It was just another evening in Sarnia, February 2017, when the apocalyptic flaring began.

Without warning, enormous flames engulfed Imperial Oil’s petrochemical refinery, spewing plumes of smoke into the air. Nearby houses in Aamjiwnaang First Nation and south Sarnia shook and windows rattled. A foul odour overwhelmed the area.

For the next five hours, the night sky was aglow with vivid oranges and yellows. A grass fire broke out on a nearby lot.

By 11:30 pm, the incident had formally concluded. But flaring continued for the next 10 days.

Since that week and a half of chaos back in 2017, local community members who live near the refinery in Sarnia’s notorious “Chemical Valley” have been pushing for answers from the province and for Imperial Oil to be held accountable for potentially exposing them to toxic chemicals.

Ontario’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change recently released a preliminary incident report after being prompted by an application from Aamjiwnaang First Nation member Vanessa Gray and Ecojustice scientist Elaine MacDonald back in October.

The ministry referred the investigation to its enforcement branch to determine if charges are warranted — a process that could take years.

Experts say it’s an important first step for residents who are surrounded by Chemical Valley’s 57 industrial polluters and often feel their serious environmental concerns are ignored.

“What stood out to us this time was the severity of the event and also not seeing much in the way of follow-up by the ministry,” said Kaitlyn Mitchell, lawyer at Ecojustice.

“We started talking to people about it, because we thought ‘well, if it looked and sounded that big then maybe it had some impacts on people, but that’s not really coming through in any of the ministry’s or company’s updates.’”

Over 500 incident reports filed in Sarnia region in only two years

Sarnia’s Chemical Valley is one of the most notorious spots in Canada when it comes to local environmental impacts.

Around 40 per cent of the country’s petrochemical industry is located in the 25 square kilometre region, producing everything from gasoline, to fertilizers, to plastics.

Imperial Oil’s facility can refine up to 120,000 barrels of crude oil a day as well as produce products like polyethylene and chemical solvents. It’s only one of the nearly 60 industrial facilities in the area.

In 2012 the World Health Organization awarded Chemical Valley with the top spot for most polluted air in Canada.

Such toxic pollutants can include sulphur dioxide and benzene, which can cause serious respiratory and cardiovascular impacts as well as having links to cancer.

A recent collaborative investigation by Global News, the Toronto Star, the National Observer and a number of journalism schools found that over 500 incident reports had been filed in 2014 and 2015 for spills and leaks in the Sarnia area: yet only one public warning had been issued through the municipality’s alert system.

With that said, flaring — used to prevent the dangerous buildup of gas by combusting it as an alternative to releasing it straight into the air as methane — is a routine process in the area and usually doesn’t become an “incident” (although it does result in significant air pollution, including volatile organic compounds, soot and sulphur dioxide).

The uncontrolled flaring that caused the 10-day incident in February 2017 resulted from an equipment malfunction.

But according to the application for investigation filed by Gray and MacDonald, that was the 10th malfunction-related flaring incident at Imperial Oil’s facility since January 2014.

Mitchell said that while the government indicated it was looking into the incident prior to the application for investigation, it became clear that they weren’t aware of many of the impacts on the surrounding community.

“What we would say is that when there’s a massive flaring event, you should not assume unless otherwise told that there were no off-site impacts and community members were not adversely impacted,” she said.

“You should be proactively reaching out. If the flames were big enough to be rattling people’s houses, then I would like to see the ministry knocking on people’s doors and asking them if they did have any sort of impacts or if they’d like to talk to the ministry about the flaring event.”

Warning sirens only went off for a few seconds during flaring

Sarnia has 15 municipal sirens to warn of chemical spills and leaks, as well as a public alert system that uses phone calls, email and text messages.

But when the Imperial Oil flaring incident happened, sirens only sounded for a few seconds.

Many members of the surrounding community, including Aamjiwnaang First Nation, were left without any knowledge of what was happening.

The application for investigation detailed how many attempts were made to contact both the provincial ministry and Imperial Oil to find out details, but to no avail: “The combined effect of these impacts was to cause residents significant fear, as they did not know whether their health and safety was in danger.”

This confusion was aggravated by the province’s failure to conduct any air monitoring during the flaring incident. That left Imperial Oil to conduct monitoring.

“They just went out with these handheld monitors to try to measure levels around the facility,” MacDonald told DeSmog Canada. “The handheld monitors were nowhere near sensitive enough to actually determine whether any air standards were being violated.”

In the following days, Imperial Oil brought in consultants to conduct sampling with more sensitive equipment: but that monitoring didn’t occur downwind or include testing for sulphur dioxide.

While increases in sulphur dioxide levels were noticed on several nearby stations, many of the monitors in the Sarnia region were operated by industry and didn’t provide public information.

“At the time this happened, we had no information on what the monitoring stations were picking up,” MacDonald said. “If it would happen again now, at least we’d be able to look at those air monitoring stations as they’re finally online.”

This means that nobody has firm evidence of the type or quantity of toxic pollution that was emitted during the incident.

In a press release issued on March 1, 2017, Imperial Oil stated: “The disruption Imperial has experienced is not an emergency situation for the community.”

Vanessa Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and co-applicant in the call for investigation, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that “even the people who are investigating this incident are very dismissive of the adverse effects of personal experiences in the community.

“I feel like that’s the general feeling when Indigenous community members talk to the ministry: they’re very dismissive to our concerns,” she said. “If they’re not looking out for our best interests, then who is?”

‘This happens as part of daily life’

There have been some instances of progress for Chemical Valley’s current approach to air pollution.

In late March, the province of Ontario adopted a new sulphur dioxide standard which reduces the maximum amount a facility can emit within a single hour by almost seven times. The ministry also recently clarified its rules on the tracking of flaring by industry, which has long been accused of being overly ambiguous.

But there’s still much to be done.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario identified a series of problem areas in its 2017 report, which devoted an entire section to air pollution in Aamjiwnaang. They include the ministry’s ignoring of cumulative effects of emissions (instead only regulating facilities on an individual basis), an over-reliance on self-reporting by industry, a lack of monitoring equipment and an inadequate approach to warnings and communications.

Onlookers suggest government must also reconfigure its relationship with a community of residents who have been effectively forced to acclimatize to significant air pollution as a way of life.

“The thing that struck me when I was speaking to people was this is not a stand-alone incident,” Mitchell said.

“This happens as part of daily life, in some ways — of course, it doesn’t happen every day but it happens frequently enough that it’s not as alarming or doesn’t seem as surprising to people as it would in other Canadian communities.”

Gray agreed: “It’s not enough that Indigenous activists from Aamjiwnaang have been speaking out against the amount of pollution we’ve been experiencing my whole life. There are reasons that are piling on that there should be more action than there is. But what we’re seeing in Sarnia is they continue to expand. It’s not slowing down. Industry is still proud of what they’re doing.”

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Every day, we’re assailed with dozens of facts and figures about energy issues in Canada: how many jobs or royalties will come from a new pipeline, the annual growth rate of renewables, our per-person energy consumption.

But it’s often tricky to decipher truth from fiction.

That’s where the new 176-page encyclopedic report by veteran earth scientist and expert in coal and unconventional fuels David Hughes is meant to come in.

“Hopefully what it does is it provides the foundation of facts,” Hughes said in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “There’s a lot of rhetoric when it comes to energy. I wanted to make that quantitative so we actually had that bottom line of facts, rather than conjecture. I’m not trying to be prescriptive. I don’t have a magic answer. But I think we need to start with the facts.”

Over the course of 132 graphs and another 34 tables, Hughes — who worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for more than three decades as a scientist and research manager — meticulously chronicles and illustrates close to every imaginable part of Canada’s energy system.

There are four components to the report: 1) Canada’s actual energy production and consumption compared to the rest of the world, broken down into all the different sources; 2) the supplies and money from fossil fuel production; 3) electricity sources and trends; 4) emissions trajectories and targets.

Sounds like a few metric tonnes of info, right?

Well, while we highly recommend perusing through the report in its entirety, we’ve broken down some the 10 most noteworthy facts Hughes highlights in the report.

1. Canada uses a massive amount of energy

It might not come as a surprise to many, but Canada uses a lot of energy: more than five times the world’s average on a per-capita basis.

Hydroelectricity makes up a bigger proportion of our energy mix than other countries, but we have the exact average of dependence on oil and gas as everyone else.

When it comes to natural gas — used for heating and electricity generation — Canada uses 5.8 times the global average.

On the bright side, Canada’s coal consumption has been on the steady decline since the phase-out in Ontario. We’re already using half as much on a per-capita basis as the United States — and that trend will continue as Alberta shuts down its 18 coal-fired power plants in the coming years, with massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

2. There’s an incredible amount of hydro power in this country

Canada is the second largest hydropower producer in the world, trailing only China with its colossal Three Gorges Dam.

