In a blog posting today, independent salmon biologist Alexandra Morton calls attention to the recent listing of Norway-based Marine Harvest – the world’s largest salmon farming company – on the New York Stock Exchange. The move comes on the heels of the revelation that the Harper Government is planning a major expansion of open net-pen salmon farms on BC’s coast, made public by First Nations Chief Bob Chamberlin.
As Chamberlin noted, the plan utterly disregards the conclusions of the $26 million Cohen Inquiry into collapsing Fraser River sockeye stocks, which recommended a partial moratorium on new farms and urged more scientific study into disease transfer from fish farms to wild salmon, calling for the Precautionary Principle to be implemented:
[quote]It’s time for us to hold this government to account. This is an urgent message to all the people who rely upon wild salmon in BC…I urge all of you to take a stand, to start writing letters to the editors, for First Nations people to start demanding that your chief and council stand up and do what’s right for wild salmon. We cannot sit back idly and hope something gets done. It’s up to you, it’s up to me. I want to lock arms with all of you and do what’s necessary to save wild salmon.[/quote]
For her part, Morton, connects the dots between the federal policy change and Marine Harvest’s move to recruit North American investment on the NYSE:
In early January, we learned the Harper government quietly invited the Norwegian salmon farming industry to expand in BC. He did this despite specific warnings to the opposite by his own federal Commission. He did this ignoring his constitutional responsibility to consult with First Nations. See press release by Living Oceans.
A few days later on January 28, 2014, Marine Harvest (the biggest of the three Norwegian operators using BC to grow “their” fish) was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. They rang the Opening Bell. Their press release states they plan to lead the blue revolution similar to 5000 years ago when we went from hunting to farming.They fail to mention salmon farming requires aggressive wild fisheries. Truth is a scarce commodity in this deal.
Read this inspiring story from The Guardianon Spain’s dramatic increase of renewable energy and consequent 23% decline in energy-related carbon emissions.
Remarkable new figures from Spain’s grid operator have revealed that greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s power sector are likely to have fallen 23.1% last year, as power generation from wind farms and hydroelectric plants soared.
Red Eléctrica de España (REE) released a preliminary report on the country’s power system late last month, revealing that for “the first time ever, [wind power] contributed most to the annual electricity demand coverage”. According to the figures, wind turbines met 21.1% of electricity demand on the Spanish peninsular, narrowly beating the region’s fleet of nuclear reactors, which provided 21% of power.
In total, wind farms are estimated to have generated 53,926 gigawatt hours of electricity, up 12% on 2012, while high levels of rainfall meant hydroelectric power output was 16% higher than the historical average, climbing to 32,205GWh.
“Throughout 2013, the all-time highs of wind power production were exceeded,” the report stated. “On 6 February, wind power recorded a new maximum of instantaneous power with 17,056MW at 3:49 pm (2.5 per cent up on the previous record registered in April 2012), and that same day the all-time maximum for hourly energy was also exceeded reaching 16,918MWh. Similarly, in January, February, March and November wind power generation was the technology that made the largest contribution towards the total energy production of the system.”
An increase in wind power capacity of 173MW coupled with an increase in solar PV capacity of 140MW and solar thermal capacity of 300MW meant that by the end of the year renewables represented 49.1% of total installed power capacity on the Spanish peninsula.
In contrast, the preliminary figures show that power output from combined cycle gas plants fell 34.2% year-on-year, coal-fired plants saw generation fall 27.3%, and nuclear power output fell 8.3%.
The dramatic shift towards renewable generation coupled with a fall in overall power demand of 2.1% led to a similarly drastic reductions in emissions from the peninsular’s power sector. “The increased weight of renewable energy in the generation mix structure of 2013 compared to the previous year has reduced CO2 emissions of the electricity sector on the Spanish peninsula to 61.4 million tonnes, 23.1% lower than in 2012,” the report stated.
As 2013 winds down, veteran BC journalist Sid Tafler looks back at the province’s 2013 election and the surprising (to some) victory of the BC Liberal Party.
On the night of the BC election, a supporter of Green Party candidate Andrew Weaver told a TV reporter he was overjoyed at Weaver’s win in Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Then he added that he was devastated at the overall result – a fourth consecutive Liberal majority.
Well, I guess the take-away message is, if you don’t vote to defeat the party in power, you vote to elect them.
That’s just one lesson of the May 14 election, in which the Liberals supposedly overcame a substantial NDP lead to win a surprise victory, even increasing their seat count by four.
I say supposedly because only the naïve, including most of the political media in this province, would have thought the NDP – who have only won three elections of 23 in the last 80 years – were a shoo-in as the campaign began in mid-April. That’s just a little better than a 10% success rate, or a 90% failure rate.
It could be argued that if the NDP lost the election, so did the political media, who might have done better if they did more reporting and less repeating. Throughout the campaign, members of the press gallery and the rest of the media were fixated on the polls, which formed the subtext of the entire election, instead of the issues, the campaign itself and, most importantly, the record of the government seeking our confidence in a new mandate.
Polls apart
But what about those opinion polls? Didn’t they all say the NDP was sure to win the election?
Well, we should all know by now that polls, in the age of cell phones and voter apathy, are predictably unreliable. Take two other provincial elections last year as examples. The polls were wrong in the Quebec election, predicting a PQ majority government (the result was a PQ minority, with the supposedly spent Liberals virtually tying the PQ in the popular vote and nearly winning re-election) and wrong again in the Alberta election, in which the upstart Wild Rose party was predicted to cruise to victory (instead the Conservatives cruised and the Wild Rose crashed).
