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NEB review of Trans Mountain dangerously flawed

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With friends like the National Energy Board, does Kinder Morgan really need enemies?

Sierra Club BC has released a report entitled Credibility Crisis that documents a litany of flaws in the NEB’s review of Kinder Morgan’s proposed pipeline and tanker project.

Sierra Club BC are calling for B.C. to withdraw from the federal review of the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline and initiate a B.C. environmental assessment. Sign the petition today.

These flaws are so extensive and serious that a massive legal cloud already hangs over Kinder Morgan’s proposal.  The NEB’s approval will be vulnerable to legal challenge on any number of fronts, all because the federal government has turned environmental reviews into elaborate and expensive exercises in rubber-stamping favoured projects. NEB hearings are intended to determine whether or not a given project is necessary and in the public interest.  For over 40 years in Canada, we have made such determinations in public, with public participation, in order to build social license for projects. An open hearing helps the public understand the trade-offs being made among the various economic, environmental, social and cultural values that may be impacted by a project.

Yet the Kinder Morgan hearings are being conducted in the opposite spirit.

Here are some of the flaws the report identifies:

  1. Public participation severely curtailed.
  2. Participants denied adequate and timely funding.
  3. Upstream and downstream impacts, such as climate change, not considered.
  4. Kinder Morgan  allowed to submit incomplete information.
  5. The only evidence subject to cross-examination is First Nations oral evidence.
  6. No cross examination of Kinder Morgan permitted.
  7. Kinder Morgan is allowed to ignore or provide incomplete responses to written Information Requests.
  8. Panel has accepted 80 per cent of the Kinder Morgan’s motions, but only 11 per cent of intervenor motions.
  9. Panel failed to ensure Kinder Morgan’s environmental and risk assessment conformed to accepted best practices.

In short, the federal government has completely stacked the deck in Kinder Morgan’s favour and blocked the public from meaningful participation in the process. Sign the petition calling for B.C. to withdraw from the federal NEB process and conduct an independent environmental assessment that considers climate impacts and gives all British Columbians a voice.

Read the full report.

 

Sorry B.C., You’re not a Climate Change Leader

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This piece by Jens Wieting originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

If you live in British Columbia you might think that our province is a climate champion, because you heard it from our government. Last month, for example, the provincial government sent out a bold press release touting B.C. as a world leader in climate action. The release highlighted B.C.’s carbon tax and the accomplishment of “meeting our 2012 GHG reduction target.”

However, just a few days later, the Canadian government released its latest greenhouse gas emissions data showing that B.C.’s emissions actually increased by 2.4 per cent in 2013 (to 63 million tons of greenhouse gases, from 61.5 in 2012. This is a big deal, because the threat of global warming has reached a point at which we cannot afford our annual emissions to continue to increase.

In March, the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million. When the concentration of greenhouse gases was last this high, temperatures were several degrees warmer and sea level many metres higher.

If we want to curb rising temperatures and sea levels, we need immediate and far-reaching annual emission reductions, especially in industrialized nations like Canada. There is only one path to stabilizing the climate: annual emissions must decrease every year and they can never go up. This is the first step towards saving our climate — don’t make our annual carbon pollution worse.

Fortunately, many countries around the world are now taking steps into the right direction and are reducing their annual emissions, from Europe to the U.S.

China managed to reduce coal consumption for the first time in 2014. Thanks to renewable energy success and other breakthroughs, global annual emissions remained stable in 2014, and didn’t go up as usual.

climatechange

Image courtesy visualcarbon.org

The B.C. government release announced that work on Climate Action Plan 2.0 is about to begin and that “the Province is challenging other jurisdictions to match or exceed the world-leading standard B.C. has set for climate action.” It is great to hear that work on a new climate action plan has begun. But this plan needs to be grounded in an honest assessment of our success to date, not wishful thinking.

So what progress has our province made so far? Eight years ago, the province set a relatively
ambitious target: to reduce B.C.’s emissions by 33 per cent of 2007 levels by 2020. Unfortunately, the new data shows we are way off track, with a reduction of only 2 per cent and only 5 years to go to our deadline.

In contrast, the European Union had reduced emissions by 19 per cent in 2013, compared to 1990 levels. By contrast, B.C.’s 2013 emissions were 13 per cent higher . Premier Christy Clark’s claim that B.C. is still a “world leader in the fight against climate change” is highly misleading.

