Matt Johnson says there’s a clear starting point for governments looking to stabilize the atmosphere to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas pollution.

While decision makers often talk about the carbon dioxide emissions produced during combustion of fossil fuels, Johnson, a researcher from Carleton University, notes there is a much more powerful greenhouse gas that must not be forgotten.

“If we’re serious about net-zero, at any date, by 2050, the absolute first thing that has to go to zero is methane,” Johnson tells The Narwhal in an interview.

Johnson recently co-authored a study that found oil and gas companies, along with governments, are underestimating the amount of methane that is leaking from oil and gas production. The initial research found methane emission levels in British Columbia were 1.6 to 2.2 times higher than current federal inventory estimates. 

As his team continues to survey 8,000 sites across the country, there is mounting evidence from a range of scientific studies and assessments, including the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that indicates existing government policies are failing to adequately tackle the methane emissions that could trigger some of the worst potential outcomes of the climate crisis.

At the same time, some of the research shows how governments and industry can get ahead of the problem and achieve significant reductions in global heating, faster than similar action that is aimed at slashing CO2 pollution.

“The first step to any reduction has to be to measure it,” Johnson says. “I think the regulations we have are an important first step, but I think people would be naive to think that we aren’t going to have to go a whole lot further.”

But to succeed, some observers say governments must also counter mounting pressure and lobbying from industry stakeholders that seek to slow down action and delay new regulations.

Many oilpatch companies are also seeking billions of dollars in government subsidies to adopt greener technologies, according to Audrey Mascarenhas, president and CEO of Questor Technology Inc., a firm that helps energy companies reduce pollution.

But instead of offering handouts to oil and gas companies, she says government officials in Canada could get better results by adopting tougher regulations.

“All the major oilsands players have gone and said we need $60 billion and then we will be clean and actually our fuel is cleaner than everybody else,” Mascarenhas says. “We don’t realize that our regulations are actually — especially on emissions —  behind the United States.”

Methane regulations could reduce warming by 0.3 C

There is agreement among scientists that stronger methane regulations could have a significant impact on efforts to slow down global warming.

Climate scientists say methane is the second biggest contributor to warming temperatures. The gas is around 28 to 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It only lasts for about a decade, but warms the planet a lot faster in a shorter time. After a decade or so, the gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide. It’s also why it’s referred to as a “short-lived climate forcer.”

Johnson’s report, co-authored by Carleton researcher David Tyner, concludes that an “immediate reduction of methane emissions is seen as essential to holding planetary warming below a 2 C threshold.” In addition, a 2021 assessment of impacts of methane on climate models by the United Nations Environment Programme found that rapid reductions in methane pollution could reduce potential warming by 0.3 C by the 2040s. 

Environmental Defense Fund senior climate scientist Ilissa Ocko’s research on methane has reached similar conclusions about how regulations could help reduce anticipated warming, although not by as much as what the UNEP assessment had anticipated. Regardless, Ocko has estimated that up to 0.25 C of warming could be avoided prior to 2050 through stronger policies from all stakeholders as well as stronger regulations.

“Methane is the single fastest, available and affordable opportunity to slow down the rate of warming,” Ocko says.

National and provincial regulations with a 2025 methane reduction target of 40-45 per cent below 2012 levels came into force last year. But the latest assessment of the science from the IPCC indicates that the world is going to surpass 1.5 C in the 2030s instead of the 2040s as previously predicted, “unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

The Trudeau government in Canada has already announced plans to strengthen its methane regulations, but has been vague about the details.

Ilissa Ocko’s research has found that better methane regulations could significantly reduce the amount of global warming expected from climate change. Photo: Leslie Von Pless

At the 26th annual United Nations Conference of Parties (COP26), beginning Oct. 31, countries will, for the first time since the signing of the Paris Agreement, present their updated plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — including methane.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Oct. 11 that the federal government will commit to a plan to reduce methane emissions “by at least 75 per cent below 2012 levels by 2030.” The announcement was made in support of the Global Methane Pledge Ministerial Meeting, co-chaired by the United States and the European Union.

While it declined a request for an interview, Wilkinson’s department told The Narwhal it will release a report in late 2021 on “the efficacy of the suite of federal actions to achieve the 2025 methane target.”

The most recent announcement is consistent with recommendations from IPCC’s latest report and also targets proposed by the Pembina Institute (75 per cent below 2021 levels by 2030).

The Canadian Energy Research Institute supports a slightly higher target with analysis showing the country can reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 80 per cent from 2012 levels by applying a price on carbon of less than $25 per ton.

