| With less than a month to go before the Kyoto Protocol becomes international law, Canada is nowhere near meeting its greenhouse gas reduction target.
And the Alberta government isn’t aiding Kyoto with a climate change strategy that would allow overall increases in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15 years, says Matthew Bromley, climate change program director at the Pembina Institute.
Under the Kyoto Protocol Canada is obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent of 1990 levels by around 2010. Bromley says the most recent greenhouse gas emissions figures, from 2002, show that Canada’s emissions are 20 per cent higher than 1990 levels.
Under the Alberta government’s climate change strategy, the government has promised reductions in greenhouse gas emission intensity (emissions in relation to the province’s GDP) but not an overall reduction in emissions.
"Under the Alberta climate change plan the plan explicitly foresees Alberta’s emissions rising to 39 per cent above 1990 levels by 2010 and remaining 27 per cent above 1990 levels by2020," says Bromley.
Alberta produces a high level of greenhouse gas emissions due to its huge oil and gas sectors, especially the energy intensive oil sands, and the province’s coal fired power plants.
"Climate scientists are telling us we have to reduce greenhouse gases by well over 50 per cent to prevent climate change and yet here we have one of the world’s most greenhouse gas intense jurisdictions continuing for a number of decades to come to keep its emissions above 1990 levels. I can’t see how that is a responsible response to the challenge that faces us globally," says Bromley.
Alberta Environment spokesperson Kim Hunt says the province’s "practical and sensible" climate change plan balances the environment and the economy.
"We’re not eliminating our growth to achieve our goal," she says.
The federal government isn’t showing much leadership either, says Bromley.
The Canadian Press reported this week that it had obtained a leaked copy of a Department of Natural Resources report that suggested weakening industry targets on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government’s 2002 plan to address climate change called for industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 megatonnes by 2010, a 15-per-cent reduction from "business as usual" emissions (projected emissions if no action was taken). But the leaked Natural Resources report suggested reducing that target to a 10 per cent reduction, or 37 megatonnes. Environment Canada statistics from 2002 showed industry was responsible for 53 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2002 the oil and gas industry produced 143 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, which was the highest level of any industrial sector and that figure is expected to rise rapidly as an increasing number of oil sands projects begin production.
"It makes it very difficult to meet Kyoto unless the oil sands companies are obliged to take on more responsibility," says Bromley.
Pierre Alvarez, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which has opposed Kyoto, says the oil and gas sector is working hard to be more energy efficient and to introduce new energy efficient technologies. He says reductions in flaring and venting are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and he says each oil sands project "is more efficient than the next one."
"We’re very concerned and have been from the beginning that the oil and gas industry would get a target that was more onerous than any other sector and we will fight to the last if that’s what it comes down to," says Alvarez. And he says the government should focus on getting consumers to reduce consumption of oil and gas rather than just cracking down on the oil and gas producers. |
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