[ad_1]
CALGARY — After lengthy having fun with a fame as a “bridge gas” able to serving to the world obtain its local weather objectives, pure fuel is shedding a few of its environmental lustre — and that has implications for Canada’s power sector.
CALGARY — After lengthy having fun with a fame as a “bridge gas” able to serving to the world obtain its local weather objectives, pure fuel is shedding a few of its environmental lustre — and that has implications for Canada’s power sector.
Canada is the fourth-largest international producer and sixth-largest exporter of pure fuel. And with the warfare in Ukraine driving a world power disaster, firms like Enbridge Inc. and TC Power say they count on demand to develop for liquefied pure fuel (LNG) exports from Canada within the coming years.
However pure fuel — as soon as seen as a low-emitting gas in a position to act as a stopgap till extra renewable sources of power may very well be developed — has been taking warmth at this 12 months’s U.N. COP27 local weather summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
“It’s the proper time to clear the air on pure fuel,” stated Binnu Jeyakumar, clear electrical energy director for clear power think-tank the Pembina Institute, in an interview from the COP27 local weather summit, which she is attending this week.
“We as Canadians must have a fuller view of the emissions profile of pure fuel.”
Canadian power firms have lengthy touted pure fuel as a “cleaner” various, suggesting that initiatives like the large LNG Canada export terminal at the moment underneath development close to Kitimat, B.C. may be a part of the local weather change answer by serving to to displace coal-fired energy technology across the globe.
It is true that, when burned, pure fuel produces far fewer carbon dioxide emissions than oil or coal. That implies that in some instances, it has made sense for jurisdictions to maneuver from a “worse” fossil gas to a greater one.
For instance, by changing its coal-fired energy crops to pure fuel, the province of Alberta has managed to cut back its greenhouse fuel emissions from electrical energy by almost 40 million tonnes in lower than a decade, a feat that has been hailed by specialists as a significant local weather success story.
However delegates at this 12 months’s local weather summit are more and more calling consideration to the pure fuel business’s function within the manufacturing of methane, a very potent greenhouse fuel that leaks from pure fuel pipelines and wells within the type of “fugitive emissions” or is launched in the course of the venting and flaring a part of the pure fuel extraction course of.
Jeyakumar stated if the world is critical about its objective of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, then to drive greenhouse fuel manufacturing down even additional, nearly all of electrical energy manufacturing going ahead must be carried out via renewables.
“I believe the danger with viewing (pure fuel) as a bridge gas is that it could lead on one to construct pure fuel belongings, and these belongings have an financial lifetime of a number of a long time,” she stated.
“So what this does is lock us into these belongings . . . and so they change into stranded belongings.”
In Sharm el-Sheikh, each Canada and the U.S. pledged to take additional steps to cut back methane emissions, with Canada stating it goals to remove 75 per cent of methane emissions from the oil and fuel sector in contrast with 2005 ranges by 2030.
However David Hughes, president of power consultancy International Sustainability Analysis Inc., stated even with none LNG exports, Canada can be hard-pressed to satisfy its local weather targets. He stated as soon as LNG Canada comes on-stream — and its full life-cycle of emissions from manufacturing and processing of the fuel, pipeline transportation, liquefaction and delivery are taken into impact — it will likely be almost inconceivable.
“It actually makes it a hopeless scenario,” Hughes stated. “The quantity of carbon seize and storage and so forth that you’d must do to be able to meet your commitments could be enormous.”
Dennis McConaghy, a former government vice-president at TransCanada Corp., now TC Power, stated he believes the present debate over pure fuel must take note of that the world wants inexpensive, dependable power.
“The minute you say you’ll decarbonize, you’ll be able to demonize pure fuel,” McConaghy stated in an interview. “However the price of making an attempt to do that has nearly gone with out consideration.”
McConaghy stated he believes a balanced strategy that mitigates the worst results of local weather change whereas nonetheless strategically utilizing pure fuel to maximise human well-being is the reply.
“As a result of to utterly remove the manufacturing and use of all hydrocarbons is, in my opinion, an awfully excessive view and an excessive goal,” he stated.
In response to the Worldwide Power Company, the “golden age” of pure fuel was within the 2010s, when the U.S. was going via a large-scale phaseout of coal-fired energy crops in favour of pure fuel.
With the local weather insurance policies which were carried out by international locations since, the IEA now says it expects the world will hit peak pure fuel demand as early as the top of this decade, after which demand will start to fall.
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Nov. 17, 2022.
Corporations on this story: (TSX:ENB, TSX:TRP)
Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press
[ad_2]
Source_link
