Month: September 2011

Thinking in terms of renovated bungalows, not megatons.

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Greenhouse gas emissions are an abstract concept for most people. Ask a sample of Canadians what Canada’s annual GHG emissions are, and you’ll likely get a very broad range of answers (they’re about 750 million metric tons (Mt) per year).

The figures are so abstract that errors like Gasland producer Josh Fox claiming that Canada’s oilsands emit 36 Mt of GHGs per day go unnoticed by many – likely because they don’t have the context to catch the mistake rather than because they don’t care about the exaggeration. If you’re one of those people who didn’t catch the error, 36 Mt per day is about half of the world’s total GHG emissions, while oilsands emissions are about 40 Mt per year.

I am guilty of this abstraction myself – I deal in megatons all the time, whether it’s talking about carbon capture and storage, oilsands, or just about anything else I do – and I don’t often stop to think about the scale of those numbers. I decided to do something about this, using the example of Keystone XL.

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If you’re talking jobs or GHGs, alternative scenarios matter

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As seems to be the case with every aspect of the discussion of the Keystone XL pipeline, the claims with respect to job creation or lack thereof are all over the map. I’ve written at length about the right way to assess the GHG emissions implications of Keystone XL and the logic used there should also be applied to employment numbers tied to the project.

The API claims that “U.S. jobs supported by Canadian oil sands development could grow from 21,000 jobs today to 465,000 jobs by 2035” – ironically even a little higher than claims cited in this article by Kate Sheppard – while a couple of reports I found on TransCanada’s website cited numbers as high as 553,000 permanent jobs tied to the pipeline.  Sorry, TransCanada – the number which matters and on which decisions should be made is not how many people will be employed building the pipeline and supplying all of the services associated with building it, or the employment tied to the use of the oil transported. These gross employment figures are meaningless. As with GHG’s, only net impacts relative to the most likely alternative matter.

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Globe and Mail Energy Policy Feature

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Since Premier Ed Stelmach announced his resignation on May 27, 2011, the race for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta — and the race to be the next Premier of Alberta — has been in full swing. Six candidates are vying to lead Alberta’s PCs, who this past week celebrated 40 consecutive … Read more