In the midst of the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline last fall, two of us -- Neil Swart, a PhD student in my lab, and I -- undertook to measure the likely impact of oil sands development upon world climate. On September 28, we submitted the results of our analysis for publication and after five months working its way through the peer review paper, the final article appeared in Nature Climate Change on Sunday. We received no funding for this research.
We asked the question as to how much global warming would occur if we completely burned a variety of fossil fuel resources. Here is what we calculated for the following resources:
In other words: Coal presents a climate challenge 1500x greater than that presented by the oil sands.
Our overarching conclusion is that as a society, we will live or die by our future consumption of coal. The idea that we're going to somehow run out of coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels is misplaced. We'll run out of our ability to live on the planet long before we run out of them.
Some might point out that our published calculations do not account for the additional greenhouse gases arising from the extraction, transportation, and refining of the tar sand resource. This was deliberate.
The so-called "wells-to-wheels" approach to tar-sands mining includes the natural gas, diesel, and coal emissions that arise during extraction and refining, together with the transportation of the oil. However, these would come from the other resource pools and shouldn't be double-counted. The relative mix of such fuels would obviously change in the future as well. We wanted to be consistent to ensure that emissions and subsequent warming from all resources were calculated the same way.
Nevertheless, if you account for the additional "wells-to-wheels" emissions, our estimates of potential global warming from the tar stands would increase by about 20%. But even this is uncertain. If all refining, extraction, and transportation were done using renewable energy or nuclear power, the number would be close to 0%. If it were all done using electricity from inefficient coal-fired generators, it would be higher. Once more the key message is clear: We will live or die by our future consumption of coal. And if everyone in the world had similar per-capita emissions as North Americans, it will be sooner than later. More information on this topic is available on Neil Swart's website.
I have always said that the tar sands are a symptom of a bigger problem. The bigger problem is our societal dependence on fossil fuels. As we use up the easy-to-find resources, we start going to more extreme measures to access what is left. The result is increasingly environmentally hazardous approaches to extraction. For example, this image illustrates the breadth of boreal destruction associated with tar sands exploration.
None of this discussion takes away from the profound ecological and social concerns involved with the development of the tar sands that I attempt to articulate here.
I am convinced that the Canadian government can do a better job of regulating the tar sands industry to ensure that these ecological and social concerns are properly addressed. In addition, the industry represents the single biggest growing sector of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions.
The atmosphere has traditionally been viewed as an unregulated dumping ground. There is no cost associated with emitting greenhouse gases. Economists call this a market failure. To correct this failure, a price is needed on emissions. This allows individuals and businesses to find the most cost-effective means of reducing their own emissions. In fact, the oil and gas industry have repeatedly called upon the federal government to introduce such emissions pricing. They want some certainty as to "the rules" under which they must operate.
Does our study mean that I am in favour of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline in northern British Columbia? No. For the record, I am strongly opposed to it for four reasons:
In terms of the Keystone pipeline, I believe the industry was arrogant in its approach to the very legitimate concerns of First Nations, Nebraskans, and other Canadians and Americans. For example, it is troubling to contemplate building a new pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer. Some have also raised legitimate concerns about the social cost of exporting jobs to the United States instead of building refineries locally to process the crude. In the end, it seems that compromises might be reached in the case of Keystone XL. But it is hard for me to see any possible room for compromise in the case of Northern Gateway.
It would be a huge mistake to interpret our results as some kind of a "get out of jail free" card for the tar sands. While coal is the greatest threat to the climate globally, the tar sands remain the largest source of greenhouse gas emission growth in Canada and are the single largest reason Canada is failing to meet it's international climate commitments and failing to be a climate leader. The world needs to transition away from fossil fuels if it wants to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate system. That means coal, unconventional gas, and unconventional oil all need to be addressed.
Exporting to poor countries like China and India, from a G7 country (Canada), or to another G7 country (the US), makes it *FAR* less likely that carbon controls can be uniformly imposed. This is a *HUGE*, maybe the *DOMINANT* risk factor, and it's plain incompetence not to report on it here.
Canada only produces 2% of the world's man-made GHGs and the oilsands only produce 5% of Canada's total emissions.
The Oilsands produces one tenth of one percent [0.1%] of the world's GHG emissions.
As for transportation fuels I would suggest natural gas for heavy transport and large scale renewables for all new power generation.
The huge cost savings through circular materials could pay for the building of the circular energy infrastructure.
This January 2012 peer reviewed report is entitled "Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition".
For PDF file http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
The report added that after the buyout in 2007, Desso's market share grew from 15 to 23% and profit margins (EBIT) from 1 to 9%, with about half of this gain attributable to the introduction of C2C principles.
Desso is also phasing in renewable energy sources for each of its production sites - in line with another core C2C principle.
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=347928
http://www.carbontracker.org/unburnable-carbon
That does a far better job of differentiating between carbon that is already "booked" as "reserves" on the world's public market's, who owns them and where the bubble is causing dangerous exposures... It could bethe basis of a legitimate study of what carbon must be left in the ground, taking into account what is already flowing and capitalized to flow soon.
