Quebec Breaks With Fossil Energy


Quebec has become Canada's first jurisdiction to sign onto the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance launched at the Glasgow climate summit this week.  The alliance members vow to keep fossil energy safely sequestered in the ground.

"We see provinces move first. This is what happened in terms of our public health system. It's also what happened quite significantly for carbon pricing, with Quebec and British Columbia moving first and then the federal government adopting this minimum standard across the country," said Caroline Brouillette, a Montreal-based policy expert at Climate Action Network Canada.

Has the global appetite for hydrocarbons waned? Not a bit.

Two recent reports have placed giant question marks over the continued production of oil and gas. In a headline-grabbing report in May, the International Energy Agency said that no new oil and gas fields should be developed anywhere in the world in order to limit an increase in the global average temperature to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

Then in October, right before the COP26 conference, the UN Environment Programme released its Production Gap Report, which said that countries are currently on track to produce 57 per cent more oil and 71 per cent more gas in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 C.

The report, which examined 15 major fossil fuel-producing countries, including Canada, also warned that steep declines in production will be required if the world is to meet its climate targets.

A report in the journal Nature Energy specifically singled out Athabasca bitumen as likely to become a stranded asset by 2036. The world is simply awash in lower-carbon oil that's much easier and cheaper to extract. Bitumen is a higher carbon resource, much more costly to extract and process. If global markets for renewable energy grow, bitumen is the proverbial 'dead duck'.

Which way will the world go? It can seem like a coin toss. Stay tuned.







Comments

  1. TrailblazerNovember 6, 2021 at 6:04 PM

    All of Canada play the Go fund me ; oil company game!

    https://thenarwhal.ca/environmental-stain-bc-announces-clean-up-2000-oil-gas-wells/

    As corporate oil influence increases their royalty payments decrease.

    Resource extractions value to the tax base has become little more than income taxes, provincial and federal hence all the fuss of expanding the industry!

    We really are prostituting ourselves to carbon.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 7, 2021 at 8:06 AM

      We are being played by the fossil energy producers. No question of that. And, yes, our supposed energy "partners" have detached their revenues from responsiblities, especially when it comes to orphaned wells and tailing ponds. They have done that with the knowledge of prime ministers and premiers who seem to get away with it.

      Delete

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