The fossil fuel industry lobbied the B.C. government more than 22,000 times between April 2010 and October 2016, according to a report released Wednesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of the Corporate Mapping Project.

The report also found that 48 fossil fuel companies and associated industry groups have donated $5.2 million to B.C. political parties between 2008 and 2015 — 92 per cent of which has gone to the BC Liberals.

The analysis found seven of the top 10 political donors from the fossil fuel industry are also B.C.’s most active lobbyists.

The Corporate Mapping Project is a six-year research and public engagement initiative jointly led by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute.

Researchers have painstakingly analyzed lobbying and political donation records to demonstrate the extensive political influence of the fossil fuel industry in B.C.

“I was definitely surprised at the sheer volume of lobbying contacts that we found,” Nick Graham, lead author of the report and PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, told DeSmog Canada.

Spectra Energy, Enbridge, FortisBC, Encana, Chevron Canada, CAPP and Teck Resources conducted the majority of registered lobbying contacts, more than 19,500 in total since the lobbyist registry was first initiated in 2010 — an average of 14 lobbying contacts in B.C. per day.

“We were expecting to see some overlap between political donations and lobbying,” Graham said. “Part of what donations help achieve is access to government so we certainly expected to see some of that.”

The top 10 fossil fuel industry donors were responsible for $3.8 million in contributions to the BC Liberals and $270,000 to the BC NDP.

The Corporate Mapping Project report, co-authored by Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Bill Carroll, professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, is the first systematic analysis of fossil fuel lobbying in B.C.

Top 10 fossil fuel industry donors in B.C. Source: CCPA, Corporate Mapping Project.

Clear Connection Between Lobbying, Donations and Policy Outcomes

“There is a fairly clear connection between lobbying, donations and policy outcomes that is quite troubling,” Daub told DeSmog Canada.

“It can be difficult to draw a line between a political donation or a meeting and policy because so little information is released to the public about what is going on behind closed doors,” Daub said.

But, she added, a more broad analysis like this can help connect the dots.

“We did note the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, for example, in a one year period between October 2015 and August 2016, reported 201 lobbying contacts with the provincial government specifically in relation to the climate leadership plan.”

“And of course that plan turned out to not be much of a plan at all,” Daub added.

The analysis found 28 per cent of lobbying by the top fossil fuel lobbyists was with cabinet ministers.

Several cabinet ministers were the frequent target of lobbying contacts, the most popular being Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman, who was listed in 733 contacts with the top 10 fossil fuel firms.

The other most contacted senior ministers are Premier Christy Clark (618 contacts), Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett (437), Environment Minister Mary Polak (354) and Finance Minister Mike de Jong (330).

“It really does speak to the development of these close relationships,” Graham said. “You do see particular firms heavily targeting individuals. There is this really tight, if not cozy, ongoing relationship that develops and the perspective of the two become quite closely aligned.”

Companies such as Encana, with significant operations in B.C.’s natural gas plays focused heavily on lobbying Natural Gas Development Minister Coleman, the analysis found.

Source: CCPA, Corporate Mapping Project

Corporate Influence Far Outweighs Environmental Voices

Graham added the analysis was shaped in part by the B.C. government’s push for increased extractive industry projects in the province for nearly the last decade.

“The paper began from the perspective of seeing this really incredible push around expanding fossil fuel development in the province especially around natural gas and the really aggressive promotion of the LNG industry in particular by the government.”

“Part of our question was, ‘how can we explain this? What explains this?’ ” Graham said.

“What we found are there are multiple explanations that point to the structural power of industry and the provincial government’s reliance on resource rent. But also major corporate influence: the ability of corporations to have these stores of capital to pressure government on an ongoing basis.”

The analysis found a total of 1,300 lobby contacts between the government and environmental or non-governmental organizations during the same timeframe.

Daub said there is clearly not level access to provincial decision-makers in B.C.

“What shows really clearly from these numbers is that we have one industry with a very disproportionate level of access to government and government policy,” she said.

B.C.’s Ongoing Transparency Problem

B.C. has some of the weakest political donation rules in the country, which allow unlimited donations from individuals, foreigners, corporations and unions.

“Clearly it’s just time to ban big money in politics all together. One of the recommendations in our report is to put a stop to corporate and union donations and a cap on individual contributions.”

