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Alberta

Alberta’s carbon diet – how to lose megatonnes in just three short decades

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Carl Marcotte, Candu Energy, Scott Henuset, Energy Alberta, and William McLeod

From Resource Works

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Solving emissions problem is turning Alberta into a clean-tech powerhouse.

While oil, gas and pipelines took up a lot of oxygen at last week’s Global Energy Canada Show in Calgary, there was also a considerable focus on clean energy, clean-tech and decarbonization.

Alberta’s very survival in a decarbonizing world depends on innovation, best practices and regulations that will allow it to continue to produce oil and gas while trying to meet net zero targets that, like a mirage, appear to move further away the closer we get to them. Necessity being the mother of invention, Wild Rose Country has become rather inventive. It has become something of a clean-tech powerhouse and, as a result, has made some notable progress in its emissions intensity. Alberta’s industrial carbon tax, in place since 2007, and which hit $95 per tonne in 2025, has been used to fund emissions abatement technology and innovation through the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program.

According to the Government of Alberta, the province has, to date, achieved:

  • an 8.7% decline in overall emissions since 2015;
  • a 52% decline in methane emissions since 2014;
  • a 26% decline in oil sands emissions intensity since 2012; and
  • 15 million tonnes of CO2 sequestered through carbon capture and storage.

The Pembina Institute, it is worth noting, has taken issue with some of Alberta’s reporting. Based on the federal National Inventory Report, Alberta’s methane emissions have declined by 35% between 2014 and 2023, not 52%.

Information sessions at last week’s conference covered topics like geothermal energy, lithium extraction, methane emissions detection and reduction technology, low-carbon hydrogen production and use, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power. Alberta’s contributions to the energy transition and decarbonization is, I think, a bit of an untold story.

In the case of carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), it’s a story that some environmentalists don’t want to hear, and don’t want anyone else to hear. In 2023, Greenpeace and two other environmental NGOs filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau against the Pathways Alliance, saying its claims of potential emissions reduction through CCUS constituted greenwashing. The Trudeau government responded with an anti-greenwashing bill — C-59 — that puts companies at risk of fines for making claims on emission reductions that are not backed by “adequate and proper” testing and evidence. Basically, companies will need to show their homework before making claims on climate benefits or risk hefty fines.”Some of the things that I’ve said would be illegal for my companies to say under the existing law because it would be called greenwashing,” Premier Danielle Smith said at last week ‘s conference. Green fundamentalists don’t want to hear about climate benefits, if it involves things like carbon capture, which they view as extending the lifetime of fossil fuels. Maybe they didn’t get the memo from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 3, which last year pronounced in a special report that carbon sequestration is “unavoidable if net zero CO2 or GHG emissions are to be achieved.”

Alberta’s oil and gas industry understands full well there is a big target on their backs: the oil sands. This energy intensive form of extracting oil generated 86.5 million million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in 2023, according to the Alberta government. That accounts for 33% of Alberta’s total GHG emissions, and is getting perilously close to the federal government’s emission’s cap for oil and gas.

Government of Alberta
Government of Alberta

Alberta ingenuity and innovation in extracting oil from sand led Canada to become the world’s fourth largest oil producer, with huge economic benefits for Canada. Alberta is now applying that ingenuity to try to shrink its GHG profile. Alberta has had some of the largest emissions reductions in the power generation sector in Canada recently, thanks to the phasing out of coal power.

Last year, it retired its last coal power plant, meaning the province reached its goal of phasing out coal six years ahead of federal and provincial targets of 2030. As a result, emissions from Alberta’s electricity sector declined 54% between 2015 and 2023, according to the Alberta government. It accomplished this by investing in wind and solar power, backed by firm natural gas power. Alberta now has about twice the amount of installed wind power as B.C. Alberta also reached methane emission reduction targets ahead of schedule. The Alberta government reports a 52% decline in methane intensity between 2014 and 2023, exceeding the target of a 45% decrease by 2025.

According to a recent S&P Global report, the GHG intensity of Alberta’s oil sands has declined 23% since 2009. And since 2019, S&P reports, the pace of oil sands emissions growth has slowed, with a 3% increase in emissions since 2019, despite a 9% growth in oil and gas production. Alberta’s challenge is that, as long as it plans to increase oil and gas production — and it does — reducing its emissions is like draining a bathtub while the faucet is still on. While emissions intensity may go down, absolute emissions could still grow with production growth, and Danielle Smith would like to see Alberta’s oil production double. So, some pretty big gains will be needed if Alberta is to achieve the dual goal of increasing oil production while trying to bring its emissions intensity down to zero by 2050. The only way to do that is through large-scale CCUS, and Alberta has become a global leader in its deployment. Thanks to CCUS, Alberta is poised to become a leading producer of blue hydrogen, ammonia and other “net-zero chemicals.” Through CCUS initiatives like the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line and the Shell Quest CCS project, Alberta has already sequestered 13.5 million tonnes of CO2, according to Emissions Reduction Alberta.

