Doubts are being raised about the Alberta government’s decision to restore a policy that protects the Rocky Mountains from coal mining.
Energy Minister Sonya Savage on Monday brought back a 1976 policy that keeps open-pit coal mines out of most of the Rockies and foothills. University of Calgary resource law professor Nigel Bankes says the ban doesn’t apply everywhere, despite Savage’s assurances that mountaintop removal mines are prohibited, The Canadian Press reports.
That means Benga Mining’s proposal for such a mine, now before a review panel, could still go ahead.
Bankes also points out exploration already permitted can still go ahead, so hundreds of drill sites and kilometres of roads could still be built despite return of the policy.
Environmentalist Kevin van Tighem calls bringing back the coal policy a “bait and switch.”
He says the energy minister’s letter to the Alberta Energy Regulator still allows for the possibility of open-pit mines.
Last November, APTN News reported concern about the C$800-million project on the part of the Kainai First Nation south of Calgary, also known as the Blood Tribe, despite previous support it received from the mainly Blackfoot bands in southern Alberta that make up Treaty. “This Grassy Mountain Coal Project will cause irreversible damage to our traditional territories, including the mountains, rivers and natural landscapes,” said Kainai member Latasha Calf Robe. “These mountains that our people have occupied since time immemorial will be gone and will never be able to be replaced.”
Calf Robe added that “no community-level consultation has been done on the Blood Tribe, and as far as I know, has not been done with any of the communities in Treaty 7.” So letters of support from Treaty 7 “were issued without community-level consultation in any of these communities.”
Ian Urquhart, conservation director with the Alberta Wilderness Association, said the project “raises important questions about climate change—both for the globe, and also for the federal government to try to meet its commitments under the Paris Accord.”
Coal “is a huge carbon polluter,” he told APTN, and “the steel sector that’s going to use the coal that Benga wants to produce is the largest single industrial source of (carbon and greenhouse) emissions on the planet.”
Benga is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Australian coal developer Riversdale Resources, APTN says.
Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg greets Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G7 leaders summit in La Malbaie, Que., in June 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
As major oil and gas producers and exporters, Norway and Canada share a particular responsibility for confronting the planet’s existential climate threat. However, their different political, economic and cultural features have resulted in major differences in their climate policy track records.
Overall, Norway is a leader on climate change performance and Canada is a laggard. The 2021 Climate Change Performance Index ranks 61 countries on their progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, renewable energies and climate policy. Norway ranked eighth overall, while Canada was near the bottom in 58th place.
Both countries face epic challenges in weaning themselves from petroleum dependence — and putting an end to exporting carbon emissions. Canada is a long way from winding down the oil and gas industry and implementing a green and inclusive recovery.
One of the advantages Norway holds is the high degree of equality and inclusivity in the policy process, which translates into a healthier democracy than Canada’s. This is something Canada can learn from and improve upon.
Norway’s exit ramp from oil dependence is bumpy. Despite some contradictory climate actions, Norway’s progress exceeds that of virtually all petro-states, with Canada trailing behind.
Canada recently introduced legislation to meet or exceed a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2005, in part by boosting its carbon tax, but continues to heavily subsidize fossil fuel production. Since early 2020, Canada has allocated US$14.6 billion to support fossil fuel energy and an equivalent amount on clean energy.
Norway also spends a lot on its fossil fuel industry — at least US$11.76 billion since 2020. And with an economy that runs largely on renewable energy, it allocated only US$382 million to renewables.
The good, the bad and the ugly
Neither Canada nor Norway has achieved absolute emissions reductions. Industry in both countries downplays this reality, choosing to focus instead on their progress in reducing carbon intensity — emissions per barrel of oil.
Neither country has committed to a production endgame either. Denmark is the first major oil-producing country to commit to terminating state-approved oil exploration in the North Sea and ending all oil extraction by 2050.
Climate change performance index (2021). The first three positions are blank because no country scores high enough. Canada is ranked among the worst performing countries and fell three spots in 2021. (Germanwatch 2020)
Canadian carbon emissions increased 20.9 per cent between 1990 and 2018, mostly driven in turn by a five-fold expansion of oilsands emissions. Canada’s energy regulator predicts oil production overall will grow 41 per cent from 2018 to 2040.
Norway is a unitary state giving the government uncontested jurisdictional authority over climate policy. As a federal state with divided jurisdictions, the Canadian federal government is in a much weaker policy-making position.
