After six months of consultations, the National Energy Board (NEB) Modernization Expert Panel has delivered its long-awaited report.

The results are damning.

“In our consultations we heard of a National Energy Board that has fundamentally lost the  confidence of many Canadians,” the five-member panel wrote. “We heard that Canadians have serious concerns that the NEB has been ‘captured’ by the oil and gas industry.”

The 87-page report issued 26 key recommendations to repair the oft-criticized quasi-judicial tribunal, responsible for regulating interprovincial and international oil, gas and electricity projects.

Those include establishing a one-year review process by cabinet to ascertain whether a major project meets “national interest” prior to regulatory review, replacing the NEB with a “Canadian Energy Transmission Commission” and placing a broader focus on interprovincial transmission lines and renewable energy.

In addition, the panel recommended the government create a new agency responsible for collecting information about energy, relocate board headquarters back to Ottawa, considerably improve consultation with Indigenous peoples including an Indigenous Major Projects Office and extend the timelines for review of major projects (which were accelerated under the previous Conservative government).

“It’s clear that this is a pretty major confirmation of what we’ve been saying for years,” says Adam Scott of Oil Change International in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“It’s basically saying that the National Energy Board as it stands today is a broken and outdated institution that’s not fulfilling its role, and not serving the best interest of Canadians. It was very good at the very beginning to see that acknowledgment: there’s a problem here, and we really need to do something bold to rebuild what the NEB is and figure this out.”

Trudeau Promised to Fix the National Energy Board. Here’s What His Expert Panel Recommends https://t.co/tkSQLYJcNz @james_m_wilt #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/pb8I2Hh9re

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 16, 2017

Recommendations Include Prioritizing Renewables, Transmission Lines and Independent Information

According to Natural Resources Canada, the panel travelled to 10 cities, heard presentations from almost 200 people and received another 200 written submissions online.

Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, says in an interview with DeSmog Canada the recommendation to focus more on interprovincial transmission lines and renewables is “very consistent with the direction that the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate and Clean Growth sets for the country.”

“As acknowledged in the report, so much of the focus and conflict right now has been around pipelines,” he says.

“But in making recommendations for how to approach this regulatory decision-making in the future, they need to make sure that expertise is being brought in on the electricity side [to address] the interprovincial nature of that.”

The creation of a proposed Canadian Energy Information Agency will also assist with this task, he says.

The NEB’s current “Energy Futures” projections are “always very conservative when it came to renewable energy” and largely disconnected with climate policies that have been put in place on both provincial and federal levels.

As the panelists wrote: “We heard over and over in public consultations in all the regions of Canada that the NEB appears to be operating in a national policy vacuum.”

Critics Flag ‘National Interest Designation’ As Giving Cabinet Too Much Say

However, experts have already voiced serious concern about the recommendation that federal cabinet have the ability to designate “national interest” for major projects.

In a statement, Erin Flanagan of the Pembina Institute noted: “The recommendation that the Government of Canada make up-front recommendations on the extent to which proposed projects align with national policy objectives lacks any discussion of trade-off rules or other guidance to ensure this process is not arbitrary.”

Similarly, Anna Johnston of West Coast Environmental Law said in a statement: “The NEB Panel’s recommendation for determining ‘national interest’ is putting the cart before the horse. How can you determine whether or not a project aligns with policy objectives, respects Indigenous rights or carries unacceptable risks before a full impact assessment is conducted?”

Indeed, it’s unclear how cabinet would adequately assess national interest before an environmental assessment is even conducted.

Patrick DeRochie, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence, says in an interview with DeSmog that there needs to be more clarification about how the NEB modernization would intersect with the proposed changes to Canada’s environmental assessment process, including issues like “net contribution to sustainability.”

“This national interest determination doesn’t actually spell out how we get to that, or why a project would be rejected within that process,” DeRochie says.

