We’ve always been an exploiter of our environment; that’s the nature of a frontier province. But now we’re notching it up: If you can get fossil fuels in a pipe or to a port, we’ll sell it to the world – and take no responsibility for the consequences.
Yes, we have a carbon tax on domestic consumption of carbon, but not on the throughput of oil, LNG and coal, which we are doing our best to facilitate. As indicated in items that came in today:
Bridge high enough for LNG tankers proposed
Port Metro Vancouver wants the province to build a higher bridge when it replaces the Massey Tunnel to allow taller LNG tankers to travel up the Fraser River, according to documents obtained by an environmental group. …
An internal email between port staff suggests the port’s 65-metre figure is based on the height clearance requirements for the biggest LNG tankers that could turn in the river.
Tunnel replacement, it is said, will also help in shipping coal out of an expanded Fraser-Surrey Docks.
So we both increase the amount of carbon we can ship, and use the wealth generated to build infrastructure that will encourage even more driving and suburban sprawl – the highest-energy forms of urban development.
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Meanwhile … also in the Sun: “Big energy clashes with Kerry on climate change.”
“The call for carbon pricing is unanimous,” Gerard Mestrallet, CEO of the French energy company Engie, said on a panel discussion in Paris. “It’s loud and clear. Carbon pricing is the right signal, the right tool.” …
“We need a robust price of carbon,” Philippe Varin, chairman of the French utility Areva SA, said at the conference. “Necessity is the mother of creativity, and we definitively need a carbon price.”
If indeed that should happen, the economics of the carbon we export, currently without a carbon tax, suddenly change. And so, presumably, would we – or at least the cost of the debt we incur for the kind of car- and truck-dependent urban region the Province will build, especially in the absence of a commitment to transit and assumption of ever-greater royalties for carbon.
“Every coal company will be finished in the next 10 or so years,” Ross Beaty, executive chairman of Alterra Power, founder and CEO Pan American Silver Corp., speaking at Renewable Cities conference in Vancouver last week.
“The public would be well advised to demand more from their government than an improbable LNG fix to address crucial long term energy security, environmental, and fiscal problems. … Arm-waving assertions by BC politicians of more than 950 tcf14 of recoverable resources are misleading, as they convey none of the geological and economic uncertainties in these estimates, nor the scale of the environmental and technical challenges in attempting to recover them. Natural gas is a finite, non-renewable resource; however it will continue to be an important energy input to BC and Canada for the foreseeable future. Liquidating BC’s gas resources as quickly as possible is not a sustainable energy plan. Long term energy sustainability must of necessity involve a reduction in our reliance on non-renewable resources and a vision of how to get there.”
‘BC LNG: A Reality Check’, David Hughes, retired geoscientist, 2014.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/article16443948.ece/BINARY/Hughes-BC-LNG-Jan2014.pdf
Exporting more weed is better ?
Increasing electricity to Ontario or European rates (4-5 times as in BC currently ) by mandating more solar or wind is better ?
Not exporting or coal, gas or oil is better ?
Leaving our oil, gas or coal in the ground is better ?
Tripling food cost by disallowing carbon based transportation options is better ?
Forcing carbon taxes onto gas or oil producers and putting them at a competitive disadvantage over OPEC producers is better ?
Increasing unemployment rates to double digit rates is better ?
Laying off 50% of university staff while cutting their salaries 30-40% due to vanishing tax revenues is better ?
This is better: supporting local business organizations like LOCO BC. The economic spinoffs are far greater then resource extraction who’s profits go to corporations that pay little tax and meager jobs.
http://www.locobc.com
Addressing value-added and diversification away from exporting raw resources is better.
Reducing our dependence on finite resources subject to roller coaster prices is better.
Increasing urban efficacy through transit, appropriate land use measures and energy conservation is better.
Energizing an industrial strategy and creating jobs through renewable base flow energy alternatives like geothermal is better.
The last time I checked the earth is rather vast. Huge resources everywhere and much of it unexplored still. Oil and gas is quite plentiful .. Canada has several hundred YEARS of resources already discovered .. and likely far more still undiscovered. Until then we ought to use it it and monetize it for human’s benefits TODAY. Once oil gets scarcer, say 2200 or 2300 we can switch to more expensive energy sources such as solar, wind or nuclear, all with their pro’s and con’s.
We ought not to save it like the Norwegians that are running out of oil in 20 years. Canada is very very different ! We also ought not to subsidize solar panels like the Germans with 4-5 times the electricity costs and a tax burden almost 100% higher than Canada (when counting income taxes and PST/GST per working adult)
For example this 200B+ barrel of oil reserves in NWT: http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/northwest-territories-sitting-on-massive-shale-oil-reserves-on-par-with-booming-bakken-field-in-u-s
Value-add as in refineries or petro-chemicals ? Canada does that where it makes sense already, say AB, PQ, ON or NB. Wouldn’t billion $ firms figure that out themselves that refining makes sense or doing more petro-chemicals ? Do we need governments, like the new inexperienced one in AB, to tell them that or force them there through higher taxes ?
