The B.C. government has quietly released its response to an independent scientific panel’s report on hydraulic fracturing as it ushers in a fracking boom to supply the LNG Canada project with unconventional gas.

Notably absent from the government’s news release — posted on its website Thursday but strangely not sent out to media — is any commitment to investigate the human health impacts of fracking in the province’s northeast.

The issue was flagged by Dawson Creek doctors as a potential cause for concern after they saw patients with symptoms they could not explain, including nosebleeds, respiratory illnesses and rare cancers, as well as a surprising number of glioblastomas, a malignant brain cancer.

The independent scientific review did not include an examination of the public health implications of fracking, in keeping with the government’s quiet assurance to the industry lobby group Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that the hot button issue would not be included in the panel’s mandate.

Even so, the panel found that fracking entails numerous unknown risks to human health and the environment.

Panel members cautioned the severity of those risks is unknown due to a lack of data, noting they were not aware of any health-related studies being conducted in northeast B.C., which is already covered with thousands of fracking wells, including in the middle of communities and on farmland.

‘Highly toxic compounds’

B.C. Green Party environment critic Sonia Furstenau pointed out that other jurisdictions around the world have identified human health impacts as a reason for banning fracking.

“We know that the mix of chemicals being used and being pumped into the ground include highly toxic compounds and we should absolutely be determining what any impacts are to human health,” Furstenau told The Narwhal.

“There’s no way these kinds of things should be proceeding without that information.”

The government’s decision to proceed with fracking and liquefied natural gas development is “deeply troubling,” Furstenau said.

B.C. Green Party environment critic Sonia Furstenau.

The fracked gas will be shipped through TransCanada’s new Coastal GasLink pipeline to Kitimat, where it will be cooled in massive compressors to minus 162 degrees Celsius, the point at which gas turns into liquid and becomes easier to transport in ocean tankers. LNG Canada will burn its own natural gas for the energy-intensive compression process, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas pollution.

The LNG Canada project will emit 3.45 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the provincial government, which promised the cleanest LNG in the world even though claims of “clean LNG” have been thoroughly debunked.

The project’s emissions will represent more than one-quarter of B.C.’s legislated targets for carbon pollution in 2050, set at about 13 megatonnes a year.

“This should alarm all British Columbians,” Furstenau said, pointing out that climate change is already causing drought and forest fires across the province, including in the northeast.

On June 18, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission ordered cutbacks to water diversions at northeast oil and gas operations due to drought. That follows a statement to the expert panel from a commission representative that the past 10 years in the northeast have been drier than usual, at a time that fracking operations are using substantial amounts of water.

“The government doesn’t seem to want to address the fundamental problem at the centre of this,” Furstenau said.

“They’ve not only approved but massively subsidized an LNG industry that will require a massive increase to fracking in northeast B.C. — and a massive increase to the amount of water that would go into those fracking operations.”

“You cannot make sense of what the evidence and the data is showing and the response and decisions from government. It’s like they are operating in entirely different universes.”

Furstenau said the government “continues to try to justify a project that will increase emissions, as well as risk contaminating community drinking water, and endangering human health.”

The expert scientific panel found that baseline data and the ongoing monitoring of surface water and groundwater quantity in the northeast was insufficient.

“In the view of the B.C. ministry of health expert who presented to the panel, current water quality sampling (i.e. the private wells study) is not being carried out to screen for potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing fluids and wastewater on drinking water,” the panel concluded.

Close to 100 unauthorized dams used to impound water for fracking operations have been identified in B.C. All have been built on private lands within the Agricultural Land Reserve. This photo shows a dam near the Pine River in Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Expert panel flagged leaking fracking ponds as cause for concern

The panel also found a “profound absence of knowledge” about the presence and migration of fracking fluids — a proprietary mix of chemicals — below the ground.

Dissolved arsenic was found to be the main health-based constituent of concern, with about 30 per cent of samples exceeding the maximum allowable concentration guideline. The panel noted that higher arsenic levels could potentially occur in unfiltered groundwater.

The panel also categorized the potential for leaks from fracking containment ponds as “moderate to high,” based on the fact that two of four decommissioned ponds were found to have leaked.

Following the panel’s report, The Narwhal revealed that a large fracking pond nearly 400 kilometres north of Fort St. John is leaking. The pond is filled with 113,000 cubic metres of sludge and water that may be contaminating soil and groundwater through a leak in its outer lining, according to the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission.