There is a high degree of political stability on climate action in Norway. Even the right-wing Progress Party acknowledges the climate threat and supports the government’s climate plan. In Canada, wide swings on climate policy over the past 40 years have thwarted sustained advances. While a majority of Canadians now support decisive action on climate change, there are splits along party lines and geography, with most Conservative provincial governments opposing a carbon tax.
Governing the decentralized Canadian federation is complex. This puts more weight on political leadership in all parties, in all regions, to acknowledge the truth about the climate crisis and build the necessary consensus to meet the challenge.
Political leadership is the art of persuasion: learning from the past, building coalitions, taking bold action. As a major carbon emitter, Canada must fulfil its global responsibility in helping to stop this runaway train.
Denial, delay and division are no longer an option. Leadership that fails avoid a cataclysmic future will be judged harshly by our descendents.
EDMONTON — Critics are asking why Alberta Environment has been sitting on years’ worth of data about pollution from coal mines while the government considers a dramatic expansion of the industry.
“It raises some important questions about our ability to trust what’s going on,” said New Democrat environment critic Marlin Schmidt. “The fact (Alberta Environment) hasn’t reported publicly is extremely concerning.”
On Monday, The Canadian Press reported on analysis of coal mine contamination in the Gregg and McLeod Rivers and Luscar Creek near Jasper, Alberta, dating back to the 1990s. It found toxic levels of selenium many times over the amount considered safe for aquatic life, CP says.
The Gregg and Luscar Creek mines closed in the early 2000s. Selenium levels from both declined, at best, only gradually over more than 15 years of remediation.
In the case of the Cheviot mine on the McLeod River, levels gradually grew between 2005 and 2017. The operation closed last June.
The data also shows the provincial government knew about the levels for at least 15 years and did not report anything after 2006. The information was available in raw form, but Schmidt said it isn’t enough to simply collect information.
“There are numbers and then there are the numbers that the stories tell. That’s the piece that’s missing.”
The New Democrats were in power for four of those years. Schmidt said sitting on the information is worse now because Alberta is going through a wrenching debate over the present government’s plans to expand the industry by opening up the Rocky Mountains to open-pit, mountaintop coal mines—an option that did not exist under the NDP.
“This data’s relevance is more important now,” he said.
Alberta Environment has pointed out that the raw data has always been public. Spokesperson John Muir promised the province would soon release its own report on water downstream of coal mines.
Lack of action shows that monitoring often promised by industry and government as new projects are considered isn’t enough, said Katie Morrison of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“On those rivers we’re seeing that monitoring hasn’t been enough to actually control selenium. We just continue to promise monitoring. We didn’t see action to bring those selenium numbers down.”
A 2006 provincial report found that selenium was already harming fish. As well, a 2005 published study co-authored by provincial scientists found rainbow trout were suffering facial and skeletal deformities from selenium.
The province has recently sold about 1.4 million hectares of coal exploration leases. Hundreds of drill sites and kilometres of new roads have already been permitted on previously unmined mountainsides. One new coal mine, Benga Mining’s Grassy Mountain project in the Crowsnest Pass in southwestern Alberta, is before a joint federal-provincial review.
The information on the old coal mines shows what’s at issue for new ones, said Morrison.
“Those stakes are really high,” she told CP. Selenium release “has been happening other places and they have not been able to get the selenium under control.”
Benga says a new method should allow the mine to treat 99% of its selenium. As well, the mine has been designed to minimize contact between water and selenium-bearing rocks, the company says.
Morrison said that treatment is still unproven. She said if its efficiency falls to even 90%, selenium levels in nearby streams will cross thresholds safe for aquatic life.
Morrison said her group produced expert testimony at the Benga hearings suggesting the company doesn’t have a convincing long-term plan for controlling selenium long into the future.
“We have not seen that technology work at the scale that we’ll need it to or with the amount of selenium we’re likely to see.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published January 26, 2021
The rural county in Alberta that brought Canada its biggest solar farm to date is at it again, with word this week that it is seeking regulatory approval for a 500-megawatt wind farm.
A year ago, Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners confirmed a C$500-million investment that would allow Calgary-based Greengate Power to proceed with the 400-MW Travers Solar Energy Project in Vulcan County. This week, the county announced its application to the Alberta Utilities Commission for the Buffalo Plains Wind Farm, an 83-unit development with individual turbines that would approach the height of the iconic Calgary Tower, CBC reports.
Like the Travers project, Buffalo Plains will be located near Lomond, about 175 kilometres southeast of Calgary, the national broadcaster says.