Notice the commonality here with these two elections and the Liberal victory in BC? In all three cases, the party in power attracted much more support on election day than they did in the polls.
The conclusion is that opinion polls, mostly conducted months or weeks before the election, are about the past – the government’s record. Hypothetically, if I were to vote today, a month before the election, I would throw the bums out. Look at all those scandals and, hey, they hiked my Mom’s care home fee by 40%. But the actual election, those 30 seconds I spend alone in the voting booth, are about the future, my fears, my job, or the job I hope to have, which the government in power is promising. So let’s play it safe and throw the bums in. In a nutshell, how you would vote may be very different from how you do vote, or even if you vote.
If they’re so unreliable, why did the B.C. media give the polls so much credence leading up to and during the campaign? The only answer I can provide is laziness or a failure of motivation. It’s so easy to be handed the results of a poll and then slice and dice the numbers, get reaction from the parties, candidates and pundits, compare it to last week’s poll, rather than dig around for real campaign coverage and analysis. It’s great publicity for the polling companies, and it’s FREE! But as Christy Clark said as she licked her fingers after the election, you get what you pay for.
Would vs. Will
There are other psychological factors at play when the polls predict a victory for the NDP opposition. Some soft NDP supporters feel they don’t have to bother to vote — after all, it’s such a bother to draw two lines over a piece of paper to form an X. Others feel they can vote Green — sure, let’s have a Green MLA or two in a legislature dominated by the NDP government.
The absence of all those non-voters of every political persuasion or state of indecision is a major factor, especially since they form — and distort — part of the sample of respondents to opinion polls. “Here’s how I would vote,” they tell pollsters, but on election day, they don’t bother. In the early 1980s, the turnout of eligible voters in BC was in the 70% range, but in the 2009 and 2013 elections, it sank to the low 50s. The difference is 600,000 people in B.C. who would rather watch Duck Dynasty than choose which government decides trivial questions like how our children are educated, whether the doctor will be there when you have a heart attack, or what you’ll pay for hydro or even if BC Hydro will exist in the years to come.
Back in 1984, I commissioned and conducted a poll of the Victoria riding for Monday Magazine a few weeks before the federal election. As the results of our in-house poll came in, I felt a little guilty compiling the numbers and sharing them with readers. What right did I have to know the intention of the electorate before they voted? As it turned out, the poll — phoning and methodology supplied by UVic students — was almost a mirror image of the result on election day. In the 1980s, people still answered their phones, read newspapers (remember them?) and believed it was their civic duty to participate in the electoral system, by actually voting, and even telling nosy pollsters what party they supported.
So what happened between then and now? Here’s a partial list: mobile phones, electronic voice mail, call display, digital autodialing, privacy concerns, a disengaged, diminished media, and of course, the forementioned voter apathy and alienation.
These factors form high barriers between pollsters and potential voters. While you’re trying to reach me, I’m in the bar with my cell phone, and the land line you’re calling is out of order because I cancelled it last year. Or I check call display and don’t answer because I don’t know who you are — or because I do and don’t want to talk to you. Or I pick up the receiver, then hang up again during the telltale one-second delay while the auto-dialer in your calling system shuttles the call to a live pollster. Or you actually reach me, but no, I won’t tell you how I’m going to vote, because it’s none of your business, and who the hell are you anyway?
Other pollsters use robocalls or online polls, but the evidence is, these methods may be even less accurate than live calling.
The difficulty of reaching voters also seriously affects the political parties themselves, especially the NDP, which uses hundreds of volunteer callers at sweaty campaign phone banks calling for hours on end – and, in many cases, getting little usable data from voters. It seems like a terrible waste of time, but the callers are eager and unpaid, so at least it keeps them busy and gives them the illusion of helping the campaign.
So the misdirected campaign run by the supposedly poll-leading NDP was the fourth wobbly leg of the election footstool, already unbalanced by misleading polls, absentee voters and distracted media.
NDP campaign to blame too
Adrian Dix and the other brain trusters in the NDP backrooms decided they were going to redefine politics in B.C., from the stick-and-knife fight of the last century to a genteel garden tea party. The NDP would stay positive and refuse to stoop to the level of name-calling and mud-throwing of the nasty, supposedly desperate Liberals. Fine idea, except they never asked Christy Clark nor the rest of us if we approved.
Just imagine telling your professional hockey team to refrain from body-checking because it’s not nice. You’d lose every game, until your players limped off the ice and quit.
So just what did the NDP stand for? During the campaign, I scoured the websites of Victoria area NDP candidates like Carole James, Rob Fleming, Jessica Van der Veen. What local policies did they support — funding for the new Johnson Street bridge, approval or not for the highly controversial sewage treatment program (mandated by the Liberal government, but considered wasteful and misguided by many people in the capital)?
I found nothing about policy on these candidates’ pages, neither provincial nor local — a big goose egg. The message was vote for us just because. These websites are crucial, because a quick browse online is how many people make last-minute decisions these days about where to eat dinner, go on holidays, or pick the party that will run the province for the next four years.