The government currently estimates that methane accounts for 13 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s a matter of taking the current regulations and making them more stringent,” says Jan Gorski, senior analyst at the Pembina Institute.

Mascarenhas says increasing energy efficiency and reducing methane emissions is the “biggest opportunity right now that gets us 80 per cent of the way there [to limit warming].”

Flares are just one example where regulations can be strengthened, she explains. At oil and gas extraction sites, excess gas is routed through a piping system that is burned as it exits a flare stack. In the industry, flares are assumed to be 98 per cent efficient, meaning 98 per cent of the greenhouse gases that exit those pipes are assumed to be combusted. But Mascarenhas says it’s evident that’s not the case.

“It’s black and smoky — how can it be 98 per cent efficient?” she says.

Pembina’s report on existing regulations showed that federal regulations and provincial regulations in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan need major improvements on high efficiency flares and combustors, among other issues like public reporting to demonstrate compliance to regulations.

B.C. oil and gas sites releasing up to 2.2 times more methane emissions than federal estimates: study

Canada’s main oil and gas industry lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, did not respond to a question from The Narwhal about whether Canada needs stronger methane regulations. Instead, its spokesman, Jay Averill, emailed a statement saying the industry is “actively working to achieve the methane emissions reductions” and added “British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan’s regulations on flaring, venting and fugitive emissions from upstream facilities” serve as models for other onshore jurisdictions.

Current regulations are also working with out-of-date data, according to Johnson, the researcher from Carleton.

“The absolute critical piece is we need a commitment to do these kinds of measurements,” he says. “We’re going to have to do that annually for at least the next five or 10 years, and probably as long as we have an oil and gas sector.”

It involves measuring methane emissions every year, updating an inventory based on measurements, not projections, and then tracking whether regulations are working, Johnson explains.

Johnson notes his research has adopted a new technology to detect and measure emissions within facilities and revealed that major methane emission sources from the oil and gas sites include tanks, compressors, flares and pneumatic devices. A tank can leak methane gas if pressurized gas is sent to it. A compressor can leak by letting the gas escape through gaps between piston cylinders. And flares can end up venting the gas directly into the atmosphere due to multiple factors like wind or inefficiency.

There is also existing technology to stop and prevent pollution from leaking.

Pneumatic devices, such as pumps and level controllers, traditionally powered by gas pressure, can be switched to “low-bleed” or “zero-bleed” where instead of being gas-powered, they’re powered by electricity, a relatively affordable solution, Johnson explains. Combusting the gas to generate power, through clean combustion units like those offered by Questor, can burn the gas instead of flaring and venting, and are among the cheapest to implement, Mascarhenas and Ocko both note.

A recent study on methane emissions found oil and gas companies, along with governments, are underestimating the amount of methane that is leaking from oil and gas production. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

But Johnson adds that tanks require a little more infrastructure and cost, like installing a vapour recovery unit. 

“As soon as you put a price on carbon of any kind, then these things start to look really cheap,” Johnson says.

“There will be some sites you decide aren’t economic, like marginal wells that are remote, producing a lot of gas and not a lot of oil,” Johnson says. “It’s a multifaceted thing, no matter what.”

Ocko believes existing technology can allow for up to a 75 per cent reduction in methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.

“In theory, if you shut off all methane emissions tomorrow, a quarter of the warming would be gone in a couple decades,” she says.

In addition to methane emission reduction being good policy, she adds there are also potential economic benefits for producers that capture and sell methane on the market.

“Because you can sell it, there’s a lot of things you can do for a no net cost; you make up the cost of fixing the leaks with the product you sell,” she says.

The oilpatch lobby group appears to agree.

“Companies also have a financial interest in these efforts as producers would much rather be selling their natural gas than losing it through the production and transportation process,” Averill, from CAPP, says. “Additional methane captured means less emissions and more product makes it to market.”

The market for natural gas is also shifting, with regions like Quebec and Europe demanding a highly regulated product that conforms to climate goals.

Earlier this year, Quebec rejected the proposed Énergie Saguenay project — an LNG export project. The province’s environment minister Benoit Charette said the project would discourage a transition toward cleaner energy sources. That was a $9 billion project, 750-km pipeline to which the province simply said ‘no.’

Last year, the French government pulled out of a US$7 billion deal with Texas-based NextDecade Corporation because the LNG project emitted too much methane at its supply origin.

“Some companies are realizing the need to address methane, both from a timing perspective but also it’s what investors and stakeholders are looking for,” Gorski says.

Some oil and gas companies are moving toward that goal.