Federally, political parties cannot accept donations from corporations or unions and provinces like Quebec place a $100 limit on personal donations.

“It’s supposed to be one person, one vote,” Daub said. “Instead in B.C. it’s more like one dollar, one vote.”

A level democratic playing field is important for the public to have confidence in the political system but also to feel they can meaningfully participate in the process, Daub said.

Beyond problems with special interest dollars flooding the political process, B.C. also has poor transparency requirements when it comes to lobbying.

Lobbyists must register to lobby in B.C. and provide a list of intended meetings. However, there is no official record kept that distinguishes between intended and actual meetings.

Any meetings requested by public officials are not registered.

In addition, lobby records do not give the public detailed information about the content of meetings.

“Teck is one of the biggest lobbyists in the province among industry groups and they have a particular focus on MLAs,” Daub said. “But what they report they’ve lobbied on is things like ‘mining,’ or ‘employment and training’ or ‘aboriginal affairs.’ ”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about what they’re actually talking to these public officials about.”

Daub said better records should be kept of lobbying interactions that gives the public a decent account of when and how frequently these meetings are taking place and what public policy matters are at stake.

“A more transparent system would make it much easier for the public to find out what is going on in these closed door meetings.”

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If you read any commentary in the wake of Trudeau’s pipeline approvals, you might have come across the sentiment that pipeline opponents are “environmental NIMBYs” and “angry mobs” who are “stuck in bondage to strange ideologies…eyes ablaze with truth oil,” having “demolished trust in agencies.”

Conversely, pipeline proponents are “realistic” and “rational,” able to offer up “informed discussion and courtesy” due to their nuanced understandings of economics and deep respect for regulatory processes.

“In the current political climate, if you disagree with an economic model or the critical assumptions underlying it you court the risk of being labelled an extremist or emotional, or simply unqualified to participate in the debate,” says Jason MacLean, assistant professor of law at Lakehead University and author of two recent Maclean’s essays on climate policy.

It’s a quaint notion: proponents of oilsands and pipeline expansion are mere technocrats only trying to do what’s best for Canada but are being tragically derailed by rabid protesters who don’t care about facts and figures.

But it disguises the much deeper fact that fossil fuel companies exist for the sole purpose of ensuring maximum returns for their shareholders.

Writing off industry opponents as blindly anti-everything ignores the incredible amount of sociopolitical influence the fossil fuel industry deploys to maintain its position in an increasingly carbon-constrained world.

Fossil Fuel Industry’s Barriers to a Low-Carbon Economy

“Private investments of [the fossil fuel industry’s] magnitude create an enormous inertia because the investors will want their money back and investments recuperated, and profit in the end,” Andreas Malm, author of Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, told DeSmog Canada.

“That means they will fight tooth and nail to maintain the infrastructures for as long as possible and for as long as they can generate revenue.”

Despite a clear and urgent need to transition our energy systems to renewable sources, dismantling fossil fuel-based infrastructure has proven “very, very difficult to do,” says Malm, who serves as an associate senior lecturer in human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University.

“Efforts to mitigate climate change have generally been very naive about how deeply rooted fossil fuels are in certain power structures related to wealth accumulation.”

“Their business interests are at stake here,” he concludes. “They want to survive. They want to continue digging fossil fuels out of the ground. As long as they are not challenged, we won’t make any progress on climate.”

From supercharged lobbying efforts to hefty political donations to high-profile public relations campaigns that influence even our deepest personal notions of freedom, the fossil fuel industry plays an aggressive role in contouring the politically possible  — all in an effort to keep opponents and alternatives at bay.

Fossil Fuels and the Making of a Carbon-Dependent Way of Life

A common refrain from fossil fuel companies and associations is that their products underpin our entire way of life.

In many ways, this is true.

As Bob Johnson, associate professor of history at National University in San Diego and author of Carbon Nation: Fossil Fuels in the Making of American Culture, points out, everything from cooking soup on a stove, to practising hot yoga, to flying across the country to visit relatives for Christmas, to protecting national parks from deforestation draws on the availability of cheap fossil fuels.

But it’s also no coincidence that we’re living in a society completely dependent on fossil fuels.