On a per-capita basis, Canada harnesses 20 times the power from dams as the global average — only beat out by Norway, which somehow generates 51 times the per-capita average (you’ll start to notice that Scandinavia excels at a lot of these things).

Plenty of forecasts of low-carbon futures predict that Canada will have to add a lot more hydro to the grid in the coming decades. But Hughes isn’t convinced, based on recent precedent.

“I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to build all those Site C sized dams and nuclear reactors [modelled in various reports],” he said. “Economics, ecology and public protest would be off the rails.”

3. But we kind of suck at non-hydro renewables

Unfortunately, that dam-building habit has meant Canada isn’t nearly as good at non-hydro renewables: sources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Compared to Denmark (23.7 per cent of energy from non-hydro renewables), Portugal (15.5 per cent) and Germany (12.7 per cent), Canada only generated a tiny 3.1 per cent of its energy from such sources in 2016.

That’s slightly below the world average.

This is expected to change in the coming years as provinces and territories shift towards renewables.

4. Industry uses most of the energy in Canada

While we’ve been talking about per-capita consumption, it’s not really that accurate because 51 per cent of Canada’s energy is used by industry for things like oil and gas, refining, mining, pulp and paper and chemicals. Another 23 per cent is used in transportation: freight trucks, passenger cars, airplanes.

That leaves only 14 per cent for residential and 12 per cent for commercial. In other words, it’s the big factories, mines and refineries that are using most of our energy — yet they’re often the same entities which receive exemptions or subsidies for emissions.

Given the industrial sector’s large dependence on fossil fuels to make or extract stuff, this has meant that Canada has an extremely high amount of energy required per dollar of GDP — higher than even China.

While Canada’s GDP is being slowly “decoupled” from emissions, we’re still a long ways from the lower carbon likes of Denmark or the UK.

5. Western Canada is littered with an unbelievable number of old wells

Most people will understandably picture the oilsands when they think about the Canadian oil industry. But the massive growth in extracting bitumen from Alberta’s northern boreal forest is actually a fairly new phenomenon, really kicking off around 2007.

Up until that point, conventional oil — the stuff you drill for in wells — had reigned. But production from that method peaked in 1973. That’s meant that steadily rising production has required more and more wells, as declining well productivity means that companies have to keep finding and drilling more.

“With conventional oil and gas, you’ve just got to keep drilling and pouring capital into it all the time, otherwise it goes down,” Hughes said. “Companies always drill their best land first. You always got for the sweet spots, where the best economics are.”

It’s something made even more frantic with fracking. At last count, fracking now accounts for three-quarters of all oil production from wells in Western Canada. Such wells result in high initial production but decline at an even more rapid pace than conventionals — up to 83 per cent over three years.

As a result, Western Canada is just littered with wells: more than 820,000 in total, including gas, oil and bitumen. Only 235,000 are still active. A full 38 per cent of the wells are listed as inactive, with another 11 per cent as suspended. That means companies haven’t actually dealt with the environmental liabilities — which may cost billions to reclaim in the future.

6. The oilsands still produces some of the highest carbon oil in the world

Politicians and industry often brag about Alberta’s world-class environmental regulations and claim that’s a reason to justify more oilsands expansion.

But the unfortunate reality is that Alberta oilsands crude remains incredibly carbon-intensive, with Suncor’s Synthetic H blend emitting 297 per cent as much pollution as the best-performing oil in the world (in Kazakhstan) and 161 per cent as much as conventional oil in Saskatchewan. Many other oils around the world produce cleaner barrels: Iraq, Kuwait, Brazil, Russia, UK and Norway.

It’s an incredibly energy intensive process, with an energy return on energy investment of 4:1 for in-situ and 8:1 for mining, compared to 17:1 for average global oil.

7. Alberta is receiving astonishingly little return on its oil

Another resounding narrative is that Alberta needs pipelines and oilsands expansion in order to generate massive revenues for government coffers, allowing it to build schools, hospitals and roads. But Alberta is actually receiving decreasing revenues on a per-barrel basis.

Since 1980, oil and gas production in Alberta has doubled. But royalty revenues are down by 90 per cent from that level.

Currently, non-renewable resource revenue makes up a mere 3.3 per cent of the government’s income. The same has happened in B.C., with gas royalties collapsing as production skyrockets. Corporate income taxes from fossil fuel producers have also collapsed by 51 per cent since 2006.

“The concept of high-grading and selling the best of our resources off for declining revenues to governments and people who own the resource doesn’t seem to be very smart,” Hughes quipped.

8. Fossil fuel jobs are also surprisingly low

You’d never know it from listening to Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but long-term fossil fuel jobs have effectively flatlined since 2006. Meanwhile, construction jobs now constitute 52 per cent of all jobs in the sector — but they’re short-term jobs and usually evaporate as soon as a project is completed.

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment.

Hughes was also intentional not to include so-called “spin-off” jobs in his reporting.

“What the politicians do is say ‘we’ve got to count all of the store owners and money that these workers put into the economy,’ ” he explained. “That sort of assumes the store owners would otherwise be unemployed, which is not accurate. A lot of the jobs numbers that are quoted are huge numbers of spin-off jobs.”

In total, employment in oil and gas extraction totals less than three per cent of total Canadian employment, and around 12 per cent of Alberta’s employment. https://t.co/5uaACUKV81

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 1, 2018

9. Meeting climate targets is going to be nearly impossible with oilsands expansion

Thanks to rapidly rising oilsands emissions, scheduled to hit 115 megatonnes by 2030, it’s appearing unlikely that Canada will hit its Paris Agreement target. Currently, we’re overshooting the mark by a full 66 megatonnes — meaning costly emissions credits will have to be bought.

It’s going to get way harder heading towards 2050. By then, oil and gas emissions will require the remainder of the economy to contract by more than 100 per cent. That will require a tremendous amount of low-carbon electricity to pull off, costing anywhere between $30 billion and $70 billion per year from 2017 to 2050.

Hughes is seriously doubtful this will happen — and instead calls for finding efficiencies and reductions from existing systems.

“Investing in reducing consumption will be a very big deal,” he said.

“To me, we have to do as much of that as we can first before spending a lot of money trying to replace business as usual. I don’t think it’s possible. Fossil fuels are just too useful, energy dense and convenient. All of our infrastructure is built based on them. But I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit for reducing consumption.”

10. We need to rely on facts to guide us forward

Hughes spent years chipping away at this report, compiling decades worth of knowledge and sources into one place. He said he’s going to continue updating it now that he has a template.

For the rest of us, the mammoth work now exists as an excellent reference and fact-checking resource for when something a politician or industry exec says sounds a bit off.

“I just want to provide a solid factual basis to go forward,” he concluded. “I’m a grandfather. I have a concern for future generations. I’m a little put off by some of the rhetoric I see on TV. We need to start with the facts and go from there. ”

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The language and culture of the Upper Nicola Band honour the natural laws of the tmixw — “that which gives us life.” One tmixw is the sun, which shines for more than 2,000 hours annually in much of the band’s traditional territory in B.C.’s arid Okanagan region.

Plans are afoot to harness the sun’s power to build B.C.’s largest solar farm on the band’s Quilchena reserve, a project that would create enough energy for 5,000 homes and deliver up to $4 million in annual revenues to the First Nation community.

The farm would be 15 times the size of Kimberly’s SunMine solar installation on the site of a former hard-rock mine, currently the largest solar project in the province.

“We wanted to showcase something positive for the environment,” Chief Harvey McLeod told DeSmog Canada.

“Our members will go by and see this and know we are contributing to a cleaner, greener planet. We’re not destroying anything; we’re using the resources given to us by the Creator.”

Solar has been slow to take off in B.C., even though the province receives more annual sunshine than Germany, a country at the forefront of the global solar revolution.

B.C. homeowners can install solar panels through BC Hydro’s little-known net metering program, but solar farms are almost non-existent in the province at a time when they are proliferating around the world, including in countries like the United Kingdom, not typically known for its sunny days.

The U.K. now has almost 12,000 megawatts of installed solar capacity, the majority from solar farms. By comparison, B.C. has a total generating capacity of about 16,000 megawatts, mostly from large dams.

Jae Mather, executive director of Clean Energy BC, said the price of solar has plummeted by almost 20 per cent in the past year alone.

Typical rooftop solar installations on European warehouses are each capable of generating one megawatt of power, and solar farms can produce far more electricity, Mather said in an interview.

“If you compare it [the Upper Nicola solar farm] to the world it’s actually not that big at all.”

“Hundreds and hundreds of megawatts of solar farms are going up in Ontario right now. It’s big for B.C. but still quite small for the world.”