The campaign, other than out-moded joe-jobs like door-knocking and phoning, was being managed by the heavy thinkers at party HQ in Burnaby, who gave the voters fuzzy messaging and the Liberals a pass on all their wrong-doing, failed policies and dubious promises. Like the navigator of the Queen of the North, they blithely ran into a reef and scuttled the ship.
And there the ship will remain until they find the courage to choose a capable new leader and conduct a thorough overhaul of party personnel and tactics aimed at running a party and campaign designed for the 21st century.
And the rest of us? We must learn to ignore the polls, demand more of our media and vote both for and against the parties running to form the government.
Sid Tafler is has been a journalist in BC for 30 years. He is a former contributor and columnist for the Globe and Mail and editor of Monday Magazine.
The days of the family farm are numbered if we don’t act to protect BC’s ALR now, says ex-Minister Corky Evans
by Corky Evans
Imagine that you might, someday, want to farm for a living. Or imagine your kids might want to farm, or your grandkids. All over the world such dreams become harder and harder to achieve as land capable of supporting crops is paved over for roads or built into shopping centers or houses or is used for industry.
In B.C. during the 1960’s and early 70’s, we lost 6,000 acres of farmland every year to subdivisions and other non-farm activities. In 1972 there was a provincial election and farmers came together to ask all of the parties to do something about the preservation of farmland before it was all gone. Every party responded to those concerns by talking about various solutions they might enact should they win the election.
Farm protection grows with birth of Agricultural Land Reserve
In 1973 the new Government created the Agricultural Land Reserve to protect land capable of producing food. The new law was tough, and owners of land who wanted the right to sell it for subdivision or some other use were surprised and angry. Surprised because such zoning laws are rare in the whole world, and angry because if they ever decided to stop farming, they would only be able to sell their land as farmland (not to developers from whom they could make much more money).
But the people of B.C. liked the idea of protecting farmland and, surprisingly, the law has remained on the books and functioning for four decades. Thus, if you or your kids or your grandkids want to farm someday, or if you want to be able to buy food from people who live and farm near you, B.C. is a good place to live to make those dreams come true.
Tough road to hoe for Commission
The outfit responsible for supervising the Agricultural Land Reserve is called the Agricultural Land Commission and it is a group of people appointed by whoever is the Government of the day. They have the very hard job of receiving applications from owners of farmland for various uses and deciding what is good for the protection of farming and what is not.
Back in the late 1990’s I was honoured to be the Minister of Agriculture. My friend John van Dongen was the Opposition Critic of Agriculture for the Liberal Party.
One day John rose in the Legislature and accused me of Conflict of Interest in a case being considered by the Agricultural Land Commission. Conflict is a serious charge. A Minister can, and should, lose their job if they are guilty of Conflict. Even just the accusation of Conflict implies the possibility of a serious breach.
I could tell from John’s expression as he raised the issue that he didn’t believe his claim to be true. And I knew it wasn’t true and, later, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner would research the charge and find it was wasn’t true.
While I was not, legally, guilty of wrongdoing or Conflict, John’s accusation was, nevertheless, justified. My point is that the relationship between any Government of British Columbia and the Agricultural Land Commission is always fraught with difficulty. Provincial Ministers charged with representing the interests of the Crown are, under any administration, frequently skating on the edge of real Conflict in their dealings with the Commission.
But it cannot be otherwise. The Agricultural Land Commission is charged with doing the work of the Angels in protecting land capable of producing food from development. Conversely, the Government of the Province is charged with doing the work of the Devil in trying to make development happen in order to sustain an economy and employ people and get themselves re-elected. The interests of the two are at odds with each othereven in times when the Government of the day is supportive of the Agricultural Land Reserve in principle.
BC’s ALR a world-renowned model for food security
I live and produce food on land that I purchased prior to the creation of the ALR and still own. I love the Agricultural Land Reserve and hugely admire the politicians who had the guts and the foresight to put it into law so many decades ago.
When I had the honour to serve as Minister of Agriculture of B.C. I received separate visits from farmers from Ontario, Alberta, Tennessee and New Mexico who traveled all the way to our Province to ask our advice. They all wanted to know how they might develop a similar law to protect their livelihood, threatened as it was by various forms of encroachment into farmland by other interests.
In every case I had to tell them that I did not know how they could enact such legislation in the face of modern pressures that would oppose them.
I also told them that if they could achieve sufficient political will to consider such legislation we would, of course, assist them in any way we could to write or to debate such legislation. But, I said, sufficient political will in this day and age was hard to imagine. If we hadn’t seen fit to pass the law protecting farmland in 1973 there is no way we could manage to do so now.
Right-wing think tank plants seeds of ALR’s demise
Such is the debt that we, British Columbians, owe to those who made the ALR in the 1970’s. It was possible then to consider such a vision, policy and law. It is almost unfathomable today to imagine a government, anywhere, achieving a similar objective.
A few years ago, a B.C. organization that speaks for corporatist values, the Fraser Institute, commissioned a report calling for an end to the Agricultural Land Reserve. The report disparages both Canadian farmers and consumers of food who desire to purchase food produced locally. The report is online and it is worth reading to understand that your dreams or your values may run counter to those of some people with a great deal of power in our society (download full report).
Following the publication of that 2009 report, we had an election in B.C. While the issue of the future of the Agricultural Land Reserve was not an issue in the election, the Government that won the election appears to have decided to support the ideas of the Fraser Institute.
