Act now on climate change, oil exec tells industry, government
By Mike De Souza, Canwest News ServiceOctober 4, 2009
OTTAWA — A major player in Canada's oil and gas sector is warning that both the economy and the environment are in danger in the absence of a "robust" federal plan to crack down on heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere.
In an interview with Canwest News Service, a Shell Canada executive says the company has been engaging stakeholders from both environmental and government circles to push for a climate-change plan that has legitimate targets and incentives for new technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
It believes that industries and governments would be forced to "scramble" to respond to climate-change impacts and surging energy demands, if there is no clear blueprint to establish standards, along with a new market system that pays dividends to those who reduce their environmental footprints.
"If we don't take action for five or 10 years, (the actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions) are going to have to be potentially much more severe," Gerry Ertel, manager of regulatory affairs at Shell Canada, said in an interview. "So we think it's to the advantage of our industry, and of all sectors, to move now and to put that regulatory framework into place so that we can start down the road of (greenhouse-gas) reduction today."
The Harper government has not yet introduced any regulations to crack down on greenhouse-gas emissions as a part of a climate-change plan, but it proposed a framework in 2007 that would establish "intensity" targets for industrial facilities for each unit of production. For oilsands producers, an intensity target would limit the emissions for each barrel of oil, but would allow the overall amount of greenhouse gas to grow for any company that increases production.
Although some of its competitors favour this intensity approach, Shell Canada, which was recently targeted by environmental activists in Alberta, believes an effective climate-change plan must have absolute targets to reduce the global concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"We feel quite confident that our position is in the best interest, not only in an environmental, sustainable path forward," said Ertel. "It's also a good approach for responsible delivery of energy and it's also, we believe, in the best interests of our investors and shareholders. So we've looked at it from all angles and we think that this is the right approach to take."
Ertel said he supports regulations to establish a cap-and-trade system, where companies can buy and sell credits on the market, for each tonne of carbon dioxide, in order to meet their targets. But he said special incentives or bonus credits should be given to build new facilities that capture emissions and bury them in the ground, since the initial market value of carbon-dioxide credits might not be high enough to cover the startup costs.
John Ashton, a special climate-change envoy from the United Kingdom, has invited Canada and other countries to create an international partnership to promote and speed up the growth of this technology, also known as carbon capture and storage.
"If you can do things that will accelerate that market growth, then you've got a win-win on your hands," said Ashton, who met last week with Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt during a visit to Ottawa.
Ashton said technologies that eliminate the carbon dioxide footprint of energy systems are essential to preventing global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and potentially catastrophic effects of global warming.
mdesouza@canwest.com
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