“That way of life had to be engineered,” says Timothy Mitchell, chair and professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University and author of Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.

“The oil companies and others worked very hard to create a way of life that would become enormously dependent on oil and carbon-heavy: gas-guzzling automobiles, to interstate highway systems, to suburban life, to any number of ways of living to which there were always alternatives.”

It might sound conspiratorial. But there are many examples of fossil fuel companies directly funding efforts to deny climate change, including ExxonMobil and Talisman Energy (in 2004, the latter funnelled money to the notorious Friends of Science group, which claims climate change is caused by solar flares).

Mitchell says industry has also done a lot to encourage car-based cultures, including sponsoring and publishing travel guides, maps and ads in which the car became a centrepiece of consumer lifestyles.

Johnson said that’s been aided by the work of think tanks and industry associations — including the Cato Institute (started and funded by Charles Koch) and the American Petroleum Institute — creating a deep cultural relationship between concepts of mobility and freedom.

Johnson says an industry film in the 1950s proposed a Petroleum Bill of Rights, taking the U.S. Constitution and assigning relationships between specific articles and petroleum, such as the freedom of movement and travel.

“These are people and institutions whose goal is to shape public opinion through things like children’s programming, editorials, buying up newspaper influence, having journalists in hand and subsidizing politicized science,” Johnson says.

As the University of Ottawa’s Patrick McCurdy has identified with his MediaToil project, multi-million dollar advertising campaigns by corporations have strategically evolved over the years in response to criticisms, with recent efforts targeting “lifestyle rhetoric.”

Enbridge’s recent “Life Takes Energy” campaign directly connects “dinner with dad,” “amazing journeys” and caring for one’s newborn child to oil and gas products.

While not technically wrong, this and other industry campaigns are designed to obscure the ways societies can actually make choices about the types of energy used.

Many of our energy demands can be at least partly met with a substituted combination of solar, wind and geothermal, accompanied by significant investments in public transit infrastructure, energy efficiency and smart grids. Municipalities can be key players in such scenarios, with the powers to amend zoning bylaws, limit urban sprawl via developer levies, approve bike lanes and cycle tracks, and even plant more trees to reduce demands on air conditioning.

There are many alternatives. But you won’t hear such ideas in fossil fuel advertisements.

Fossil Fuel Industry and the Purchase of Political Influence

But the fossil fuel industry invests in much more than public relations campaigns. Lobbying and political donations are also ways industry can leverage its economic capital for political influence.

In Canada fossil fuel companies and associations have lobbied the federal government hundreds of times since they were elected in October 2015.

Major players include Suncor (96 times), CAPP (84 times), Enbridge (66 times), Imperial Oil (62 times), Shell Canada (59 times), TransCanada (39 times), Northern Gateway (38 times) and Kinder Morgan (26 times).

And those are only the communications that we know about.

Under the current iteration of the Lobbying Act, lobbyists only have to log “oral, prearranged” communications, which leaves emails, texts, letters and speaking at a “non-prearranged time” wide open.

Duff Conacher, founder and long-time coordinator of Democracy Watch, says the ongoing federal cash-for-access scandal — in which people paid $1,525 to attend one of 100 Liberal fundraisers in private homes and have the chance to lobby Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and high-ranking cabinet ministers — was almost certainly taken advantage of by fossil fuel executives, even if that fact remains undocumented.

“It’s completely undemocratic and unethical for the government to keep this information secret,” Conacher says.

Fossil fuel companies are some of the largest companies in the country, meaning they have considerable resources to dedicate to toward activities like hiring lobbyists and potentially hosting or attending fundraisers.

Conacher also notes that while corporate donations were banned at the federal level in 2007, it’s still possible that companies use executives, managers, spouses and family members to secretly donate to a party and riding association using corporate money; an Elections Quebec audit identified $12.8 million in likely funnelled donations from corporations to provincial parties between 2006 and 2011.

“We essentially have a system of legalized bribery with our donation system and secret unethical lobbying,” Conacher says. “You put those two together and you’re going to have corruption of the decisions that cabinet ministers make across the country.”

The ‘Revolving Door’ Between Industry and Politics

All of those actions take place from the outside, with lobbyists and executives pushing for change either legally or otherwise.

