Last August, long-time Albertan Ed Whittingham took a break from a family vacation to sit in his rental car and make a call on Skype.

Whittingham had seen a job posting in April that had intrigued him. The posting — which had been forwarded to him by a roommate from his university days — was for a position on the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator, the corporation responsible for oversight of Alberta’s energy industry.

The Skype interview went well and his application was successful, but it took longer than expected for all the paperwork to be finalized and his appointment to be announced. It wasn’t for another seven months that he would head to his first board meeting.

That’s when the news broke.

Unbeknownst to Whittingham, the United Conservative Party (UCP) had been at work preparing a press release condemning his appointment. They took umbrage with his past work lobbying for environmentally responsible growth of the oilsands and made use of an oft-repeated criticism of charities of late: the countries of origin of some of the funding of his past employer, the Pembina Institute.

“It’s outrageous that the NDP government would appoint a foreign-funded, anti-oilsands, anti-pipeline activist like Mr. Whittingham to such an important government body,” then-UCP MLA Jason Nixon, now Minister of Environment and Parks, said in the press release.

When the news hit the media, Whittingham was driving from Canmore, Alta. — where he lives with his wife and family — to what would be his first, and only, board meeting at the Alberta Energy Regulator’s office in Calgary.

His friends and colleagues started to see his name in the news almost immediately.

“My phone just went apeshit,” he says.

‘Bears and bunnies’ conservation

By the time I met Whittingham — at his local gun club, tucked beneath the peaks of the Rockies — he had resigned from his post at the Alberta Energy Regulator, following a tumultuous period of being portrayed as the disgraced face of an environmental movement accused of being “anti-Alberta.”

When photographer Amber Bracken and I visit, Whittingham is in what could be called his ‘outdoorsy’ mode — donning a puffy vest and a pair of Carhartts. He’s got a suit and tie hanging in his car, in case he needs to make a quick change for a TV interview he’s doing later in the day. It’ll be about his 20th media appearance of the week, he says.

He gives us a tour of the gun range, where he comes regularly to practise his marksmanship for hunting season. Whittingham is an outdoor and sports enthusiast — he’s a member of his local judo club (where he also coaches kids’ judo) and is a recreational hockey player. He hunts regularly and is an avid skier and mountain biker. “You have a very Canmore vibe,” our photographer remarks.

“I didn’t consult Vogue,”  Whittingham quips.

Whittingham giving a television interview in Dead Man’s Flats, near Canmore, Alta. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

His enthusiasm for outdoor pursuits started at a young age, when he grew up in Newmarket, Ont., a small city with a population of about 80,000.

When he was in elementary school, he remembers, things started to change in his neighbourhood. A fallow field near his childhood home — a favourite destination for adventures with his friends — was surveyed for a suburban development.

His reaction at the time manifested itself in what he now describes as the mischievous behaviour of young boys — “night missions” to pull up survey stakes. “I’ll probably be called an ecoterrorist,” he says, laughing.

His motives were sincere, though he may regret his eight-year-old methods. It was an early experience in what he saw as the importance of conservation.

“That was the first time I experienced ‘ecological grief,’ ” he says. “You really feel that grieving for losing a chunk of nature that you’re attached to.”

This early connection to natural places made it unsurprising when he decided to make his home in the Rocky Mountains. His early work was in what he jokingly refers to as “bears and bunnies conservation.”

“I was a rough-and-tumble conservation activist,” he says of his 20s in Alberta’s mountain parks. That early experience in conservation work, he tells me, made him realize how important it was to understand diverse perspectives, including those in industry.

This belief in a more pragmatic environmentalism — one that embraced myriad perspectives — led him to an MBA in international business and sustainability at York University. Whittingham had previously studied at McGill, UC Berkeley and Sophia University in Japan (he had been an exchange student in Japan as a teenager).

With his MBA under his belt, he moved back to Alberta and began working with the Pembina Institute, the organization he would eventually lead for more than six years.

The Narwhal’s Sharon J. Riley speaks with former Alberta Energy Regulator board member Ed Whittingham, whose friends joked was ‘the most hated man in Alberta’ during the recent election campaign. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

‘Most hated man in Alberta’

In late 2010, Whittingham’s appointment as executive director of the Pembina Institute was announced under a headline that described him as “a bird-watching business guy.”

That’s not the only way he’s been described in recent years.

