In Alberta government and resource industry circles, they’re now calling it the “K word.”
They don’t much like the way it rolls off the tongue.
That’s K as in Kyoto. As in Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement that was supposed to unite the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
U.S. President George W. Bush has decided there’ll be no “special K” word for him, thanks. Bush has withdrawn his country from the Kyoto Protocol.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with George Dubya’s action, it has essentially reduced the often over-heated debate on climate change to one question: Does the world need the Kyoto Protocol to take meaningful action on climate change?
Meaningful action would involve Canada, the U.S. and the rest of the world in reducing a 10-year trend, especially in North America, of steadily increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Kyoto or no Kyoto, it makes no difference to us,” says Alberta Environment Minister Lorne Taylor.
“We’re going to go forward with the Alberta plan and the Alberta agenda” on climate change, he said in an interview.
“Our industry is committed to continued reduction of greenhouse gas emissions” with or without Kyoto, agrees David Luff, vice-president of environment and operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Mike Kelly, spokesperson for TransAlta Corp., says: “As far as we’re concerned, we’re going to march in the same direction we were before with our offsets programs.”
Offset projects are voluntary initiatives by industry in Alberta and Canada to reduce or offset greenhouse gas emissions, especially from new fossil-fuel developments.
Companies invest in zero-emission renewable energy sources, such as wind-generated power, and in similar projects in Canada and other countries that help reduce world-wide emissions.
For example, TransAlta in February bought $5 million worth of wind-generated electricity from Calgary-based Vision Quest Windelectric Inc.
TransAlta intends to apply the 8,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases, which would otherwise have been generated by coal-fired power, toward reducing the increased emissions from its Keephills coal-fired power plant expansion.
Under the Kyoto accord, companies investing in offset projects would be awarded “credits” toward reducing their overall corporate emissions. Kyoto also provides for the trading of these emission-reduction credits, which has already started in North America and abroad.
In the absence of an international treaty or federal or provincial regulations, offset projects and emission-reduction credits aren’t yet recognized by government.
But, Kelly says, “we’ve got to anticipate this risk (of future regulation) and make sure that we’re able to moderate it.”
Even with offsets and trading of credits, new fossil-fuel development will increase Alberta’s total emissions and the impact on the environment.
TransAlta and Epcor’s coal-fired power plant expansions, for example, will together add more than seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide to Alberta’s airshed by 2005.
The Alberta Forest Products Association, which represents the province’s primary and secondary forest industries, remains committed to minimizing environmental impacts, says spokesperson Larry Skory. “We will continue to do our part to try to become more efficient and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and tighten up our operations.”
Alan Johnson, president of the Calgary-based Coal Association of Canada, says in light of the new U.S. stance, the world’s effort to respond to climate change “is going to get refocused more from artificial solutions to real solutions.”
Johnson expects that in Canada, the federal government will push Alberta to use some of its huge oil and gas revenues to speed development of emissions-reduction technology, such as injecting carbon dioxide into deep underground formations.
But Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in a formal talk to petroleum executives recently in Calgary, completely ignored the Kyoto accord and climate change. Instead, Chretien threw open the door to more U.S. investment in Alberta’s oilsands and Arctic natural gas.
Oilsands expansion already under way or proposed is projected to increase Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 29 per cent, says environmentalist Martha Kostuch of the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition. When it comes to emissions climbing in Canada, the figures show “Alberta’s leading the pack of bad guys,” she says.
Environmentalists predict the battle against climate change will be lost without Kyoto or a similar binding treaty that compels countries to make verifiable emission reductions.
Environment Minister Taylor disagrees. Climate Central, a Calgary-based agency created by the provincial government to tackle the problem, will launch the first of its projects this spring, he notes.
“I won’t talk about the projects, other than to say they’ll be revolving around greenhouse gas reductions,” Taylor says.
Sources told Business Edge the initiatives, likely to be announced in May, are expected to include a province-wide program to help educate Albertans about climate change, along with one or two projects aimed at actually reducing greenhouse gases.