As for the claim that "the correct number is 41" rather than 1500 times "worse" for coal, that is still nonsense. To be correct the disclaimer has to say "Under the limited assumptions of the study, coal appears to be 41 times more of a factor in climate destabilization than coal. Those assumptions do not include infrastructure or capitalization restrictions that might prevent or enable certain resources from coming to market. They do not include, unlike Kyoto, the assumption that use or export of carbon-heavy fuels by richer nations enables or justifies or prevents controls on these by poorer countries. They do not include water, ocean or biodiversity effects of "dirty" fuels."
Consider the work of Dr. Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre in the UK. He says in part because the developing world appear determined to continue their dramatic expansion of fossil fuel use and in part because the developed world seems so committed to maintaining its current level of use, we are already committed to 4 degrees C of warming, which is, he says, committing us to an "impossible" future. By this he means: warming that is “incompatible with organized global community", "is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’", "is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable" (i.e. positive feedback would likely be setting in to drive warming even higher). He says if we tried to avoid this we would face an "impossible" rate of emission reductions. Anderson is saying "all" reports such as the Stern report inaccurately assessed how difficult it would be to phase out emissions and stabilize the composition of the atmosphere, basically because the reality was too hard to face. Its something to think about.
Any further addition to the fossil infrastructure at this point drives another nail in the coffin we are building for ourselves and this age of life on the planet. Saying the problem is the tar sands, or its not the tar sands its coal, misses the point. The problem is CO2 emissions.
The whole point of putting a price on carbon is to let market forces decide which parts of the fossil resource will be used in what ways as the emissions of CO2 are phased out so the entire process proceeds with the most economy. When you point to coal in particular, it appears you are suggesting a "command and control" approach.
I wonder why you are so uninformed about carbon capture. The IPCC published a Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage. American Electric Power CEO Mike Morris would have built a large scale CCS plant at Mountaineer Virginia if his regulator would have allowed him to recover costs. The regulator says there isn't a carbon price, so an electric utility cannot charge its customers to remove CO2 from plant exhaust. See: http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00029&segmentID=1 Again, the point is that what matters is how many molecules of CO2 reach the atmosphere. Do you disagree?
Can the atmosphere distinguish between a molecule of CO2 that comes from burning coal as opposed to a CO2 molecule that comes from burning tar sand oil?
Where is the GreenPeace protest about that?
Some people wanted to know the CO2 produced per metric tonne of coal and oil.
I calculated;
About 2770kg CO2 per 1000kg of coal
and 2873kg CO2 per 1000kg of tarsands oil (including 550kg CO2 for processing)
If someone else could do some calculating to compare answers that would be great.
I don't know why he isn't asking "for a fixed energy requirement, how do tarsand and coal compare?"
I checked their data after you replied to my post and their grams of CO2 come from another source and is based on a barrel of bitumin while I did my calculation of CO2 from processed ready to use oil. It's diff to find data on bitumin so I'll keep looking in my spare time.
Thanks for the reply and hae a great weekend.
Gasoline internal combustion engine is the problem, period. Needs to go.
5. The increased *RISK* (probability) of more coal being burned because of Tar Sands export. There is already coal being burned in Alberta and Saskatchewan because natural gas and oil and bitumen are being exported or ab/used in Tar Sands processing. That would not happen if bitumen and bitumen-derived products could not be exported, so the yes/no condition (does Tar Sands processing and the industry cause more coal burning) is satisfied. Far more importantly, exporting to poor countries like China and India, from a G7 country (Canada), or to another G7 country (the US), makes it *FAR* less likely that carbon controls can be uniformly imposed.
This is a "race to the bottom" between the US, China and India at least, and probably more countries. It doesn't require Northern Gateway either, Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline already reaches Vancouver and will be twinned soon enough if it's not stopped.
Transport and processing costs of the fuels, the fact that coal on average travels far less, are not considered for the reasons you indicate, but I think a more complex model could be developed that more accurately reflected actual export and processing patterns. I appreciate you had few funds to pursue that.
I'd like to see your response to these comments, or refutation, before I write to Nature myself.
4. There is presently no significant research or effort being put into using bitumen in other ways, such as processing to plastics or applying existing research on how to microbially or chemically change it to gas for clean extraction or catalyzing it for electricity for export. This is in very stark contrast to active research on gas. [I am also not aware of any serious progress on clean uses of coal that do not result in CO2 emissions other than sequestration, which may work some day as coal is burned in large regulated plants].
The drawbacks of it are greatly overlbown. The ignorance and misinformation concerning it have been phenomonal.
Somehow it has become the symbol for all of fossil fuels. It's not clear why. It is no more "dirtier" than many other sources of oil, and far cleaner than coal. And it is far more socially responsible to buy petroleum from Canada than Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps environmentalists see Canada as an inviting target. They haven't the guts to criticize Saudi A
Arabia or Venezuela.