In 2015, the New York Times dubbed him “one of the country’s most prominent environmentalists.” A 2016 profile in the Financial Post described him as an “environmental movement leader” who “understands business.” A commenter on a 2013 YouTube video that chronicled “Two Days in the Life of Environmentalist Ed Whittingham” — a video with nearly 75,000 views that followed Whittingham as he knotted his tie, met for coffee at Starbucks with a senior advisor from Conoco-Phillips, rode his bike around Calgary and slept on a cot in his office at Pembina — noted “this guy is like the environmental Clark Kent!”

Praise for Whittingham came from within the oil and gas industry, too.

Michael Crothers, president and country chair of Shell Canada, who had regular conversations with Whittingham between 2016 and 2018, told The Narwhal by email that Whittingham “provided a balanced voice to help bridge the divide in the economy versus environment debate.”

“We worked with him the way we like to work with others outside of our sector — with the knowledge that we can accomplish more together, through dialogue and collaboration,” Crothers told The Narwhal.

Whittingham headed up Pembina’s corporate consulting arm before becoming executive director. That arm worked with large oilsands companies, governments and other groups to advocate for responsible fossil fuel development.

Whittingham, pictured here at his home in Canmore, has been described as a “great listener and thoughtful contributor,” by a former executive of Suncor Energy. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A former Suncor executive — now president and CEO of the Alberta Energy Regulator — described him in 2016 as “a great listener and thoughtful contributor.” (Suncor declined The Narwhal’s request for comment and the regulator told The Narwhal by email that it “cannot comment on the work of any specific director.”)

But the UCP press release kicked off a barrage of public denunciations, Twitter tirades and op-eds about Whittingham.

The Calgary Herald dubbed him an “enemy of Alberta’s oil and gas industry,” and his appointment was deemed “disturbing” by the opinion pages of the Calgary Sun (both newspapers now share a newsroom under the ownership of Postmedia). He was variously described by online commenters as a fox guarding the hen house, a “staunch opponent of industry,” an “avowed opponent of earth jobs … engaged in economic sabotage against earth,” and, by one angry Twitter user, as a “pretentious turd.”

Whittingham didn’t comment publicly during this period. He says the Alberta government and the regulator assured him the attention would blow over.

It didn’t.

It wasn’t long before the UCP’s platform was released. It included the name of just one private citizen, alongside an election promise.

“Fire Ed Whittingham.”

‘This is how your reputation can be taken apart’

Having his name included in the UCP platform ensured that Whittingham’s name became even more well known.

“I became increasingly surprised by how much it took off and what a political punching bag I became,” he says.

“I became a sound-byte in stump speeches.”

Whittingham remembers meeting one of his fellow team members at the community hockey league in Canmore, where he plays at least twice per week. One of the league’s members greeted him on the ice by proclaiming, “You’re the most hated man in Alberta!”

It was a joke, but Whittingham, 46, says the sentiment weighed heavily on his wife and kids.

Yuka Ozawa met Whittingham 25 years ago, in Banff. They were both staying at the same youth hostel — a spot that was likely the start for a lot of international marriages, Whittingham jokes.

The couple have two children, Beck, 15, and Alice, 12. Their niece, Kaela, 17, is also part of the family and lives with them in Canmore.

Ozawa says that 12-year-old Alice learned about her dad’s newfound infamy in school, as her class studied current events. Her dad’s photo was featured front and centre on CBC’s website.

“I didn’t know how to deal with it,” Ozawa says of the negative attention.

Ozawa’s eyes brim with tears as she tells me about the strain of hearing the nasty comments about her husband, a man she’s been married to since 1999.

“He’s not two-faced,” she says. “I don’t see anything different out there or inside the house. He is who he is.”

The UCP party’s election platform included the promise to “fire Ed Whittingham” from the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator. Whittingham resigned from his position the day before Jason Kenney and the new UCP government took office. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Whittingham said he recently watched a John Oliver interview with Monica Lewinski, and felt a kinship, of sorts.

“Talk about someone whose life, whose identity, was completely taken away from them,” he says. “With something like this you get the slightest surface-level understanding. Obviously what she went through was a million times [bigger], on a global scale.”

“But when your anonymity is taken away, when you have people you don’t know saying nasty things and when you have the premier-in-waiting saying you’re anti-Alberta … then it’s like ‘oh this is how it works, this is how your reputation can be taken apart’ … It was a very surreal thing to go through.”

‘Jingoistic’ accusations of foreign funding

Whittingham’s work with the Pembina Institute formed the basis of the bulk of criticism against him. The organization was created in Alberta in the 1980s by residents living near the Pembina River — in the Drayton Valley area — in response to a toxic fire at a sour-gas well.