In 2018, Shell Canada said it launched a program to reduce methane emissions by replacing old valve actuators at one of its B.C.-based sites. However, Shell Canada did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment on what actions the company was taking in light of the IPCC’s report and the new findings on methane detection.

Updated Nov. 1, 2021, at 11:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify a line that had overstated a summary of Ocko’s research. In fact, it was a UNEP assessment, and not Ocko, that provided an estimate about how methane regulations could reduce potential warming by 0.3 C.

Updated Oct 21, 2021, at 5:28 p.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify details describing Johnson’s research on detecting and measuring leaks.

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None of Canada’s national political parties in the 2021 federal election campaign can say exactly how their platforms would address the findings of a new scientific study that concluded the country needs to keep more than 80 per cent of its oil, gas and coal in the ground in order to respond to the global climate crisis.

The Narwhal reached out to the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the NDP and the Green Party in the wake of the study, published on Sept. 8 in Nature by scientists from University College London. While some listed examples of their climate policies and promises, none would say whether they could meet the target recommended by the peer-reviewed article.

Overall, the scientists concluded that nearly 60 per cent of the world’s oil and gas and 90 per cent of its coal must not be extracted in order to give the planet a 50 per cent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 C by 2050.

For Canada, the study, Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 C world, said those numbers are higher. Approximately 83 per cent of the country’s oil reserves, 81 per cent of its gas reserves, and 83 per cent of its coal reserves must stay in the ground to achieve climate targets, the study found.

“There is an important leadership role here,” the study’s lead author, Dan Welsby, told The Narwhal by email. “A managed decline of fossil fuel production now, with government assistance in areas with high employment in fossil fuel production, will be critical.”

“Removing subsidies and tax incentives for fossil fuel producers is also an important aspect of this,” he added.

Welsby, a researcher at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources, said the modelling used in the study is based on the assumption that all regions are committed to the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty that has a goal of limiting global temperatures to well below 2 C and preferably 1.5 C below pre-industrial levels.

“Our analysis suggests that global oil and gas production needs to have already peaked and enter decline at a global average of around three per cent a year out to 2050,” he said in an email.

Some federal election promises to slash pollution

In the federal election campaign, it was not clear how any of the parties intended to wind down oil and gas production, in line with the study’s findings, although all parties have introduced plans that they say would slash pollution from this sector.

Liberal Party spokesperson Alex Deslongchamps told The Narwhal in an email statement the party’s focus is getting to net-zero by 2050 by “ensuring emissions from the oil and gas sector only go down from here.”

The Liberals will put a cap on emissions and ensure they decline at the required pace to achieve net-zero by 2050, Deslongchamps explained. On subsidies for oil and gas, the party intends to eliminate them by 2023 instead of the previously proposed 2025. Public financing of the fossil fuel sector will also be phased out.

The Green Party’s spokesperson Imre Szemen said the party’s proposed policies include cancelling all new pipeline projects, cancelling all new oil exploration projects, ending the leasing of federal lands for fossil fuel production and retiring existing licences and banning fracking.

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The Conservative Party of Canada did not respond to The Narwhal by publication time, while a spokesperson for the NDP said it was working on a response.

In their election platform, the Conservatives commit to introducing policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would include finalizing regulations proposed by the Liberal government to reduce pollution from fuel and pursuing a price on pollution for industrial emissions that is tied to the U.S. and the European Union. On the other hand, the Conservatives also propose some policies that would expand fossil fuel production such as reviving the Northern Gateway pipeline project and encouraging the growth of what it describes as “renewable natural gas.” The Conservative platform also proposes to develop a new national clean energy strategy that includes nuclear, hydrogen, natural gas and renewable energy.

The NDP says in its platform that its policies are aimed at achieving net-zero emissions while creating a million new jobs, it also wants to boost cleantech research and incentivize environmentally friendly technology in the hopes of transitioning off fossil fuels.

Carbon budget shows Canadian energy sector is facing struggles

The Nature study examined how much carbon pollution can go into the atmosphere before global temperatures surpass 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. Under that scenario, it estimated how much fossil fuel can be developed and how much needs to stay in the ground. Researchers and policy makers often refer to these types of calculations as a way of determining what they describe as a carbon budget.

The study also considered the cost of production of fossil fuels, the carbon intensity of extracting them, and the costs of low and zero-carbon alternative technologies in the region. As a result, Canada’s fossil fuels that need to stay in the ground are higher than the global average, particularly because of the high cost of production in the oilsands region where producers need to use large amounts of energy and water to separate bitumen, a heavy and thick oil, that is mixed with clay in the ground.