Flanagan also noted in her statement that Pembina is “disappointed” with the recommendation that environmental assessments of energy transmission projects (and energy transmission project alone) be conducted in collaboration between the proposed Canadian Energy Transmission Commission and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, as opposed to just the latter.

“Many experts agree that consistent application of [environmental assessment] law can only be achieved if all projects are reviewed under one set of rules, applied consistently,” she wrote.

Natural Resource Minister Suggests Government Won’t Adopt All Recommendations

Next up is a 30-day window for public comment on the report, closing on June 14, 2017.

Jim Carr, minister of natural resources, told reporters in Ottawa on Monday: “Now the government will ask Canadians what they think, and with other reviews that are happening now, come the fall, we’ll meet together as a government and determine the modernization of the National Energy Board and environmental assessment in Canada.”

In addition, he implied the government wouldn’t be accepting all 26 recommendations, telling the National Observer: “That means that we wouldn’t have any tough decisions to make, and I can tell you, we will have tough decisions to make.”

Woynillowicz adds that transmission projects that allow for more renewable energy and emissions reductions are still at risk of being held up because of an insufficient regulatory process, and that having these recommendations adopted will increase the likelihood that they’ll get built.

“I think it’s really positive that this review has happened,” he concludes. “Hopefully Minister Carr and the federal government will pay heed to these recommendations and move quite quickly to adopt them.”

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The federal government is expected to announce the details of Canada’s national climate plan Friday, Dec. 9 at a high-profile gathering of First Ministers in Ottawa.

The details of the climate plan, which amount to a balance sheet of the nation’s carbon emissions, are critical to evaluating the federal government’s recent decisions to approve major fossil fuel projects in light of Canada’s international climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

“To have confidence in this plan’s ability we need to see credible accounting,” Catherine Abreu, executive direction of Climate Action Network Canada, said.

Trudeau has garnered significant criticism for his recent approvals of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Enbridge Line 3 replacement, both of which invite increased production in the Alberta oilsands, Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In September the federal government approved the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal on the B.C. coast, a project that is expect to be the single largest point source of emissions in the country.

These approvals — and the increase in emissions they entail — have raised questions about the government’s ability to meet its climate targets.

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

“We know the 2030 target is the one that is top of mind for ministers,” Erin Flanagan, director of federal policy for the Pembina Institute, said. “It’s the one that [Environment and Climate Change] Minister McKenna is referring to when she says we’ll meet or exceed our climate commitments.”

Canada, unfortunately, has a long history of signing up for targets and an equally long history of not meeting them, Flanagan said.

“In fact, Canada’s best reporting through its biennial report indicates we’re a long way off from achieving those goals,” she said. “The report is quite bullish on fossil fuel development.”

By its own accounting the federal government anticipates Canada will emit 814 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030. To meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement, Canada must limit that number to 524 Mt.

Flanagan said the federal government has yet to release an updated plan that incorporates recent climate efforts, like the introduction of a national carbon tax, the phaseout of coal power plants and provincial climate plans, into the overall emissions accounting.

A recent analysis done by EnviroEconomics finds that climate progress made under Trudeau’s leadership will help close but not eliminate that emissions gap. The report estimates that by 2030 Canada will overshoot its 2030 target by 152 Mt (or slightly less if international carbon offset credits are used).

But those calculations are based on what can be gleaned from provincial and federal plans announced so far and not necessarily what the federal government has in store.

On Friday Trudeau will meet with ministers and provincial and territorial premiers to discuss the details of what Trudeau has called an “ambitious and achievable plan” to meet 2030 targets.

The specifics have up to this point remained elusive.

Much-Anticipated Details of Canada’s #ClimatePlan to Be Revealed at First Minister’s Meeting. Maybe. https://t.co/7b11biMXJP #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 8, 2016

Steven Guilbeault, senior director of Équiterre, said the government must show its work.

“Without a balance sheet there is no way to know if this plan is delivering on what it says it does,” he said.

“What is enabling Canada’s emissions to go down? Why are they going up? To be able to adjust that plan over time and to have a genuine understanding and reassurance that we do have a plan that will put us on a path towards emissions reduction is needed for credibility,” Guilbeault said.