The pond was owned by Ranch Energy Corporation, a Calgary-based company that went into receivership last year leaving 700 gas wells in B.C. and a sea of debt. Ranch was one of three fracking companies operating in B.C. that went belly-up last year, with taxpayers ultimately on the hook for clean-up costs that far exceed an oil and gas commission fund.

About 60 per cent of the gas for the LNG facility will come from new fracking in B.C.’s northeast —  a boreal region rich in biodiversity that is home to endangered woodland caribou and many other species vulnerable to extinction.

B.C. government says it will map aquifers and observe groundwater

In its uncirculated news release, the B.C. government says it will install new groundwater observation wells near Fort Nelson, complete mapping of 55 aquifers and install hydrometric monitoring systems to gather information about surface water in collaboration with First Nations.

The government also says it will implement an outreach and education initiative for affected landowners and fracking dam owners in the northeast and map zones “that are likely to experience greater ground motion from seismic events.”

Furstenau noted the expert panel’s report warned of serious regulatory infractions, water contamination and a lack of information, oversight and monitoring, all of which “make it nearly impossible to evaluate the current state of our water and air quality.”

“It’s too risky,” she said.

The government news release said a working group has been established to address the panel’s 97 recommendations.

Working group members include staff from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, the ministry of energy, mines and petroleum resources, the ministry of environment and climate change strategy and the ministry of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development.

The working group will provide Energy Minister Michelle Mungall with an update by the end of this year.

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The electricity created by the controversial Site C dam — long touted for producing enough electricity for 450,000 homes — could end up powering natural gas fracking operations in northeast B.C.

The Prince George Citizen reported on Wednesday that for the first time BC Hydro is considering Site C as a power source for its proposed Peace Region Electrical Supply project, a major transmission line project in northeast B.C.

If the Site C dam gets built (it’s currently facing several legal challenges) and BC Hydro moves forward with the proposed route for the transmission line, natural gas drillers between Dawson Creek and Chetwynd could plug directly into the grid.

The Citizen reports that Hydro expects the transmission project won’t be in service until 2022, making Site C — set for completion in 2025 — a viable option.

The subject of what Site C’s power is required for has spurred intense debate. Some have argued that the dam is needed to power B.C.’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. However, a DeSmog Canada investigation last year indicated that was unlikely to be the case due to timing and transmission constraints.

This week’s news, however, indicates Site C’s power could be used to produce the gas the province plans to export via LNG plants.

"It’d always been in the back of the mind that Site C was possible, but until it got approved it wasn't something we were looking into in a great amount of detail," BC Hydro spokesperson Lesley Wood told the Prince George Citizen.

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, the Site C dam is the most expensive public project in B.C. history. Because it's being proposed by a crown corporation, the costs will ultimately be borne by taxpayers and BC Hydro customers. If built, the dam will flood an 83-kilometre stretch of the fertile Peace Valley.

Work has already started to upgrade power lines in the Groundbirch area east of Dawson Creek, where the province has been experiencing the "most dramatic single-industry driven regional load growth BC Hydro has ever seen," Wood told the Citizen.

The natural gas is located in the Montney Play region, which contains unconventional tight gas and shale gas. The gas is accessed through a process called hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — which involves blasting a mixture of water and chemicals underground to fracture the rock formation and release the gas.

A fracking study released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found fracking puts drinking water supplies at risk of contamination. Further, exporting LNG will not help combat climate change, according to a report from the Pembina Institute last year. A report in Nature last year also found cheap abundant natural gas will delay efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Site C is facing growing opposition, despite BC Hydro hoping to start construction in July.

In May, a U.S. energy economist said the power from the dam is dramatically more costly than previously thought.

Earlier this year, the chair of the joint review panel that reviewed the Site C dam told DeSmog Canada that the province should have waited on making a decision to go ahead with the project. Chair Harry Swain also called the province’s failure to investigate alternatives a “dereliction of duty.”

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A film about a B.C. indigenous leader torn between two worlds as his people grapple with the impact of hydraulic fracturing on their territory will premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto Tuesday night.

Fractured Land follows Caleb Behn, a young Dene lawyer, as he navigates the conflicts on his physical terrain — where fracking is taking its toll on his land and water in northeastern B.C. — and the conflicts within himself as he struggles to reconcile his traditions with the modern world.