But industry also has significant influence from the inside of governments.

“We see an easy trafficking between fossil industry players and government agencies: a revolving door between the carbon industry and politics,” Johnson says.

Powerful industry players in Canada have gone on to sit on environmental review panels, lead staff at the ministry of natural resources and lead political campaigns.

The embeddedness of industry players in the upper political echelon can have real world consequence, Johnson says.

“You end up with really soft regulations, really slippery policy language, the giveaways of mineral rights.”

For instance, Janet Annesley, the former head of CAPP and current chief of staff for Natural Resources Canada, has officially met twice with her former employer, CAPP, as well as members of CAPP, including Suncor, Encana and CNRL.

Tracing Fossil Fuel Influence Through Political Cycle

And these three factors — advertising, lobbying and appointments — all achieve maximum influence in our current electoral system.

Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and co-director of the University of Alberta’s Petrocultures research cluster, says that for him, the approvals of the Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipelines are an outcome of Trudeau’s political calculation.

The pipelines, he said, go hand in hand with the government’s controversial backtracking on electoral reform.

“We operate by means of a government form that was established in the 18th century: post-monarchy, constitutional democracies that operate on a four-year electoral cycle,” Szeman says.

“Once again, we have a situation where governments are more concerned with their own electoral possibilities than making true, long-term decisions about what they’re going to do.”

Entrenched, powerful interests greatly benefit from a system in which politicians must think very short-term in scope.

Fossil fuel companies generate a significant amount of GDP, exports, capital investments, jobs and government revenues, which are good selling points for a government that must have numbers to show come election time.

Malm says the obvious first step to managing climate change — let alone solving it — is to put an end to any expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. Others have argued the same.

But political parties want to win elections. And fossil fuel companies will do everything they can to exploit that fact, in desperate attempt to maximize profits from huge capital investments in an increasingly carbon-constrained world.

It’s an extremely dangerous combo.

“When you have a very powerful industry that’s important to the GDP, it’s going to have major effects on what the government does,” Szeman concludes.

“This is a matter of social survival for all of us in the long run.”

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Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of global CO2 emissions but they can save the planet by greening one community at a time said Vancouver’s David Cadman at the close of the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments in Seoul, South Korea.

“We can do it. We must do it,” Cadman, the retiring president of Local Governments for Sustainability, told some 1,500 delegates from nearly 1,000 cities and local governments in 96 countries on April 11.

The majority of climate actions and most plans to reduce CO2 emissions are happening at the city level, Cadman told DeSmog Canada in Seoul.

Vancouver and 50 other cities have committed to 100 per cent renewable energy and 500 more are part of ICLEI’s Cities Climate Registry that documents verifiable CO2 emission reduction actions and commitments that amounted to 2.8 billion tons a year in 2014.

Cadman, a former City of Vancouver councillor, has been president of ICLEI since 2006. It’s an international organization headquartered in Bonn, Germany, with 280 staff and 23 other offices scattered around the globe. ICLEI, which stands for International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, started 25 years ago in Toronto to help cities become more sustainable. It now goes by the more manageable name of "Local Governments for Sustainability," but still uses the original acronym.

Canada’s federal and provincial governments were very strong supporters in the early days but the past decade has been very different.

“We seem to be chained to the fossil energy industry in Canada and it’s pulling us down. Cities and organizations can hardly dare to speak out about this now,” he said.

Germany was only too happy to bring ICLEI to Bonn eight years ago and has been generous with its support, along with the European Union. Now the organization is experiencing what is being called an “Asian pivot,” with the mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon, as the new president.

Park has helped Seoul to become one of the world’s leaders on sustainable development. With 11 million people and growing fast, Seoul will reduce its energy use and increase renewable generation including rolling out 40,000 solar panels to households by 2018 and 15,000 electric vehicles. By 2030, CO2 emissions will be cut 40 per cent.

“Action on climate will be by local governments no matter what national governments decide,” Park Won Soon told DeSmog Canada.

“We need to act quickly, we need to act energetically,” the mayor said.

China’s megacities are also joining ICLEI. At the congress, Hailong Li, deputy secretary general of the China Eco-city Council said the country will have 100 low-carbon eco-cities by 2017. That will drive down the costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy, Li said.

