The Ontario Energy Board’s approval of three natural gas projects last week puts the province’s plans to significantly reduce Ontario’s carbon footprint in jeopardy.

The ruling also gives Ontario the green light to import controversial shale gas from the U.S. This type of gas is trapped in rock-like shale and is extracted using a process called hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, which involves pumping a chemical mix underground at high temperatures to break apart the rock and free the gas. The practice has caused controversy worldwide due to fracking chemicals and methane contaminating drinking water.

“So often we see approvals given to pipeline and fossil fuel projects without a real understanding of the broader and long-term impacts on climate, water and public health,” says Emma Lui, a water campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

The interdependent projects — two by Union Gas and one from Enbridge Gas — will expand the natural gas supply and delivery network in southern Ontario. Consuming more natural gas, particularly a more polluting form of natural gas, are direct contradictions with the province’s strong greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.

“Energy conservation is the lowest cost method to keep our homes warm. It creates jobs and reduces our greenhouse gas emissions and energy bills,” Jack Gibbons, director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, told DeSmog Canada in an interview.

Burning natural gas to heat homes and produce electricity accounts for 35 per cent of Ontario’s energy-related carbon footprint. Ontario plans to achieve a 15 per cent reduction in the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and a reduction of 80 per cent by 2050 (based on 1990 levels).

“Buildings are the third largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the province, making it important to save as much energy in heating them as possible,” Gillian McEachern, campaigns director of Environmental Defence, told DeSmog Canada. “Conservation needs to be a requirement before companies are given approval to expand infrastructure."

Environmental Defence, Council of Canadians and the Ontario Clean Air Alliance all found the Ontario Energy Boards’s decision a “disappointment.” They also disputed the need for the project because the alternatives were not properly considered.

The energy board criticized Enbridge Gas for only taking a “cursory” look at energy conservation as an alternative to its project, known as the GTA project. In the future, the board “expects applicants to provide a more rigorous examination of demand side alternatives, including rate options, in all gas leave to construct applications.”

Ontario Clean Air Alliance estimates Ontario could save $1.4 billion over 10 years if spending on energy conservation is increased. Installing more insulation and high-efficiency windows in homes, replacing aging furnaces with new models and switching to geothermal energy for space and water heating are just some of the ways of achieving these savings.

Ontario Needs To Increase Incentives For Energy Conservation

Ontario provides financial incentives for Enbridge Gas and Union Gas — Ontario’s main natural gas distributors — to invest in energy conservation, but only to a point.

The Ontario Energy Board has put a cap on gas companies surpassing their energy conservation targets — meaning the financial rewards stop once a company exceeds its conservation targets by more than 50 per cent.

The caps on financial rewards for energy conservation are “penny wise and pound foolish” and do not benefit Ontario according to Ontario Clean Air Alliance. The organization recommends the energy board remove the caps “subject to the constraint that this must not lead to undue rate increases” for Ontarians.

Pinning Ontario’s Energy Future on Fracked Gas Is Precarious At Best

During the public hearings on the gas projects, the Council of Canadians, one of Canada’s leading water advocacy groups, argued pinning Ontario’s energy future on U.S. shale gas was precarious at best.

Three reports from U.S. experts provided by the Council of Canadians indicated upcoming bans and moratoriums on fracking and gas wells nearing the end of their lives will make importing fracked gas less economical for Ontario in the future. This could increase energy costs for Ontarians in the end.

“While the image of tap water on fire has become iconic about the risks of fracking shale gas, the climate impacts are less understood,” says Andrea Harden-Donahue, a climate and energy campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

Fracking wells leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The world’s leading scientific body on climate issues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, estimates methane has 84 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The Ontario Energy Board appeared unmoved by the argument against using fracked shale gas:

“There are currently no regulations in Ontario or at the Canadian federal level which prohibit shale gas production or transportation.”

Quebec, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have all placed moratoriums on fracking.

Ontario Energy Board Decision Clears A Hurdle for Energy East Oil Pipeline

TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline proposal could benefit from Ontario’s decision to import large quantities of U.S. shale gas.

Part of the pipeline project to ship western Canadian oil to New Brunswick involves converting a natural gas pipeline running from Alberta to Ontario. Ontario receives almost half its natural gas through this particular pipeline system at the moment.

The prospect of Ontario losing a source of natural gas prompted the Ontario government to announce an assessment of the Energy East project on its costs and benefits for Ontarians. 

Now that Ontario will be able to tap into the booming shale gas industry of the U.S. the provincial government’s scrutiny of Energy East may not be that severe.

“The OEB decision helps lay the groundwork for Energy East,” Harden-Donahue told DeSmog Canada. “This is bad news all around for the region which could have the biggest tarsands pipeline snacking through it and be increasingly reliant on socially and environmentally damaging fracked gas imports."