Filmmakers Fiona Rayher and Damien Gillis followed Behn for four years, capturing hundreds of hours of footage of him on his territory, at law school in Vancouver and even consulting with New Zealand’s Maori people, who are also under siege by the fracking industry.

Fractured Land is less an environmental film and more an intense personal tale of Behn’s struggle to come to grips with complex issues such as fracking, resource politics and Canada’s colonial legacy.

The tension is illustrated most clearly by the contrast of Behn’s parents — his mother is a high-ranking oil and gas officer trying to make change from the inside and his father is a residential school survivor and staunch environmentalist.

Fractured Land Official Trailer from Fractured Land on Vimeo.

Behn has blended those two influences to become a young man who sports a Mohawk and tattoos beneath his business suit. In the film, he sits down with Janet Annesley, the former vice president of communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. It’s a scene that makes you wriggle in your seat, but it results in one of the film’s more poignant moments when Annesley drops this line: “I think to some degree we are all fractured within ourselves.”

With B.C.’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export dreams, those fractures are only set to grow for Behn. The gas intended for export would be derived through fracking on his land, which involves drilling deep underground and then fracturing the rock via a blast of high-pressure water, sand and chemicals. The emissions from fracking and LNG plants threaten to triple B.C.’s carbon footprint — rivalling the Alberta oilsands — but the industry also provides jobs for Behn's people.

The documentary avoids becoming another enviro film about emissions statistics or scary fracking tales and charts a different, more universal storyline about, as Behn puts it, “how to best use our heartbeats.”

Hot Docs Screenings

– Tuesday, April 28 at 9 p.m., Tiff Bell Lightbox

– Thursday, April 30 at 2:30 p.m., Scotiabank Theatre

– Saturday, May 2 at 4 p.m., Scotiabank Theatre

The film will have its broadcast premiere on CBC’s Documentary channel later this year.

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Part 1 of DeSmog Canada’s exclusive sit-down interview with Harry Swain, the man who chaired the panel tasked with reviewing BC Hydro’s Site C dam, sparked a firestorm of activity on Tuesday.

Energy Minister Bill Bennett responded to Swain’s critique in the Globe and Mail, the B.C. NDP issued a statement on Swain’s comments and an environmental law expert called the statements “unprecedented.”

Martin Olszynski, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary, said Swain’s comments are extremely rare.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that a panel member has spoken about a previous report in this manner,” Olszynski, an expert in environmental assessment, said. “To my knowledge, it’s unprecedented.”

The concerns Swain raises are not unusual though, Olszynski pointed out.

“The course of actions taken by the B.C. and federal governments in this case are not atypical,” he said. “They very often will ignore, or pay only lip service to, the recommendations of their expert panels. If you talked to other people who have served on similar panels — if they were willing to talk — they might express similar frustration.”

Geothermal Recommendations for B.C. Ignored …. For 32 Years

Certainly, the issue of recommendations being ignored is a live one in the case of the 1,100-megawatt Site C dam proposed for the Peace River. The dam is facing six legal challenges, including one that alleges that Cabinet erred in dismissing key portions of the joint review panel’s findings on the project.

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But beyond that, one of the key issues the panel raised in its report was the B.C. government’s failure to follow a recommendation to investigate alternatives to the dam, particularly geothermal — a recommendation made 32 years ago by the B.C. Utilities Commission when it first turned down the Site C proposal.

“The province or the province and its wholly owned subsidiary BC Hydro should have taken to heart the admonitions of the utilities commission 32 years ago and done some of the basic work that would allow an industry to develop,” Swain told DeSmog Canada. “But they didn’t do it, so there we are.”

In speaking notes obtained by DeSmog Canada, the province prepares to deflect questions about why it hasn’t pursued geothermal.

“While geothermal energy has a role to play in British Columbia, it has been slow to develop and has not developed the track record to reliably meet today’s growing demand,” read the notes prepared for the government’s Site C announcement in December.

Asked what he makes of that statement, Swain responded: “Dereliction of duty.”

The B.C. government has the principal responsibility for lands and resources under the constitution, Swain said.

“And in that sense, the province owes — in my view — an obligation to the citizens of B.C. to do a lot of basic mapping and exploration,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a major resource industry in this country that didn’t start without governments doing some of the basic work.”

