Alberta banks on new carbon capture technology
Last month, Diana McQueen attended international climate change talks in Poland as Alberta’s environment minister. She came away convinced that carbon capture and storage is a key to solving the global problem of rising carbon emissions.
The Warsaw conference, which set out a road map for achieving a new global agreement limiting carbon emissions by 2015, saw environmental groups take a swipe at Canada for its rising emissions, especially from the oilsands.
On Friday, McQueen’s job changed in a provincial cabinet shuffle when she was named Alberta’s energy minister.
In a recent interview, while still environment minister, McQueen said she was impressed that the UN conference focused mainly on prospects for new technology, especially carbon capture, which buries the greenhouse gas emissions deep underground, and how much progress is being made developing commercially viable technology to deal with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“We have 21 CCS (carbon capture and storage) projects globally that will be commercial and that’s different than the past when people were just talking about it. Now there is commercialization.”
Alberta is also looking at opportunities to work with an international research centre on CCS, set up by Norway and the United Nations, said McQueen.
The province originally provided $2 billion in funding for four major carbon capture projects. But two were deemed uneconomic and cancelled, despite millions in assistance from the province’s technology fund.
McQueen says she was still confident about the future of CCS in Alberta.
“My cup is always half full, so I see that we’ve got two projects moving forward and 21 globally. The investment Canada and Alberta has made is very significant and was seen very positively at the climate talks.”
McQueen also downplayed critics who noted that Canada will not achieve its Copenhagen targets (to reduce greenhouse gases by 17 per cent below 2005 levels) mainly because Alberta’s rising emissions will cancel out reductions in most other provinces.
In a carbon constrained future (the goal of UN climate talks), GHG emissions from the oilsands must come down, she said.
But will that be in time to avert the worst of climate change?
McQueen declined to set a timetable on when to expect progress on slowing the annual increase in GHG emissions. That will come clear when federal regulations for limiting emissions in the oil and gas sector are released, she said.
Those regulations were slated for release this year but still have not appeared.
The province is also working on a new reduction strategy for the fall of 2014, the expiry date of the current plan which puts a $15-atonne levy on excess GHG emissions, she said.
“The timetable is part of what we are working on now. We are committed to meeting our reduction targets and it’s going to be through technology, efficient and renewables,” she said.
“So it’s in the mid to longer term that technology is going to be the game changer.”
It’s too soon to say if the $15 carbon levy on big emitters will be increased, she said.
It’s critical to keep the Alberta industry competitive with American companies, she said. But that’s a difficult balance given the U. S. has not put a price on carbon.
“Originally, we thought there would be a North American strategy but (the U.S.) hasn’t done their work yet.”
Oil companies are worried about paying a higher levy. If the technology is not ready, they would not achieve the reductions in emissions, McQueen said.