While the B.C. government may like to claim it’s a “climate leader,” the province has quietly become a climate laggard compared to Canada’s other most populous provinces according to a new analysis released by the Pembina Institute on Tuesday.

The analysis indicates that eight years after B.C.’s Climate Action Plan was implemented, B.C.’s emissions are projected to continue increasing — standing in stark contrast to Ontario, Quebec and even Alberta.

Between 2011 and 2014, B.C.’s emissions increased by the equivalent of adding 380,000 cars to the road — putting B.C. on track to blow past its legislated 2020 emissions target.

If the province’s inaction on climate change continues, B.C.’s emissions will increase 39 per cent above 2014 levels by 2030, according to modelling.

Meantime, carbon pollution in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec is expected to decrease by 26 per cent, 22 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively, over the same period.

How is it possible that B.C. will perform worse than oilsands heavyweight Alberta? The predicted increase in B.C.’s emissions is largely due to projections for B.C.’s nascent liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector — which would account for more than 80 per cent of B.C.’s emissions increase between 2014 and 2030. And that calculation is based on the equivalent of just one LNG terminal getting up and running (roughly the size of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, which would create 24 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year).

Yup, despite whatever insane statements Premier Christy Clark might make about how the LNG industry is going to fight climate change the opposite is true due to its carbon intensity.

#LNG Could Make BC Canada’s Worst Actor on #Climate https://t.co/aznNQhPhv0 @christyclarkbc #bcpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/fgUX9tdF6v

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 14, 2016

Pembina is applying pressure on the B.C. government as it makes the final decisions on a new Climate Leadership Plan, expected to be released later this month. Last fall, Clark’s Climate Leadership Team (which included Matt Horne of the Pembina Institute) delivered 32 recommendations to the government to get B.C. on track to meet its 2050 climate target.

“In 2008, B.C. built a solid foundation with the Climate Action Plan. But when it came time to construct the proverbial house, Premier Clark balked at taking the next steps,” Horne said in a news release. “It’s time to quit stalling and finish the job.”

The Climate Leadership Team’s recommendations included reducing emissions from buildings by 50 per cent by 2030, establishing a new zero-emission vehicle standard, cutting methane emissions from the natural gas sector by 40 per cent in the next five years and increasing the carbon tax by $10 per tonne per year.

Image: Christy Clark attends an LNG rally in Fort St. John/Flickr

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Christy Clark is our province’s very own natural gas salmon, swimming gamely upstream against the advice of evidence and experts from multiple fields, determined to spawn B.C.’s LNG business in the heart of the province and give it the best start she can — everything else be damned. Or dammed, or whatever.

On a visit this week to Fort St. John, which is currently on fire, the premier bragged that producing and burning LNG will help prevent wildfires by causing a net decrease in carbon emissions as it displaces coal in China.

“If there’s any argument for exporting LNG and helping fight climate change, surely it is all around us when we see these fires burning out of control,” she told reporters at a press conference.

FSJ for LNG Rally

The people of North Eastern BC and Fort St. John are sending a strong message that they want LNG and the benefits it will bring their community.

Posted by Christy Clark on Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Not even taking into account the Orwellian logic of using increasing early starts to the destructive wildfire season to sell the public on the province’s biggest fossil fuel ambitions ever, that statement is akin to saying switching to a fast food diet will help you lose weight because at least you’re not eating pure lard: it’s somewhat true, but only if you’re really desperate to justify that Big Mac.

Here are the facts: when the full life cycle of natural gas and its non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions (like methane) are taken into account, LNG does little or nothing to reduce overall emissions, even in places where it displaces coal — and it may even increase emissions according to some estimates. And without strong climate policies that put a price on carbon in the market the gas is destined for, demand will continue rising for all fossil fuels, hampering the upward trajectory of alternative energy sources and efficiency programs.

Cheerleaders for LNG like the provincial government like to point out that burning natural gas for electricity is about half as CO2-intensive as coal. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.

Natural gas, also known as methane, has about 25 times the climate-altering power of CO2 over a 100-year span. This means anything leaked between the well and the power plant adds significantly to the overall climate-change impact of the fuel, and those leaks are not insignificant: the EPA estimates that in the United States the energy industry is the biggest single source of methane.

Turning that raw natural gas into its liquid form for transport isn’t cheap from an energy (or financial) standpoint, either. With the gas itself often used to power the liquefaction process, between 10 and 20 per cent of the product is lost in that process alone according to industry numbers, again ramping up the GHG emissions before it has done anything useful for anybody.

China is indeed planning on building up its coal power base. But substituting some of that coal power production for natural gas electricity will not have the intended emissions-reducing effect without climate policies that favour alternatives. A widely-adopted price on carbon could mean a decrease in the use of all fossil fuels — including LNG and coal — while a business-as-usual approach would just result in more of both.

Natural gas has been hailed as a “bridge fuel,” helping us bridge the gap between energy-intensive fuels and zero-emissions alternatives. It may be a mind-blowing revelation to some, but whatever the best solution to climate change is, it’s probably not burning more fossil fuels. With even the promised economic benefits of LNG called into serious question, there’s one less reason to dive headfirst into an industry that at best has a few decades left before much of it becomes a stranded asset. So if LNG is truly a bridge, the question is where that bridge really ends.