Canada is the only country around the Pacific Ring of Fire that does not produce geothermal power at a commercial scale.

Vast Amount of Data Available From Gas Drillers on Geothermal Potential

In the past three decades, technological advances have led to the discovery of even more geothermal potential in B.C. — including in the Peace Country, where the Site C dam is proposed.

“Up in the Peace, in the very strata that are being drilled for natural gas, there’s a lot of hot water,” Swain said. “Moreover, since the well logs of exploration and drilling companies are supposed to be deposited with the provincial government, there is a vast amount of information available. It was surprising to me that no attempt had been made to exploit that information.”

The challenge is that currently BC Hydro, the province’s crown energy corporation, is forbidden by law to involve itself in projects beyond big hydro and large transmission projects.

“All of the other production stuff is to come from the holy private sector,” Swain said.

To prevent future governments and panels from being “seriously uninformed” again, the panel recommended that, regardless of the decision taken on Site C, BC Hydro establish a research and development budget for the characterization of geographically diverse renewable resources.

“It’s probably fair to say that institutionally Hydro really, really wants to build this,” Swain said. “And that’s perfectly understandable. If you ask the Ford company, ‘what would you like to do?’ they’ll say ‘build cars.’ If you ask Boeing ‘what’s the solution to our transportation problems?’ they’ll say ‘airplanes.’ ”

The Canadian Geothermal Energy Association has argued geothermal can meet B.C.’s future energy needs at a lower cost than Site C with fewer environmental impacts. The association has called for a one-year moratorium on Site C to allow time for further due diligence on geothermal.

The LNG Wild Card: Inconsistency in Province’s Statements

One of the B.C. government’s go-to talking points on Site C has been that the dam is needed to power the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. In a Jan. 30th letter to the Peace River Regional District, Energy Minister Bill Bennett wrote that liquefied natural gas facilities would drive more electricity demand than the Joint Review Panel accounted for in its report (due to an addition error).

Swain says that, although there was an addition error in the report, it doesn’t change the conclusion: demand for the dam wasn’t proven.

“Given skepticism about LNG and about demand elasticity, I see no reason to modify the conclusion,” Swain said. “Frankly, I think their low-demand figure was probably overstated. So far there is no evidence that even their low usage scenario is likely to take place.”

Beyond that, if the province’s original LNG dreams had come to pass as quickly as they’d stated and if the plants had relied on grid electricity (two big ifs), that power would have been needed well ahead of Site C’s in-service date of 2024. A single LNG plant can require as much as 700 megawatts of electricity to run the giant compressors required to cool gas to 163 degrees below zero; at least 10 plants are proposed for B.C.’s coast, but it’s unclear whether any will come to fruition.

“If the initial scenario took place, the power demand would arise a long time before Site C could be built,” Swain said. “There really wasn’t a compatibility between the two statements of the province if you think of one statement about the development of the LNG industry and the second about the timeframe in which Site C was to be built. By their own story, they had an inconsistency.”

Site C Dam ‘No Ordinary Project’

About 20 B.C. local governments have asked the government to send Site C to the B.C. Utilities Commission to further investigate demand and costs — a recommendation made in the panel’s report and echoed by Swain in Part 1 of his interview with DeSmog Canada.

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, Site C would constitute the largest expenditure of public money in B.C. history.

“Site C is not an ordinary project,” the panel wrote in its report.

Swain said British Columbians should pay attention because “it’s going to effect them in the pocket book,” “destroy valuable bits of landscape” and “affect the constitutionally protected rights of First Nations.”

He suggested British Columbians consider the dam in light of the alternatives.

“Have we really pushed conservation and efficiency as far as they can go? And the answer is no,” he said. “What other kinds of generation or energy production are available and what are their costs and benefits?”

Swain called B.C.’s refusal to consider its entitlement under the Columbia River Treaty “inexplicable” and noted the verdict is still out on how British Columbians will react to electricity prices going up 30 per cent in the next three years (demand could decrease, for example).

Ultimately, the way forward needs to be one that considers all the options, not just large hydro dams.

“The province has defined the role of Hydro as being very limited,” Swain said. “If this were not the BC Hydro company, but simply … the ‘energy company’ whose job it was to make sure that demand was satisfied at reasonable prices regardless of source, regardless of who got to build and own, regardless of those kinds of extraneous considerations, we might have a more balanced view.”