Mather said investors are keen to build solar farms in B.C., but it’s virtually impossible right now to get a commitment from BC Hydro to buy the electricity.

“Until you get an Energy Purchase Agreement (EPA) nothing really matters when it comes to energy.”

“You can have every permit in the world, have huge amounts of money spent, have every tick on every box, but until the EPA is issued nothing matters.”

Negotiations over transmission line revolved around clean energy project

The story of how the Upper Nicola Band managed to leverage an EPA for its precedent-setting solar farm began almost 10 years ago, when BC Hydro approached the band and said it wanted to twin a major transmission line — the Interior to Lower Mainland transmission line — through its traditional territory.

Prolonged negotiations ensued, and the First Nation said it would consent to the line on a major condition.

The band wanted to develop a “clean and green” power project and BC Hydro had to agree to buy the power — not a straightforward proposition considering that B.C. has a power surplus, demand has been flat for more than a decade despite a population surge and a decision to proceed with the $10.7 billion Site C dam has chased some renewable energy projects out of the province.

“We had a lot of negotiations,” the chief recalled. “And part of the compensation was a 15 megawatt project. We included that as one of the terms.”

“We see it as really beneficial for us to get engaged in clean energy. This was one of our priorities. It had to be clean, green energy. And we had some alternatives. We looked at geothermal, we looked at wind and we eventually settled on solar.”

A solar installation could be built on reserve land, for everybody to see, and for the band to own and control, said Chief McLeod.

But before the Upper Nicola Band could build a power project, it had to find the right business partner. In August 2016, the band selected Fortis, a company many British Columbians associate with natural gas.

Fortis is also a leading electricity provider, with more than 80 per cent of its $48 billion of Canadian and U.S. assets in the electricity sector. One Fortis company owns Tucson Electric Power, which has extensive experience in solar installations.

Grant Bierlmeier, business development director for Fortis, described the company’s relationship with the Upper Nicola Band as a “great complementary partnership.”

“They bring the land, they bring the EPA [Energy Purchase Agreement], they bring some labour, and we bring expertise on the solar technology itself and a long-term interest in ownership,” he said in an interview. “We’re all very excited.”

Bierlmeier pointed out that the Upper Nicola Band solar project is moving forward even though the independent power industry “is having challenges getting contracts to sell power to BC Hydro,” largely due to an electricity glut.

“The short answer is no, BC Hydro doesn’t need the power from this particular project,” said Bierlmeier.

“The bigger answer and the more complete answer is ‘yes, they need the power.’ The cost of getting [power] from northeast B.C. to the Lower Mainland is to do this accommodation with the Upper Nicola…to buy power from a renewable project of their selection.”

“So it’s the cost of the Interior to Lower Mainland transmission line.”

The twinning of the transmission line took place as the former BC Liberal government forged ahead with plans to build the Site C dam on the Peace River, and also made plans to shut down Burrard Thermal, a natural gas-fired plant in Port Moody that was on standby to provide electricity to the Lower Mainland.

‘We have to move into the future’

The new $743 million line transmits power from large dams on the Columbia and Peace rivers. It crosses mountains, grasslands, major rivers and highways, and runs “right through the middle of our territory to Vancouver,” explained Chief McLeod.

He said the Upper Nicola Band is now deeply engaged in discussions with the province about putting solar panels on band buildings and homes and investing in wind and geothermal energy, in addition to the solar farm.

The chief sees benefits from clean energy projects aside from revenue, including training opportunities and renewable energy careers for some of his people, instead of shorter-term jobs in the boom and bust resource sector.

“We have to move into the future,” explained Chief McLeod.

“Water is getting more scarce, there’s going to be less of it. We have to look at alternatives [to hydro] and at the same time protect our environment.”

Earlier this month, BC Hydro announced plans to “pursue negotiations” for electricity purchase agreements with five “small and micro” renewable energy projects led by First Nations, including a one megawatt solar power project led by Tsilhqot’in National Government near Hanceville.

Energy Minister Michelle Mungall said in a press release that, “moving forward with the development of these energy projects is a step in the right direction in creating opportunities for First Nations in the province, while also contributing to B.C.’s clean energy future.”

Mather said Clean Energy BC is happy the First Nations-led projects are progressing.

“It’s wonderful for everyone involved. It’s really important for reconciliation, for local economic development and for more clean energy in the marketplace.”

But he said the “rest of the queue” for clean energy projects in B.C. is “not moving forward.”

Upper Nicola Band members will vote in April on whether to set aside 400 hectares of their Quilchena reserve for economic development projects, half of which would be allocated for the solar farm.

Pending approval from band members, a solar farm final investment decision will be made by the end of the year, and construction will take four to six months.

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There have been delays, exemptions, backtracking and threats of lawsuits — but the Pan-Canadian Framework is ever so slowly inching the country towards a low-carbon future.

Unfortunately, the same can’t exactly be said about the country’s 292 off-grid communities, most of which are Indigenous. Roughly 86 per cent of off-grid communities are primarily dependent on diesel for generating electricity.

The federal government recently allocated $220 million over six years to help such communities transition to renewables, a marked increase from the $9 million doled out over the past decade. But calculations indicate that it’s not nearly enough to deal with the 450 megawatts of installed diesel in Canada.

“It’s really a drop in the bucket,” said Nicholas Mercer, PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo and expert on off-grid diesel-reliant communities. “Over six years, that works out to less than five megawatts per year, and that’s only if you’re investing in infrastructure.”

Mercer said the current trajectory will only address around six per cent of annual demand, potentially leaving hundreds of communities dependent on diesel. And that’s a hugely concerning possibility for environmental, social and economic reasons.

Nunavut pays $60 million a year in diesel subsidies

The one and only upside to diesel generation is that it has extremely cheap upfront costs.

Mercer said that diesel in an off-grid community costs around $1,500 per installed kilowatt, whereas a solar or wind installation ranges between $7,000 and $8,000. That means that a 100-kilowatt diesel generator comes at about $150,000, compared to $700,000 or $800,000 for the same capacity from renewables.

That can be a significant benefit in a cash-strapped community — but it’s the only one, and it dooms communities to a string of downsides.

Diesel fuel costs a ton of money for communities. While the average Canadian consumer pays between seven and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, the unsubsidized cost of diesel is about $1.30. As a result, governments have to heavily subsidize communities. A recently published report from the World Wildlife Fund Canada found that the Government of Nunavut pays $60.5 million every year in diesel subsidies.

The Pembina Institute reports that Canada’s off-grid communities collectively consume between 90 million and 120 million litres of diesel on an annual basis. That’s enough diesel to run all of Toronto’s Go Train system for five and a half years.

While related greenhouse emissions aren’t huge — after all, the communities and electricity demands are fairly small — the use of diesel results in a per-capita electricity carbon footprint that’s over double the national average.

There’s also enormous risk of diesel spills. Recent investigative work by Christopher Pollon indicated that 2015 saw 830 diesel spills in five provinces — and those are only the ones we know about. Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario is still cleaning up a spill of almost 30,000 litres of diesel from 1979. These can lead to a wide range of human health effects, including cancer.

Finally, there are the social impacts. Diesel generators tend to be old and unreliable, leading to frequent power outages; Mercer said that Pikangikum First Nation in Northern Ontario loses about 20 per cent of classroom education time because of outages. Many are also faced with “load restriction,” which occurs when peak demand reaches 75 per cent of generation capacity and severely restricts potential jobs and growth.

“You can’t build new homes and connect them to the grid, you can’t add new businesses to create opportunity for the community, you can’t invest in infrastructure upgrades,” Mercer said. “You can’t do anything that will increase load. This is a major issue in Canada.”

Capacity training key for remote communities

Dave Lovekin, senior analyst for Pembina Institute specializing in renewable policies for remote communities, said the design of the new funding is also important because it specifically carves out money for capacity training, something which had previously only been lumped together with the overall program. This means that communities will be able to receive money specifically for training and education so that local residents can fix, maintain and order spare parts themselves.

Judith Sayers, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, said that Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations near Tofino serve as a great example of this in action — they built two small-scale hydro projects in partnership with the Barkley Group and are now working on a third on their own.

“They’ve built enough capacity that they have enough confidence to do this one on their own,” she said in an interview. “That’s what we want to see, right?”

As chief of Hupacasath First Nation, Sayers oversaw the construction of the 6.5 megawatt China Creek run-of-river hydro project. Unlike many First Nations which were only accepting royalty agreements, Hupacasath retained a majority ownership stake in the project and sell excess electricity to BC Hydro.

Approval of Site C dampens potential for Indigenous-owned renewables

Experts said that kind of Indigenous participation and ownership of renewable projects is a crucial part of success.