Diversification, as in high-tech ? Blackberry just laid off thousands more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/blackberry-issues-unspecified-number-of-layoff-notices-1.2387789 But sure, high tech is good but not on government dime, please.
Better, as in “better for whom” ? What is “better” ? A smaller car ? A small condo than a big house with a yard ? Solar based electricity at 30-40 cents a kwh ? A $100,000 e-car with a range of 250 km affordable only for the very rich ? That is better ? A university prof making $50,000 and not $140,000/year due to lower taxes collected ? That is better ?
Are you proposing a socialist subsidy schemes, i.e. a lower living standard due to massive taxation for an allegedly “better” world of smaller cars, smaller houses, no airplane travel, expensive vegetables, grown by hand or with e-tractors ? No more bananas in the winter from Mexico or Chile ? or only for the top 1% ?
Geothermal: absolutely, where it makes sense. Does it make sense in BC ? Why is BC Hydro not doing it ? Or any rich entrepreneur ? Or you ?
You sure are a pessimist Thomas.
Thermal coal is toast. Oil generation is next to fall. It’s likely that natural Gas will not be a valuable commodity within my lifetime (but maybe not yours).
The combination of solar panels, and battery storage has the potential to undercut most types of fossil fuel generation within the next decade, even when externalities such as pollution or transmission costs are not counted.
Hydro will likely remain cheaper than Solar in BC for decades to come, but in most places that won’t be the case.
Canada will still however remain a big energy exporter since small countries with high population densities will still require lots of energy without necessarily possessing the hinterland to support renewables.
As far as transport goes, electric cars are already here and are quite decent. Even if they’re not to your tastes yet, they likely will be soon. My primary car is mostly electric (PHEV) and has been using about 1.1 L/100km (256 MPG). It cost me under $30,000 to buy which is hardly prohibitive.
Buses and trucks are also likely to be electrified soon.
Also, before you go doubting me as a ill-informed hippy, I’m a mining engineer. I’ve got my fingers quite deep in the resource extraction economy. Dominoes are falling.
Thomas, I will disagree with you on Norway. We most certainly do need to charge a fair price for public resources and bank the royalties and stop use them to artificially subsidize provincial and federal budgets. Canada seems hellbent on exporting raw resources at the lowest possible price in the fastest amount of time with the least possible planning and certainly no regard to save some for long term domestic use and using it more judiciously as a resource to transition to deeper conservation and renewables. It’s a gold rush. A publicly-subsidized gift to Big Oil. And it’s illusory.
The hedge fund managers and economists do not understand geology and have a proven record of creating magical-thinking press hype to sell shares, earn fees, cast pixie dust into the air and adhere slavishly to the petroleum industry. They regularly confuse an entire resource with the tiny fraction that is technically and affordably recoverable (e.g. Arctic oil cheerleaders who use poor statistical methodology to quantify it according to knowledgeable critics like Thomas Homer Dixon, David Hughes and Richard Heinberg). They offer impressively complex economic models while utterly failing to grasp that the economy is underpinned by energy which is controlled by the laws of physics, not by the supply of money. This leads to their lack of understanding of the concept of Net Energy where the higher energy consumption rates of unconventional petroleum sources to bring them to the surface, process and ship to market are routinely disregarded when they cancel out larger chunks of total available energy. Perhaps most egregiously, they overlook the increasingly obvious fact that there is both a floor and a ceiling in the price of petroleum beyond which the markets and government budgets falter and consumers flee to alternatives. And that’s just the criticism on the economic front; the environment brings a whole new set of eyes to the table.
BC is already fairly well diversified beyond fossil fuel extraction (but could do better), but certainly not on its own dependency (that needs a lot of work). The government doesn’t need to portray LNG as some kind of economic Messiah while practicing the opposite: giving it away at bargain basement prices with no concern about long term conservation-based domestic use while transitioning to renewables, let alone its ground environmental impact and life cycle embedded emissions.
Lastly, you overlook the term “finite” when casting about on fossil fuels. Geologists who have examined the actual rock strata and studied prior production rate data have been warning for years that, contrary to the rosy picture painted by economists, we must plan to incrementally transition away from petroleum. Just wait until the price at the pump hits $3.00 a litre to see the hue and cry of not planning for it.
You have grossly underrated BC’s tech sector. It reached $23 billion in total value in 2014 and has grown to 7.6% of the provincial GDP. It employs 84,000 people with an average weekly wage of $1,440. It generated $300 million in direct investments, and the associated R&D was worth $3 billion. It generates an average of 165 patents and 116 university licenses a year. It has grown 12% since 2007, twice as much as all non-renewable resource extraction activities combined. It’s mostly a private sector initiative; so much for your prognostications about socialism. [Source: BC Tech Report Card, KPMG, 2014.]