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The B.C. government cannot expect support from First Nations for its much-touted liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects if the province insists on steamrolling ahead with the Site C dam, a First Nations chief is warning.

“They want support on LNG, and the level of destruction that is going to bring, and then they want Site C as well. They can’t have them both,” Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nation told DeSmog Canada.

There is no logical reason to have both, Willson added, saying the provincial government has ignored alternatives to Site C, even as the federal Joint Review Panel found there is no immediate need for the power and excess power would be sold at a loss.

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Treaty 8 First Nations in B.C. are vehemently opposed to BC Hydro’s plans to build a third massive dam on the Peace River that would flood more than 5,000 hectares of land, swamp more than 330 recorded archaeological sites and — in direct contravention of the 1899 treaty — destroy land now used for hunting, fishing and collecting medicinal plants.

Initially, some Treaty 8 Tribal Association nations were willing to look at what the B.C. government was offering in terms of mitigation and compensation, but, as more information became available, Willson noted a change in attitude.

“Now everyone is opposed,” he said.

The treaty states First Nations have the right to continue with their way of life “for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow.”

But with massive resource development in the area, the sun, grass and rivers are all at risk and Site C is the final straw, Willson said.

With high levels of methylmercury in fish because of rotting vegetation from the previous two dams, fishing is restricted and ungulates, such as caribou, are being destroyed by the major projects, said Treaty 8 Tribal Association Chief Liz Logan, who has asked the UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya to call on the government of British Columbia to assess cumulative impacts of industrial activity in the area.

A recent study, Passages from the Peace (PDF), by the David Suzuki Foundation and Global Forest Watch Canada found 28,587 kilometres of pipelines, 45,293 kilometres of roads and 116,725 kilometres of seismic lines used for oil and gas exploration within the Peace region.

“We have become the cash register for the province . . . .Now our way of life is going to be interfered with again,” Logan said.

“We are bush people and this is our grocery store, our pharmacy, our school and our church. It still sustains us.”

The treaty is alive, despite damage inflicted on the ecosystem by resource extraction and previous Peace River dams, so the province should think carefully about ramifications of treaty-breaking, Willson said.

The Joint Review Panel agreed the dam will have significant adverse effects on First Nations practices and heritage and that many of those effects cannot be mitigated.

A total of 21 First Nations would be affected if the valley is flooded and, with numerous legal decisions reasserting First Nations’ constitutional rights, there is growing awareness that a court challenge could hold up the $7.9 billion project for years if the province decides this fall to proceed.

First Nations file for judicial review of panel report

This month the Mikisew Cree First Nation, which has nine reserves in northeastern Alberta, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which has eight reserves near the southwestern tip of Lake Athabasca, filed a Federal Court application for a judicial review of the Joint Review Panel report.

The two Treaty 8 First Nations rely on the Peace Athabasca Delta for plant gathering, fishing, hunting and travel through the many lakes and river tributaries and presented evidence at the hearings that showed the Delta is already ecologically stressed, with low water levels affecting wildlife habitat and harvesting.

Any further changes to water levels in the Delta could prevent First Nations from exercising their treaty rights, according to the application, which aims to have some sections of the Joint Review Panel report declared invalid and unlawful, some sections quashed and others referred back to the panel for further consideration.

The application is asking the Federal Court to prohibit the federal and provincial governments from taking any further actions that would allow Site C to proceed until a new report is issued that complies with “principles of procedural fairness.”

BC Hydro spokesman Dave Conway said he could not speculate about the possibility of Site C heading to court.

“However, I can tell you that we aim to fulfill our duty to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate aboriginal groups,” he said.

Logan said the five Treaty 8 nations have not yet voted on whether to go to court, but there are heavy hints that any attempt to build the dam will immediately become entangled in legal battles.

Chief's mandate: 'Oppose this right to the end'

“The only mandate I have right now is to oppose this right to the end. We are going to go back to our people once we hear the decision,” Logan said.

Willson supports the judicial review of the environmental assessment and then, if necessary, a court challenge.

But going to court is expensive, especially when going up against the deep pockets of BC Hydro and the provincial government, he said.

BC Hydro has talked with more than 50 aboriginal groups in hundreds of meetings since 2007 and will continue to look for mitigation measures, Conway said.