China also intends to become an expert on eco-construction and to market its expertise to the rest of the developing world.

By 2030 another 3.5 billion people will be living in cities so it is absolutely critical that the infrastructure be sustainable said Cadman who will continue to be active as special representative to the new ICLEI President.

“I’m 70 now and need to reduce my workload. My wife says she’d like me to be around a bit longer.”

Canadian cities could also do more and sooner if they had the support of provincial and federal governments, he said. That may be changing at the provincial level with growing support for various forms of carbon taxes that will help generate funds and financial incentives to reduce emissions.

“The provinces are doing the heavy-lifting on climate while the Harper government sits on the sidelines.”

Fossil fuels are in decline — divestment is taking off and investments are shifting to renewable energy. There’ll be no pipelines to the West Coast and no new investments in the oilsands, Cadman said.

Even in B.C., the hoped-for markets for LNG may not exist with China building gas pipelines to tap reserves in Iran and Russia, he said.

“Canada needs to move away from selling raw resources, but is any political party ready to go there?”

Image Credit: David Cadman and Park Won Soon at the World Congress 2015. By Stephen Leahy.

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A side event at the UNFCCC COP20 climate negotiations in Lima, Peru was disrupted Monday when climate activists and individuals representing communities on the frontlines of energy development flooded the presentation hall and staged a ‘walk out’ on fossil fuels.

The event was hosted by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and the Global CCS Institute and featured Lord Nicholas Stern and David Hone, Shell’s chief climate advisor, as speakers.

The talk, originally entitled “Why Divest from Fossil Fuels When a Future with Low Emission Fossil Fuel Energy Use is Already a Reality?,” was inexplicably renamed “How Can we Reconcile Climate Targets with Energy Demand Growth” and focused on the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a technological solution to carbon emissions that cause global warming.

A citizen group formed outside the venue holding a banner that read “get fossil fuels out of COP” and used the acronym CCS to spell out “Corporate Capture ≠ Solution.”

Civil society groups gather outside a fossil fuel sponsored event discussing carbon capture and storage. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

The protest was designed to “defend our rights from these companies and corporations that are attacking our people,” Ana Maytik Avirama, from the Corporate Europe Observatory Foundation, told a crowd gathered outside the presentation pavilion.

“We need to keep the fossil fuel lobby out of these negotiations, out of our governments and out of the decisions that are trying to protect our livelihoods and our lives,” she said.

Godwin Uyi Ojo, executive director of environmental rights action in Nigeria attended the action to protest Shell’s presence at the climate negotiations.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

Godwin Uyi Ojo speaks to a crowd gathered outside the IETA event. "Leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, the tar sands in the sand," he said. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

“Shell is in that conference promoting dirty energy. They say dirty energy has a place in the future…what you see there is greenwashing. That’s why people are so angry at Shell. We are tired of these antics.”

Bronwen Tucker, a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation said the event, which was sponsored by Shell and Chevron, was designed to discredit grassroots fossil fuel divestment campaigns and tout CCS as a climate solution.

“CCS has been labeled the unicorn of the climate change world because instead of taking emissions out of the atmosphere it would just store them, but it’s an unproven technology that’s prohibitively expensive, much more expensive than renewable energy and other solutions that have been put forward,” she said, adding the event is emblematic of a long-term problem at COP of fossil fuel industry influence in the climate decision-making process.

Bronwen Tucker from the Canadian Youth Delegation told DeSmog CCS is an "unproven technology" that directs investment funds away from renewable energy. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute of Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, told DeSmog CCS has the potential to play a huge role in climate action.

“We have to take 50 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent now, globally, down to about zero by the end of this century.”

“We’ve not got many options. And in my view energy efficiency can do the half of it, and the more it does, the better,” Stern said, adding renewables will play a major role as well as some nuclear.

Lord Nicholas Stern discusses CCS with DeSmog Canada. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

“The rest will have to be CCS. That’s all we’ve got. The problem is so big and so important that we’ve got to do all we can.”

He added that CCS removes particulates in dirty emissions coming from sources of energy like oil and, especially, coal.

“The climate emissions we produce now kill people down the track,” Stern said. “Particulates…are killing people now on a major scale. We’ve got to deal with both of them and CCS does both of them.”