Image Credit: Allen York, OCAA, OEB, Fracking Resources

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The days of cheap abundant natural gas from US shale gas ‘fracking’ operations are most likely numbered, three experts testified before the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). Far better for Ontario to increase energy efficiency and look elsewhere to meet its natural gas needs.

“If (US and state) governments respond with effective regulatory and economic measures to the environmental challenges facing the shale gas industry, the cost of shale development will certainly rise, and in some cases is likely to become uneconomic,” says Lisa Sumi, one of the three experts and a environmental consultant, in a recent report The Regulation of Shale Gas Development: State of Play.

Ontario’s gas distributors Enbridge Gas and Union Gas want to expand the Greater Toronto Area’s natural gas delivery network and import natural gas from the surging shale gas industry in the US northeast (primarily the Marcellus shale and Utica shale gas reserves).

“The first step in any energy strategy should be looking for ways to conserve energy, not increase energy consumption,” Mark Calzavara, Ontario-Quebec organizer for the Council of Canadians, told DeSmog Canada.

Lisa Sumi, along with geoscientist David Hughes, and Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, professor of engineering at Cornell University warned the OEB importing US shale gas will increase Ontarians’ household heating costs in the future. And using shale gas from fracking operations will put more global warming greenhouse gases (GHG) into the planet’s atmosphere.

“The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming,” says Ingraffea in his report.

Fracking Has Dirtied Natural Gas’ Clean Energy Name

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking to get access to unconventional sources of natural gas like shale gas involves digging underground wells 200 to 3,000 meters vertically and another 1,000 meters or more horizontally to penetrate the rock-like shale. Pressurized water laced with toxic chemicals is shot down the well to break apart the shale and push the natural gas to the surface.

Poorly constructed or cracked fracking wells have led to fracking chemicals and methane (natural gas is mainly methane) contaminating drinking water. A study of 141 drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania (home to the Marcellus shale) published last June found 82% of water samples taken within a kilometer of fracking wells contained levels of methane six times higher than samples more than a kilometer from fracking wells. 

Fracking operations also leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading scientific body on climate issues, methane has 84 times more global warming potential over twenty years than carbon dioxide.

“This does not justify the continued use of either oil or coal, but rather demonstrates that substituting shale gas for these other fossil fuels may not have the desired effect of mitigating climate warming,” concludes Cornell's Ingraffea.

Ingraffea was named one of TIME Magazine’s “People Who Mattered” in 2011 for his research on methane emissions from shale gas. A study published last August by the US’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicates fracking wells may leak anywhere between 6 – 12% of the methane they produce. A 2% methane leakage rate is already too much according to the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

These ‘fugitive emissions’ from fracking operations remain largely unreported or under reported by the gas industry as DeSmog Canada revealed in an exposé on British Columbia’s gas industry last May.

Shale Gas is Becoming Uneconomical

“U.S. supply growth assumptions made by Enbridge and Union Gas are overly optimistic at the natural gas prices assumed,” wrote geoscientist Hughes in his critical report on the GTA project.

Hughes has spent four decades studying energy resources, and says many of the projections for the US shale gas industry are overblown.

“Four of five shale gas plays comprising 80% of shale gas production in the U.S. are in or near decline,” states Hughes.

Fracking wells tend to produce a lot of natural gas in the first three years, but then head into a steep production decline afterwards. Hard-to-access shale gas is expensive to produce and reduced supplies of shale gas will increase the price of natural gas coming from the US.

The Pushback Against Fracking

According to environmental consultant Sumi, the US is introducing regulations that are slowing the production of shale gas and making it less economic for producers. Sixty bans and one-hundred and twelve moratoriums on fracking have been introduced in New York alone, which is part of the Marcellus shale.

Public pushback against fracking in the US alone could make shale gas uneconomical. And the bans and moratoriums go beyond New York.

France and Bulgaria have banned fracking and Germany has been very hesitant to endorse the method. Quebec’s moratorium on fracking is still in place and indigenous and non-indigenous residents of New Brunswick have locked horns with their government to stop fracking exploration in their province.

Fracking has created a new type of environmental movement that has brought rural farmers and environmentally conscious urbanites together. In pro-mining countries such as South Africa and Australia the fracking industry has come up against surprisingly stiff public opposition in the Treasure the Karoo and Lock the Gate movements.

On October 19th, the second annual Global Frackdown will be held “to challenge fracking” worldwide. Last year’s Global Frackdown took place in over 200 communities in twenty countries.

Ontario may be betting on the wrong horse by locking their energy future into ‘frack gas’ imports to warm the homes of the most populous province of Canada.

Image credit: Global Frackdown, Fracking Resources, Council of Canadians

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