Time to speak up for agricultural land
That is why it is time for all of the people in the province who produce or eat food to rise up and defend the Agricultural Land Reserve. If we weaken it now, it will die.
Although the Land Reserve may have been visionary and, therefore, hard for some people to accept way back in 1973, I think it’s time may have finally come. Everywhere I go people are beginning to talk about food and the quality of food and where it comes from and how it is produced. Young people, for pretty much the first time in my 65 years, are talking about wanting to learn to farm for a living. Village, town and city people are often even more interested in food issues than my neighbours in the rural area.
This might be the moment when both urban and rural people could build a coalition of consumers and producers to defend farmland and support farmers that would define public policy in B.C. for decades to come.
An issue of values
At this moment in history, when everyone from the Fraser Institute to the Provincial Government seems to want to do away with the ALR, or manipulate it to serve their interest, the situation reminds me of that line we hear at weddings, the one that says “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
This is not a partisan issue. New Democrats wrote the law in 1973. It was sustained by Socreds for a quarter century. When John van Dongen rose to defend the Commission in the 90’s, he was a Liberal. I know lots of farmers and discerning consumers who vote Green. One of the strongest voices in defence of the ALR in the Legislature, Vicki Huntington, is an Independent. This issue isn’t about your politics, it is about your values. Either your values, or those of the Fraser Institute.
Let’s choose to speak. Loud and from everywhere, with no urban/rural difference, in support of the Agricultural Land Reserve and in support of the producers who work that land.
What you can do
And if you are moved to speak I have thoughts about how you might go about it. First, send this or some writing of your own to everyone you know who eats, gardens or farms to let them know what’s happening.
Second, take an old-fashioned pen and some paper and write your thoughts in a letter to the Premier of British Columbia. Your own thoughts. Do not bother with the Ministers whose names have been attached to this issue. Ministers are supposed to try “trial balloons” to see if they are accepted by the public. They will not be the ones who decide whether or not to mess with the Land Reserve. The Premier will make that call. Do not bother sending her an e-mail. E-mails do not make a stack on anybody’s desk. E-mails are not given the weight of a letter that you write yourself. A big stack of letters will not go unnoticed.
This issue will be resolved, one way or another, by the spring. Now is the time to choose to speak.
Corky Evans is a retired BC NDP MLA for Nelson-Creston and provincial agriculture minister.
Nov. 19th, 2013. A Tuesday. The day started out sunny, but hail fell out of the sky in the afternoon. It was a Victoria day like any other until I found out the Canadian government has been vigorously spying on several Canadian organizations that work for environmental protections and democratic rights.
I read the news in the Vancouver Observer. There, front and centre, was the name of the organization I worked for until recently: Dogwood Initiative.
My colleagues and I had been wary of being spied on for a long time, but having it confirmed still took the wind out of me.
[quote]I love my country. And in my eyes, there isn’t anything much more patriotic than fighting for the interests of Canadian citizens.[/quote]
Harper Government spying on church gatherings
I told my parents about the article over dinner. They’re retired school teachers who lived in northern Alberta for 35 years before moving to Victoria.
I asked them: “Did you know the Canadian government is spending your tax dollars to spy on your daughter?”
Then I told them how one of the events detailed in e-mails from Richard Garber, the National Energy Board’s “Group Leader of Security,” was a workshop in a Kelowna church run by one of my close friends and colleagues, Celine Trojand (who’s about the most warm-hearted person you could ever meet). About 30 people, mostly retirees, attended to learn about storytelling, theory of change and creative sign-making (cue the scary music).
CSIS, RCMP, Enbridge working together
In the e-mails, Garber marshals security and intelligence operations between government operations and private interests and notes that his security team has consulted with Canada’s spying agency, CSIS.
To add insult to injury, another set of documents show CSIS and the RCMP have been inviting oil executives to secret classified briefings at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, in what The Guardian describes as “unprecedented surveillance and intelligence sharing with companies.”
These meetings covered “threats” to energy infrastructure and “challenges to energy projects from environmental groups.” Guess who is prominently displayed as a sponsor on the agenda of May’s meeting? Enbridge, the proponent of a controversial oilsands pipeline to the coast of British Columbia.
I asked my folks: “Isn’t that scary? CSIS is hosting classified briefings sponsored by Enbridge?” No answer. My parents are not the type to get themselves in a flap about things like this, but I prodded them: “Dad, this is scary, right?”
“It’s scary,” he admitted.
Is this Canada or Nigeria?
How much information is being provided to corporations like Enbridge? What about state-owned Chinese oil companies like Sinopec, which has a $10 million stake in Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker proposal?
What kind of country spies on environmental organizations in the name of the oil industry? It seems more Nigerian than Canadian.
I fought the urge to react with indignation, a sentiment I find all too common in the environmental movement. I also didn’t want to be overwrought about it. Fact is though, the more I thought about those documents, the more I began to feel a sense of loss for my country.
Enemies of the State
I’m not the touchy-feely type. Everyone from my conservative cousins in Alberta to my former colleagues at the Calgary Herald could attest to that. I grew up in northern Alberta playing hockey and going to bush parties. I think our oil and gas deposits, including the oilsands, are a great asset to our country — if developed in the public interest. Yes, that’s a big “if” — but Canadians own these resources and the number one priority when developing them should be that Canadians benefit.
For speaking up for the public interest and speaking out against the export of raw bitumen through the Great Bear Rainforest, hundreds of people like me have been called radicals and painted as enemies of the state, as somehow un-Canadian. That last bit is what hits me in the gut.
