Liz Barratt-Brown's Blog
One tar sands project = 800,000 cars = significant, Canadian Court says
March 6, 2008
Posted by Liz Barratt-Brown in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, our Canadian colleagues won a landmark tar sands case. The Canadian Federal Court found that there were gaping holes in the environmental assessment of a huge tar sands project that would strip mine the Boreal forest for oil. The Kearl project would have emitted CO2 over the next 50 years equivalent to 800,000 cars.
It is not news that these tar sands projects have huge emissions associated with them. What is news is that the Canadian Federal Court has weighed in and said - yes, we agree with you - global warming pollution equivalent to 800,000 cars is not "insignificant" as the defendants, Imperial Oil (and parent company ExxonMobil) argued.
It is also significant because the court basically disagreed that "intensity-based" emissions targets were adequate to address the global warming implications of the project. This is one act on a big Canadian stage, where Canada's Prime Minister and Alberta's Premier have both put forward global warming plans that are based on "intensity-based" targets, not absolute reductions. In Alberta's case, their recently released plan, by their own admission, would result in a 15% reduction from today's levels by 2050 -- not anywhere near the 80-90% reductions from 1990 levels scientists are calling for.
This court case also has important implications for the U.S. The oil from the Kearl project would be destined for U.S. markets. As more states adopt low carbon fuel standards modelled on California's LCFS, the carbon dioxide emissions from projects like the Kearl become increasingly important. LCFS are meant to take into account so-called "lifecycle" emissions from "well to wheel". Those emissions start upstream with extraction and extraction of oil from the tar sands produces three times the carbon dioxide pollution per barrel as compared with conventional oil. That means that projects like the Kearl could make it more difficult for us to lower the carbon in our fuels. Ditto for acheiving real reductions under carbon caps.
Congress is also worried about these "lifecycle" emissions. In Section 526 of the energy bill signed into law in December last year, federal agencies are barred from purchasing "unconventional" fuels like tar sands that have higher lifecycle emissions than conventional oil extraction. Since emissions are embedded in products - from oil for our cars, trucks and airplanes to steel for our construction - what Canada does, and increasingly what Alberta does in the tar sands, has huge implications for the U.S. Our energy economy and our atmosphere are inexorably intertwined.
“This is a huge victory,” said Sean Nixon, the Ecojustice lawyer who represented the Pembina Institute, Sierra Club of Canada, the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta and the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition in the case.
Congratulations to the environmental groups that brought the case and to the Federal Court for looking through the Alice in Wonderland arguments and finding that big pollution is just that. Let's hope this case has drawn a new line in the sand - the tar sands - for controlling the huge global warming pollution from their excavation.
Let's also hope this decision will give the Alberta and Federal governments good reason to redo their global warming plans to take into account cumulative emissions and set absolute reductions. That's the only thing that counts in our atmosphere after all.
Photo Credit: Garth Lenz
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- Liz Barratt-Brown
- Senior Attorney
- Washington, DC
- I came to NRDC in 1981 and have worked with NRDC’s International Program for the...
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