Another announcement of millions of provincial dollars going toward carbon capture and storage begs the question what the Alberta government is doing to prepare for a post-carbon world.
The province announced this week that it’s committing $285 million toward a Swan Hills power plant that will gasify underground coal and pump the resulting carbon dioxide into abandoned oil wells. It’s the fourth project the province has committed to since 2008, when Premier Ed Stelmach announced his plan to put $2 billion toward carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
This week Energy Minister Ron Liepert was gushing like Leduc No. 1: “… many jurisdictions talk about the importance of CCS, but to be honest, very few have really done anything about it,” he said.
At this point, it would be extremely easy and a bit of a cliché to criticize the government for pursuing development in such an unproven area. After all, the public and the media are constantly haranguing our politicians for being foot-draggers and lacking vision. In this case, however, our leaders deserve criticism for wearing blinders as they led us into an uncertain energy future.
It’s safe to say that the jury is still out on the viability of this very expensive technology.
Scientists working on CCS projects around the world, such as a government-funded project in Weyburn, Sask., acknowledge the technical difficulties associated with CCS but say these can be tackled with careful site selection and monitoring.
Alberta’s Pembina Institute, a research-based environmental group, believes that carbon capture has potential to reduce greenhouse gases but that it shouldn’t be the only approach.
University of Manitoba energy expert Vaclav Smil believes it’s irresponsible to portray CCS as a practical option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions because, to have any measureable effect, CCS would have to happen on such a massive scale that it couldn’t be achieved in a generation.
One aspect of CCS that brings agreement from all sides is that it’s expensive. How expensive? Well, after the province burns through Stelmach’s first $2 billion, it could expect to pay $1 billion to $3 billion per year for 10 years to make carbon capture a reality, according to a 2009 report from the Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council.
Much of CCS is focused on coal-burning power plants, which provide about 70 per cent of Alberta’s electricity. Renewable sources like wind and solar are growing in prominence, but each comprise less than five per cent of the generation capacity.
With a lot of work, the world could get about 77 per cent of its power from renewable sources by 2050, according to a 2011 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Clearly, there are no easy or cheap solutions, but there are other options besides fossil fuels that are worthy of investment.
While the provincial government is pumping billions into a program that will make us feel better about adding more coal-burning plants, it has been content to let market forces and the availability of federal incentives dictate the pace of wind power development. It has also refused to follow the lead of places like Germany and Ontario by introducing incentives to encourage more solar generation.
Alberta is on the cusp of becoming a global energy powerhouse, but this surge is focused purely on oilsands and carbon capture. This is one of the sunniest provinces in the country. It is home to a wealth of technical knowledge, a can-do attitude and a relatively rich government. What this province needs is a comprehensive energy strategy that includes significant investment in renewable energy.
It would be naive to suggest that we should ignore our abundant reserves of fossil fuels and concentrate solely on renewable energy sources, but it’s also irresponsible to think that we should continue to fuel our comfortable lifestyles by just finding better ways to burn stuff.