According to a report recently put out by the New Carbon Economy, particulate matter from the burning of fossil fuels contributes to both lung and heart disease. According to the World Health Organization particulate pollution plays a substantial role in nearly 4 million premature deaths each year that are attributed to outdoor pollution.

Stern acknowledged there is some uncertainty associated with the technology but he added “you’ve got to pursue all the options because some are going to do better than others and you can’t tell for sure what those are going to be. From the point of view of managing risk, it makes sense to go after more than one [solution].”

Mike Monea, president of the carbon capture and storage initiatives for SaskPower, Saskatchewan’s main power provider, also attended the event to talk about CCS viability in the wake of Boundary Dam, the world’s first coal plant retrofitted with carbon sequestration technology. The project went live in October 2014.

Carbon capture and storage infographic from SaskPower.

Monea argued CCS technology is no longer in question and should play a critical role in the new climate era. And although Monea highlighted the positive climate effects of CCS usage, the position of SaskPower is that CCS “is making a viable technical, environmental and economic case for the continued use of coal.”

Saskatchewan local, Megan Van Buskirk, a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation said the $1.35 billion Boundary Dam project won’t do much at all to address climate change.

“There are lots of issues involved with that project in terms of its reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, for example, SaskPower which is a monopoly in Saskatchewan – which owns that power plant – their emissions are 15 million tonnes per year and that storage facility is only reducing their emissions by 1 million tonnes.”

Van Buskirk adds that SaskPower already has a plan to sell much of that captured carbon to Cenovus Energy for enhanced oil and gas recovery.

“So we see that issue there where we’re touting this as a solution to climate change but really we’re using it to extract more oil and gas which will ultimately mean more greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

“We really believe this is a false solution to climate change.”

Brad Page, the CEO of the Global CCS Institute, said he feels CCS is a necessity if we’re going to meet global climate targets. He points to the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges CCS will play a role in preventing carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. 

He added negative public perception is due to a lack of understanding – something industry needs to remedy.

“At a very simple level, CCS puts carbon dioxide back underground where it came from. Many of the people I talk to think CCS is putting carbon into big caverns or something. It’s in fact back into the porous spaces in rocks that the oil and gas originally came from. So it’s actually not a threat.”

Page did not speak to concerns that failed CCS projects could re-release carbon back into the atmosphere.

He added, “I think that environmental groups are really from their heart concerned about continuing the use of fossil fuels and I think many of them want to actually see CCS take off and prove that it can actually be one of those viable technologies.”

Page pointed to Boundary Dam as an example of viable CCS and said there are about four more projects underway in their early construction stages.

“By 2050 though, with the sort of climate targets we’ve got we can’t achieve those emission outcomes without all the technology. Renewables are really important in this, as it energy efficiency. Nuclear is a fairly unloved duckling as well, but it’s going to be needed. And so is CCS.”

“I don’t see that there’s another option here.”

Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy and chief scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said we’ve “dallied so long on moving toward aggressive emissions reductions that we really need to explore every possible opportunity to constrain emissions below 2 degrees C.”

Frumhoff added efficiency and renewables may not be enough in themselves to limit warming to that 2 degree level.

“Therefore we need to consider other technologies including some that some of us might not love and that may themselves pose some risks. But we’re simply not at a point where we can ignore the much greater climate risks of going above 2 degrees C.”

But for Tucker, the conversation about CCS at the ongoing UNFCCC climate talks should not be dominated by industry.

“It would be the same as having tobacco companies at a conference on lung cancer. There’s a clear conflict. They already have so much sway outside of discussions like this. There’s no room for companies to be holding official UN events."

Jamie Henn from the climate advocacy group 350.org described CCS as a "smokescreen."

"The fossil fuel industry can run from divestment, but they can't hide from the reality that 80 per cent of their reserves need to stay underground. Here in Lima, world leaders are finally talking about targets that are in the realm of what's needed, namely going to zero carbon by 2050. If we're going to meet that goal, we need to start now. If Big Oil wants to research CCS, fine, but that shouldn't distract us from the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels and towards 100 per cent renewable energy." 

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Rich G20 nations are spending about $88 billion (USD) each year to find new coal, oil and gas reserves even though most reserves can never be developed if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, according to a new report.

