The oil and gas industry is playing the clock. While climatologists cry out for urgency, she tries to buy time.
In principle, it says it aims for carbon neutrality by 2050. But in practice, it is moving in the opposite direction. It continues to increase its production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Its slogan is green, but its plan is smoky.
The Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, could expose this bluff. He promises to cap and then reduce emissions from the sector. Opposition from the West will be strong. But if it succeeds, the fossil fuel industry will hardly qualify as radical a measure consistent with its own objectives.
By opposing it, she would prove that she ultimately did not plan to do much …
The industry’s real plan comes in three steps: get the most out of oil and gas, pray that some unlikely technology drastically cuts emissions, and then pass that bill on to taxpayers.
Environmental groups have searched the books of Canada’s major oil and gas companies. How do they want to change? As little as possible, as shown in a report unveiled at the start of COP26. These companies are heading for a 30% increase in their production and 25% in their emissions by 2030. Exactly the opposite of what needs to be done.
Read the environmental groups report
The warnings are however clear.
Globally, this production must decrease by 3 to 4% per year, each year. Right now.
Read the Production Gap Report 2020
And in Canada, the efforts to be made are even greater, because of the intensity of emissions per barrel.
According to a study published in Nature, Canada will have to leave the vast majority of its resources in the ground – 83% of its oil and 81% of its gas.
Read the study by Nature (in English)
This means that new projects must be abandoned. In Canada and elsewhere. This was recommended in May by the International Energy Agency (IEA), however renowned for its conservatism.
In recent years, the oil and gas lobby has taken refuge behind the projections of this organization, which predicted an increase in demand. But even the IEA has stopped taking demand as a starting point. His reasoning was reversed. She now uses what one might call, in a pragmatic way, “reality”. Or the effect of climatic disturbances on the physical world. It calculates the total emissions that humanity can afford to avoid the worst, and it allocates them for each country.
This gives a carbon budget. The trajectory proposed by the industry would take us into the red. By 2050, emissions from projected new operations would even be higher than those from current projects.
Read the IEA report
How can this be reconciled with the promised carbon neutrality?
The industry hopes that carbon capture and storage technologies will enable it to cancel its emissions. It could also rely on small nuclear reactors and the purchase of carbon credits to offset its emissions.
It is like crossing your fingers as you walk towards the storm with your eyes closed …
These technologies are not yet developed. And even if they were, the cost would be monumental. Who will pay the majority of the bill? You demand the industry.
It is not very fair. Neither economically wise. This small fortune would be better invested in the green energies of the future.
And above all, above all, this “plan” contains a blind spot. In fact, an elephant in his windshield: the bulk of oil and gas emissions come after they are produced, when they are consumed. And carbon capture will not change anything …
That could give Mr. Guilbeault some arguments. But what he will need above all is skill and courage.
In office for just a few days, the new minister presented himself to the COP26 with electoral promises.
How will it cap emissions from the fossil fuel sector? And how will he end the subsidies? He himself ignores it.
His simple appointment was received as good news, but the pressure is enormous and patience will be limited. Canada is the only G7 country not to have reduced its emissions since 2015, it has yet to meet its new target for 2030 and, as foreseen in the Glasgow agreement, this target will have to be revised upwards. ‘within a year.
Like the fossil fuel industry, the minister is fighting against time, but moving in the opposite direction. Their paths will eventually cross. In a head-on collision.