“The height of the tower itself is about 115 metres and the blade is about 170 metres in diameter. To put that in comparison, the Calgary Tower is 191 metres tall,” said Vulcan County Reeve Jason Schneider. “The towers have definitely grown substantially,” and “they’re producing three times the power as well.”
Vulcan is also the site of Blackspring Ridge, the country’s biggest wind farm when it was built in 2014, CBC states.
Schneider said the project will bring badly-needed tax revenue to the community, along with 300 jobs during construction and 10 to 15 once the turbines go into operation.
“For rough numbers, when the Blackspring Ridge project came online, it was about 20% of all the county’s entire tax base, which is, you know, quite substantial,” he said. “When you compare it to at the very peak of oil and gas (in 2004 and 2005), that made up 50% of our tax base. So it’s big numbers and they definitely change things.”
Although CBC doesn’t mention it, Vulcan is also one of the Alberta communities that have discovered the difference between calculating a commercial tax bill and successfully collecting it. In December 2019, Chief Administrative Officer Nels Peterson was “preparing his municipality for a $400,000 hit to tax revenue, or 2.5% of the annual operating budget,” after the province tried to cut fossils’ property taxes by 35%, the Globe and Mail reported at the time. The tax rebate for shallow gas well developers was expected to cost cash-strapped rural municipalities C$20 million per year.
Schneider said the ultimate decision to approve the new wind farm will be up to the province. “We definitely do hear people with some current concerns on these, especially when you’re proposing towers that are taller than the Calgary Tower,” he told CBC. “Ultimately, the Alberta Utility Commission is the one that kind of makes the final decision.”
Original article by The Energy Mix. Printed here with permission.
The former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contained a chapter on investment that allowed foreign investors to sue governments in international arbitration. The owner of Keystone XL — TC Energy (previously TransCanada) — used NAFTA to launch a US$15 billion lawsuit in 2016 after President Barack Obama cancelled the project.
At the time, some legal experts thought the company had a reasonable chance of winning. We will never know, because the case was dropped when President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to let the project proceed.
President Donald Trump approves a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline on Mar. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
This time may be different if TC Energy chooses to proceed with a claim. NAFTA has been replaced by a new agreement — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unlike NAFTA, USMCA does not permit Canadian investors to sue the U.S. government (or American investors to sue the Canadian government).
Legacy claims for investments that had occurred prior to the USMCA coming into force are permitted until 2023. But TC Energy’s claim may now be weaker because the permit issued by the Trump administration explicitly stated that it could be rescinded, essentially at the president’s whim.
Nevertheless, many investors have proceeded with claims on the basis of much weaker cases. Investors bet on positive outcomes in arbitration, as much as they bet on governments not taking action to halt catastrophic climate change. This is because the anticipated rewards, in both instances, are high.
Risky business
One example of an incredibly dubious investor claim is the one launched by Westmoreland Mining Holdings against Canada in 2018. Ironically, this case concerns action that the previous Alberta government took to address climate change.
The case is ongoing and outcomes of arbitration are very difficult to predict. But it demonstrates a concerning trend, as do other cases that have emerged in Europe.
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, announces he’s rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline because he does not believe it serves the national interest, on Nov. 6, 2015. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
A global problem
Climate activists may be tempted to dismiss the threat that investment treaties pose to action on climate change. After all, the Canadian and U.S. governments have the resources to rigorously defend themselves in arbitration and they often win. Indeed, the U.S. has never lost a case. Furthermore, governments already subsidize the industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year, so is a few more billion in “compensation” really going to make much of a difference?
Number and percentage of foreign-owned coal plants protected by at least one treaty with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in place, by host state. (Kyla Tienhaara and Lorenzo Cotula), Author provided
For example, a large number of planned and newly operating coal-fired power plants are in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. A recent study found that many of these plants are protected by investment treaties. These countries have fewer resources for fighting claims and a much poorer record of success in arbitration.
A real concern is that even the threat of a big investor claim could be enough to dissuade one of these governments from taking action to phase out coal.
A global solution
We need climate action to happen everywhere, not just in the countries where governments can afford to fight legal challenges. This is one of the reasons why many are calling for radical reform or complete abolition of international investment treaties.
In the meantime, the Canadian public should make it clear to TC Energy and Jason Kenney that they should drop any plans to pursue a legal challenge, and own up to the fact that they alone are responsible for their own poor investment decisions.
Doubts are being raised about the Alberta government’s decision to restore a policy that protects the Rocky Mountains from coal mining.