“Without the plusses and minuses it’s impossible for us to say whether premiers and the Prime Minister have delivered on that plan.”

This week the Canadian Press reported internal sources said the federal government will not, as expected, release detailed information regarding the country’s greenhouse gas inventory.

Minister McKenna responded to the reports, telling the CBC that Canada will indeed release an in-depth plan.

"We will show how we're going to meet our 2030 targets — what measures we've taken, what additional measures we will be taking to meet the target," McKenna said.

"You will see a specific plan. You will see, in each sector, what we're doing to reduce emissions. You'll see what investments we're making. You'll see how we're working with Indigenous communities, in particular in the north, where they have specific concerns about diesel but also about adaptation."

“We know Friday is not the end of the story,” Dr. Louise Comeau, director of climate change and energy solutions with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, said.

Wrinkles in the climate framework as they relate to financial arrangements for green infrastructure, low carbon economy funding and equivalency agreements, which aim to standardize accounting of efforts made from province to province, will need to be ironed out moving forward, Comeau said.

Dale Marshall, climate campaigner with Environmental Defence, said he’s confident the ministers’ meeting will end with a climate agreement.

“I think there is high likelihood we’ll get an agreement,” he said.

“The federal government has spent since the last First Ministers’ Meeting in March, coordinating with the provinces, meeting with working groups and signed a number of agreements that had the signon of the country, like the carbon price, within the pan-Canadian framework.”

“Most people are feeling positive that we’re going to have a pan-Canadian framework agreed to by most if not all of the provinces and territories.”

Catheine Abreu said it’s important to ensure what is decided now, will remain relevant to 2030 and beyond.

“What we want to see on Friday is a commitment that the federal government and provinces commit to collaborate on moving forward.”

Abreu added more in-depth discussion is needed on crafting a workable accountability mechanism to ensure governments at all levels are keeping to their targets.

In addition the commitment made under the Paris Agreement isn’t just to limit emissions to 2030 but to strengthen targets every few years moving forward, Abreu said.

Canada committed to complete decarbonization by the end of the century and to work to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Abreu said Canada needs top-notch measuring, reporting and verification systems to not only establish emission reduction policies and regulations, but to gradually improve them over time.

“We have to totally or almost totally decarbonize our economy,” Guilbeault said. “Really 2030 isn’t the end.”

Image: Justin Trudeau and First Ministers at a March meeting in Vancouver. Photo: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

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The National Energy Board is fundamentally broken.

That was a point repeatedly highlighted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2015 federal election — and one confirmed for many with recent revelations that former Quebec premier Jean Charest had privately met with senior NEB officials while on the payroll of TransCanada.

Trudeau and his federal cabinet have the chance to change that: in June, the government announced dual review panels to assess the mandates and operations of the NEB and the country’s oft-criticized post-2012 environmental assessment processes (it also announced five interim principles until those reviews are completed, including a requirement to assess upstream greenhouse gas emissions although it’s unclear how that information is being used).

But for those to serve as anything more than symbolic gestures of goodwill, the pause button must be hit on the reviews of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain and TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline proposals.

Those review processes need to be completely redone once recommendations from the two review panels have been implemented.

If it sounds demanding, that’s probably because it is. But that’s the price of real change.

‘To Govern is to Choose’

If built, the Trans Mountain pipeline and Energy East pipeline would add a combined 1.79 million barrels per day of export capacity from the Alberta oilsands (690,000 and 1.1 million barrels/day, respectively).

Let’s put that in context.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has projected that heavy oil production will increase 1.45 million barrels per day by 2030, to a total of 3.99 million barrels per day. In other words, the two massive projects currently under review would lock in more than enough export capacity for the oilsands to maximize its growth to 2030.

