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Feds join Alberta in Walking away from Kyoto - Industry Let off the Hook on Real Greenhouse Gas Reductions

April 27, 2007

Prime Minister Harper’s new green plan steers Canada away from its international obligations and follows Alberta’s “lead” by rejecting the targets and timelines of the Kyoto Protocol . The federal plan is startlingly similar to regulations released by the Alberta government last month and, according to environmental groups, will be just as ineffective in achieving real emissions reductions within the Kyoto timeframe.

“Using intensity targets to regulate industry allows emissions to keep growing,” explained Lindsay Telfer, Director of the Sierra Club of Canada’s Prairie Chapter. “Talk of ‘turning the corner’ is disingenuous until we see guaranteed reductions in absolute emissions. Canadians expect their government to live up to its Kyoto obligations and are getting fed up of this game of smoke and mirrors.”

The new regulations will place an emissions intensity target of 18% on existing large industrial facilities beginning in 2010, and increase that target by 2% per year until 2015. Research shows that compliance in the oil sands will cost less than 40 cents per barrel of oil and that despite meeting targets, industry emissions from the tar sands will still more than double between 2006 and 2015.

Environmental groups explained that the plan will be ineffective largely because it contains many of the same loopholes as Alberta’s regulations. Both sets of regulations:

  • Use small intensity based targets rather than absolute targets. This means emissions from industry can to continue to grow even while targets are met.
  • Exempt new industrial facilities from regulation. This means that for the first three years of operation, new oil sands facilities will be let off the hook – facing no targets, and no incentives to incorporate the best available technology into their design.
  • Allow emitters to pay into a fund instead of reducing emissions. This means that regulations will have no way to guarantee decreases in pollution: if facilities choose to maximize their fund payments and fund monies aren’t invested in real, immediate reductions – emissions will be much higher than “expected”.

“It’s like the feds decided to simply steal a page out of Alberta’s book,” said Nashina Shariff, Associate Director of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, “Now we have two levels of government unwilling to require Alberta industry to take the kind of meaningful action on climate change that we all know is feasible.”

Under the new federal regulations, Alberta’s industrial emissions in 2010 will be well above what they were in 1990. Meaningful action, by contrast, would commit industry to assuming its faire share – 50 per cent – of helping Canada meet its Kyoto obligations, widely accepted as the benchmark for significant short-term reductions. This means reducing emissions to 6% below 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period, a target that would only cost about $1 a barrel in the oil sands, and less elsewhere.

“We don’t see the cost of complying with Kyoto targets as being unreasonable for the oil sands industry,” added Shariff. “In today’s overheated economy – with rampant inflation and labour shortages – it seems hard to believe that a buck on a barrel of oil to get the climate file right is going to hurt anyone.” 

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