The Alberta government created Climate Change Central with $6 million in operating funds over three years. At one point, the agency’s internal action plan included seeking a commitment by government to use renewable energy to meet 25 per cent of its energy needs.
Also proposed was a one-time $35-million fund to support projects to reduce greenhouse gases.
Environmentalists still wonder what happened to that plan.
Allan Amey, president and chief executive of Climate Change Central, says he believes there is “a lot of commitment in the province to try and make progress on reducing emissions.”
However, the $35-million fund was only an early proposal, Amey says. There’s still a significant amount of work needed to determine Alberta’s priorities for climate change projects, he adds.
“We’ve never used the K-word in any of our documentation at Climate Change Central, and purposely so,” Amey says. “We are focusing on doing what’s right, which is trying to find the most efficient ways to reduce emissions and trying to involve both industry and government in that process.”
Taylor says he agrees with President George Bush that the Kyoto Protocol is flawed in one important aspect. The agreement, in its initial implementation period from 2008 to 2012, wouldn’t require developing nations such as China and India to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The way Kyoto was structured, all it amounts to is a job transfer and a wealth transfer from the West to the Third World,” Taylor complains.
The Coal Association’s Johnson says Russia would be able to profit through emissions trading allowed under Kyoto, simply because the country closed polluting plants after abandoning the Soviet-style central economy.
“There’s an awful lot of international politics and stuff in Kyoto that had people very worried,” Johnson says.
TransAlta’s Mike Kelly says that in any agreement, the devil is in the details. “I think in terms of Kyoto, there were too many devils in there.”
But without Kyoto or a similar treaty, the effort in Alberta and the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions relies on voluntary initiatives.
All of Canada’s voluntary efforts haven’t reduced the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in the last decade. Canada’s total emissions actually increased 13 per cent from 1990 to 1998, to 692 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gases.
Continued increases, of about one per cent per year since then, have taken Canada further from its Kyoto target — to reduce emissions to 575 million tonnes or about six per cent below 1990 levels.
“To claim that you can get to Kyoto (targets) with voluntary measures is nonsense,” says Matthew Bramley, senior policy analyst for the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research and policy group.
The petroleum association’s Luff, however, points to the Clean Air Strategic Alliance, a voluntary initiative by the industry, government and environmental groups that has reduced oil and gas flaring emissions in Alberta by more than 30 per cent since 1996. Oilsands operators also have reduced carbon dioxide emissions during the last three years by more than 50 per cent per barrel of production, Luff adds.
Better step back and look at the big picture, the environmentalists respond.
Total emissions from Canada’s fossil fuel industries’ fuel combustion increased by 24 per cent, to 47.5 million tonnes in 1998 compared with 43.8 million tonnes in 1990, according to data provided by companies to the Voluntary Challenge and Registry Inc., which tracks voluntary emission reductions.
“Emissions from the electricity generation and oil and gas production sectors rose much more quickly than Canada’s total emissions, while emissions from the pipeline sector rose four times more quickly than the national total,” according to a Pembina Institute study of the data.
Alberta companies reporting emission increases for the 1990-1998 period included Husky Energy, TransCanada Pipelines, Suncor Energy, Atco Electric, Epcor and Syncrude Canada. TransAlta was the only Alberta-based company that reported an emission decrease, of about 10 per cent, for the period.
Petro-Canada, in a more recent report, says it has reduced its 1999 emissions to four per cent below the 1990 level.
And the Alberta government says greenhouse gas emissions from its operations in fiscal year 1999-2000 were 19.8 per cent lower than in 1990.
But given the country’s overall picture of steadily increasing emissions, Bramley says, Chretien must now explain “how Canada can simultaneously meet its Kyoto target and develop these massive new fossil fuel developments.”
Perhaps the world will get that explanation July 16-27, when international negotiations on climate change are scheduled to resume in Bonn, Germany.