The Financial Post described the Pembina Institute as “the green group that the oilpatch can work with” in 2016.

A spokesperson for Cenovus, a major Canadian oil company, told the paper in 2016 that the company had “a strong and constructive relationship with the Pembina Institute.” (Cenovus declined to make anyone available for an interview with The Narwhal, as did the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.)

Pembina “collaborated with industry for decades to improve environmental practices rather than demand its demise,” according to the Financial Post.

The Post didn’t stop there, noting that the organization had “deep knowledge of the [energy] business based on science, and knew its way around executive offices.”

In Alberta at least, the organization’s treatment in some media outlets has changed somewhat since then.

Among the most prominent criticisms of Whittingham revolves around the Pembina Institute’s acceptance of some funding from outside of Canada during his time at the helm.

Whittingham points to a poster attacking the credibility of the Pembina Institute, where he used to work. Similar criticism dates back many years and re-surfaced during the recent election. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Whittingham is vehemently opposed to this criticism, noting that 85 per cent of Pembina’s funding is from Canadian sources.

But that, he says, is besides the point.

“Anyone that uses ‘foreign funded’ as a slur, as a bad thing, I find really concerning — it’s jingoistic, if not bordering on racist,” he says.

“I’m married to a foreigner,” he adds. His wife is from Japan; his parents are from England. It’s personal for him — the idea that “foreign” is necessarily negative.

On top of that, he views the foreign-funding criticism as hypocritical.

“No one’s talking about trying to put national borders on the ability to seek capital — and nor would I ever suggest that. We’re living in a globalized world and we need to bring a globalized approach to these really big-ticket challenges.”

“Climate change knows no borders,” he says.

Whittingham points out that money and capital flow across borders not just in philanthropy, but in business, too.

“To say some foreign-funding is good, like for companies, but to say foreign funding is bad for an international Canada-based organization — I just think it takes us in completely the wrong direction.”

“The fact that more people aren’t challenging that … aren’t pointing out the hypocrisy in that and how troubling it is — that to me has been frustrating and disturbing.”

‘Solutions are global’

Simon Dyer, the current executive director of the Pembina Institute, told The Narwhal that he takes issue with what he calls “spurious” criticisms about foreign funding of his organization.

“Energy is a global issue. The solutions are global,” he says, noting that there is a double standard for public-interest groups when compared to industry players. “The industries that operate in Alberta and Canada have significant foreign investments.”

Dyer told The Narwhal he thinks his former colleague “was, unfortunately, a prop in an election campaign.”

“It was pure politics. It’s got nothing to do with what actually happens on the ground.”

Dyer says the Pembina Institute has long been working “in the middle,” working on solutions to issues about “both jobs and the economy and meeting our international obligations about climate change.”

“Ed was a superb executive director,” Dyer says. “He’s devoted his entire career to working on energy and environment solutions. He’s got deep relationships within the energy sector, specifically the oil and gas sector.”

Whittingham meets up for a television interview near Canmore on May 1, 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The Alberta Energy Regulator said by email that it works “with a wide range of stakeholder groups, including the Pembina Institute. We believe that each stakeholder group can provide insight and helpful feedback to inform the work of the [regulator].”

Marlo Raynolds, former executive director of the Pembina Institute and now chief of staff for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, also worked with Whittingham in the past.

“As an environmental advocate, Ed is known for being pragmatic and solutions-focused,”  Raynolds said in an email of their time working together at Pembina, noting Whittingham pushed for a “high bar for environmental performance in Alberta, while taking into account the realities of business.”

“When he was head of the Pembina Institute, he worked to find common ground between the environmental movement and the energy sector, and championed sustainability solutions that also made good business sense,” Raynolds told The Narwhal.

“He’s extremely collaborative; extremely solutions-oriented,” Dyer said.

“I think it’s a real loss to the Alberta Energy Regulator that they won’t have a person of Ed’s caliber and expertise supporting responsible development in the province.”

Skewered for riding a bike to work

Whittingham resigned from his Alberta Energy Regulator post the day before UCP leader Jason Kenney was sworn in as premier.

In response, Kenney tweeted, “It was gracious of Ed Whittingham to resign a day before we could fire him. Our government will never appoint people like him who are avowed opponents of Alberta jobs.”

Others weighed in too, including Jeff Callaway, the former UCP leadership candidate who was allegedly involved in the so-called kamikaze campaign to elect Kenney as leader.