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The oilsands contain massive deposits of bitumen that are part of what makes Canada home to the world’s third largest reserves of crude oil after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, according to government estimates. The region has been both a source of significant revenues and jobs, as well as exponential growth in greenhouse gas emissions since the 1990s.

“Despite cost reductions in recent years, Canadian oilsands struggle to compete with other oil producing regions in our model in a rapidly declining market given the levels of demand reduction we see in order to keep within our 1.5 C carbon budget,” Welsby said.

The model used in the study notes carbon intensity from oilsands production is higher than conventional oil. Even if the energy involved in the production is decarbonized, it just makes for “additional costs to an already struggling position of Canada in terms of competitiveness vis-a-vis other producers.”

As Canada’s oilsands are subsidized by the federal government, “this would make subsidizing oilsands even more costly,” Welsby said.

Rapid reductions are anticipated in U.S. fossil fuel consumption

The 1.5 C scenario model also projects rapid reductions in U.S. fossil fuel consumption, which ultimately affects Canada’s oil and gas industry due to declining exports to south of the border.

This would make it harder for any Canadian oil and gas projects to achieve economic success.

“More countries are coming around to saying that they’re going to take strong climate action,” which makes it harder to sell them a carbon intensive product, said Mason Inman, oil and gas program director at Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based climate research and advocacy group.

“Another part of it is that the development of renewable energy is coming along really well,” he added, which means those options are becoming cheaper.

Inman doubts any new oilsands or pipeline projects in Canada would be economical at the kinds of prices expected for them. Those new projects are at serious risk of becoming stranded assets, he added.

“Canada’s oil production sector is really going to be in trouble, because they are very high cost producers,” Inman said. “People have been warning about this kind of risk of stranded assets for several years, but the oil industry in Canada keeps continuing with adding more and more projects, nonetheless.”

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Concordia University climatologist Damon Matthews’ internationally recognized research examines carbon budgets and emission allowances. He agrees that much of Canada’s oil and gas reserves are less economically viable than other global reserves.

“I think the fundamental conclusion [from the Nature study] is that there is vastly more carbon in current oil, gas, and coal reserves around the world than we are able to burn globally [in a 1.5 C world],” Matthews said. “Canada is at the higher end of that because our reserves are more carbon intensive, and more expensive, and less economically viable in the context of 1.5 degree warming.”

Matthews adds there’s a “disconnect” between “stated climate ambitions” and the policies proposed by federal parties in the upcoming election.

“Canadian governments are either not connecting the dots, and not realizing that a 1.5 degree level of emissions means winding down fossil fuel extraction in Canada over a 20-year period,” he said.

“The Conservative and Liberal policies are seeming to anticipate a world that is not following the 1.5 C scenario.”

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On Wolfe Island in Lake Ontario, Mark Mattson has always seen water levels rise and fall from his home.

But Mattson — the founder of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a charity that works to protect the watershed — says the recent low water levels spark uncertainty for the lake’s future, especially after the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board measured the driest precipitation conditions since 1966 over the last 12 months in Lake Ontario.

The River Board’s drought monitor maps show abnormally dry to moderate conditions within the Great Lakes basin, which have left Lake Ontario’s water levels about 30 centimetres below the average level.

“It’s a bit shocking how low the water is,” Mattson said.

The wetlands and marshes around Wolfe Island are dry, and the water levels are lower than he can ever recall seeing before, Mattson explained. Just a few years ago, water was flooding over the banks, onto the grass, even onto the roads.

High water levels cause massive wetlands to fill with water in the spring, allowing much of the watershed’s wildlife to proliferate.

“There are fish and birds, it’s green and full,” Mattson said. “When they’re dry, like this year, they’re empty brown zones with no water. They seem very dead.”

While scientists have recorded similar fluctuations in water levels since record-keeping began in 1918, what’s different now is how quickly the region is shifting between the extremes.

Between 1998 and 2013, the Great Lakes had low water levels that lasted for 15 years.

After that, much of the Great Lakes reached record-highs while Lake Ontario’s water levels were higher than normal.

By 2017, Lake Ontario water levels hit a record-high at 75.88 metres before reaching a new record two years later in 2019, rising to 75.92 metres.

Between 2019 and 2021, Lake Ontario’s water levels dropped more than a metre down to 74.7 metres.

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s senior climatologist Dave Phillips calls this sudden drop a “wake-up call.” 

“There’s never been a more dramatic change,” Phillips told The Narwhal.

