It is becoming much harder to kick the fossil fuel habit with the current conflict in the Middle East destabilizing oil and gas supply chains. The aspirational goal to cut emissions causing global warming appears increasingly out of reach. Instead, there is a mad scramble to shore up fossil fuel supplies.
In April, I wrote a three-part series on Earth Day and the carbon removal challenge. Earth Day seemed significant a few years ago. It appeared that much of the world was on board and taking the global warming threat seriously. Not so much now.
In Canada, where a federal government consumer carbon levy had been introduced to drive down emissions, it is now gone in the face of America’s climate change denial rhetoric. The tough milestone-reducing emission targets are a thing of the past here and in many other countries.
In the absence of various national and regional Canadian governments imposing carbon limits, market-driven policies were introduced to combat global warming. Watching the latest retreat from policies initiated after the COP-15 Paris Climate Agreement has been disheartening. I say this, not for me at age 77, but for my granddaughter, who recently turned 5, and will inherit greater climate challenges as a result than the ones we already face today.
Walking Backwards When Fighting Climate Change
Market-driven carbon pricing policies in Canada have dramatically altered with last year’s repeal of the consumer carbon levy, a point-of-sales tax levied at gas pumps. Now, with the latest agreement on industrial carbon pricing coming from meetings between the federal government and the Province of Alberta, industry will be the driving mechanism for Canada to reduce total emissions. This political bargain includes building the carbon capture and storage (CCS) network by a consortium of oil sands operators known as the Pathways Alliance.
The original benchmark industrial carbon price in Canada was to rise from CDN$ 95 today to $170 by 2030. Under the new agreement, the target is $130 by 2040. It is being levied on large fossil fuel, steel and cement operations. When announced, one of Canada’s premier oil sands producers remarked it would have no impact on the company’s operations and do very little to reduce total emissions.
The industrial carbon price is a charge per ton of emissions. The companies do the measuring and reporting. Independent verification is supposed to ensure an honest accounting. Unlike the consumer carbon tax, it is not a blanket levy on every ton emitted.
So, how will it reduce demand for carbon-based fuels, and how will it help Canada reduce the national carbon footprint? It will not apply until large industrial emitters exceed their current established emission benchmarks. For companies that exceed their benchmarks, they can buy carbon credits from others whose emissions are below their benchmarks. That means the large carbon emitters, whether doing business as usual or expanding output while buying offsetting credits, can continue to pollute and contribute to global warming.
How this new climate change tackling problem will get Canada to net-zero carbon by 2050 is a pipedream, and harder to believe even when experts claim that industrial pricing alone can deliver from 20 to 48% of all emission reductions by 2030 under Canada’s climate plan. I am a skeptic.
Will the Pathways Alliance Rescue Us?
The six oil sands producers who formed the Pathways Alliance in 2021 account for 95% of oil sands output and between 8 and 12% of Canada’s total carbon emissions. Their plan involves the construction of a 2,000-kilometre (1,240-mile) network of pipelines to transport captured carbon emissions for storage underground at six continuously monitored sites. Phase 1 involves 400 kilometres (250 miles) of pipeline at a cost of CDN$ 16.5 billion.
Nothing has been built to date, which means the Alliance has four years to get the network built and achieve its Phase 1 reduction target of 22 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)by 2030. Pathways calls for a full network deployment in place by 2040. By 2050, the Alliance describes their network as Canada’s backbone for achieving industrial net-zero CO2 emissions. In fairness to the Alliance, no CCS project has ever been constructed before at this scale.
With $16.5 billion for the Phase 1 down payment, who will pay for the network in totality remains unresolved. The Pathway partners want the Canadian and Alberta governments to offset their risk by contributing a healthy chunk of money to the project. The two governments want the Pathways Alliance to foot the majority of the bill.
We Need Better, Less Expensive Ways to Capture Carbon
Is the cost of getting rid of carbon emissions always going to be this high? To date, capturing CO2 at the source from oil sands operations, steel, cement, or coal-fired and gas-fired power plants is proving very expensive. It involves inventing new processes and materials.
Direct air capture (DAC) to pull CO2 molecules from ambient air is proving equally expensive.
Then there is the cost of storage, which involves finding and preparing suitable underground sites and building the safety infrastructure to ensure CO2 never escapes.
All these projects have involved numbers followed by nine zeros.
What if materials could be found or synthesized on the cheap to absorb CO2? Many materials are excellent at capturing CO2. They can repeatedly be used to absorb and discharge the gas, dramatically reducing material costs.
Among them are cheap solvents and sorbents such as formaldehyde and cyanuric acid, traditionally used to preserve specimens in laboratories and to treat swimming pools.
Another is melamine, a powdered polymer that is used today to make Formica countertops. It is really cheap at $40 per ton.
Equally effective are natural rock-based solutions. Mineral-carbonation storage using heated basalt and sandstone, when exposed to liquefied CO2, rapidly fixes the gas permanently to create the carbonate mineral limestone.
Minimally-heated potassium carbonate, to no more than 60 Celsius (108 Fahrenheit), is a good medium for storing CO2.
Synthesized solid nitrogen-doped carbon materials called viciazites, invented by researchers at Chiba University in Japan, capture and desorb CO2 easily from chimney stacks and flue streams.
Applying these less expensive materials and processes should make CCS viable. For now, however, the fossil fuel industry and its expensive proposition are reluctant participants in a problem of their own making with enormous planetary and human consequences.