Exporting raw bitumen, Canadian jobs
I love my country. And in my eyes, there isn’t anything much more patriotic than fighting for the interests of Canadian citizens. I’ve argued that after 25 years of oilsands development, Albertans should have something to show for it — not be facing budget crises and closing hospital beds; that Albertans aren’t collecting a fair share of resource revenues; that we should develop resources at a responsible pace that doesn’t cause rampant inflation, undermining Canadians’ quality of life and hurting other sectors of the economy; that we should prioritize Canadian energy security (half of Canada is currently dependent on foreign oil). And I’ve agreed with the Alberta Federation of Labour that exporting raw bitumen and 50,000 jobs to China doesn’t make sense for Canadians.
Enbridge hearings drew unprecedented public turnout
Now, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but it’s a stretch to portray any of those statements as unpatriotic or radical. In fact, one of my proudest moments as a Canadian was encouraging citizens to register to speak at the public hearings on Enbridge’s pipeline and tanker proposal for B.C. With a team of committed people at Dogwood, in collaboration with several other groups, we helped more than 4,000 people sign up to have their say — seven times more than in any previous National Energy Board hearing.
It was this act of public participation that sparked the beginnings of the federal government’s attacks on people who oppose certain resource development proposals. Helping citizens to participate in an archaic public hearing process is a vital part of democracy— not something to be maligned.
Corporate media ignores Harper Government spying
What makes me sad is the thought that we’ve been reduced to being the type of country that spies on its own citizens when they speak out against certain corporate interests. Not only that, but our government then turns around and shares that intelligence with those corporations.
Disappointingly, a scan of today’s news coverage indicates Canada’s major newspapers never picked up the spying story, save for one 343-word brief on page 9 of the Vancouver Province. Is it now so accepted that the Canadian government is in bed with the oil industry that it doesn’t even make news any more? Now that’s really sad.
Whether you agree or disagree with my ideas about responsible natural resource development, I’d hope we could all agree Canada should be a country where we can have open and informed debate about the most important issues of our time — without fear of being attacked and spied on by our own government.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Common Sense Canadian’s Damien Gillis was also featured in an email from CSIS to the National Energy Board, spying on Enbridge critics, as revealed in this story from The Vancouver Observer.
Frackwater pits in Talisman’s Farrell Creek operations in northeast BC – photo taken in March. Pond A, on the far right, suffered a rupture, leaking contaminants into the soil and groundwater (Two Island Films)
by Damien Gillis and Will Koop
A pit storing contaminated fracking water in northeast BC was leaking into the surrounding soil and groundwater for up to six months before owner Talisman formally notified the Oil and Gas Commission and undertook clean-up efforts, The Common Sense Canadian has learned.
One of five lined pits connected to Talisman’s Farrell Creek operations north of Hudson’s Hope, referred to as Pond A, suffered a puncture through both of its protective layers, causing toxic fluids to begin escaping into the environment. The pits are used to store “produced water” from previous fracks to be reused later as part of a program to cut back on freshwater use. Ironically, this practice has now threatened local groundwater due to the ruptured liners.
It has proven difficult to obtain straight answers from the regulator or company, but through a series of recent communications, we have been able to piece together a rough timeline of the incident.
Holes in Talisman’s liner, story
Pond A in Sept 2010. Both protective liners would later fail (Will Koop)
Talisman’s storage pits consist of two liners with a a layer of interstitial webbing in between. As Talisman Community Engagement Advisor Dan Glover explained this past Friday over the phone, that webbing contains sensors which detected a leak in the inside membrane during a routine inspection in “late January” of this year.
“What we didn’t pick up at that time was that there was also an issue with the second liner,” added Glover.
“From what I understand, we started draining the pond in late January when the leak was detected, but it didn’t happen quickly,” he acknowledged.
[quote]That’s a lot of water to truck away.
[/quote]
Indeed, Pond A holds approximately 30,000 cubic metres (30 million litres) of fluids at capacity. With the three neighbouring pits full, the company had to pump out Pond A by tanker truck, removing the toxic liquid waste to the Silverberry industrial waste transfer site, some 70 km away. Each truck can carry just 30-36 cubic metres, meaning almost 1,000 truck loads to empty the pit (and about 120,000-140,000 total km of travel).
That said, the above aerial image of the pits, taken on March 28, conflicts with Mr. Glover’s statement that the company began emptying the pond back in January after the sensors detected a leak in the inner membrane. At least two months later, there is no visible sign that the company has even begun pumping out Pond A.
Getting to the bottom of Pond A leak
It is unclear when Talisman did begin emptying the pit, but Mr. Glover claims it was fully drained by the beginning of June, after which the company removed the liners and discovered the outer layer had failed too, meaning the pit had been leaking for close to 5 months into the soil and groundwater at that point.
In a November 8 email to Hudson’s Hope Mayor Gwen Johansson, responding to questions from a concerned community member, Glover said, “…in June we informed the OGC that we were taking the pond out of service.” Yet, in an advisory emailed to media last week, the regulator stated, “The BC Oil and Gas Commission is investigating a leak in a Talisman frackwater storage pond that was reported by the company on July 22, 2013.”