Generous government subsidies are actually propping up fossil fuel exploration which would otherwise be deemed uneconomic, states the report, “The fossil fuel bail-out: G20 subsidies for oil, gas and coal exploration.”

Produced by the London-based Overseas Development Institute and the Washington-based Oil Change International the 73-page analysis also noted the costs of renewables is falling and the investment returns are better than fossil fuels.  

“Every U.S. dollar in renewable energy subsidies attracts $2.5 in investment, whilst a dollar in fossil fuels subsidies only draws $1.3 of investment,” said the report released Tuesday, just days ahead of the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane, Australia.

The report also notes the G20 nations are creating a ‘triple-lose’ scenario by providing subsidies for fossil-fuel exploration.

“They are directing large volumes of finance into high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without catastrophic climate effects,” the report said. “They are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power. And they are undermining the prospects for an ambitious climate deal in 2015.”

Noting that leaders of the G20 countries, which produce about 80 per cent of global carbon emissions, pledged in 2009 to phase out ‘inefficient’ fossil-fuel subsidies, the report says there is a large gap between G20 commitment and action.

So who is paying for this exploration?

According to the report $49 billion of these subsidies occurred through state-owned enterprises, $23 billion from national subsidies delivered through direct spending and tax breaks and $16 billion from public finance from banks and financial institutions.

During the same period, the report said, the top 20 private oil and gas companies, globally, invested just $37 billion in exploration – less than half of what is provided annually by G20 governments – suggesting their exploration activities are highly dependent on public finance.  

The report added global fossil fuel subsidies — of which exploration is just one portion — are estimated to be $775 billion a year. 

Key findings in the report show that the U.S. provided some $5.1 billion in national subsidies to fossil fuel exploration in 2013 – almost double the level in 2009.

Australia, meanwhile, is providing $3.5 billion for the development of offshore and inland fossil-fuel resources and Russia is provides $2.4 billion in national subsidies for fossil fuel exploration.

The report noted the Canadian government offers a wide array of national subsidies that total a minimum of $928 million annually to encourage fossil fuel exploration, including tax benefits for nearly all exploration activities.  

“Despite the widespread perception that renewables are costly, our research reveals that finding new fossil fuel reserves is costing nearly $88 billion in exploration subsidies across the G20,” the Overseas Development Institute’s Shelagh Whitley said. “Scrapping these subsidies would begin to create a level playing field between renewables and fossil fuel energy.”  

Oil Change International’s director Stephen Kretzmann said “five years ago, G20 governments pledged to both phase out fossil fuel subsidies and take action to limit climate change. Immediately ending exploration subsidies is the clearest next step on both fronts.”

The report recommended governments should price carbon to reflect the social, economic and environmental damage associated with climate change, and reduce emissions to levels compatible with the globally agreed 2oC target.

It also recommended that G20 nations should immediately phase out exploration subsidies as a first step towards a wider fossil-fuel subsidy phase out and reform.

In addition, it said governments should transfer subsidies from exploration and other fossil-fuel subsidies to support for the transition to low-carbon development and universal energy access.

On the same day the report was published, a number of high-profile economists said in a letter to a number of newspapers that governments should end fossil fuel subsidies and galvanize international action on climate change.

“Given that two-thirds of currently known reserves cannot be exploited if the world is to remain within the internationally agreed 2º Centigrade threshold, this is a bad investment for tax-payers and the planet,” said the economists. “Fossil fuel subsidies turn upside down the logic of effective action on climate.”  


Religious leaders in Australia, according to a story published Wednesday, said “world leaders must move towards a renewable energy future or there will be human suffering on an unthinkable scale.”  

Anglican Church Bishop Professor Stephen Pickard was quoted as saying there is overwhelming scientific evidence about the impact of unchecked climate change.

“To our very great shame, unthinking economic growth has become the great treasure,” Pickard said. “It has captured our hearts. It has captured our pockets. It has blinded us to the wellbeing of the planet.”

Under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, coal-rich Australia, described as “being the developed world’s worst polluter per head of population,” repealed the nation’s carbon tax earlier this year.

Image Credit: Stop sign in the oilsands region. Photo by Kris Krug.

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