CALGARY — After lengthy having fun with a repute as a “bridge gasoline” able to serving to the world obtain its local weather targets, pure gasoline is dropping a few of its environmental lustre — and that has implications for Canada’s power sector.

Canada is the fourth-largest world producer and sixth-largest exporter of pure gasoline. And with the conflict in Ukraine driving a world power disaster, firms like Enbridge Inc. and TC Power say they count on demand to develop for liquefied pure gasoline (LNG) exports from Canada within the coming years.

However pure gasoline — as soon as seen as a low-emitting gasoline 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 precise time to clear the air on pure gasoline,” mentioned 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 gasoline.”

Canadian power firms have lengthy touted pure gasoline as a “cleaner” various, suggesting that initiatives like the huge 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 gasoline 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 gasoline to a greater one.

For instance, by changing its coal-fired energy vegetation to pure gasoline, the province of Alberta has managed to scale back its greenhouse gasoline emissions from electrical energy by practically 40 million tonnes in lower than a decade, a feat that has been hailed by consultants as a serious local weather success story.

However delegates at this 12 months’s local weather summit are more and more calling consideration to the pure gasoline trade’s position within the manufacturing of methane, a very potent greenhouse gasoline that leaks from pure gasoline pipelines and wells within the type of “fugitive emissions” or is launched through the venting and flaring a part of the pure gasoline extraction course of.

Jeyakumar mentioned if the world is severe about its objective of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, then to drive greenhouse gasoline manufacturing down even additional, the vast majority of electrical energy manufacturing going ahead must be finished via renewables. 

“I believe the danger with viewing (pure gasoline) as a bridge gasoline is that it could lead on one to construct pure gasoline belongings, and these belongings have an financial lifetime of a number of a long time,” she mentioned. 

“So what this does is lock us into these belongings . . . and so they turn out to be stranded belongings.”

In Sharm el-Sheikh, each Canada and the U.S. pledged to take additional steps to scale back methane emissions, with Canada stating it goals to get rid of 75 per cent of methane emissions from the oil and gasoline sector in contrast with 2005 ranges by 2030.

However David Hughes, president of power consultancy International Sustainability Analysis Inc., mentioned even with none LNG exports, Canada can be hard-pressed to fulfill its local weather targets. He mentioned as soon as LNG Canada comes on-stream — and its full life-cycle of emissions from manufacturing and processing of the gasoline, pipeline transportation, liquefaction and transport are taken into impact — it will likely be practically unattainable.

“It actually makes it a hopeless scenario,” Hughes mentioned. “The quantity of carbon seize and storage and so forth that you’d must do with a view to meet your commitments can be enormous.”

Dennis McConaghy, a former govt vice-president at TransCanada Corp., now TC Power, mentioned he believes the present debate over pure gasoline must consider that the world wants inexpensive, dependable power. 

“The minute you say you’re going to decarbonize, you’ll be able to demonize pure gasoline,” McConaghy mentioned in an interview. “However the price of making an attempt to do that has virtually gone with out consideration.”

McConaghy mentioned he believes a balanced strategy that mitigates the worst results of local weather change whereas nonetheless strategically utilizing pure gasoline to maximise human well-being is the reply.

“As a result of to utterly get rid of the manufacturing and use of all hydrocarbons is, in my opinion, a very excessive view and an excessive goal,” he mentioned.

In keeping with the Worldwide Power Company, the “golden age” of pure gasoline was within the 2010s, when the U.S. was going via a large-scale phaseout of coal-fired energy vegetation in favour of pure gasoline. 

With the local weather insurance policies which were applied by international locations since, the IEA now says it expects the world will hit peak pure gasoline 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.

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Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press