The 2013 emissions increase is a wake-up call and the province must take immediate action to reverse this trend. Among the many measures needed is phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and re-establishing the annual increases in the carbon tax rate.

But perhaps the most important step to make it possible for B.C. to get back on track is for the province to introduce a “climate test” for all energy infrastructure projects — a mandatory assessment of the full carbon footprint of new coal, oil or gas infrastructure projects.

For example, the B.C. government has not yet given up its goal to build at least three LNG terminals by 2020, which would lead to a massive ramp up of fracking in the province. This would increase provincial emissions by more than 50 per cent, entirely incompatible with the idea of saving a livable climate. We must cease making these large, long-term capital investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure because they would lock in additional emissions for decades. This is crucial for getting out of the hole: Stop digging.

B.C. has a diverse economy with many opportunities to strengthen low-carbon sectors with a bright future like clean technologies, renewable energy, tourism, creative industries, forestry and agriculture. We must restore our forest’s function as carbon banks by increasing forest conservation and improving forest management. Our province can become a real climate leader through a full shift away from gas, oil and coal, to climate solutions that create more and better jobs. This would allow us to actually meet our reduction targets and aim for new ones.

B.C. should follow Premier Clark’s suggestion to “meet or beat” the world-leading standard for climate action and adopt the same target that California and the European Union set their eyes on: a 40 per cent reduction of 1990 emissions levels by 2030. In light of the failure of the Canadian government to take the threat of global warming seriously it is time for the provinces to step up to the plate and inspire hope on the road to the important climate summit in Paris end of the year.

Read the original story in the Huffington Post. Also published on DeSmog Canada.

Supernatural or Supertankers?

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This piece by Caitlyn Vernon originally appeared in the Georgia Straight.

July 19 marks the 25th anniversary of Canada’s Parks Day, an annual event that sees thousands of people across the country celebrating Canada’s parks and protected areas. However here in B.C., despite our magnificent parks system, I’m finding it hard to celebrate.

Earlier this year, the provincial government passed the Park Amendment Act, an insidious piece of legislation that opens the door to industrial development in our parks. B.C’s provincial parks and protected areas, which cover more than 14 percent of the province, now face the possibility of a future crisscrossed with pipelines, logging roads, and resource extraction projects.

The legislation, known as Bill 4, came to the public’s attention only weeks before it was passed with little opportunity for public input and no consultation with First Nations. When Bill 4 came to light, there were protests and rallies and thousands of letters in opposition sent to the minister of environment. And in May, just two months after the contentious bill was passed, a petition with 167,000 signatures was presented to the minister, calling for a repeal of this destructive act—the largest number of names speaking up for park protection ever gathered in Canada.

People obviously care. So why would the provincial government push through such a massive legislation change with profound impacts on B.C. without the approval of the public who elected them?

It is no surprise that pressure from business and a range of resource extraction projects including fracking, LNG, and tar sands pipelines have provided much of the impetus for the Park Amendment Act and related changes to the park boundary adjustment policy.

Take Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline project, for example, that would pass through at least five provincial parks and protected areas en route to Burnaby, not counting the parks along the shoreline that tankers would have to navigate past.

In fact, the Park Amendment Act seems an attempt by the provincial government to clean up their act as they had already issued industrial park-use/research permits without the legal authority to do so.

It was already bad enough that Kinder Morgan’s pipeline proposal would bring 400 oil tankers through southern B.C. waters and result in annual greenhouse gas emissions almost twice B.C.’s officially reported emissions for 2010. It was bad enough that a major spill would be catastrophic to marine and salmon ecosystems and put at risk hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island.

But now on top of all that, the proposed pipeline is prompting increased harm to the natural systems of B.C.’s world-renowned parks that people throughout B.C. have worked hard to build over the last 100 years.

B.C. parks attract millions of tourists to this province every year. Pipelines most certainly do not. B.C. parks help ensure the survival of species-at-risk and fragile, rare ecosystems. Pipelines most assuredly do not.

Pipelines generate toxic, hazardous work in spill response. Instead, we can provide economic benefits to local communities by investing in parks: maintaining the trails and re-instating park naturalists and park rangers.