If paired with the construction of a single LNG export facility in British Columbia, this situation would require the rest of the Canadian economy to contract by 47 per cent from 2014 levels by 2030 in order to meet the country’s Paris Agreement targets (an impossibility “barring an economic collapse” according to David Hughes, who calculated those numbers in a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report).

In other words, approving the two projects would completely botch the country’s chances of meeting international climate commitments.

“When you’re in opposition, you can be strongly committed to contradictory things,” says Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada.

“But to govern is to choose. And the Liberals have been very clear they want to meet our international climate commitments, implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and get a pipeline built. The problem is you can have, at most, two of those.”

Why @JustinTrudeau Should Call Off the Reviews of Trans Mountain and Energy East https://t.co/TslT4Z5IbV #bcpoli #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 24, 2016

Opportunity for Canada to Enact ‘Visionary Environmental Laws’

The review of the process has great potential, especially given the impacts of the gutting of environmental assessments in 2012 under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Anna Johnston, staff counsel at West Coast Environmental Law Centre, describes the review as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for Canada to enact really visionary new environmental laws and processes.”

Johnston says a key component is to hold projects to a higher standard — requiring companies to prove net benefits as opposed to not simply posing a “significant adverse impact” — as well as measuring total cumulative impacts. Such an approach would result in a threshold of potential greenhouse emissions, meaning some projects simply wouldn’t be considered due to impacts on meeting climate targets.

“Those are just going to a red light and won’t even need to go through an environmental assessment process as we know this huge project is going to take up way more of its fair share of greenhouse gas emission allocations,” she says.

The panel members for reviewing environmental assessment processes were announced on August 15: it will be chaired by Johanne Gélinas of consulting firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, Renee Pelletier of the Aboriginal law firm Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend LLP, Rod Northey of law firm Gowling WLG and Doug Horswill, senior vice president of Teck Resources and “honorary life director” of the Mining Association of Canada. (Interestingly, Bob Rae is a senior partner at Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend and Rod Notley has donated $17,000 to the Liberals since 2004).

Erin Flanagan, director of federal policy at the Pembina Institute, says the panel has “a solid balance of perspectives and experience on the file.”

The panel members for the NEB review haven’t been announced yet. The executive summaries of the final reports will be published on January 31, 2017; Flanagan emphasizes “the clock is ticking – it’s a huge mandate to execute on by early 2017.”

There’s plenty of ground to cover.

Trans Mountain, Energy East Remain Exempt

But even if the review panels produce progressive recommendations — for instance, calling for the revamping the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, returning the responsibility for federal environmental assessments of interprovincial and international pipelines to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and treating Indigenous nations as much more than an afterthought — they wouldn’t apply to the two biggest pipeline projects in recent Canadian history.

The federal cabinet will be making a decision on the Trans Mountain pipeline before Christmas, a full month before the review panels deliver their recommendations (the NEB approved the project in May with 157 conditions). This occurs in contradiction to a promise Trudeau made during the election that the NEB review would apply to the project.

The government’s ad-hoc supplementary review panel, intended to improve public consultations, has come under serious fire for conflict-of-interest allegations and failures to offer translation services or livestreaming, in many ways pointing out the massive flaws of the existing process.

Those meetings have, by and large, been an opportunity for communities to voice their majority opposition to Trans Mountain and the review process. In the case of Vancouver and Victoria, the overwhelming number of public participants voiced opposition to the pipeline project.

The NEB’s review process for Energy East is already underway via panel sessions in communities. The bulk of the work won’t start until 2017.

But if the federal government is serious about addressing concerns about the NEB, why not hold off on the panel sessions until community members are fully aware of the stakes? Currently, intervenors are operating under the expectation that the NEB will be responsible for conducting the environmental assessment of Energy East, a reality that could very well change if the dual review panels recommend serious alterations to processes.

Canadians Still Without Restored Environmental Laws

In February, Ecojustice argued in regards to the TransCanada project that “the government missed a golden opportunity to put the entire process on hold until legislative amendments could effectively repair the damage done by the Harper government’s rollbacks.”