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After using Detroit as a toxic waste dumping ground, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers are now piling their petroleum coke from tar sands oil refineries in Chicago.

Kiley Kroh of ThinkProgress writes that petroleum coke, or petcoke, "is building up along Chicago's Calumet River and alarming residents." The Chicago petcoke piles are owned by KCBX, an affiliate of Koch Carbon, which is a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

Petcoke is a high-carbon, high-sulfur byproduct of coking, a refining process that extracts oil from tar sands bitumen crude. The petcoke owned by Charles and David Koch is a byproduct of bitumen crude shipped to US refineries from the Alberta tar sands.

Midwest Energy News reports that "a mile and a half of the Calumet River shoreline holds big black piles," some of which rise "about five stories high." Locals say that the piles have grown recently, even as the BP Whiting refinery across the border in Indiana nears completion of a $3.8 billion upgrade to process more tar sands crude.

Detroit Mayor David Bing ordered the removal of the petcoke piles from his city in August, after protests by residents and local politicians concerned about the health and environmental impacts. Residents complained of "respiratory problems as the thick, black dust was blowing off the piles and into their apartments," reports ThinkProgress. The Detroit petcoke is being moved to Ohio.

A January 2013 report by Lorne Stockman of Oil Change International estimates that taking petcoke into consideration would raise annual Keystone XL GHG emissions "13% above the State Department's calculations" for the pipeline.

While petcoke can't be used as fuel in Canada and the US because of its high GHG emissions, the waste can be sold as a cheaper, more polluting alternative to low-grade coal in countries with looser environmental and health regulations. There is high demand for petcoke in countries like Mexico, China and India, where its emissions further exacerbate the effects of tar sands production on climate change.

The waste piles accumulating in the U.S. Midwest are only the beginning, should Keystone XL be approved. As this infographic from Oil Change International shows, if the pipeline is built, "the tar sands oil flowing through it would result in massive amounts of this dirty byproduct."

Credit: Oilchange International

Stockman's report calculates that diluted bitumen delivered to the US via Keystone XL would produce about 15,000 tons of petcoke a day, all waiting to be exported as dirty fuel in piles like the ones plaguing Detroit and Chicago.

Petcoke produces 10 to 15 per cent more CO2 than coal, bringing its additional emissions to "50,000 tons of CO2 every day or over 18.3 million tons (16.6 million metric tons) of CO2 a year."

"The Petcoke piles in Chicago are another symptom of Obama's flawed "All of the Above" energy strategy. It's time we actually made choices about the kind of energy we want rather than taking anything we can get," Stockman told DeSmog Canada.

Chicago can choose to follow Detroit's lead, fighting back against the Koch brothers' dumping of petcoke. But the fact remains that petcoke is a growing environmental threat directly related to tar sands production and expansion, and remains a dangerously overlooked threat when considering the full consequences of the Keystone XL pipeline.

President Obama would be wise to sit up and take notice of the petcoke piles already threatening health in US cities when weighing whether to approve the pipeline. 

Image Credit: Josh Mogerman / Flickr

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On Friday, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San Diego, recorded CO2 levels higher than the world has seen in over 800,000 years.

From atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the big island of Hawaii—the oldest continuous carbon dioxide measurement station in the world—a reading of just over 400 parts per million (ppm) was recorded this Friday. A similar measurement was made at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) station, also in Hawaii. This reading pushes us well past the 350 ppm target scientists say we should stay below if a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius is to be avoided.

This interactive infographic, originally published on The Guardian, gives a more detailed account of just what 400ppm looks like and how these measurements compare to our historic average:

Dr. Charles David Keeling of Scripps began measuring emissions in 1958.

A constant record of CO2 levels has been kept since Keeling developed the now standard ‘Keeling Curve.' It is the most accurate method of measuring carbon dioxide in the air to date and there are several global stations using it to keep an eye on rising emissions. The earliest measurements recorded 310 ppm in the late 1950’s and the global average before the 19th century's Industrial Revolution was 280 ppm.

According to James Butler of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, a CO2 reading of 400 ppm “[is] mainly important as a milestone that marks a steady progress of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Marking such progress has been crucial in understanding the global rise of CO2 concentrations and demonstrating the need for improved environmental practices on an international level.

By studying the bubbles trapped in glacier ice, scientists have deduced that the atmosphere hasn’t had this much carbon dioxide in it for 800,000 to 5 million years.

The numbers will dip somewhat when the Northern Hemisphere reaches the height of summer and the leafy forests drink up some of the CO2 in the air. However, according to NOAA, once emitted, the extra “CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans remains for thousands of years.”

This news has hit many scientists hard. Maureen E. Raymo from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University told the New York Times, “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster.”

Dr. Keeling’s son, Ralph Keeling took over the research at Scripps after his father’s death in 2005. He fears that the levels could reach 450 ppm in the next 25 years if nothing is done to reduce emissions.

Many major contributors to global carbon emissions – like the United States, China and Canada – have no binding national targets and no immediate plans to make them. Without clear guidelines in place, limiting the warming and extreme weather events associated with increased carbon in the atmosphere will be difficult, and likely expensive.

“There’s no stopping the CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” Ralph Keeling says. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

Infographic Credit:@theduncanclark / The Guardian / Kiln

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