The Pathways Alliance — a consortium of Alberta’s biggest oil producers — propose a $10 billion to $20 billion investment that includes a large scale-up of CCUS, to decarbonize oil sands production and Alberta’s petrochemical industry. According to Natural Resources Canada, the estimated sequestration of the Pathways project would be 13.9 Mt CO2 captured by 2030 — 4.2 MT per year — and 62 Mt per year by 2050. A buildout of CCUS infrastructure in Alberta’s refining and petrochemical complex in the Edmonton area would capture CO2 from gas combustion. “That then puts them on the road to net-zero aviation fuels, net-zero chemicals, what-have-you,” Chris Bataille, adjunct research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “If you look at this as a transition, it’s a necessary thing to do, and we have the right geology for it, and these companies know how to do this kind of thing.”

In addition to CCUS, Alberta also now plans to become a nuclear power producer. A company called Energy Alberta plans to deploy existing Canadian nuclear technology — the CANDU reactor. It proposes to build a 1,000 megawatt twin CANDU MONARK reactor north of Peace River, Alberta. It is now in the early stage of a federal Impact Assessment process. If the federal Liberal government is serious about achieving its ambitious climate policy objectives, it needs to either help Alberta with its ambitious decarbonization efforts, which would include some major federal subsidies, or just get out of its way and let Alberta do what it does best, which is innovate.

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Alberta

Calls for a new pipeline to the coast are only getting louder

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From Resource Works

Alberta wants a new oil pipeline to Prince Rupert in British Columbia.

Calls on the federal government to fast-track new pipelines in Canada have grown. But there’s some confusion that needs to be cleared up about what Ottawa’s intentions are for any new oil and gas pipelines.

Prime Minister Carney appeared to open the door for them when he said, on June 2, that he sees opportunity for Canada to build a new pipeline to ship more oil to foreign markets, if it’s tied to billions of dollars in green investments to reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.

But then he confused that picture by declaring, on June 6, that new pipelines will be built only with “a consensus of all the provinces and the Indigenous people.” And he added: “If a province doesn’t want it, it’s impossible.”

And BC Premier David Eby made it clear on June 2 that BC doesn’t want a new oil pipeline, nor does it want Ottawa to cancel the related ban on oil tankers steaming through northwest BC waters. These also face opposition from some, but not all, First Nations in BC.

Eby’s energy minister, Adrian Dix, also gave thumbs-down to a new oil pipeline, but did say BC supports expanding the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain TMX oil pipeline, and the dredging of Burrard Inlet to allow bigger oil tankers to load Alberta oil from TMX at the port of Vancouver.

While the feds sort out what their position is on fast-tracking new pipelines, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith leaped on Carney’s talk of a new oil pipeline if it’s tied to lowering the carbon impact of the Alberta oilsands and their oil.

She saw “a grand bargain,” with, in her eyes, a new oil pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert, BC, producing $20 billion a year in revenue, some of which could then be used to develop and install carbon-capture mechanisms for the oil.

She noted that the Pathways Alliance, six of Canada’s largest oilsands producers, proposed in 2021 a carbon-capture network and pipeline that would transport captured CO₂ from some 20 oilsands facilities, by a new 400-km pipeline, to a hub in the Cold Lake area of Alberta for permanent underground storage.

Preliminary estimates of the cost of that project run up to $20 billion.

The calls for a new oil pipeline from Bruderheim, AB, to Prince Rupert recall the old Northern Gateway pipeline project that was proposed to run from Alberta to Kitimat, BC.

That was first proposed by Enbridge in 2008, and there were estimates that it would mean billions in government revenues and thousands of jobs.

In 2014, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper approved Northern Gateway. But in 2015, the Federal Court of Appeal overruled the Harper government, ruling that it had “breached the honour of the Crown by failing to consult” with eight affected First Nations.

Then the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who succeeded Harper in 2015, effectively killed the project by instituting a ban on oil tanker traffic on BC’s north coast shortly after taking office.

Now Danielle Smith is working to present Carney with a proponent and route for a potential new crude pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert.

She said her government is in talks with Canada’s major pipeline companies in the hope that a private-sector proponent will take the lead on a pipeline to move a million barrels a day of crude to the BC coast.

She said she hopes Carney, who won a minority government in April, will make good on his pledge to speed permitting times for major infrastructure projects. Companies will not commit to building a pipeline, Smith said, without confidence in the federal government’s intent to bring about regulatory reform.

Smith also underlined her support for suggested new pipelines north to Grays Bay in Nunavut, east to Churchill, Manitoba, and potentially a new version of Energy East, a proposed, but shelved, oil pipeline to move oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries and a marine terminal in the Maritimes.

The Energy East oil pipeline was proposed in 2013 by TC Energy, to move Western Canadian crude to an export terminal at St. John, NB, and to refineries in eastern Canada. It was mothballed in 2017 over regulatory hurdles and political opposition in Quebec.

A separate proposal known as GNL Quebec to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline and export terminal in the Saguenay region was rejected by both federal and provincial authorities on environmental grounds. It would have diverted 19.4 per cent of Canadian gas exports to Europe, instead of going to the US.

Now Quebec’s environment minister Benoit Charette says his government would be prepared to take another look at both projects.

