The Trudeau Administration has delayed the delivery of a promise cap on fossil fuel sector emissions. However, they insist that there is no need for production to be curtailed.
The Canadian government has delayed announcing a cap in production emissions for its large oil and gas sector. It said it needs to consult with the industry.
Justin Trudeau’s government announced its emissions reduction plan on Tuesday, outlining how it plans to meet its target to reduce emissions by 40-45% between 2005 and 2030.
It predicts that oil production from oil production will continue growing while emissions from oil production will fall. Campaigners said this “doesn’t add up” and “bets too heavily on [carbon capture technology]”.
At Cop26, Trudeau told world leaders that the town of Lytton had burned down because of climate change and promised “we’ll cap oil and gas sector emissions today and ensure they decrease tomorrow at a pace and scale needed to reach net zero by 2050”.
“That’s no small task for a major oil and gas producing country,” he said. “It’s a big step that’s absolutely necessary.”
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But Tuesday’s plan did not include a cap on production emissions from oil and gas. Steven Guilbeault (Environment minister) stated earlier in the month that this policy would not be implemented until late 2022, or early 2023.
Announcing the plan in Vancouver, natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson explained: “We committed to the [oil and gas] sector that we would work with them in a collaborative basis to establish the cap”.
He added: “We will be working with them over the coming months to ensure we put in place an appropriate cap that’s going to work in a manner that will continue to employ people but that will allow us to get at those emissions”.
It is still unclear how the cap will be implemented. Guilbeault stated that a cap-and-trade system is one option. This is when a restricted number of pollution permits is issued in key industries and companies that reduce their emissions more quickly can sell any unused allowances.
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According to the government, emissions from oil-and-gas production will fall 42% from 2019 levels, while oil production is expected to rise 22% between 2020-2030.
The emissions reduction plan states: “The intent of the cap is not to bring reductions in production that are not driven by declines in global demand”.
Catherine Abreu, director of Destination Zero, told Climate Home it was good that Canada is “finally moving to address the glaring gap in all of its previous climate plans – the oil and gas sector”.
But, she said: “Increasing oil production while trying to reduce oil and gas emissions doesn’t add up… Canadian governments need to ask whether it makes sense to keep ramping up extraction in this critical decade of decarbonisation.”
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Measures to reduce emissions without reducing production include tax credits for carbon capture technology and potentially domestic and international carbon offsets for “a small portion of the reductions”, the plan says.
Julia Levin, from the Environmental Defense Fund, said the plan “bets much too heavily on [carbon capture]”.
Jan Gorski, a Pembina Institute think-tank, stated that the 2030 oil and gas emission reductions were not ambitious enough. He said that the industry’s fair share was a 45% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 not the plan’s 31% projection.
His analysis suggests this can be achieved through stopping methane leaks and venting, electrification, carbon capture, facilities reaching their end of life and “other decarbonisation activities for which we do not yet have adequate information”.
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Campaigners were critical of the plan, but the oil and gas industry welcomed it. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said that it “acknowledges that global demand for natural gas and oil will continue for decades and Canada has a role to play in providing lower emission resources to the world’s energy mix”.
According to the International Energy Agency oil demand should fall by 75% between 2020 and 2050 if the world is to achieve net zero by 2050, according to the agency. Over the same time, gas demand should drop by 55%.
Guilbeault said last November that the federal government doesn’t have the constitutional right to cap oil and gas production – that’s in the power of Canada’s provinces. But the federal government has the ability to limit production emissions.
Canada is the only G7 nation whose emissions are still increasing. This is due to Canada’s growing oil and gas production as well as its increased use of polluting transport methods like SUVs.
The emissions reduction plan also includes C$9bn ($7bn), new green investments in electric cars, green buildings, farming and restoring nature. This is in addition to Canada’s rising carbon price on pollution.
The plan set interim targets to eliminate the sale of new passenger vehicles with internal combustion engines. Zero-emission vehicles should account for 20% of all new vehicle sales by 2026. This should increase to 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.
Source: Climate Change News