But Mercer noted that both the state and private sector can often view Indigenous communities as “testing grounds” for technologies or the “low-hanging fruit” of greenhouse gas reductions, which can come across as forcing projects on a community and undermining political self-determination.

“Often, communities are bombarded with consultants and companies that come and say ‘hey, have we got the technology solution for you,’” Lovekin added. “Communities are often over capacity and have a tough time getting past the sales pitch and determining which technology will actually work. It’s a valid concern and communities need more support in this regard to lead instead of dealing with consultation fatigue.”

In British Columbia, there’s yet another obstacle. Sayers said that since the provincial NDP government gave the go-ahead to the Site C dam, BC Hydro has quit taking any applications for new renewable projects that would sell power to the grid. So while First Nations can still build projects that help them transition away from diesel and become grid-independent, they’ll lose out on a lot of potential jobs and revenue due to not being able to sell excess electricity.

“There are so many First Nations that want to develop clean energy,” Sayers said. “Because the government has started to build Site C, they no longer need clean energy. It’s a barrier right now to do anything in an economic way. There’s none. There’s no opportunity.”

The BC Utilities Commission’s final report on Site C concluded that a mixture of alternative energy sources such as wind, geothermal and solar could generate the sufficient amounts of electricity at lower rates for residents.

Still need policy support and new funding

As with many of the government’s climate policies, experts are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Lovekin said he’ll be watching to see what other funding announcements come, noting that more money for projects may be available via the Arctic Energy Fund and Canada Infrastructure Bank.

But he suggests that policies are generally missing to support the funding.

“Actual policy to mandate a certain target of renewables or a production incentive is something we’d like to see,” he said. “Right now, what the federal government has announced are programs to support diesel transition, but no specific policy. We’d like to see a combination of both.”

Contrary to what many people might think, there’s really no major technological challenges impeding the ability for remote communities to transition to renewables: solutions are all available and can be tweaked to particular locations. The only issues are lack of upfront capital and community capacity — both of which could be resolved with far more federal investments.

“When you start looking at some of the other countries and their challenges, we should be able to do this with the kind of technology and money we have available in our country,” Sayers said.

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Changing from an energy system powered by fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy takes long-term planning, innovation and a buy-in from citizens, industry and all levels of government, says deep decarbonization expert Manfred Fischedick, an advisor to the German government during its transition from a country reliant on coal and nuclear energy to the global poster child for renewable energy.

Germany is aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 95 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050. Strategies call for a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption and a minimum of 80 per cent of the country’s energy to be generated by renewables by 2050.

Yes, it can be done, yes, there are skeptics, yes, it takes hard work and yes it is worth it, were the messages Fischedick brought to B.C. this week.

Fischedick, vice-president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, met with provincial politicians and spoke at the University of Victoria on strategies for shifting to a renewable energy future.

“I am very much looking forward to the experience exchange.To convey some of the learnings of Germany, but of course to take with me some of the learning from Canada,” Fischedick told DeSmog Canada.

We asked Fischedick what Canada can learn from Germany, how his country faced the biggest challenges in its transition and what the energy expert makes of Canada’s oil pipeline debate.

So what lessons can Canada learn from Germany’s transition to clean energy?

The most important aspect is to have a long term strategy and, for Germany, that  came in 2011 after the Fukishima accident happened. The strategy for 2050 sets very concrete milestones focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Specific targets are set for both areas and sector specific targets have  been set so that companies and individuals have an orientation mark.

Secondly, build up a sophisticated and sufficient monitoring system. Strategy is always good, but implementing the strategy is even better. You need to see what is working well and where there is room for improvement so each year there is a monitoring report from the government, which is important for building confidence among the public. Then there is an independent scientific commission that gives additional recommendations to government, so the whole thing is very transparent.

The third point is sector specific targets. We established these targets in 2016 and now each sector knows about what efforts are necessary in the next decades to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets.

The fourth point is to organize a top-down, bottom-up process. We need to provide the necessary framework at the federal level and then to initiate and set a path in the regions and cities and companies to organize an implementation culture, to empower cities to address greenhouse gas emissions or to empower companies to do it. That’s very important to have broad support.

Another thing that’s important is the electricity sector. We started 15 years ago with five per cent renewables in the system, mainly based on hydropower, and, last year, for the first time, more than one-third of the electricity system was based on renewables, so it’s a very dynamic increase and it was possible to guarantee and even improve grid stability. That’s a very important message that it is possible to increase renewables within a very short time-frame without jeopardising system stability. If you go back 10 years in Germany the discussion was whether it would be possible to have more than 10 or 12 per cent of renewables in the system without jeopardizing stability and without the risk of the collapse of the system.

How did Germany convince the man-in-the-street, the general public that this was necessary?

The starting point in Germany was that people in general would say they were highly concerned about the environment and there were complaints about nuclear power plants and the risks associated with nuclear power plants, so we have a long term tradition of thinking about alternative energy systems.

Secondly, right from the beginning, you have to draw on citizen engagement and participation. For example, the biggest state developed a climate protection plan and then asked questions on the future energy system and how to achieve the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions targets by 2050. They did it in a way that they invited more than 400 different stakeholders — from energy utilities, from industries, from labour unions, from non-governmental organizations, from associations to be part of the process. So it really was a participatory process. It was a very transparent and open-minded process with a lot of communication with the public. It allowed people to step into the discussion, to be part of planning the future energy system and to convince them it was the way to go. It motivated people.

We learned in the last two decades that it is very important to motivate people to invest in renewables in the specific areas where they live so there is a sense of ownership and being an effective part of the transition to renewable energy. It is not someone from the outside investing in the windmill next to you or in the solar facility. We did a lot of motivation campaigns.

We also have many cities in Germany that are proactive with regards to mitigation and they very often do it in a way that involves citizens. They do workshops and look for proposals in a very open way.

“We learned in the last two decades that it is very important to motivate people to invest in renewables in the specific areas where they live so there is a sense of ownership.” https://t.co/01KAcrYruA #climate #renewables pic.twitter.com/dX0DyHWvGR

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 23, 2018

You also emphasize energy efficiency and that everyone has a personal responsibility?

Yes, that’s true. We have to inform people of the need to go in that direction and, at the same time, it reduces their energy costs. We need to have a contact person at the local level and that’s done in many cities nowadays for climate management. They can give direct advice to people living in the area, which means much more than a motivation campaign at the federal level. You have to go into the local communities to speak directly to people. One city in the northern area, the energy heart of Germany, started a process where they did a campaign with local building owners to convince building owners to invest in retrofitting their buildings. It was extremely successful.

What were the biggest challenges. Are there parts of the transition that still worry you?

First of all there’s the technological challenge because in Germany we do have many solar and wind energy sources and we did well in the last couple of years to increase the share from five per cent to 33 per cent, but the next is the goal to double the renewables by 2030 — that is a major step forward because it requires infrastructure and it requires an extension of the transmission grid and requires a change in market structure, so a lot of things have to be done. Then the main challenge is to provide appropriate long-term storage. We really need technical plans of what is doable and it is a question of what is affordable.

Then the energy sectors like transport and industry have some limitations on the direct use of electricity. Immobility is not appropriate for trucks or planes. Transport is the most problematic sector, a hot topic, because in Germany as in many countries, we are not able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in that sector for the last 25 years. Following our pathway to reduce emissions by at least 80 per cent by the middle of the century, we need a total shift in that sector and very soon. We need public acceptance and public support for the social challenges. We are changing a significant part of the economic structure of the country and it’s a long-term process over a couple of decades. It can be hard to motivate people to counteract the NIMBY effect. It requires a lot of effort.

What is your opinion of the controversy and polarized debate over the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion?

If countries invest a lot of money in traditional infrastructure like oil and gas infrastructure there is a danger because traditional energy systems are changing on a global scale and, if you really take into consideration the Paris agreement, then it becomes quite clear that there is no long-term future for oil and coal for instance. So you have to take into consideration that investments made now, may not be successful for a longer time period and there might be a risk of stranded investments.

The other message I would like to convey is to think about new energy potentials and think about whether it can be done any faster than many experts expected a couple of years ago. We are now in a situation where wind energy has become very, very competitive in many countries. I know in Canada you have very low energy prices, but nevertheless there is still room for cost reductions through the solar and wind sectors.

(Edited for length and clarity)

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On Friday, the federal government released its long-awaited draft regulations for the phase-out of coal-fired power in Canada. It was a huge move — the first step to fulfilling a central piece of the government’s pledge to “transition to a low-carbon economy” via the Pan-Canadian Framework.

But another draft regulation was also released on Friday, albeit with a lot less fanfare: performance standards for natural gas electricity generation. Basically, it proposes establishing maximum carbon intensities for different kinds of gas plants. Importantly, it won’t apply to facilities that already exist, converted from burning coal or those operating as “peaker” plants.