We asked Mr. Glover to account for the discrepancy between to two conflicting dates when the spill was reported to the OGC. He explained that the first notification, in June, was an informal “heads-up” from Talisman’s regulatory compliance officer. The July date constitutes the company’s “official self-disclosure” to the regulator.
It would take another two and a half months for the OGC to issue a formal order to Talisman “to delineate the extent of soil and groundwater impact in and around Pond A and provide the results to the OGC,” according to Glover. The OGC has declined repeated requests to furnish us with a copy of the order, but has acknowledged the date was October 4 – with a deadline of November 29 for more detailed reporting of remediation and test results on the soil and groundwater.
The above sequence illustrates some serious gaps in the regulatory framework for the industry, with companies left to self-report such incidents, and an apparent lack of urgency on the part of the OGC for mandating and monitoring emergency clean-up measures.
First Nations upset at lack of disclosure
Chief Roland Wilson of West Moberly First Nations, on whose shared territory the leak occurred, is upset at the lack of disclosure by Talisman and the OGC. He says that dialogue with both entities only began once the Nation initiated it, after hearing about learning of the leak through other sources. “They didn’t come forward with anything. That’s a big concern,” says Wilson.
[quote]We have people on the ground – hunters, people practicing their treaty rights. Is this getting into the creeks where they’re camping? Who knows what’s happening? The OGC has the duty to consult. When there is a possible threat to the safety of our members, it’s their duty to inform us.[/quote]
Talisman also neglected to inform West Moberly of the incident, in spite of a memorandum of understanding between the Nation and company which mandates open dialogue. Mr. Glover doesn’t dispute this point. However, when asked why the company didn’t inform First Nations of the leak in January when it was first detected, he suggests it didn’t yet have enough information to share without further investigation.
[quote]We didn’t want to go to them and say, ‘hey guys, we have an issue with one of our ponds,’ then they would ask, ‘what’s the issue?’ and we would have told them we have no idea.[/quote]
That said, there remains the apparent contradiction between the company’s timeline for draining the pit and the above photographic evidence, which suggests Talisman’s response was far less prompt than it has portrayed.
Mr. Glover says that once First Nations contacted Talisman with concerns about the leaking pit, they were invited for a site inspection. He also maintains the company will share its reports on the clean-up with First Nations throughout the region going forward.
Liners punctured by shale
The 12 metre-deep Pond A in Sept. 2010 (Will Koop)
Talisman believes the pit’s liners were punctured by a chunk of shale protruding from the surrounding soil, in the bottom third of the 12 metre-deep cavity.
Following the draining of the pit, Talisman hired Highmark Environmental Services to remove contaminated soil and Matrix Solutions for groundwater monitoring. Results from preliminary testing were supplied to the OGC on September 16, along with an initial remediation plan, which Highmark began to implement. As of last week, an estimated 4,600 cubic metres of soil had been removed and trucked to the Silverberry facility – with approximately 300 cubic metres of contaminated soil remaining to be removed.
The work is ongoing, with follow up meetings being planned in the coming weeks between Talisman and the regulator to review the company’s progress and further testing results.
Chemicals, contamination largely unknown
The company has been unclear about the nature of contaminants in the frackwater, only acknowledging the presence of chlorides, sodium and dissolved solids. In his email to the Hudson’s Hope mayor, Mr. Glover pointed to the province’s “FracFocus” tool, a database where companies operating in BC are now mandated to file chemicals used in their fracks. However, companies are allowed to keep trade secrets and use other tricks to avoid full disclosure.
For instance, we examined the FracFocus list of ingredients used in Well 93-i of the Altares field,directly across the road from the frack fluid storage pits, as an example of the toxics potentially contained in Pond A. While contractor Schlumberger lists most of the chemicals it used in the well, it leaves out some critical details and product information (known as CAS Registry Numbers). And since the FracFocus tool has only been in place since November 2011 in BC, there is data missing for a number of older wells.
For example, Talisman only reports chemicals used in 73 out of 111 of its wells in the Altares field. The company’s total data for the 73 Altares wells indicates it used 993,832 cubic metres (almost a billion litres) of water for fracking purposes – and about 10,000 cubic metres (10 million litres) of toxic additives.
Moreover, the FracFocus tool does not include drilling additives, which, as revealed in a recent peer-reviewed, published paper, can be just as dangerous as fracking fluids.
In any event, here are just a few of the chemicals disclosed by contractor Schlumberger at Talisman’s well (view the full list here):
Hydrochloric Acid
Distillates (petroleum)
Sodium hydroxide (impurity)
2-Methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one
Trisodium nitrilotriacetate (impurity)
We asked Calgary-based Talisman spokesperson Berta Gomez specifically if the water contained the known carcinogen benzene, to which she replied via email, “Yes the produced water does contain low level concentrations of Benzene. Our sampling has shown an average concentration of 0.465 mg/L with a range of 0.211 – 0.824 mg/L,” though she maintains that’s well below the allowable concentration under BC’s Contaminated Sites Regulations.
Finally, neither the OGC nor Talisman have yet to reveal to the public the naturally occurring toxics released within the fracked flow back water – such as mercury, arsenic, barium, strontium, chromium, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes), radium, uranium, and whatever other dangerous underground substances are being dredged up by fracking (read our recent story about dead cows and radiation connected to fracking near a farm in Alberta).
Volume of leaked frackwater unknown
According to the OGC, “The volume of fluid leaked [from Pond A] at this point has not been determined.”