The Grays Bay idea is to include an oil pipeline in a corridor that would run from northern BC to Grays Bay in Nunavut. Prime Minister Carney has suggested there could be opportunities for such a pipeline that would carry “decarbonized” oil to new markets.

There have also been several proposals that Canada should build an oil pipeline, and/or a natural gas pipeline, to the port of Churchill. One is from a group of seven senior oil and gas executives who in 2017 suggested the Western Energy Corridor to Churchill.

Now a group of First Nations has proposed a terminal at Port Nelson, on Hudson Bay near Churchill, to ship LNG to Europe and potash to Brazil. And the Manitoba government is looking at the idea.

“There is absolutely a business case for sending our LNG directly to European markets rather than sending our natural gas down to the Gulf Coast and having them liquefy it and ship it over,” says Robyn Lore of project backer NeeStaNan. “It’s in Canada’s interest to do this.”

And, he adds: “The port and corridor will be 100 per cent Indigenous owned.”

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has suggested that the potential trade corridor to Hudson Bay could handle oil, LNG, hydrogen, and potash slurry. (One obvious drawback, though, winter ice limits the Hudson Bay shipping season to four months of the year, July to October.)

All this talk of new pipelines comes as Canada begins to look for new markets to reduce reliance on the US, following tariff measures from President Donald Trump.

Alberta Premier Smith says: “I think the world has changed dramatically since Donald Trump got elected in November. I think that’s changed the national conversation.”

And she says that if Carney wants a true nation-building project to fast-track, she can’t think of a better one than a new West Coast oil pipeline.

“I can’t imagine that there will be another project on the national list that will generate as much revenue, as much GDP, as many high paying jobs as a bitumen pipeline to the coast.”

Now we need to know what Mark Carney’s stance on pipelines really is: Is it fast-tracking them to reduce our reliance on the US? Or is it insisting that, for a pipeline, “If a province doesn’t want it, it’s impossible.”

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Alberta

Alberta pro-life group says health officials admit many babies are left to die after failed abortions

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Alberta’s abortion policy allows babies to be killed with an ‘induced cardiac arrest’ before a late-term abortion and left to die without medical care if they survive.

A Canadian provincial pro-life advocacy group says health officials have admitted that many babies in the province of Alberta are indeed born alive after abortions and then left to die, and because of this are they are calling upon the province’s health minister to put an end to the practice.

Official data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which is the federal agency in charge of reporting the nation’s health data, shows that in Alberta in 2023-2024, there were 133 late-term abortions. Of these, 28 babies were born alive after the abortion and left to die.

As noted by Prolife Alberta’s President Murray Ruhl in a recent email, this means the reality in the province is that “some of these babies are born alive… and left to die.”

“Babies born alive after failed late-term abortions are quietly abandoned—left without medical help, comfort, or even a chance to survive,” noted Ruhl.

This fact was brought to light in a recent opinion piece published in the Western Standard by Richard Dur, who serves as the executive director of Prolife Alberta.

Ruhl observed that Dur’s opinion piece has “got the attention of both Alberta Health Services (AHS) and Acute Care Alberta (ACA),” whom he said “confirmed many of the practices we exposed.”

Alberta’s policy when it comes to an abortion committed on a baby older than 21 weeks allows that all babies are killed before being born, however this does not always happen.

“In some circumstances… the patient and health practitioner may consider the option of induced fetal cardiac arrest prior to initiating the termination procedures,” notes Alberta Health Services’ Termination of Pregnancy, PS-92 (PS-92, Section 6.4).

Ruhl noted that, in Alberta, before an “abortion begins, they stop the baby’s heart. On purpose. Why? Because they don’t want a live birth. But sometimes—the child survives. And what then?”

Ruhl observed that the reality is, “They plan in advance not to save her—even if she’s born alive.”

If the baby is born alive, the policy states, “Comfort measures and palliative care should be provided.” (PS-92, Section 6.4).

This means, however, that there is no oxygen given, no NICU, “no medical care,” noted Ruhl.

“Their policies call this ‘palliative care.’ We call it what it is: abandonment. Newborns deserve care—not a death sentence,” he noted.

As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, a total of 150 babies were born after botched abortions in 2023-2024 in Canada. However, it’s not known how many survived.

Only two federal parties in Canada, the People’s Party of Canada, and the Christian Heritage Party, have openly called for a ban on late abortions in the nation.

Policy now under ‘revision’ says Alberta Health Services

Ruhl said that the province’s policies are now “under revision,” according to AHS.

Because of this, Ruhl noted that now is the time to act and let the province’s Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange, who happens to be pro-life, act and “demand” from her real “action to protect babies born alive after failed abortions.”

The group is asking the province to do as follows below:

  1. Amend the AHS Termination of Pregnancy policy to require resuscitative care for any baby born with signs of life, regardless of how the birth occurred.
  2. Require that these newborns receive the same level of care as any other premature baby. Newborns deserve care—not a death sentence.
  3. Recognize that these babies have a future—there is a literal waiting list of hundreds of families ready to adopt them. There is a home for every one of them.

While many in the cabinet and caucus of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative government are pro-life, she has still been relatively soft on social issues of importance to conservatives, such as abortion.

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