Doesn’t sound awful, right? Except one big catch: the regulation effectively gives the go-ahead for provinces transitioning away from coal — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia — to replace a lot of their lost generation capacity with natural gas. And that seriously undermines the country’s ability to decarbonize its electricity system anytime soon.

“Having a grid that relies on 70 per cent on natural gas by 2030 is definitely not compatible with a strong climate policy,” said Benjamin Israel, analyst at the Pembina Institute, referencing Alberta’s climate plan. “That’s a very huge concern because we’re not going to meet the federal target of 90 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2030.”

The regulation dictates that most  facilities will be allowed to emit a maximum of 420 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per gigawatt-hour. While that will prevent future construction of the dirtiest kinds of plants, it still allows for most modern operations: for example, the recently opened Enmax Shepard Energy Centre in Calgary boasts an emissions intensity of 370 tonnes per gigawatt-hour.

New Natural Gas Plants Can “Lock In” High Emissions for Decades

In 2014, Canada generated 78 per cent of its electricity from non-emitting sources: large hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants and conventional renewables such as wind and solar. But a recent report by EnviroEconomics and Navius Research concluded that by 2030, Canada will only generate 80 per cent — a mere two per cent increase.

That’s almost entirely because of the doubling of natural gas generation that’s about to take place.

To be sure, there’s also going to be a 250 per cent increase in generation from renewables. But it won’t be enough to replace all the coal-fired power. Exacerbating the situation is the temporary loss of low-carbon electricity from the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, which is undergoing a decade-long refurbishment.

As a result, provinces are turning to gas — which will increase annual emissions by 19 megatonnes, greatly undercutting the savings from the coal phase-out.

There are a number of reasons this doubling down on gas is concerning to experts.

Clearly, Canada wants to cut its emissions by as much as possible in line with its Paris Agreement commitments. Switching from coal-fired power (with an average emissions intensity of over 800 tonnes of CO2 per GWh) to natural gas (as low as 370 tonnes per GWh) is a step in that direction. But wind, solar and nuclear facilities have an average operating emissions intensity of literally zero. It doesn’t take a math nerd to know that 370 is a lot more than zero!

There’s also the potential issue of gas-heavy jurisdictions exposing themselves to fluctuations in commodity prices, resulting in electricity prices spiking if gas supply falls for whatever reason. And on that note, we can’t forget where natural gas comes from in Canada — fracking currently accounts for 66 per cent of domestic production, but will rise to 80 per cent by 2035, carrying all sorts of local environmental impacts and unknowns about methane leakage with it.*

All of that will be “locked in” for 30 or 40 years if new natural gas power plants are built — resulting in a serious risk of creating stranded assets and having to compensate owners.

“As we’ve seen with coal, if you’re looking at stranding those assets that usually involves some form of compensation that ratepayers or taxpayers are footing the bill for,” said Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada. “Are we potentially repeating mistakes of the past in terms of allowing things to proceed that if you play it out over their full operating lifetime are going to be inconsistent with other objectives that have been set and therefore require compensation?”

Canada Is Replacing Coal With Natural Gas — And That’s A Huge Problem https://t.co/HvwL6USZwl #coal #naturalgas #climate #cleanenergy #Electricity via @james_m_wilt pic.twitter.com/2YD9qH2buU

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 17, 2018

Modelling Shows Wind Power Can Make Up 35 Per Cent of Canada’s Power Supply

Luckily, there are lots of other options.

Economists Brett Dolter and Nicholas Rivers recently published a study in Energy Policy modelling the lowest-cost pathways to decarbonize Canada’s electricity system. It was a huge endeavour, including hourly solar irradiation data from 200 stations and hourly wind speed data from more than 2,000 locations. While conclusions varied by specific scenario, wind power ends up as the superstar on all counts, making up 30 to 35 per cent of the future decarbonized system (with hydro and nuclear contributing the remainder).

Interestingly, solar power won’t play a role at all assuming the continuation of current installation costs (which is by no means certain). Dolter explained in an interview that a key challenge with solar is “seasonal capacity factors” that sees facilities in Saskatchewan generating at 30 per cent of capacity in the summer but only 12 per cent in the winter — at the exact time when the grid needs the most electricity.

There’s also the complicating factor of “variable” versus “dispatchable” electricity, in which baseload sources like hydro, nuclear or gas need to be deployed in conjunction with solar and wind. Alternatively, innovations in energy storage and demand flexibility can be used to “balance” the system. All of this would be greatly accelerated by a higher carbon price or more rapidly tightened output-based allocation framework.

“You’re missing the opportunity to send that price signal that might also drive some competition from alternative sources of supply that don’t have carbon emissions,” Woynillowicz said.

New Transmission Lines Would Reduce Costs of Transition, Improve Reliability

Central to any decarbonized future will also be new high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines.

“Because we have so much hydro in Canada, if you can connect hydro jurisdictions and non-hydro jurisdictions and start to use the hydro to balance the wind,” Dolter said. “If you can start to link across jurisdictions, a lot more becomes possible.”

According to their model, this would include new transmission lines between Labrador and Nova Scotia, northern and southern Quebec and the “western interconnect” project through the four western provinces.

“There’s no politics in our model so it’s easy for us to assume that this could be built,” Dolter admitted. “Generally, we’re finding it’s going to cost less if we can act together. Decision makers should see even the political benefit of that, if you can make a decarbonized system for a lower cost.”

* UPDATE Feb. 20, 11:25 a.m.: This article originally stated that fracking accounts for 53 per cent of domestic gas production, but that number has actually increased to 66 per cent.

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Chris Turner’s new book, The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands, opens with a story about ducks.

Actually, in the context of the oilsands, it’s the story about ducks: more than 1,600 ducks migrating through northern Alberta died after landing on a tailings pond in 2008. It brought worldwide condemnation of the industry, and acted as a catalyst for environmental protests that are ongoing today.

The Patch is the story of what happened long before, and since, the turning point brought about by the ducks: how the industry came to be, how it scraped by through its infancy to become the roaring engine of Canadian industry in the early 2000’s; how its cycles of boom and bust have built fortunes and shifted the gravitational centre of Canada to a once-quiet patch of Boreal forest; and how the same ambitious industrial vision that stoked the fire may yet snuff it out.

Turner’s focus on the people of the Patch makes it unique among the multitude of books on the subject. He brings us into the lives of assortment of characters who have been drawn to the industry: driving first class buses and what were once the biggest dump trucks in the world; pulling a boat out of the water in PEI in time to catch the next morning’s shift in Fort McMurray; and doing shots of vodka with Soviet engineers after touring the subterranean death traps that would be adapted into a high-tech solution for mining underground oilsands deposits.

We spoke to Turner about his new book.

You open the book with the anecdote about the ducks. How important of a moment was that for the oilsands?

The reason I opened with that is because it represented a pivot point. From the industry’s point of view, this looked like another minor little hiccup along the way — business as usual, which at that moment was a roaring success. And the industry had always had local environmental problems, some worse than others, and it was a lot of ducks, but it was still seen as, ‘okay, these things happen, it’s a terrible tragedy but we’ll move on.’

What I was trying to get at by beginning the book with it was to say, this was the moment where the industry’s understanding of itself in a greater conversation nationally and internationally was beginning to shift forever.

What I call in the book this High Modern industrial triumph story was now going to become this ecological tragedy story. They didn’t see that shift coming, and that was part of why I think the duck incident resonated the way it did. It indicated how much the broad general public’s tolerance for that kind of environmental damage had changed. Why do you think the conversation was changing at that point?

To some degree, the global conversation about climate change was finally maturing. The clarity of the argument was beginning to emerge: that this was about fossil fuels, and about needing to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.

That didn’t happen all at once and certainly it didn’t all happen in 2008 — it was still ongoing. But it was the end of the necessity argument, which particularly for the oil business, has long been, and still to some degree remains, their main point: you need us.

I think that what we’re seeing, as the climate change debate has matured, is a direct challenge to that point. To say, maybe we don’t need you. Not only maybe not, but maybe in fact the last thing we need is more fossil fuel. The beginning of that collision in essence was some random duck incident in 2008. You mentioned the High Modern period, or spirit; what is it about the High Modern that allows or encourages the development of this huge project? 

It creates kind of the broad logic. You can go all the way back to the beginning of the 1900s, where you see pretty broad support; it was understood as a universal good that there was an oil deposit there.

There were these technical questions of how do you unlock it, but the general idea of progress was that you find a resource, particularly one as valuable as oil, you find a way to turn it into a commodity, money is made, work is done, this is the greater good. This is the purpose of an advanced industrial society.

