B.C. walks a tightrope
LNG at odds with plans for environment
VICTORIA — Like the underground shale gas that Premier Christy Clark says will pave the way to a debt-free future, British Columbia appears caught between a rock and a hard place in balancing its hunger for a burgeoning liquefied natural gas industry and meeting its ambitious 2007 greenhouse gas pollution-reduction targets.
If there is a definitive plan in place, the government isn’t laying it out yet: Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman says the Liberals’ LNG economic plan, which includes a tax structure developed with industry consultation, should be complete within the next 30 days. It won’t be introduced to the legislature until next year.
Environment Minister Mary Polak says similar LNG environmental negotiations are underway, of which she indicates the options are limited. She is refusing to fully elaborate.
But a process of elimination indicates B.C. will rely heavily on carbon offsets to meet its environmental goals.
That means even if the actual pollution dumped into the atmosphere increases, rather than declines, B.C. will still be able to say the targets have been met because of the discounts offered by requiring industry to financially support environmentallyfriendly initiatives to fight global warming.
Still, even if the offsets enable B.C. to claim it has met its pollution targets — targets trumpeted at the time as being among the most stringent in North America — the emissions levels Canada must report to the United Nations will tell a different story.
Those numbers are reported without the discounts of offsets and they are numbers environmentalists predict will rival the emissions of neighbouring Alberta’s oilsands industry. Even without the introduction of LNG plants, environmentalists argue, B.C. is already on its way to missing its legislated targets.
“There are only two ways to reduce emissions, you either actually reduce them or you find means of mitigation and many times that’s through offsets,” said Polak.
“We know many B.C. companies are carbon neutral ... but it’s not because they have no emissions. It’s because they purchase offsets.”
Besides offsets, the government could reach the targets by taking its foot off the pedal on its ambitious LNG development goals.
That’s clearly not going to happen: Clark’s Liberal government says it wants to build the cleanest LNG industry in the world and continues to repeat election-campaign statements that B.C.’s natural gas will scrub clean China’s coal-darkened skies.
In the beginning, the Liberals pledged three LNG plants: Now, the proposal is for five to seven.
The government could back away from the targets committing it to cut greenhouse gas emissions 33 per cent by 2020 — targets created under a different Liberal government, before Clark’s aggressive push toward a liquefied natural gas industry and all the extra emissions it is bound to create.
The government has refused to say it will do that, but it has left the door open.
A government official, on background, says the targets are just that: targets. If they aren’t met, government will simply try harder to meet them next time. Much like balanced budget legislation, the official says, there are no penalties for not meeting the goal.
Environmentalists and noted climate scientists, including Green party MLA Andrew Weaver and Simon Fraser University’s Mark Jaccard, who both consulted for the Liberals on the climate targets law in 2007, have already repeatedly said the province isn’t going to meet its pollution reduction targets.
“It’s certainly our goal,” says Coleman without committing to actually doing it.
“There may be some challenges around that,” he says in an interview shortly after returning from Asia where he toured an LNG plant in Malaysia and met with executives from Petronas, the Malaysian energy company planning a $36 billion LNG investment near Prince Rupert.
“We’re going to have the highest environmental standards that there are and we’re going to have the cleanest industry that there is in the world as well.”
A third option to require the industry to explore other emission reduction techniques that could involve storing carbon emissions underground is appealing, but the technology is in its infancy and no one expects B.C. can rely on it in the short-term.
“You could potentially require certain technologies be employed,” Polak said. “You could require cer- tain purchase of offsets, but all of that is subject to negotiations, discussions, in much the same way as having the discussions now with taxation policy.”
So that leaves offsets as the most likely way to allow British Columbia to meet or at least reach for its emission goals.
The B.C. government has not stated publicly what it expects its greenhouse gas emissions to be from the proposed LNG plants. But Clean Energy Canada examined a similar LNG plant under construction in Australia and concluded B.C. LNG facilities can expect to emit about one tonne of carbon pollution for every tonne of LNG produced.
Clean Energy Canada estimates that will work out to 36 million tonnes of carbon pollution for the initially-proposed three LNG plants in the Kitimat area.
Prof. James Tansey is a business professor at the University of B.C. who is also the chief executive and founder of Vancouver-based Offsetters, a global carbon-management company that helps organizations and individuals understand, reduce and offset their climate impact.
He says he expects the government to introduce regulations that will require the natural gas companies to purchase the offsets as a cost of doing business in B.C.
“The companies will have to do it,” said Tansey. “People don’t like offsets in general, but it’s really the only way to say those millions of tonnes of extra emissions from running the LNG facilities can be addressed. If you don’t do that, then they’re going to appear as a black mark on the carbon accounts of the province.”