Green Party leader Elizabeth May has also voiced concern, stating in June 20 press release that “I vigorously opposed the idea of a drawn-out consultation without first repealing the devastating changes made to environmental assessment in omnibus budget bills of 2012” and “the government is choosing to continue with a broken system while it consults stakeholders.”

The future changes may be hugely beneficial, barring carbon-intensive LNG facilities, oilsands upgraders and other industrial emitters from ever entering the review process. But the Trans Mountain pipeline and Energy East could very well be on the path to construction and export, further jeopardizing Canada’s environmental reputation.

Government Hanging onto ‘Deeply Flawed’ Process

The Liberals have already established an unfortunate track record of blaming the previous government for politically unsavoury decisions they could have very well stopped: think the controversial sale of light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, the government’s decision to withdraw an appeal to force the Catholic Church to pay reparations for its significant role in running residential schools or the approval of permits for construction on the controversial Site C dam in B.C.

It’s a bit of a sunk costs fallacy, but one shaded by an obvious desire to keep the real political mechanisms and motives under wraps.

The same appears to be occurring with the two major pipeline approvals. The government made the powerful and convincing argument during the election that the review process was broken. Yet it has allowed the NEB to continue reviewing Trans Mountain and Energy East.

“You had Trudeau say that this process isn’t credible,” Stewart says.

“So what are you actually going to do about that? How can you approve a major controversial project based on a process that you’ve already said is deeply flawed and is proved once again that it’s deeply flawed? I just don’t understand how they think they can move that forward.”

Image: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier Christy Clark meet in Burnaby, B.C., site of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain export terminal. Photo: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

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If you’ve been watching headlines about the historic signing of the Paris Agreement this past weekend, you may be understandably confused.

Does the world’s first climate treaty represent the beginning of the end for fossil fuels or a mere free-market cop out?

Both arguments hold some truth. That’s because the agreement is more form, less substance. That’s what it was intended to be. The real meat of the deal remains entirely undetermined because it has yet to grow on the bones of the treaty.

What countries like Canada actually do to implement the intended outcome of the Paris Agreement — to keep temperatures from rising two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by eliminating greenhouse gas emissions — will determine whether the torrent of analyses we’re seeing, dire or otherwise, have any merit.

“There’s this Buddhist idiom that says: first Enlightenment, then the laundry,” Glen Murray, Ontario’s Environment Minister, said at the climate summit in Paris. “This has been the Enlightenment and now we all have to go home and do the laundry to make sure this happens.”

Same Finish Line, Different Starting Lines

Ontario received praise in Paris for its complete phase out of coal-fired power plants in 2014 and Murray spent time advising other jurisdictions, including Alberta, how they could do the same.

Yet, Ontario’s bold climate move — more than 25 per cent of the province’s power previously came from coal — and Alberta’s new climate plan highlight just how disparate efforts to limit wildly different amounts and sources of emissions are from province-to-province.

According to Environment Canada, between 1990 and 2013 Canada’s absolute emissions increased by 18 per cent, primarily from the growth of fossil fuel industries in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. Emissions from the oil and gas sector are responsible for nearly one quarter of all national emissions.

During that time, Alberta’s provincial emissions grew by 53 per cent, Saskatchewan’s by 66 per cent, B.C.’s by 21 per cent and Manitoba’s by 14 per cent.

The absolute emissions of Ontario, Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and the territories all fell during this same period.

As the saying went in Paris, we’re all trying to get to the same finish line, but don’t all have the same starting line.

Feds Need to Implement Harmonized GHG Targets

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to meet with the premiers within 90 days of the Paris climate talks to discuss how Canada will move forward in a post-Paris Agreement world.

The federal government has promised both to work with the provinces but also to implement a pan-Canadian framework for addressing the country’s growing emissions profile.

According to Erin Flanagan, policy expert from the Pembina Institute, how the federal government will wrangle the provinces together under a national climate framework is still a complete mystery.