That created the logic or justification for the oilsands, despite all the barriers, despite how long it took to develop it as a viable resource. That consensus was what I refer to as the High Modern worldview: whatever your political stripe, a resource of that value should be exploited. The technology for SAGD (Steam-assisted gravity drainage) came from the Soviet Union, which was known for its megaprojects. How similar are the giant capitalist oilsands operations and the giant communist megaprojects?

Probably more similar than a lot of the people in the industry like to think even now…in the sense that it really was a government-driven enterprise for generations. You can look at something like Syncrude; when the initial funding for Syncrude nearly collapsed in 1974, it was three governments — the Alberta, Ontario, and federal governments — all stepped up with money. So it was a kind of quasi-Crown corporation at its founding in some sense, although not directed by government, just funded by it.

So there’s probably more in common than anyone would like to think. And I think that speaks to the scale and scope of the energy industry. As much as we like to think of it as these wildcatters and entrepreneurs, like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, clawing the oil from the earth with his bare hands practically, the growth and the endurance of the industry has always involved huge public-supported backing.

Whether you were in the Soviet Union or in Canada, the way you did it was not all that different. It was similar scale, you were going to need a lot of public support and public money. The oilsands project has always been dogged by this issue of commercial viability. As you mentioned, that’s what set it back decades, and is still a problem. How has that extra cost influenced the development of the oilsands? 

It became a very technology-driven, engineering-driven enterprise. The conventional oil business, the basic kind of apparatus of getting the oil out of the ground has gotten much more efficient or that much more sophisticated, but it’s still, ‘you drill a well and you pump the oil.’ To make the oilsands viable required inventing or adapting all this technology. You needed — and still need — fleets of engineers to monitor and upgrade and improve and tweak and try new stuff.

The culture of the oilsands, I think, is uniquely a culture of engineers. There’s a strong sense of whatever the problem is, we can fix it, we can figure it out, we just need to put the right tools in place; but then also, people I talked to in the industry have said, part of the reason why we’ve been very bad at responding to criticism is that engineers by their nature don’t think in these public-relations terms very well. They’re not very good at emotional appeals, and storytelling and that sort of thing.

“You don’t start over from zero, today. We don’t begin the conversation about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion with the fact of the thing itself. There are decades of history…distrust and political issues.” https://t.co/rn5LOxLoqW #oilsands #thepatch #cdnpoli @theturner

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 23, 2017

You set the whole book up as sort of a conflict between engineers and their worldview and that of environmentalists and people who think we should be leaving the whole thing in the ground. Can those two worldviews be reconciled when it comes to the oilsands? 

It’s an open question whether they can. I think there is a version of the story, and it’s one that Rachel Notley likes to tell, and some folks in Trudeau’s government like to tell, and some people in the industry, and some people who work in the more policy-wonky and less activist part of the environmental NGOs…which goes, okay, we unlocked this resource, it’s up and running, it’s producing soon to be three million barrels of oil a day, that is an enormous economic boom that will be an excellent stabilizer for the Canadian economy as it transitions to a low-carbon economy and does so in as neat and orderly a way as possible.

And that story is, I don’t think, entirely false.

The messy bit is you don’t start over from zero, today. We don’t begin the conversation about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion with the fact of the thing itself. There are decades of history, there are decades of distrust and political issues and in the case of First Nations, legal issues, which are all sort of tangled up in what would otherwise be an easier thing to negotiate a compromise on.

So I think there is a middle path there, and probably that’s kind of the path we’ll more or less take, there will probably just be an enormous amount of push and pull from the more dug-in partisans on either side as it goes forward. You describe the pipelines as having become proxies for protests of the carbon economy generally. The fairness of that aside, how effective has it been in achieving the goals of the movements? 

From my observer’s point of view, it seems that the one thing about the pipeline protests and pipeline politics is that it’s extraordinarily effective as an organizing tool.

So you look at how Keystone XL itself was chosen as the target for protest, and what made it so attractive was that you could get such broad agreement. You had the hardcore climate activist NGOs, but then you also had regional environmental groups who were worried about regional environmental impacts; First Nations and other Indigenous people who were worried about encroachment on their land; ranchers; people worried about aquifers; people worried in the case of Trans Mountain about tanker traffic and its impact on wildlife.

There’s nothing else we’ve seen in the kind of climate change activism world that’s as good at galvanizing resistance and organizing resistance.

How effective is it if the ultimate goal is reducing CO2 emissions, if that’s the main point of it? I get a little less rosy in my assessment, because as long as the global economics of fossil fuels are what they are, whether a particular 500 or 800,000 barrels of oil a day moves down this pipeline or that pipeline is not going to be conclusive, and may not even be the first domino knocked over in a whole series of them. It might be just a one-off proxy war off to the side. In this current era of protests, carbon taxes, low oil prices, some seemingly intractable problems like tailings, how optimistic are you about the future of the oilsands?

The case for them is only going to get tougher. That seems to be broadly understood in a lot of the industry.

I think it’s understood more and more that there was this crazy 10-year boom, give or take, and that led to this unprecedented and unsustainable level of growth — and that that is now the past. The future is still an open question.

Folks in the industry will talk about their ability to innovate, their ability to reduce the carbon intensity of a barrel, their ability to attack and solve all the environmental questions. I don’t think that’s just window dressing; I think there is serious thought and effort being put into that. Can they do that in such a way and at a fast enough clip to stay competitive as fracking spreads worldwide, as demand maybe before too long begins to significantly be impacted by things like electric cars and renewable energy sources of all types? It’s a really difficult question.

There are still people who I think are aware of all these variables willing to put money into the industry…For example, you just saw Suncor announcing a new project of 40,000 barrels of SAGD. So a small expansion of a SAGD project, rather than these big, 200, 300,000 barrel-per-day mines. I think that’s the direction the industry is going.

And then there’s a whole bunch of variables that could completely change the industry in five or 10 years. Why did you want to work on this book? 

I’m a Calgarian. It is sort of my backyard.

It’s a story that hadn’t really been told for a general audience without a really significant slant to it. It’s a really compelling story; the backstory, the history of how it came to be is absolutely fascinating. Just a weird chapter in Canadian industrial history that’s never been told in a single story before. If I had had 100 more pages I would have happily gone deeper into the history.

The other thing was, I’ve written and spoken and done a lot of work on the energy transition from the green side — here’s this very exciting new economic basis and movement that’s emerging, and this is going to be a hugely compelling place for people to invest their energy and time and money for many years to come in solving the climate problem…What does it mean to a significant subset of the oil industry in northern Alberta that this shift is underway, and what does the energy transition look like from there?

Probably more importantly, if we are going to talk in some sort of consensus-building way about how Canada manages that energy transition, I think it’s important to understand that side of it as well. So a big part of what I was hoping to do with the book was, if you come into it hating the oilsands and thinking they should be shut down tomorrow, maybe you’ll understand a little bit more about how they came to be and why people are still invested in making them viable. If you come into it as a huge champion of the industry who’s had it up to here with the protests, maybe you’ll understand a little bit more about where that part of it came from as well.

I think the fence is not a weird place to be on this one.

There’s really compelling arguments for and against. Some of the rhetoric that came out of the anti-pipeline movement kind of painted over this notion that it could be very quickly scaled down. If the prime minister woke up tomorrow and thought, ‘We need to shut that thing down in five years,’ how would you ever compensate for that economically, not to mention politically? How would you absorb that shock? And if you don’t have a viable answer for that, then maybe you haven’t thought it all the way through.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver was never a big fan of LNG, he says, because he never thought the BC Liberal plan for a multi-billion domestic natural gas export industry was even possible. But that was the past: when it comes to the future of clean energy in British Columbia, what is possible?

In the following interview with journalist Christopher Pollon, the climate scientist turned politician expounds on LNG, Site C, and the imminent arrival of energy alternatives like geothermal, “pumped storage” hydro and more.

Weaver conducted this interview via speakerphone as he drove a broken microwave oven to a Victoria-area depot for recycling. Being Green, it seems, is a full-time gig.

Christopher Pollon: Is the dream of a big Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export industry dead in B.C.?

Andrew Weaver: Yes, at least for the foreseeable future. It was absolutely irresponsible of the B.C. government to raise the expectations of people in the north. People in B.C. made changes in their lives, and in the process, the BC Liberals created an artificial divide between urban and rural in B.C.  

Meanwhile there’s a global market glut, landed contracts in Asia are five bucks and change, and China was supposed to be a market but is now a seller in the market because they are oversupplied. The idea that there was going to be a big mega project like Petronas [Pacific Northwest LNG], was nothing but a pipe dream. 

The real question is, what are we going to do with our resource? 

Bloomberg has forecasted that by around 2024, Asian prices will improve and the global glut could disappear. For the couple of LNG projects holding on, is this a matter of waiting that out, or by 2024 will these projects be obsolete?