Callaway pointed to a photo of Whittingham riding a bicycle as a reason he shouldn’t have been on the board: “A member of the provincial energy regulator: riding a bike to work. Says it all … ” Callaway tweeted.

For Whittingham, he’s relieved election season is over. He has plans to get on with his life — and his work as a clean-energy consultant — and is grateful to be able to respond publicly to accusations about his character, not only to defend his professional reputation, but to explain the situation to his friends, too.

“When the story broke … there were two audiences I was particularly worried about,” Whittingham says. “I was worried what the guys in the dressing room would say, and what the gun club guys would say,”

“They were all amazingly supportive. Even the ones whose politics were totally in line with the UCP — they know, and they said, ‘Ed, this isn’t you. This is bullshit.’ ”

Update Wednesday, May 15, 9:44 a.m. PST: This article was updated to reflect that Marlo Raynolds is the chief of staff to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, rather than the ministry itself.

Editor’s note: One of The Narwhal’s editors, Emma Gilchrist, worked in communications at the Pembina Institute from 2010 to 2011. At that time, Ed Whittingham led Pembina’s corporate consulting arm.

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It’s finally happening: after years of stalling by the Progressive Conservatives, Alberta’s new NDP government announced Thursday it will double the province’s meager carbon levy on large emitters by 2017.

Industry and environmentalists alike welcomed the decision, while also saying it doesn’t go far enough. 

Currently, any facility that emits more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year must reduce its emissions by 12 per cent below typical performance or pay $15 per tonne for emissions over the baseline. By 2017, the new framework will require companies to lower emissions by 20 per cent below typical performance, with a $30-per-tonne levy for emissions above that target.

“It’s not going to drive the meaningful reductions or give the market incentives that we need,” said Ed Whittingham, executive director of the Pembina Institute.

Pembina advocates for a $40-per-tonne levy with a 40 per cent emissions reduction target. Whittingham said the NDP had three options given the circumstances: let the regulation expire at the end of the month, kick the can down the road by renewing the current framework (as previous governments often did) or actually make some changes.

Dan Woynillowicz, director of policy at Clean Energy Canada, said the most impressive element of the announcement was its decisiveness.

“The previous government has been talking about changing the SGER, or changing the price, or changing the coverage for several years,” he said. “Within a matter of weeks, this government has come in and said: ‘We’re going to do that, we’re going to make that change.’ ”

Cenovus Wants Economy-Wide Carbon Price

Brett Harris, media lead at Cenovus Energy — which has historically supported a price on carbon — says the company is pleased the government has provided clarity on the issue. However, he says “in an ideal world” the company would like to see a pan-Canadian or pan-North American carbon pricing regime to create a “level playing field.”

Shell Canada also welcomed the new rules.

Despite support from energy companies, the concept of a carbon tax has consistently been ridiculed by Canada’s federal government.

Dale Beugin, director of research at Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, acknowledges a national or international carbon tax should be the end goal, but notes it’s a difficult thing to achieve and that reform must happen incrementally.

“It’s great that the big industrial emitters are priced by the SGER, but that’s not the only emissions in the economy: a good carbon pricing policy is going to be broad as well as stringent, Beugin said. “You want to make sure you’re going after the small emitters, the vehicles, the buildings, the process emissions from waste and agriculture.”

How Alberta’s Carbon Levy Works

There are 103 large emitters in Alberta. While most of the sites are gas plants, a great majority of emissions come from seven coal power plants and five oilsands mines/upgraders. Such companies have three options if they exceed the target: buy carbon offsets, use Alberta Emission Performance Credits (similar to carbon offsets but rewarded based on performance) or contribute to the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, which funds climate change projects.

“What [this change] is going to do is drive more money into offsets in the tech fund,” Whittingham said. “There are some greenhouse gas savings or benefits to be had from that.”

Andrew Leach to Head Climate Change Panel

In addition to announcing changes to the carbon levy, Environment Minister Shannon Phillips reported the government is forming a climate change panel, chaired by Andrew Leach, the University of Alberta environmental economist.

"Andrew Leach is pretty much the first person I'd choose for that gig, so good job,” said Chris Turner, the author of The Geography of Hope and The Leap.

According to a feature Leach wrote for Maclean’s, the panel will examine a wide assortment of potential actions. It will deliver a report to the government in the fall, prior to Premier Rachel Notley’s trip to Paris in December to attend the United Nations climate change summit.

