares Canada’s automotive industry from having to boost car and truck fuel efficiency 25 percent by 2010. Instead, it asks automakers to work together voluntarily to lower total emissions by 5.3Mt by 2010.

”It’s a disturbingly low target," said Dale Marshall of the environmental group David Suzuki Foundation.

”I don’t know how the government expects to meet its Kyoto obligations this way,” he added.

Government officials defended Project Green, saying environmental goals were balanced against the need to protect the economy, especially because industries in the United States are not obliged to curb their emissions. The United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.

”The balanced measures allow Canadians to honour our Kyoto commitment while improving our competitiveness in a sustainable economy,” Environment Minister Stephane Dion said in a statement.

With Canada’s emissions continuing to rocket ever higher, environmentalists warned, the country is unlikely to even come close to making its Kyoto target.

Canada has quietly become a nation powered by oil revenues. New estimates from the U.S. Department of Energy state that Canada has proven oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia’s. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Shell Oil have said they believe Canada’s reserves are the largest in the world.

Canada has supplanted the Saudis as the biggest supplier of foreign oil to the U.S. At 2.1 million barrels per day, Canada now supplies about 10 percent of U.S. daily consumption.

Equally energy-hungry China has made major investments in Canada’s oil patch, including a 2.5-billion-dollar, 1,160-kilometre pipeline to move oil from Alberta in Canada’s heartland to its west coast. An oil-shipping terminal will be built on the British Columbia coast to transport 400,000 barrels a day to supply China, the world’s No. 2 oil consumer.

However, much of Canada’s oil wealth is locked in what are called tar sands or oil sands, from which the oil must be extracted. This involves a process requiring the stripping of the soil and rock from hundreds of thousands of acres of land to get at bitumen 200 feet or more below the surface. All that material then is heated to extract the bitumen oil, which is further processed to become traditional petroleum.

It is an expensive and energy-intensive process that consumes enormous amounts of natural gas and water. According to some estimates, delivering a barrel of tar sand oil to the United States produces at least 25 percent more GHGs than a barrel coming from Saudi Arabia.

The process also is expensive but with oil prices riding highs and profit margins reportedly growing, the world’s biggest industry players have invested many billions of dollars in Canada in the past few years.

Tar sands production currently stands at about 1 million barrels a day and is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2015, contributing at least 100 Mt of GHGs annually.

Canada’s total emissions from all sectors came to 730Mt in 2002, the most recent year for which government statistics are available.

Project Green acknowledges Canada’s inability to cut emissions and allocates billions of dollars to buy what are called carbon offsets or carbon credits. For example under Kyoto, Canada can reforest parts of Costa Rica, earning points to offset some of its emissions at home.

It could also buy emissions credits from countries like Russia and Ukraine, which can sell carbon emission credits because their emissions are much lower now than in 1990, when state-supported, pollution-heavy industry was in full production.

It would be easy to ”buy Russian hot air,” said the Pembina Institute’s Bramley. But Canada would be much further ahead by purchasing offsets that have economic benefits and boost its international aid efforts. For example, Canada could earn carbon offsets helping countries in the South set up solar cell or wind manufacturing facilities.