For his part, Mr. Glover stated by email:
[quote]At this time we don’t know the extent of the groundwater impact; however, initial results indicate the impact is quite localized (immediate vicinity of our pond) and that the groundwater chloride concentrations do not pose a significant risk to freshwater species. We continue to check our groundwater monitoring wells on an ongoing basis and we have drilled additional wells to enhance our understanding of the groundwater conditions.[/quote]
Of particular concern is the indication on a provincial mapping service, iMap BC, that a stream runs near the four waste pits (shown on the graphic below) – which are perched at the top of a hill. Pond A rests at the eastern edge nearest the downhill slope. The company maintains the penetration of fluids into the soil has been limited to .75 metres in depth and Mr. Glover says there is no visible stream in that location. That said, government data suggests otherwise and the location of the pond at the top of a hill is cause for concern.
Government claims zero water contamination from fracking
BC Minister for Natural Gas Rich Coleman penned an op-ed in The Georgia Straightone week after the story of Talisman’s leak was broken by The Globe and Mail, boldlydeclaring:
[quote]The net result of both our strong regulatory framework and our geology is that B.C.’s water supply is protected and safe. It has never been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing.[/quote]
OGC spokesperson Hardy Friedrich echoed these comments to the media as late as last week, on November 13, stating “Water has never been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing in B.C.”
And yet, both the OGC and Talisman acknowledge there has been groundwater contamination here from the leaking Pond A. The regulator was also quick to defend the industry’s record in its media lines surrounding the leak, stating, “There have been no similar incidents in 2013. There is only one similar instance in the past five years. It occurred in 2011. In that incident the leak was immediately detected, the storage pond drained and the area remediated.”
It is nevertheless incorrect to state that water has never been contaminated from fracking in BC. Moreover, as this incident demonstrates, the regulatory system in place isn’t designed to detect contamination, so we have no real sense of how many other incidents have gone undetected or unreported. As of 2012, the OGC had all of ONE hydrologist on staff.
Talisman’s shale for sale
A Talisman frack pad near Pond A – March 28 (Two Island Films)
This incident also comes amidst the planned sale of most of Talisman’s Montney shale gas assets to Progress Energy – a subsidiary of Malaysian energy giant and would-be BC LNG player Petronas – for $1.5 Billion. The deal involving Talisman’s Farrell Creek and Cypress operations was announced on November 8 and is expected to conclude sometime in the new year.
It would appear the Pond A incident is alreading weighing on prospective owner Progress/Petronas’ mind. Following initial conversations last week about the leaking pond, Talisman spokesperson Berta Gomez told us via email, “Since the Progress/Talisman deal was announced, we need to get approval from them for any media response we provide on any issue that involves them. Can I ask you please to hold the publication of the interview you did to me until I get responses approved by Progress?”
Chief Wilson is worried about the pending handover from Talisman to Progress/Petronas and how that will impact the remediation of Pond A and relations with his community around economic and environmental issues:
[quote]This poses a concern for us because we don’t have any kind of a working relationship with Progress. We don’t know if they’re going to honour our Memorandum of Understanding with Talisman, or the employment opportunities we’ve been working on with them for our members. What’s going to happen now?[/quote]
Mr. Glover says Talisman is aiming to have clean-up completed by year-end, but that doesn’t include any final decision about what to do with the pond beyond that.
Clearly, the Talisman leak has revealed holes in more than just the company’s storage pit liners. These gaps in BC’s regulatory framework need to be addressed with the new Water Sustainability Act. The incident also poses somes tough questions for a government that wants to dramatically ramp up fracking to feed proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants on BC’s coast, yet doesn’t seem prepared to acknowledge the risks the controversial practice poses on the ground.
Executive Summary from the World Energy Outlook 2013
The International Energy Agency’s authoritative World Energy Outlook provides an analysis of global energy markets highlighting the world’s energy and environmental challenges.
Orientation for a fast-changing energy world
[quote]Many of the long-held tenets of the energy sector are being rewritten.[/quote] Major importers are becoming exporters, while countries long-defined as major energy exporters are also becoming leading centres of global demand growth. The right combination of policies and technologies is proving that the links between economic growth, energy demand and energy-related CO2 emissions can be weakened. The rise of unconventional oil and gas and of renewables is transforming our understanding of the distribution of the world’s energy resources. Awareness of the dynamics underpinning energy markets is essential for decisionmakers attempting to reconcile economic, energy and environmental objectives. Those that anticipate global energy developments successfully can derive an advantage, while those that fail to do so risk making poor policy and investment decisions. This edition of the World Energy Outlook (WEO-2013) examines the implications of different sets of choices for energy and climate trends to 2035, providing insights along the way that can help policymakers, industry and other stakeholders find their way in a fast-changing energy world.
[quote]The centre of gravity of energy demand is switching decisively to the emerging economies, particularly China, India and the Middle East, which drive global energy use one-third higher. [/quote]In the New Policies Scenario, the central scenario of WEO-2013, China dominates the picture within Asia, before India takes over from 2020 as the principal engine of growth. Southeast Asia likewise emerges as an expanding demand centre (a development covered in detail in the WEO Special Report: Southeast Asia Energy Outlook, published in October 2013). China is about to become the largest oil-importing country and India becomes the largest importer of coal by the early 2020s. The United States moves steadily towards meeting all of its energy needs from domestic resources by 2035. Together, these changes represent a re-orientation of energy trade from the Atlantic basin to the Asia-Pacific region. High oil prices, persistent differences in gas and electricity prices between regions and rising energy import bills in many countries focus attention on the relationship between energy and the broader economy. The links between energy and development are illustrated clearly in Africa, where, despite a wealth of resources, energy use per capita is less than one-third of the global average in 2035. Africa today is home to nearly half of the 1.3 billion people in the world without access to electricity and one-quarter of the 2.6 billion people relying on the traditional use of biomass for cooking. Globally, fossil fuels continue to meet a dominant share of global energy demand, with implications for the links between energy, the environment and climate change.