This summer, like many other British Columbians, I’ll be heading out to some of my favourite parks, to recharge and reconnect with this beautiful land that supports us. Whether exploring tide pools at Juan de Fuca, hiking in Tweedsmuir, or admiring alpine wildflowers in Manning, throughout my life, enjoying the many amazing parks of B.C. has been integral to who I am and what it means to me to live at the edge of this continent, between mountains and sea. Many of my most defining childhood memories were made while exploring parks and protected areas. I don’t want memories to be all that remains of B.C. parks.

On Parks Day, July 19, British Columbians concerned about the future of our parks will be fanning out across B.C. to engage with park visitors and explain the threat posed by the Park Amendment Act. We will be inviting people to sign postcards to the minister of environment, urging her to repeal the Park Amendment Act and maintain the integrity of B.C. parks.

We invite you to join us. We can pave paradise, or we can continue to protect it.

Read the original story.

BC fails in methane math

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This piece by Dr. Colin Campbell, former Sierra Club BC Science Advisor, was originally published November 05, 2013 in the Tyee.

At every media opportunity, Premier Christy Clark has been touting the development of a “clean and green” liquified natural gas (LNG) industry. Her government’s messages suggest that LNG production has little environmental impact and provides a clean energy alternative with very low carbon emissions.

These claims simply do not add up.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel and burning it releases carbon emissions. We cannot discount these emissions because they will be burned in a different jurisdiction.

Additionally, 85 per cent of B.C.’s natural gas is now extracted through hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a process that requires massive water resources and contaminates groundwater, affecting the quality of life for humans and the rest of nature.

Another extremely important factor which LNG proponents largely ignore is the high level of methane that LNG production releases.

Methane, CH4, is a potent greenhouse gas in its own right and large amounts are released during the mining, transportation, storage and distribution processes.

Because we account for all our greenhouse gases in terms of carbon dioxide, the emissions of other greenhouse gases, including methane, are calculated as equivalents of CO2 using a conversion factor called Global Warming Potential (GWP).

The GWP for methane (the primary constituent of natural gas) has been increased based on the scientific findings assessed in the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

For methane, over a 20-year time span, this factor has been recalculated from 72 to 84-86 (i.e. one tonne of methane has a warming effect equivalent to 84-86 tonnes of carbon dioxide). Over 100 years, the factor is 28-34, because CH4 breaks down to carbon dioxide and water over time.

But since we are already perilously close to exceeding dangerous levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the fact that one tonne of methane has a warming effect equal to 86 tonnes of carbon dioxide over a 20-year time span should be front and centre in assessing the climate impact of LNG development.

Not only is methane a more powerful greenhouse gas than previously assumed, its leakage rates, especially in fracking fields, are much higher than those used in emissions calculations — indeed high enough to eliminate the supposed climate advantage methane has over coal as an energy source when leakage is not adequately considered.

B.C. hugely underestimates its current and projected methane emissions. In 2010, B.C. produced 36.4 billion cubic metres (m³) of methane as natural gas, claiming that only 0.3 to 0.4 per cent leaked into the atmosphere.

However, comparable U.S. studies suggest four to nine per cent is a far more realistic estimate of methane leakage.

Even if B.C.’s methane emissions were below this range — for example, three per cent instead of 0.3 per cent — there would be 1.1 billion m³ of methane released into the atmosphere every year instead of 110 million m³.

On a 20-year timescale, this equates to 66 million tonnes of CO2 per year (see calculation below), more than doubling the official 2010 estimate of total carbon emissions of 62 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.

An upfront accounting of B.C.’s total carbon footprint clearly reveals that the construction of a natural gas industry with its inevitable leakage of methane, as well as the burning of the product, would make it impossible for B.C. to meet its legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent below its 2007 levels by the year 2020.

Intentionally promoting and pursuing such activities is not only questionable in terms of provincial law, it undermines our remaining fighting chances to come to terms with a global plan to tackle emissions. The increasing likelihood of stark future carbon pricing means it is probably an economic disaster-in-the-making as well.

Instead, B.C. must face the realities of climate change head-on, tackling the challenge of reducing our energy needs while developing alternative energy technologies. Pursuing an LNG industry is folly of the highest kind, given the warnings we have as to where climate is heading.

Calculations:

1.1 x 109 m3 CH4; what is its warming equivalent in CO2? 1m3 CH4 weighs 0.714 kg. x 1.1 x 109 = 785,400 x appropriate GWP (in this case 84 for maximum effect) = 66 million tonnes

Read the original story.

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