In the last decade, Lake Ontario hit record-high water levels but since 2019 those have dropped significantly. Photo: Zarif Ali / Unsplash

Phillips remembers above average high water levels across the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

“You were going through several years, 30 to 35 years of these long stretches where levels were traditionally higher when you compare it with the 100-year average,” he said. “Then, in about the ’80s and ’90s, and beginning into the 2000s, we went through this period of lower than average levels.”

University of Toronto professor Joseph Desloges studies the effects of climate change and human disturbance on geography. 

“From 2012, almost all the five Great Lakes had months… [when they] were at their all-time low in 2012, 2013,” Desloges said.

“And then by 2018, 2019, Great Lakes had an all-time high, just within six years. That’s climate change.”

“As you put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the atmosphere becomes more energetic,” Desloges said. “What you end up experiencing in a lot of regions is greater variability. So some years are very wet and cold, some years very hot and dry. So that variability becomes extreme.”

“That’s what climate change is doing, it’s making weather less predictable,” he added.

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Frank Segnelieks, a water resources engineer for Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian secretary of the River Board, keeps a close eye on the lake’s water level, precipitation, seasonal patterns and other indicators.

He’s not quite ready to point to climate change as the root cause of the rapidly fluctuating lake levels.

“When you’re in the middle of it, you can’t really say distinctively,” Seglenieks said. “In 10 years, if we keep seeing the swings between wetter temperatures and dryer temperatures you can maybe start to say: ‘Yeah, we’ve now seen a pattern shift.’ ”

Phillips of Environment and Climate Change Canada suggested that the recent extremes affecting the Great Lakes are a sign of things to come. 

Whereas the relatively stable periods of water levels in past decades allowed for normalcy and consistency in planning human activities, the recent extreme fluctuations not only make it hard to predict what to expect, but make it harder to adapt to conditions.

Most of the shoreline near the Greater Toronto Area is protected, but on the American side of Lake Ontario and in the east closer to Kingston, fluctuating water levels can erode the shorelines and introduce a lot of sediment into the lake, which can affect temperature and transmissivity in the water.

“We promote this thing called adaptive management, to be able to handle all these situations,” Seglenieks said, in response to these unpredictable weather patterns.

Whether building a pier or a city building, Seglenieks said engineers need to ensure infrastructure is adaptable to all these different conditions and water levels.

What’s clear for decision makers and users of the Great Lakes is a lot of challenges are emerging as long stretches of uniform water levels won’t be common anymore.

Representatives from 241 cities, villages and other jurisdictions along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River said that climate-related events have forced them to spend $878 million over the past two years, according to a new survey of shoreline communities conducted from March through May 2021 by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative and the University of Illinois Applied Research Institute.

The survey respondents, from Ontario, Quebec and eight U.S. states, also estimated they would need to spend at least $1.94 billion over the next five years to cope with extreme weather and wave action that threatens to cause greater erosion and flooding on the shoreline.At present, low water levels in the St. Lawrence River are also affecting companies accepting imports at the Port of Montreal. While the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) has low-water fees in their long-term contracts to protect themselves from such fluctuations, other shipbrokers aren’t happy about rising freight rates, according to a recent report in The Globe and Mail.

The St. Lawrence River, which flows out of Lake Ontario, is also experiencing low water levels which are affecting imports in the Port of Montreal. Photo: Samuel Charron / Unsplash

Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG is one of the major shipping lines charging a low water surcharge in the St. Lawrence. Its managing director for Canada Wolfgang Schoch told The Globe for every 10 centimetres the water level drops, that’s about 3,000 metric tonnes of cargo that needs to be removed from a freighter.

To recover the loss of cargo, shipping companies like Hapag charge a surcharge ranging anywhere from $150 to $300 USD for every container.

These challenges make for a much shorter planning horizon.

“I think that’s the new norm, you can’t depend on what the situation is going to be from one year to the next, where in the past you could and plan your operations accordingly,” Seglenieks said.

Scientists say the aquatic ecosystem also struggles to adapt to the stress of fluctuating water levels.

“There’s a smaller habitat for these aquatic biota like fish and aquatic insects. It essentially results in this increased competition and predation pressures,” Environmental Defence water policy and governance specialist Michelle Woodhouse said.

Low flows can also exacerbate the effects of other environmental stressors like sedimentation, increased nutrients, poor water quality and water extraction.

This level of uncertainty and variability should be worrying, Mattson says.

“We know the impact on navigation, fish habitats, cities, sewage, stormwater, but longer term there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “We have to be resilient and attentive to what’s going on.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.