We are in the middle of an energy revolution like we’ve never seen before, [so] to think that somehow we are going to continue to produce energy the way we were, is a bit of a myth. 

There are so many unknowns. With LNG, we don’t know [the impact] of the Iranian [natural gas] supplies, the world’s largest reserves, or what Russian supply is going to do.

We also know that the Paris Accord is a game changer. If the world leaders actually want to live up to what they signed, we are on a transitional path away from fossil fuel use…there can be no new investment in fossil fuels infrastructure, and any new investment in energy infrastructure should be transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables. 

So I’m not clear there’s even going to be a [LNG] market in the 2020s that will need to be met.

Andrew Weaver Q&A: The Future of BC #Energy Beyond #SiteC and #LNG https://t.co/GrZFKH2t0W @AJWVictoriaBC @C_Pollon #geothermal #climate

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 29, 2017

Companies like FortisBC are saying there is a huge opportunity for B.C. to use natural gas as a substitute for dirty bunker fuel and diesel in marine ships and transport trucks. Do you agree?

I 100 per cent agree. I pushed for the conversion of B.C. ferries ships to being a domestic market for our own natural gas, and they are now doing just that. 

It’s also an opportunity for long-haul transport, using compressed natural gas.

We have world leading technologies here, through companies like Vedder and Westport Innovations. Getting ourselves off diesel and onto compressed natural gas is cleaner in terms of particulate emissions and it’s frankly cheaper, too.

There are five ferries already transitioned to LNG, what do we need to do to ramp up the fuel switching for more ships and transport trucks?

We need infrastructure to charge and refill, and second, [a mechanism] for pricing emissions, which drives innovation to low- and zero-emitting vehicles.

That’s why I’m excited about our [carbon] price going up in B.C., and across Canada, because this pricing will drive us to innovation. Also, through regulation we can start to regulate tail pipe regulations like they do in California.

Back to natural gas, the NDP has called for a scientific review of fracking — what do you think about this?

To me that’s a wishy washy statement. 

I don’t know what you want to review about it. I don’t understand why they called for a review, I honestly don’t. I can’t defend what I don’t understand.

At the Union of BC Municipalities annual meeting this week, there was a vote on a fracking moratorium. Is this an idea you would support?

The problem in B.C. is not so much the existence of fracking, it’s the ‘wild west’ nature of what’s going on in B.C.  It’s a free-for-all. 

There’s no overarching approach to resource development.

The right approach would be to pause and reflect on the cumulative impacts of our ‘wild west’ approach to resource extraction here in B.C.

Nobody is saying ‘stop producing natural gas,’ but under the BC Liberals it was a get-to-yes approach, and it didn’t matter what the question was. That’s irresponsible.  

We would like to take a detailed look at what we are doing in a cumulative sense. In our platform, we had called for [the creation of] a natural resources board, that we were very keen on.

Changing tracks to Site C, what do you think about the preliminary report from the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) made public last week? 

I’m quite impressed so far, there are not a lot of answers, but there are a lot of good questions. 

BC Hydro numbers are being very effectively challenged, including on the cost of alternatives and for their approach to debt financing. BC Hydro did their typical approach, which was to submit hundreds of pages of documents. 

They’re not very convincing when it comes to their demand load forecast, though. 

It will be very interesting to see what BCUC reports. Ultimately it will be a cabinet decision, but as people who have been following know full well, the economics of Site C do not work right now. 

It was all about producing electricity subsidized for an LNG industry that doesn’t exist. So Site C is all about delivering the impossible. 

In a hypothetical world where Site C is cancelled, what sort of energy mix would B.C. need to look to for the future?

[The future] is a mix of using our existing dams more efficiently, combined with pumped storage, wind, solar, and geothermal. B.C. has it all. 

Learn about pumped storage potential in B.C.

If one jurisdiction could showcase to the world how to move forward, it is B.C.  And we’re missing out on that opportunity.  

That said, the industry is ready to go. I recently talked with a company looking at pumped storage hydro, which will use brownfield quarries, in partnership with First Nations. This is base supply — it’s one of the cheapest ways to meet peak demand. 

Take Vancouver Island for example, where we need to upgrade our transmission capacity to the mainland.  We could build pumped storage on the island, with the avoided cost of building transmission lines. Then look at a place like Valemont — they run out of electrons all the time there, we could build a geothermal plant there.

In the Kootenays there is a grid-scale solar development that wants to go forward, it’s already through the standing offer program, it’s ready to go. 

This is going to be my focus over the next couple of years in the legislature, and it’s ultimately the reason why I got into politics — to actually get us on track. 

It’s a track that was initially laid by Gordon Campbell under his first administration, which fell apart when Christy Clark came in and started talking about the impossible deliverance of LNG.

Image: B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver

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Last week Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to capture international headlines for a kayak outing on the Niagara River in Ontario.

How, you may ask? Well Trudeau paddled up to a family’s dock and had a brief conversation with them about water levels. According to Elle Magazine, he looked “picture perfect” while doing it. It all very quickly became a Twitter sensation.

Trudeau’s photogenic boat trip coincided with World Environment Day and in a speech afterward, the prime minister vowed to continue to fight climate change.

The American press, still bewildered by their president’s widely criticized decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, went wild.

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kayaks over to a family to discuss climate change,” read a headline in a San Francisco publication.

"A Chiseled Justin Trudeau Casually Kayaked Up to This Family’s Dock to Talk About Climate Change” exclaimed Cosmopolitan.

"The Quebequois [sic] Prom King was out here in these lakes paddling in support of World Environment Day, which is a holiday we no longer celebrate in the United States,” wrote R. Eric Thomas for Elle. “It's been replaced by a tire fire and a 21-aerosol can salute."

Trudeau’s PR team (which you gotta admit is pretty brilliant) hit up Instagram with this post.

Canada is all in. This morning, we paddled to celebrate #WorldEnvironmentDay & our commitment to protect the planet for future generations. Le Canada est déterminé à agir. Ce matin, nous avons souligné la #Journéemondialedelenvironnement et notre promesse de protéger la planète.

A post shared by Justin Trudeau (@justinpjtrudeau) on Jun 5, 2017 at 12:09pm PDT

"Canada is all in” to protect the planet for future generations.

It’s a really nice sentiment.

If only it were true.

While Trudeau laps up the praise that comes with not being Donald Trump, he’s also been busy approving major new fossil fuel infrastructure.

In November, Trudeau approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which if built will ship 690,000 barrels of oilsands bitumen to Canada’s West Coast for export by oil tanker through endangered orca habitat.

On the same day, he also approved an application from Enbridge to increased the capacity on its Line 3 from 390,000 to 915,000 barrels per day.

Last fall Trudeau also approved a giant liquefied natural gas export facility on the north coast of British Columbia. If built, Pacific Northwest LNG, will be one of the single largest carbon polluters in Canada. It  just so happens to be smack dab in the middle of critical salmon habitat. Trudeau’s decision on this project was seen as a litmus test for his commitment to meet Canada’s climate targets. Guess what? He failed.

Justin Trudeau May Look Pretty in a Kayak, But He’s No Climate Saint https://t.co/TRywOKYkFg #cdnpoli #bcpoli #climate #oilsands #LNG pic.twitter.com/0tz5voBdCD

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 13, 2017

Meantime, in his World Environment Day speech Trudeau said: “The future is still bright for those who have the courage to confront hard truths and the confidence to stay the course."

Yes, let’s talk about hard truths.

Last summer Trudeau failed another litmus test when he approved the Site C mega hydro dam against the objections of two First Nations. If built, the dam will flood more than 100 kilometres of river valley in northern British Columbia for power that's not clearly needed. A review found the dam will result in significant and irreversible adverse impacts on Treaty 8 First Nations. That’s a hard truth.

"We have a responsibility to future generations, and we will uphold it," Trudeau said in his speech last week.

To give credit where its due, Trudeau has successfully implemented a pan-Canadian climate strategy that puts a $50/tonne price on carbon by 2022, phases out coal-fired power by 2030 and introduces new building codes.

It was no small feat to get Canada's province's and territories to agree to a price on carbon and Trudeau deserves praise for that victory. But he’s simultaneously approved projects that are almost certain to prevent Canada from meeting its climate targets and that carry other enormous environmental risks.

Trudeau has this uncanny knack for getting a standing ovation from energy executives one day and then getting applauded as a climate-saving hero the next.

The reality is he has some hard truths to face: it’s not possible to both approve massive fossil fuel expansion and ramp down greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. Now if only he’d make a viral Instagram post about that.

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Want to modernize Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB)?

Bring the regulatory agency — first founded way back in 1959 when the realities of climate change weren’t readily known — into alignment with our carbon-constrained present.

