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EDMONTON – New figures on greenhouse gases in Canada suggest Alberta’s economy is dangerously dependent on carbon-emitting industries, experts say.
Environment Canada figures released late Thursday show that emissions from the province’s industrial plants make up half of the country’s greenhouse gases from industrial facilities, even though Alberta has just over 10 per cent of its population.
The report, which tracks facilities that emit more than 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, shows that between coal-fired power plants and oilsands facilities, Canada’s top four emitters are in Alberta.
That leaves the province more exposed than others as the world moves to penalize carbon production in an attempt to limit global warming, said David Keith, director of the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy.
“There’s economic risks that comes from the fact that we are not going to keep putting carbon in the atmosphere forever,” Keith said. “There will eventually be hard regulations of some kind.
“The economic consequences for Alberta under a really hard regime are catastrophic.”
Andre Plourde, an energy economist at the University of Alberta, said the report underscores how exposed the province’s carbon-intensive economy is.
“If either internationally or at the federal level somebody decides to get serious about this, we are in a very vulnerable place,” he said. “Alberta should have been on top of this years ago.”
The report does not include greenhouse gas emissions from small emitters such as vehicles, or diffuse emissions from industries such as agriculture. Emissions covered by the report total about one-third of Canada’s total greenhouse gases and half its industrial emissions.
The four largest emitters were the Sundance power generating station in Duffield, Alta., at 14.5 million tonnes; Syncrude’s Mildred.
Lake Aurora North oilsands plants at 11.7 million tonnes; the Genesee generating station near Warburg, Alta., at 9.5 million tonnes; and Suncor’s oilsands plant at 8.9 million tonnes.
The oilsands were the only industrial sector to increase its emissions in 2009, a year in which slower economic activity reduced carbon dioxide virtually everywhere else.
Non-conventional oil extraction increased its total emissions by 5.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2008 and 2009.
“The most striking thing in this report is the troubling role the oilsands sector plays,” said Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute. “This shows Albertas regulations arent working and Canada continues to fail to address oilsands emissions growth.”
The Alberta government is attempting to rein in the growth of emissions from large industrial sources with a $2-billion commitment to carbon capture and storage, which would separate carbon dioxide from a facility’s waste stream and inject it permanently underground. Agreements have been reached with both energy facilities and power generators, but only $760,000 has been spent so far on preliminary research and the first reductions a comparatively small five million tonnes won’t start until 2015.
The Alberta government doesn’t expect the province’s greenhouse gas emissions to start dropping for a decade.
The province puts a price on carbon of $15 a tonne for emissions over a regulated cap. Most economists believe that figure is too low to make any difference.
Meanwhile, Keith points out that Alberta is building a brand-new coal-fired power plant the Keephills 3 generator west of Edmonton.
“What I watch for is how serious we are about doing something real, starting to do the big things that would actually move us,” he said. “What I see is virtually nothing.”
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