“We are committed to providing lasting benefits to aboriginal groups through the construction and operation of the project. In addition, we are negotiating impact benefit agreements with some First Nations where appropriate,” he said.

An impact benefit agreement could mean a lump sum payment, payments over time, cash equivalent benefits or agreements around provincial Crown land, Conway said.

But a major hurdle is the distrust First Nations have for government.

West Moberley First Nation Chief Roland Willson. Credit: Garth Lenz.

“Nothing the B.C. government has done since I have been chief has made me trust that I can believe anything they do,” Willson said.

Logan said she always tries to be hopeful.

“But, unfortunately, in my 16 years of working with this government, I have learned not to really trust what comes out of their mouth,” she said.

Site C likely to get entangled in court challenges

As decision time approaches, other Site C opponents are counting on the power of First Nations.

There is no doubt Treaty 8 nations have a strong case for stopping the dam plans, said Andrea Morison, coordinator of the Peace Valley Environment Association.

“That bodes very well for the campaign and I absolutely expect it would go to court,” Morison said.

However, in the meantime, Peace Valley residents and First Nations are hoping Site C will be rejected and there will be no need for a legal battle.

That will take more pressure from people in southern B.C., Logan said. A petition to stop the Site C dam and save the Peace River Valley has been set up at StopSiteC.org

“We are doing everything we can, along with our environmental friends from down south, to create awareness and tell people ‘it’s coming out of your pocket,’ ” she said.

Photo: Treaty 8 Tribal Chief Liz Logan by Zack Embree.

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Woodfibre LNG in Squamish has announced it will run its proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant off electricity from the B.C. grid, rather than using natural gas  — making it the province’s first LNG producer to commit to do so.

Using electricity to power its cooling compressors will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 80 per cent and decrease local air pollution, according to the company.   “We sought input from the community at an early stage and ‘air quality’ was a top concern,” said Byng Giraud, vice president of corporate affairs for Woodfibre LNG. “Our engineers have now confirmed that going electric is indeed feasible, so the choice is a clear one.”

Woodfibre is a small-scale project about one-tenth of the size of the large projects proposed on B.C.’s north coast.

“It’s setting a great standard for the others to follow,” said Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada. “If B.C. is going to develop an LNG industry then the carbon footprint of the industry has got to be as small as possible.”

Liquefying natural gas involves cooling gas to -162 degrees Celsius, at which point it turns into a liquid and shrinks in volume by 600 times, making it possible to transport on ships. However, this process takes enormous amounts of electricity.

Power company TransAlta estimates electricity demand from LNG facilities in B.C. could total 4,000 MW by 2018 — that’s about four times the power that would be produced by BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam on the Peace River.

"Cleanest LNG in the world:" What does it mean?

In 2012, Premier Christy Clark told a World Economic Forum in China that B.C. has “set a goal to have the cleanest LNG in the world. We want our LNG plants to be principally fueled by renewables."

Rich Coleman, the minister responsible for LNG development, also said in 2012: “We’re trying to stay away as much as possible from having to use gas for power.”

This week, Coleman changed his tune, telling the Globe and Mail: “The cleanest means to me that we will beat any other gas-fired plant in the world.”

“That is Rich Coleman lowering the bar from what Premier Christy Clark and in fact Rich Coleman has said in the past,” Smith said.

She noted that if three of the larger LNG plants up north were to commit to using renewable energy instead of gas, it would reduce carbon pollution by the equivalent of taking three million cars off the road each year.

LNG can be powered by renewables: new study

Clean Energy Canada has argued that B.C. could create 400 more permanent regional jobs (a 45 per cent increase) and cut carbon pollution by a third without undermining competitiveness if it required LNG producers to primarily power their facilities with renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.

Coleman dismissed that idea this week, saying: “The cost to deliver the power [to a large LNG plant] would be so expensive that it would be ridiculous to make the investment.”

Clean Energy Canada disagrees. The group recently commissioned a feasibility study by Navius Research, a consulting company that has worked with the B.C. government, and Steve Davis & Associates, a firm providing British Columbia power developers with advice.

The study found that any LNG facility on B.C.’s North Coast could reliably power its production facilities with renewable energy — affordably and on schedule using established commercial technologies.

The study, to be released next week, also found powering an LNG plant via renewables would reduce carbon pollution by 45 per cent and increase local permanent jobs by 40 per cent.

