U of A works to save partnership
German team pulls out over oilsands issues
The University of Alberta is working to revise a research agreement to maintain a crucial $25-million partnership with Germany’s largest scientific organization in the face of controversy over the oilsands environmental record.
Lorne Babiuk, U of A vicepresident of research and cochair of the Helmholtz Alberta Initiative, said he talked to a top German official at the Helmholtz Association Friday and was reassured “both sides want to make this partnership work.”
Only one centre conducting research into tailings ponds in the oilsands decided to end its involvement with the U of A partnership that involves three other research centres under the Helmholtz umbrella, said Babiuk.
About 80 per cent of the partnership remains unaffected and the agreement is being revised to reflect new concerns, he said.
“I’m an optimist. This partnership is a perfect example of international co-operation on research,” said Babiuk, noting that both sides have expanded co-operation from energy into life sciences in the last couple of years. Helmholtz has 18 research centres.
Stefan Joos, executive director of the U of A side of the Helmholtz Alberta Initiative, says the office was “caught by surprise” this week when the Helmholtz environmental research branch in Potsdam decided to halt its research into bitumen upgrading.
Oilsands-derived fuel is controversial in Europe because it produces 10 to 40 per cent more greenhouse gases than fuel from conventional oil, Joos noted.
The U of A received a draft proposal for a future partnership this week and the German researchers “are looking at their future engagement” said Joos.
The research partnership, formed in 2011 with Alberta funds, aims to come up with better ways to upgrade bitumen into heavy oil, find new technology to improve carbon capture, tailings ponds, geothermal energy and material development.
The U of A will make the case many of those research topics are not just related to the oilsands, but will also be helpful to other forms of energy production, said Joos.
Improved techniques for upgrading bitumen could also apply to producing fuel from biomass, and better technology to deal with tailings would apply to all mining waste, said Joos. “So the new processes can be used with other feedstocks, not just bitumen and that was always the purpose.”
The political climate is “very different” in Germany, which is aggressively pursuing renewable energy and ambitious targets to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, said Joos.
“We were informed several weeks ago that there was mounting political pressure on research based on the oilsands,” said Joos.
It’s “hard to speculate” whether the U of A’s case would be strengthened if the province had stronger regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions form the oilsands, he said.
“It’s a debate with a lot of emotion and we have huge challenges. But there’s a role for both (fossil fuel and renewables).”
The U of A hopes to find a resolution at the institute’s annual meeting in May in Germany, he said.
The oilsands were not a contentious issue when the partnership was signed “but a lot has happened in three years,” said Joos.
After 2012 radiation leaks at Japan’s Fukushima reactor, Germany decided to more quickly phase out nuclear energy and advance the development of renewable energy.
But Germany still gets 40 per cent of its electricity from coal, he noted.
On Tuesday, Bernd Schneider, a lead scientific co-ordinator for Helmholtz in Potsdam, told reporters scientists with the Helmholtz Alberta Initiative will no longer work on oilsands-related projects.
“This bitumen upgrading will now be quitted,” Schneider said from Potsdam.
The U of A website says coal and oilsands are key research areas for the partnership: “The main objective of the collaborative HAI project in the field of energy and environment is to expand fundamental knowledge and to develop innovative technologies and system solutions in a research field of global relevance such as coal and oilsands to meet future energy needs in an efficient and environmentally sustainable way.”
In February, Babiuk was among the first recipients of an award from the Helmholtz infectious research institute for his work on infectious diseases and vaccines.