The Canadian government plans to introduce a new climate test next month and apply it to three energy megaprojects now under review: the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipelines, and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal that a consortium led by Malaysian state oil company Petronas wants to build in British Columbia.
“We are working intensely on a transition process for pipeline projects currently under NEB review that is consistent with our mandate and our commitment that no project will need to return to square one,” said Micheline Joanisse, spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. “We will have more to say in the near future.”
The Trudeau government has said projects already under regulatory review “will face additional hurdles that will be outside the quasi-judicial regulatory process,” the Globe and Mail reports. “An industry official who was briefed on the federal measures said the oil and gas sector is being hammered by low prices and worries that delays on export infrastructure will dampen prospects for renewed investment when prices rebound.”
In Montreal Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the new rules will require companies to “take into account all greenhouse gas emissions” associated with their projects, “including those upstream.”
The previous day in the House of Commons, the PM “said the government supports the notion that Canadian resources need to reach new overseas markets, but added the public needs to be assured that projects are being done in an environmentally sustainable manner,” McCarthy writes.
“We are working very, very hard right across the country with municipal leaders, with provincial leaders to make sure we’re creating the social licence, the oversight, the environmental responsibility, the partnership with communities to get our resources to market in a responsible way,” Trudeau said. “Because that’s what it takes in the 21st century.”
On Tuesday, three major U.S. environmental groups released an inventory of fossil fuel reserves around the world that will push average atmospheric warming beyond the new global limit of 1.5°C, then beyond the previous target of 2.0°C, if they are extracted and burned. The report by Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and 350.org “lays out the carbon risk of fossil fuel deposits in Africa, the Arctic, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S., measuring each against a global carbon budget meant to prevent catastrophic climate change,” Climate Nexus reports.
“Unless Canada’s government implements strong environmental protections, the country’s tar sands projects could add an expected 420 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year by 2020—more than the entire annual emissions of Saudi Arabia,” Nexus states.