Many options will need to be considered. Whittingham says the province must find a way to phase out coal-fired electricity, ensure renewable energy fills a fair share of that void and implement energy efficiency programs, as well as deal with growing emissions from the oilsands.

Photo: Kris Krug via Flickr

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Stephen Harper’s participation in the G7 leader’s declaration to decarbonize the global economy by 2100 was a massive headline generator in Canada, and not surprisingly so.

For a Prime Minister who has openly mocked the idea of carbon pricing, mercilessly driven an expensive (both financially and politically) energy superpower agenda and earned a reputation for pulling out of or stalling climate negotiations, the very idea of an ‘end’ to fossil fuels would seem … counterintuitive.

Although the shock of seeing Harper even touch something called ‘decarbonization’ is still reverberating, experts were quick to point out a long-term goal that shoves off concrete climate policy is likely just what Canada was hoping for.

Long-term Goals Are Easy

Michael Levi, senior energy and environment fellow writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, said the G7 agreement merely rearticulates what diplomats and policymakers have basically agreed to for several years now: dramatic emission cuts are required by mid century if we are to avoid surpassing the two-degree target.

“If the-two degree target didn’t motivate deep enough emissions cuts to actually meet it, recasting it in terms of global emissions won’t change that,” Levi wrote. “And the idea that an 85-year goal will have much impact on present policy or investment is a bit ridiculous. (Had you told a physicist in 1905 that a fifth of U.S. electricity would be generated by nuclear fission within 85 years, they would have said, ‘What’s a nucleus or fission?’)”

Levi said the bottom line is this: “Fiddling with distant targets is a great way to generate headlines, but doesn’t do much to affect policy and emissions themselves; at best it’s marginally irrelevant, at worst it lets people feel good without doing anything.”

Mark Jaccard, energy and climate economist from Simon Fraser University, agreed, saying the goal to end fossil fuels by 2100 makes it easy for politicians like Harper to detract from the short-term.

“Harper has gotten good at shifting timeframes, helped by a forgetful opposition, media and public,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada. “His 2006 promise for reduced emissions in 2020 slides into a 2015 promise for reduced emissions in 2030. His 2007 promise for reduced emissions in 2050 slides into a 2015 promise for reduced emissions in 2100.

“It would be funny — like Lucy lying to Charlie Brown that she would hold the football — if it weren’t so tragic." 

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, said the G7 agreement does have the upside of legitimizing discussions around decarbonizing.

"The important thing here is that for the first time we have world leaders acknowledging that we have to ditch fossil fuels; not just reduce emissions at the margins, but go cold turkey on our fossil fuel addiction,” he said.

“Of course we'd be crazy to wait 85 years to do it. But it's now a question of when, not if, we go to a 100 per cent renewable energy system."

David Keith, professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard University, who lives in Calgary, said the agreement does nothing more than score cheap political points.

“It’s not groundbreaking,” he told the CBC. “It is politically cheap to pledge a non-binding commitment that falls way behind someone’s time in office.”

“What we really need is specifics in the next few years or decades.”

Keith was one of more than 100 natural and social scientists who recently called for a moratorium on new projects in the Alberta oilsands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada’s Climate Target Weakest in G7

Environmental Defence recently gave Stephen Harper’s conservative party a ‘C’ on a climate scorecard, saying Canada currently has the weakest post-2020 climate target of all G7 nations (although Japan has yet to submit its plan).

Canada’s target to reduce emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 was recently assessed as “inadequate” by the Climate Action Tracker, a coalition of four research institutions including Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institue. The groups determined Canada’s reductions targets will not be sufficient for Canada to do its fair share for the world to avoid dangerous climate change. 

In its report, Environmental Defence said Canada has shifted its climate targets over time as a way of appearing to do more than it actually is:

“The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997) both used 1990 as the reference or base year. Most countries still use 1990 as the base year but some have started using more recent base years. Since the Copenhagen summit in 2009, Canada has been using 2005 as a base year. This makes comparison between targets more difficult. It also makes targets look stronger than they are since Canada’s carbon pollution increased significantly between 1990 and 2005. For example, the Canadian government’s pledge to reduce emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 by 2030 is actually less than half as strong (-14.4 per cent) when expressed using 1990 as the base year.”

Environmental Defence adds Canada has consistently refused to address the Alberta oilsands when discussing climate targets, a subject of some controversy during last year’s UN climate talks in Lima, Peru.