That recommendation, coming from the Pembina Institute, comes in a report released Friday to coincide with the end of a federal review of the National Energy Board that brought an expert panel into halls and meeting rooms of 10 cities across the nation.

In the report, “Good Governance in the Era of Low Carbon,” the Pembina Institute states the review is an important opportunity to not only bring the mandate of the NEB into the 21st century, but also to restore public trust in what many see as a broken process.

The National Energy Board has been called a “captured regulator” that has “lost touch with what it means to protect the public interest,” by Marc Eliesen, former head of BC Hydro and former deputy minister of energy in Ontario and Manitoba.

Eliesen was one of many groups and individuals to publicly pull out of the NEB review of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline after the process was called “fraudulent” and an act of "public deception."

“Over the last decade, energy infrastructure proposals — including fossil fuel projects like oilsands pipelines and renewable energy development like wind farms — have become increasingly contentious across Canada,” the Pembina report states.

Modernize the National Energy Board? Here’s How https://t.co/CUp1RVOETT @Pembina #cdnpoli #NEBreview

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 31, 2017

“Public trust in energy decision making is at an all-time low, brought on by rapidly changing realities in, and expectations of, the energy sector.”

Erin Flanagan, federal policy director with Pembina and lead author of the report said changes to the NEB could help temper public skepticism by bringing the activities of the agency into alignment with Canada’s climate commitments.

“Canadians need an unbiased and trusted energy regulator capable of supporting Canada’s clean growth agenda,” Flanagan said.

Under the Paris Agreement Canada has committed to reduce emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Yet the approval of major fossil fuel projects and infrastructure by the federal government have many wondering how growth in Canada’s energy sector will square with low-carbon commitments.

“National Energy Board modernization is Canada’s opportunity to turn the corner on frustrated project reviews, and instead build processes that work for all interested parties and ultimately deliver credible recommendations to government.”

The report recommends the NEB consider the climate impacts of projects as well as the impact of new projects on Canada’s climate commitments.

“In its current function the NEB…fails to assess climate change impacts in its activities, from project reviews to data production and monitoring,” the report states.

A modernized NEB would apply best-available climate science to project reviews, keep project approvals in line with low-carbon goals and protect the long-term interest of Canadians by quantifying the climate risk associated with projects. 

Currently the NEB does not incorporate an analysis of how energy projects will impact Canada's climate committments, nor does it define what is meant by "public interest."

“The federal government has an opportunity to build on the NEB’s core competencies by ensuring it has a mandate to produce energy data consistent with successful implementation of the Paris Agreement," Lindsay Wiginton, analyst with the Pembina Institute and co-author of the report, said. 

"This is an essential requirement for Canada: data produced by the NEB is widely used for energy policy development and planning across the country, and it should reflect our climate commitments.”

The report also recommends reforms to how and what projects are submitted to the NEB for assessment.

“National and sub-national governments must implement and enforce climate policy commensurate with achieving Canada’s domestic and international climate commitments. This will encourage (though not guarantee) the selection of projects that support Canada’s transition to a decarbonized economy before they arrive at the regulator.”

In addition to addressing climate impacts, the NEB should also operate in a manner that supports Canada’s commitment to respect the rights and title of indigenous peoples, including facilitating the 94 “Calls to Action" intoned in the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Federal project approvals of the Site C dam, the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal in B.C. have each been met with legal challenges from local First Nations who argue the approvals violated aboriginal rights and title or the principle of free, prior and informed consent.

“Modern regulators should conduct their work in the spirit of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” the report states, adding changes to legislation made in 2012 unnecessarily limited public participation in project assessments.

A lack of public participation and perceived transparency has also damaged the NEB’s reputation and the credibility of its processes, the report finds.

Pembina recommends a revised energy project review “support systems for the full and meaningful participation of the public and any interested parties” and ensure “provisions for ensuring the independence of commissioners, participating experts and project documents are in place.”

In September a three-member NEB panel recused itself from the review of TransCanada's Energy East pipeline, after the National Observer revealed the panelists quietly met with former Quebec Premier Jean Charest who at the time was working for TransCanada. 

“Public trust in the NEB is at an all-time low because of its perceived (and/or real) state of industry capture and the politicization of its decision-making," the report states, recommending energy regulators be "independent of bias and interferences from government and non-government stakeholders."

The Pembina Institute submitted the report to the expert panel charged with reviewing the NEB. The panel will make recommendations to Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr by May 15, 2017. 

Image: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. Photo: Government of Canada

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Access to world markets for Canadian oil has been available since 1956 when the Westridge dock was constructed in Burnaby, B.C., and linked to the Trans Mountain pipeline.

The dock’s export capacity has rarely been used to its full potential in more than 60 years — yet the oil industry and politicians continue to make the argument that Canada needs new pipelines to get oil to world markets.

Here are four reasons that argument doesn’t fly.

1) Existing Export Capacity Isn’t Being Used

In 2011, the National Energy Board (NEB) provided Kinder Morgan with a favourable and unprecedented ruling when it allocated guaranteed access to the dock under 10-year take-or-pay contracts with five crude oil shippers.

Kinder Morgan promised that 79,000 barrels a day of tidewater access would lead to the development of international markets for Alberta’s crude.

It didn’t.

Guaranteed access means the dock can service 60 crude oil tankers a year. But according to statistics compiled by Port Metro Vancouver, not even a third of that number were loaded during 2016 — and most of those tankers went to U.S. ports. The equivalent of one tanker was loaded with Alberta’s heavy oil and destined for a non-U.S. port during the entire year. Seventeen went to U.S. destinations.

If Canadian oil needs to get to world markets as desperately as some claim, why isn’t existing access being used? It’s because there is no demand for it.

2) Energy East Won’t Reduce Reliance on Foreign Oil

“The lamentable state of crude oil pipeline infrastructure makes parts of this country reliant on foreign oil and our petroleum exporters dependent on the United States, which buys Canadian product at a deep discount,” wrote Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald in the Hill Times.

Eastern Canada has a dependency on imported oil because the refineries located there are configured to process primarily light oil. Energy East is intended to facilitate the transport of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands so will not reduce eastern Canada’s reliance on imported crude to any significant degree.

But there is another source of dependency on imported oil that is rarely acknowledged. Oilsands producers are dependent on imported condensate as a diluent for bitumen blending purposes. This is because oilsands heavy does not flow down a pipeline unassisted — it’s too dense.

Canada does not produce enough condensate to meet oilsands producers’ demand. Since 2005, condensate imports from the U.S. have increased significantly. For every three barrels of increased oilsands production, a barrel of condensate is imported. Thus, as oilsands production expands, Canada’s import dependency expands with it.

So if we want to see a reduction in Canada’s reliance on foreign oil imports we must advocate for a reduction in oilsands production or an increase in upgrading and refinery capacity in Alberta. Otherwise, the minute bitumen is shipped along a pipeline, it generates a growing dependency on crude imports.

3) Canadian Oil Producers Are Not Truly Dependent on U.S. Markets

Some suggest that Canadian producers are somehow dependent on U.S. markets. The majority of Canadian producers are not “dependent” on the US. They have integrated refinery operations there. To a significant extent Canadian producers supply their own crude to themselves or their joint-venture partners as U.S. refiners.

When Suncor sells into its Commerce City, Colorado, refinery, or Cenovus supplies its facilities in Wood River, Illinois, and Borger, Texas, owned in a joint venture with Phillips 66, or Husky supplies its refinery in Toledo, Ohio, it owns in partnership with BP, or Imperial and its parent, ExxonMobile, deliver crude from their joint venture to ExxonMobile’s U.S. facilities, it is hardly accurate to suggest that they are “dependent” on the U.S. market.

4) Canadian Oil Is Not Selling at a ‘Discount’

Many argue that the U.S. “buys Canadian product at a deep discount,” but that’s incorrect. There is a natural price discount between U.S. oil and Canadian heavy oil that will always exist because of quality and transportation cost differences.

Oil is traded in U.S. currency. Canadian crude is priced against a benchmark to U.S. produced light oil; West Texas Intermediate (WTI). To examine the differential and whether there is a discount that is outside the expected natural range requires that we compare WTI to Canadian crude prices. To do this for oilsands crude is to look at the price for WTI as compared to the price for Western Canadian Select (WCS)—the highest grade of Canadian heavy.

The natural discount for WCS compared to WTI, according to the National Energy Board is about 30 per cent — or roughly $20 US per barrel. A price differential of WCS to WTI of less than $20 U.S. would therefore be considered a “premium” price for WCS. WCS has been trading at “premium” since 2014. Currently, the differential is only $14 U.S. a barrel.

Robyn Allan is an independent economist and was an expert intervenor at the National Energy Board Trans Mountain Expansion hearing.

Photo: Jon Olav Eikenes via Flickr

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