Back in 1980. Henry Shaw, a scientist working for the oil company Exxon, fears the implementation of regulations that would condemn the fossil fuel industry to decline, while the scientific community is becoming aware of the impacts of gas emissions. greenhouse effect on the global climate.
“We’re not going to stop burning fossil fuels overnight, and suddenly turn to solar or nuclear fusion, etc. We are going to make a very reasonable and gradual transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies,” he declared, emphasizing the word “transition”.
Forty-three years later, and while oil, gas and coal still dominate the energy landscape, the president of the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28), Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, agrees in this direction. “We cannot unplug today’s energy system before building tomorrow’s system,” he said last month during a speech in Saudi Arabia, criticizing in the same breath the “fantasies” of those who plead for a rapid exit from fossil fuels.
The president of COP28, who also heads the main national oil company of the United Arab Emirates, is, so to speak, the polar opposite of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. The latter continues to repeat the urgency of eliminating the fuels which fuel an increasingly severe climate crisis and whose impacts have been particularly visible this year.
“The problem is fossil fuels themselves, period,” said Mr. Guterres earlier this year, judging them in the same breath “incompatible” with the survival of humanity. And on Friday, as part of a symbolic visit to Antarctica, he urged the countries which will meet at COP28 to include the exit from fossil fuels in the final declaration which must be adopted at the end of the conference.
“Shock” of visions
It is precisely this “clash” of visions that will be transported to the negotiating rooms of COP28, in Dubai, from November 30, according to Hugo Séguin, fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal and senior advisor at Copticom. “The president spoke very clearly about decarbonization. But at the same time, he defends the existence of the fossil fuel sector for the coming decades. And at least half of the people going to COP28 will want us to go further in the final declaration and plan the end of fossil fuels. So there will be a shock on this issue. »
At COP26 in Glasgow, it was the supporters of fossil fuels who won their case. At the last minute, India and China managed to change the text, which was adopted by consensus by the States, so that it only mentions the need to “reduce” the use of coal, and not its “elimination”. Last year, in Egypt, this very loose language could not even be extended to oil and gas.
Assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Laval University, Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh therefore hopes that the vocabulary included in the Dubai declaration will live up to what climate science has already repeated many times: “we must accelerate the elimination of fossil fuels. Same story with Anne-Céline Guyon, energy and climate analyst at Nature Québec. “One of the challenges of this COP28 is to finally designate in the final agreement the elephant in the room, namely the exit from all fossil fuels,” summarizes the person who will participate in the conference.
Hugo Séguin seriously doubts such a conclusion. “I do not expect that in the United Arab Emirates, under the current presidency, we will sign the death warrant of the oil and gas sector. But I expect that we will go further in identifying the problem. And we must push oil and gas companies to explain to us how they intend to contribute to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. They must do this to demonstrate that they are an actor in good faith. The industry is playing on its credibility. It could emerge from the COP as a pariah, a bit like the tobacco companies, or it could emerge from the COP as a partner. »
According to a report published Thursday by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in addition to eliminating the still widely used coal (nine billion tons in 2022), the use of oil should be reduced by at least 75%. and gas within 25 years to hope to limit warming to the viable threshold of 1.5°C.
However, production is still on a growth trajectory, including in Canada, and the industry is relying more than ever on carbon capture and storage (CCS) to clean up its balance sheet. An “illusion”, according to the IEA, but also according to Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh, who describes as “greenwashing” the message widely disseminated here by the New Ways Alliance, which brings together tar sands producers and which claims that the industry will be “carbon neutral” by 2050 thanks to CCS.
Oil lobby
The only solution to change course and avoid climate disaster is that proposed since 2021 by the IEA, recalls eco-sociologist Laure Waridel. “No exploration and exploitation projects should be authorized,” she summarizes. “This is what we need to do, but we are not able to have this discourse, even in Canada, because of the political and economic context. We saw this clearly with the approval of the Bay du Nord project. This is a situation that illustrates the extreme power of the oil lobby. »
Canada therefore has a duty, in the context of COP28, but also here in its environmental policies, to break with the status quo desired by an industry that is omnipresent in the political and economic debate, but also in the federal register of lobbyists. “Canada, which is wealthy and has a diversified economy, is in an excellent position to put forward a message in favor of reducing oil and gas production and lead by example. But if Canada does not do it, the international message will be negative,” according to Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh.
Laure Waridel, who co-founded the organization Équiterre with the man who is today the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, has no doubts about her desire to act. But Canada, which holds the third largest oil reserves in the world, is struggling, according to her, to escape from this extractivist paradigm.
She cites as an example the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, bought by the Trudeau government and whose bill now exceeds $30 billion. “If these billions of dollars had been invested in the energy sector transition and support for workers, we would be world leaders. But we didn’t have that courage. »
In this context, Anne-Céline Guyon hopes for concrete actions from Ottawa, in order to send a clear message within the framework of COP28. She is calling, like several environmental groups, for the promised imposition of an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. She also wants, in particular, a curb on subsidies granted to fossil fuels, which jumped in the G20 countries last year.
Minister Steven Guilbeault, however, wants to be reassuring, despite an international context that is not conducive to collaboration between certain States and a presidency of the COP which is directly linked to the industry responsible for the climate crisis. “After another record year of storms, wildfires, floods, now, more than ever, is the time to act. And we must do it in collaboration with everyone,” he argues in Duty.
“Climate change knows no boundaries and will not stop until we take it seriously. All actors are concerned. Canada intends to be part of the solution, Mr. al-Jaber and I are working together towards a successful COP28,” he added in a written statement.