“In large part, the federal government has been highly cooperative and collaborative with provinces in these first few weeks,” Flanagan said, adding she doesn’t think Ottawa will be unfairly prescriptive when it comes to establishing a policy pathway.

“At the same time,” she said, “if Canada makes good on that commitment of a pan-Canadian framework within 90 days of Paris, one of the things they talked about is instituting harmonized targets.”

Tensions Likely to Emerge Between Provinces

Differing opinions on what that harmonized target should be and what each province must do to achieve it could mean troubled water between premiers and the federal government.

Flanagan said Alberta’s much celebrated climate action plan did not include specific emission reduction targets.

Alberta promised to phase out its 18 coal-fired power plants, introduce a carbon tax to match B.C.’s $30/tonne price to put a cap on oilsand’s emissions.

“But they didn’t frame any of that in terms of what Alberta should do to reduce its emission between now and 2030,” Flanagan said. “So there will be an additional conversation now about what Alberta’s contribution to a national target will be.

I think that’s where some of the challenges over the next little while will emerge.”

What steps the federal government might take if a province like Alberta fails to meet its targets will also form a part of that challenging conversation, Flanagan added.

B.C. is often celebrated for its climate leadership after instituting the country’s first carbon tax. Yet at the Paris climate talks, B.C. was on the hook for freezing that carbon tax back in 2012 and now working to build a carbon-heavy liquefied natural gas (LNG) empire.

“I don’t want to pick on the west too much,” Flanagan said, “but B.C. is a good example where you’ve got a world-winning carbon tax…but if you look at modeling coming out of that province they’re not likely to hit their 2020 or 2030 climate targets.”

“So how do you penalize a jurisdiction that has a carbon tax but isn’t doing enough to actually contribute nationally?”

“That’s going to be a tough one,” she said.

“As much as subnational climate action has been exciting — that’s the best climate story coming out of Canada right now — it does pose the risk of fragmentation. None of these conversations have been about what Canada’s emissions look like in a climate safe world. They’ve been about what it means for Ontario or Quebec or B.C. to be a climate leader.”

Living Up to Paris Agreement Means Quick Transition Off Fossil Fuels

Those are important conversations, but they need to be brought into the context of Canada’s contribution on the global stage.

If Canada is to do its fair share to keep global temperatures from increasing beyond 1.5 or even two degrees Celsius, it must reduce its emissions 80 per cent by 2050.

According to Mike Hudema, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, that charts a clear course for decarbonization.

“In order to live up to this deal we must, as a country, quickly transition off fossil fuels and usher into the renewable age,” he said. “This means saying no to tarsands pipelines and other carbon infrastructure.”

In Paris, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna avoided commenting on specific projects like the TransCanada Energy East pipeline, proposed to carry 1.1 million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to ports in New Brunswick.

“I don’t like just looking at one particular development,” McKenna said in Paris when asked about the climate impacts of Energy East. “We are looking at how we are going to make progress towards a low-carbon economy.”

Last month, President Barack Obama rejected the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, saying the project’s climate impacts were intolerable. Now many onlookers from within the climate movement are saying Canada should evaluate energy projects and infrastructure according to a similar “climate test.”

Feds May Have to Step in and Reject Projects

Critically, Canada’s position within a global context must be drawn into the national decision-making process, Flanagan said. This may mean rejecting oilsands projects, natural gas extraction or coal-fired power plants at the federal level.

Canada’s overall climate targets should not be up for negotiation with the provinces, Flanagan added.

“You let climate scientists at Environment Canada determine what that trajectory looks like and you then negotiate with the provinces how you share that burden,” she said.

“Ultimately if they want to achieve these goals they have to be bad cop and good cop — not just good cop.”

Image: Twitter

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A new report from Pembina Institute says that the proposed TransCanada Energy East pipeline could generate up to 32 million tonnes (Mt) of additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the crude oil production required to fill it. Thirty-two million tonnes of carbon emissions is the equivalent of adding 7 million cars to Canada's roads, exceeding the projected emissions of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.