Canada has pledged to regulate emissions from four sectors: natural gas-fired electricity, the chemical industry, methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and sources of hydrofluorocarbons.

For years the federal government has failed to deliver on its promise to regulate carbon from the oil and gas industry. Last year Harper said it would be “crazy economic policy” to regulate the oil and gas sector and indicated (incorrectly) that no other country was doing so.

Last year, Canada's environment commissioner Julie Gelfand said the country has "no overall vision" when it comes to oil and gas regulations and as a result will not even meet its 2020 international greenhouse gas reductions targets agreed to in Copenhagen.

Ed Whittingham from the Pembina Institute said he thinks industry will begin to pick up the slack, now that definitive dates for decarbonization are being discussed.

"We are all clear, we are still going to need fossil fuels for some time to come. Now we have, at the global level, the latest day for when we need to be off fossil fuels," he told the CBC. "CEOs in Calgary are smart; they will do the planning that needs to be done." 

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Last Tuesday, Shell Canada’s president earned praise when she said her company would welcome federal greenhouse gas regulations on the oil and gas sector. Then on Friday, Shell had its controversial Jackpine oilsands mine expansion plans approved by Ottawa.

With fears riding high over landlocked western oil blocked by limited pipeline capacity, it is somewhat surprising to hear a major oil company come out in support of increasing costs. However, interviews with experts and Shell Canada reveal Shell’s expansion plans will likely not be hindered by federal carbon prices — and they may just benefit.

Oilsands Operators Can Afford Carbon Prices

Andrew Leach, energy economist at the University of Alberta, has done some simple calculations on what a carbon price would mean for oil companies. If a company were to pay a $30 to $50 price on a tonne of carbon emissions, they would subtract it from roughly $400 to $500 worth of profit, Leach wrote on his blog.

“The realization people need to have is these (oilsands) projects would probably be more resilient to carbon pricing than most people think,” Leach said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

$200 a Tonne and Oilsands Growth?

In 2009, M.K. Jaccard and Associates conducted economic modelling for the Pembina Institute and David Suzuki Foundation on the impact of carbon pricing on the Canadian economy. The models showed the federal government needed a carbon price of $100 by 2020 to meet their Copenhagen Accord emissions targets of a 17 per cent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Going one step further, for Canada to do its part to help keep global temperature rise below of an average of 2 degrees, the models showed Canada needed a $200 carbon price by 2020.  

Even with a $200 carbon price, there is “continued expansion of oilsands operations in Alberta, but it occurs with large-scale use of carbon capture and storage,” said the report, Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity.

Shell’s Carbon Capture Dreams

In her speech to the Economic Club of Canada, Lorraine Mitchelmore, president of Shell Canada said:

“Federal CO2 regulations will add to the pressure to innovate and will signal to the world that Canada is stepping up to do its part."

Shell is building the first carbon capture and sequestration project in the oilsands for its upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.

The company has received federal and provincial money and will also be able to resell the captured C02 for enhanced oil recovery operations. But with a stronger price on carbon emissions, their Quest carbon capture project will yield a greater return on their $1.35-billion investment and could position them to resell their technology if demand for it increases.

A Shell Price?

By introducing new federal regulations to increase the price on carbon emissions, the federal government would be playing catch up to Shell’s established business planning.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Shell Canada’s parent company, has for roughly a decade been using a carbon price of $40 a tonne when sizing up potential projects, as a precautionary step to make sure projects make long-term economic sense.

“It’s one of the lenses we would use to stress test a project,” David Williams, Shell Canada spokesperson, said.

Shell joins a growing list of major oil companies and corporations incorporating a carbon price into their long-term planning.

It is likely any starting federal price on carbon emissions aligns with Shell’s planning. The last public announcement by the Alberta government looked to bump their carbon levy up to $40 a tonne for heavy emitters.

The federal government has been promising new regulations since pulling out of the Kyoto Accord in 2012. Back then, they promised to be “working toward draft regulations for 2013.” As 2013 comes to a close, new regulations still have not been introduced.

Kudos For Now

In the polarized conversation around climate policy, Ed Whittingham, executive director of sustainable energy think tank the Pembina Institute, says Shell should be congratulated for welcoming federal carbon pricing.

Shell’s $40-a-tonne carbon price aligns with Pembina’s starting point for carbon pricing, Whittingham said.

“Although Pembina and Shell might not agree on all the points we want in the regulations, the important thing is for the federal government to move forward and introduce these long overdue regs,” he said.

Image Credit: Pembina Institute via Flickr

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