“What we have modeled is using new renewables from the north coast,” Smith said. “It’s economically feasible and technically feasible. It will add a two per cent cost to the sale of gas, which in the world of gas is negligible."

A poll conducted by NRG Research Group in October 2013 found 91 per cent of British Columbians polled stated it was either “very important” or “somewhat important” that proposed LNG plants maximize their use of renewable energy.

Next week, 1,200 delegates from around the world will be in B.C. for the province’s second annual International LNG in B.C. conference. There are 14 LNG projects proposed for B.C., although only a handful are expected to be built.

Photo: Rich Coleman at revenue-sharing agreements announcement between the province and First Nations by Province of British Columbia

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Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) development in British Columbia could produce 73 million tonnes of carbon pollution per year by 2020, according to the Pembina Institute. This would bring the carbon footprint of LNG development in B.C. to three-quarters as much as that of the oilsands, currently Canada's fastest growing source of climate pollution.

Alison Bailie of the Pembina Institute writes in The Tyee, that the estimate is at the "lower end" of the development scenario required to realize the B.C. government's hopes for annual revenue from LNG exceeding $4 billion. The province would need to produce four to six trillion cubic feet of shale gas per year by 2020 to reach that number.

The scale of that kind of natural gas production would require five to seven LNG facilities and over 10,000 wells with an accompanying network of roads, pipelines, compressors and gas processing plants.

Pembina's estimate for the industry's carbon pollution refers just to LNG production in B.C. This includes pollution from extraction and processing of the gas from shale gas fields, transportation of the gas to LNG facilities on the coast, and liquefaction and storage of the LNG until it is loaded onto carriers (tankers).

The figure doesn't take into account carbon pollution released from burning the natural gas in Asia, which could produce additional carbon pollution exceeding 200 million tonnes a year.

Image: From Pembina Institute infographic titled "British Columbia's LNG Boom."

B.C. has a legally binding target for carbon reduction which requires the province's annual carbon pollution from transportation, buildings, agriculture, forestry and other industry to be below 43 million tonnes by 2020, and below 13 million tonnes by 2050.

If B.C. sticks to its plans for LNG and ends up producing 73 million tonnes of carbon pollution from a single industry, there's little doubt that the province will miss its reduction target. Bailie notes that even Minister of Energy and Mines Rich Coleman, responsible for the province's natural gas development, admitted on CBC's Early Edition that "meeting our [reduction] goals will be a challenge" in the face of LNG development plans.

The B.C. government could, like other governments, choose to simply ignore or alter the reduction targets, or add special accounting for LNG. But with evidence of of the real-world impacts of missing reduction targets building up, including declining fisheries, flooded coastal communities and increasingly vulnerable forests in B.C., ignoring the target seems particularly unwise.

Provincial MLAs will be debating rules for carbon pollution and taxes for LNG development in the upcoming legislative session this month.

As Bailie points out, when it comes to LNG development, there are still options the province could take that wouldn't involve abandoning its climate commitments.

For example, the government could prioritize creating jobs in lower-carbon sectors like clean, renewable energy — a sector that is growing globally. This would reduce the need to expand LNG production for economic growth, and "less LNG development means lower carbon pollution with jobs and GDP growth elsewhere," writes Bailie.

Restricting LNG projects so as to make a smaller carbon footprint, instead of making as many plants as possible, would also significantly reduce the projected carbon pollution levels.

The BC government would also be better equipped to make choices on how to balance LNG projects with climate concerns if it undertook a strategic environmental assessment on LNG development, instead of separate assessments for each proposed project.

Following the success of the provincial carbon tax and establishing an LNG tax could encourage the industry to minimize its carbon pollution. Standards and taxes set by the government could also encourage innovative technology to aid renewable energy goals, such as capturing and storing carbon pollution at shale gas processing plants, writes Bailie.

If LNG development proceeds according to the B.C. government's current plans, it could create a climate challenge on par with the oilsands. But the government still has the option to limit the growth of the natural gas sector and control its carbon emissions, while prioritizing low-carbon job creation in the clean energy sector.

"The implications for our climate must be an important part of those decisions," writes Bailie, because "British Columbians will live with the consequences — whether positive or negative — in the decades to come."

Image Credit: Province of British Columbia / Flickr

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