The Keystone XL pipeline, in comparison, would generate 22 Mt of additional GHG emissions through oilsands production, according to a previous report by Pembina. The estimated emissions impact of Energy East is "higher than the total current provincial emissions of five provinces."

The $12 million Energy East pipeline, proposed by TransCanada in August 2013, would have the capacity to transport 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oilsands and conventional crude oil from Alberta to New Brunswick. According to the report, the volume of new oilsands production associated with Energy East would represent up to a 39 per cent increase from 2012 oilsands production levels.

Figure 1: Greenhouse gas emissions associated with Energy East compared to those of selected provinces. Climate Implications of the Proposed Energy East Pipeline: A Preliminary Assessment. The Pembina Institute, 2014.

Oilsands production is currently Canada's fastest growing source of GHG emissions, and is set to nearly triple between now and 2030, according to Environment Canada. Report authors Clare Demerse and Erin Flanagan told DeSmog Canada that this growth is "the single largest barrier to achieving [Canada's] 2020 climate target."

Given that Canada is set to miss its 2020 emissions reduction target by 122 Mt with current measures, Demerse and Flanagan see the Energy East proposal's potential to add a new source of GHGs from the oilsands as "significant and troubling."

The authors stress that the report, titled Climate Implications of the Proposed Energy East Pipeline, only assesses the pipeline's upstream, "Well-to-Refinery Gate" emissions impact, rather than the downstream, "Well-to-Wheel" emissions of the crude oil being transported, which would include emissions released by its combustion in vehicle engines. The actual climate impact of Energy East would therefore be even greater than figures in the report.

"The oilsands are already Canada's fastest-growing source of carbon pollution and the Energy East pipeline would help to accelerate production. Any regulatory review should include not only the impact of the pipeline itself, but also the impact of producing the crude that would flow through it," said Demerse, Federal Policy Director at Pembina.

Figure 2: Change in GHG emissions by economic sector, 2005-2020. Climate Implications of the Proposed Energy East Pipeline: A Preliminary Assessment. The Pembina Institute, 2014.

Demerse and Flanagan hope that the report will urge the National Energy Board (NEB) to undertake a more thorough appraisal of Energy East's environmental impact than its review of Enbridge's Northern Gateway proposal, saying that they wanted to submit their findings "before the National Energy Board decides on the format of its review."

The authors note that "many Canadians asked for consideration of the impacts of oilsands production in the Northern Gateway hearings," so if the NEB chooses a "more complete and balanced review of the Energy East proposal – one that looks at the environmental impacts of filling the pipeline as well as the pipeline infrastructure itself – I think the regulators would simply be catching up to where Canadians already are."

TransCanada is set to submit its regulatory application for Energy East to the NEB later this year.

The report recommends that the NEB "include the pipeline's full upstream impacts in the scope of its review, and that the federal government should end its delays and adopt strong emissions regulations for the oil and gas sector."

The report mentions that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have been found to lower oilsands production emissions, but adds that "Canada lacks the kind of stringent climate policies that would provide a strong incentive for those kinds of investments," especially considering the high cost of such technology.

ICO2N, a group of energy companies invested in developing CCS technology, estimates that a carbon price of $125/tonne is necessary to justify capture of approximately 15 per cent of oilsands CO2.

The authors believe that approving projects like Energy East and Keystone XL could "see less emphasis on, and less encouragement of, clean energy investment in Canada" when the country needs to be "starting the transition to a clean energy future."

"The oilsands industry plans to triple production by 2030 and building new pipelines is necessary to realize those ambitions. We need to look at the full scope of impacts when evaluating pipelines," said Flanagan.

In its 2013 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Association (IEA) modelled a scenario where countries take the action required to keep global warming below 2 degrees C, and found that global demand for oil would likely peak in 2020 and fall thereafter. Demerse and Flanagan suggest that Canada needs to "keep that kind of long-term picture in mind when we're considering a pipeline proposal that could last for 30, 40 or 50 years."

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