Hope is not a strategy. Unless, that is, you’re a fervent supporter of big carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) projects, believing that they’ll significantly reduce emissions of CO2.
In that case, hope is pretty much all you have. That’s because CCS projects have a history of raising hopes and then dashing them.
For people who want another oil pipeline built from Alberta to the west coast, hopes are today being raised again, this time via the Pathways Alliance proposal. This is an ambitious project to capture carbon dioxide emissions from 20 oil sands facilities, pump them through a 400-km pipeline, and then inject the CO2 (compressed into a supercritical fluid) into a saline aquifer deep underground near Cold Lake. The goal is to be sequestering more than 20 million metric tonnes of emissions from the oil sands every year by 2030, about one-quarter of the industry’s total emissions.
This is what prime minister Mark Carney means when he talks about “decarbonized oil,” much like the original greenwashing term “clean coal.” Both terms are oxymorons. Coal and oil are neither clean nor decarbonized. But because emissions are captured and pumped underground, politicians can say the oil industry is reducing its carbon footprint. It’s also worth pointing out that some CCS projects inject the compressed CO2 into old oilfields to pump out even more oil, in a process called “enhanced oil recovery.” Hardly a way to reduce emissions.
This isn’t just a public relations move. The Pathways Project is a key component in premier Danielle Smith’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Carney to champion a new pipeline to pump oil sands bitumen from Alberta to the west coast for shipment overseas. Each project is conditional on the other. As the MOU spells out, the Pathways Project is a prerequisite “to the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline, given that the two projects referred to in this MOU are mutually dependent.”
In other words, Smith will have to show the Pathways Project is moving ahead for Carney to push ahead with a pipeline deal (opposed by BC politicians and First Nations), while Carney will have to show he’s serious about getting the pipeline approved for Smith to find a way to make the Pathways proposal work.
And if we’re talking about CCS, we’re inevitably talking about government subsidies of one kind or another. Pathways is estimated to cost $16.5-billion. The oil industry would like the federal government to cover 75 per cent of the cost. Ottawa has offered 50 per cent in tax credits, while Alberta has offered 12 per cent. Tax credits, though, never seem to be enough.
CCS doesn’t live up to its hype: that it can “solve” our CO2 problem while allowing us to keep burning fossil fuels.
In 2008 then-premier Ed Stelmach announced a climate change strategy for Alberta reliant on carbon capture, in which we’d sequester 140 million tonnes a year by 2050. To kickstart what he hoped would be a CCS gold rush (futilely, it turned out), he promised $2-billion for half-a-dozen proof-of-concept projects. So far, Alberta taxpayers—i.e., you and I—have spent over $1.2-billion on two projects that bury about one million tonnes a year.
Sadly CCS has never lived up to the hype as a magic bullet to solve our emissions problem while allowing us to keep burning fossil fuels. And this isn’t unique to Alberta. The billion-dollar Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, for example, was supposed to capture 90 per cent of emissions from a coal-fired power plant but manages on average only 50 per cent, prompting the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis to label it an “underperforming failure.” The institute concluded: “Canadians should not be proud of the money and resources wasted on CCS, and should be especially concerned about the billions… now earmarked for additional CCS investments.”
Worldwide, a report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development concluded that a “majority of the 149 CCS projects that were projected to be storing carbon by 2020 globally have been either cancelled or put on an indefinite hold because of incredibly high costs and technological challenges.”
Putting aside major obstacles to the Alberta/Ottawa MOU, including the potential costs to taxpayers, environmental risks, and opposition from First Nations, will the Pathways Project actually work? Will it overcome the obstacles that have tripped up so many hoopla-driven projects of the past?
The troubling reality is that these questions are moot. Alberta doesn’t need to prove the project will actually live up to the hype; at this point it just needs the hype. Alberta and the federal government aim to enter into a trilateral MOU with the Pathways companies by April 1, 2026, to find actions to reduce the “intensity” of emissions. Even meeting that relatively low standard doesn’t mean either Pathways or the new bitumen pipeline will ever get built. But it does keep alive the political mythology of CCS as a way to significantly reduce emissions while justifying the construction of more fossil-fuel projects.
Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.
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