[quote]As the source of two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the energy sector will be pivotal in determining whether or not climate change goals are achieved.[/quote] Although some carbon abatement schemes have come under pressure, initiatives such as the President’s Climate Action Plan in the United States, the Chinese plan to limit the share of coal in the domestic energy mix, the European debate on 2030 energy and climate targets and Japan’s discussions on a new energy plan all have the potential to limit the growth in energy-related CO2 emissions. In our central scenario, taking into account the impact of measures already announced by governments to improve energy efficiency, support renewables, reduce fossil-fuel subsidies and, in some cases, to put a price on carbon, energy-related CO2 emissions still rise by 20% to 2035. This leaves the world on a trajectory consistent with a long-term average temperature increase of 3.6 °C, far above the internationally agreed 2 °C target.
Who has the energy to compete?
[quote]Large differences in regional energy prices have sparked a debate about the role of energy in unleashing or frustrating economic growth.[/quote] Brent crude oil has averaged $110 per barrel in real terms since 2011, a sustained period of high oil prices that is without parallel in oil market history. But unlike crude oil prices, which are relatively uniform worldwide, prices of other fuels have been subject to significant regional variations. Although gas price differentials have come down from the extraordinary levels seen in mid-2012, natural gas in the United States still trades at one-third of import prices to Europe and one-fifth of those to Japan. Electricity prices also vary, with average Japanese or European industrial consumers paying more than twice as much for power as their counterparts in the United States, and even Chinese industry paying almost double the US level. In most sectors, in most countries, energy is a relatively minor part of the calculation of competitiveness. But energy costs can be of crucial importance to energy-intensive industries, such as chemicals, aluminium, cement, iron and steel, paper, glass and oil refining, particularly where the resulting goods are traded internationally. Energy-intensive sectors worldwide account for around one-fifth of industrial value added, one-quarter of industrial employment and 70% of industrial energy use.
[quote]Energy price variations are set to affect industrial competitiveness, influencing investment decisions and company strategies.[/quote] While regional differences in natural gas prices narrow in our central scenario, they nonetheless remain large through to 2035 and, in most cases, electricity price differentials persist. In many emerging economies, particularly in Asia, strong growth in domestic demand for energy-intensive goods supports a swift rise in their production (accompanied by export expansion). But relative energy costs play a more decisive role in shaping developments elsewhere. The United States sees a slight increase in its share of global exports of energy-intensive goods, providing the clearest indication of the link between relatively low energy prices and the industrial outlook. By contrast, the European Union and Japan both see a strong decline in their export shares – a combined loss of around one-third of their current share.
Searching for an energy boost to the economy
[quote]Countries can reduce the impact of high prices by promoting more efficient, competitive and interconnected energy markets.[/quote] Cost differentials between regional gas markets could be narrowed further by more rapid movement towards a global gas market. As we examine in a Gas Price Convergence Case, this would require a loosening of the current rigidity of liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracting structures and oil-indexed pricing mechanisms, spurred by accelerated gas market reforms in the Asia-Pacific region and LNG exports from North America (and an easing of costs for LNG liquefaction and shipping). There is also potential in some regions, notably China, parts of Latin America and even parts of Europe, to replicate at smaller scale the US success in developing its unconventional gas resources, though uncertainty remains over the quality of the resources, the costs of their production and, in some countries, public acceptance for their development.
[quote]A renewed focus on energy efficiency is taking hold and is set to deliver benefits that extend well beyond improvements in competitiveness.[/quote] Notable policies introduced over the past year include measures targeting efficiency improvements in buildings in Europe and Japan, in motor vehicles in North America and in air conditioners in parts of the Middle East, and energy pricing reforms in China and India. As well as bringing down costs for industry, efficiency measures mitigate the impact of energy prices on household budgets (the share of energy in household spending has reached very high levels in the European Union) and on import bills (the share of energy imports in Japan’s GDP has risen sharply). But the potential for energy efficiency is still far from exhausted: two-thirds of the economic potential of energy efficiency is set to remain untapped in our central scenario.
[quote]Action is needed to break down the various barriers to investment in energy efficiency.[/quote] This includes phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies, which we estimate rose to $544 billion worldwide in 2012. Enhancing energy competitiveness does not mean diminishing efforts to tackle climate change. The WEO Special Report: Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, published in June 2013 identified four pragmatic measures – improving efficiency, limiting the construction and use of the least-efficient coal-fired power plants, minimising methane emissions in upstream oil and gas, and reforming fossil-fuel subsidies – that could halt the increase in emissions by 2020 without harming economic growth. This package of measures would complement the developments already envisaged in our central scenario, notably the rise in deployment of renewable energy technologies. Governments need, though, to be attentive to the design of their subsidies to renewables, which surpassed $100 billion in 2012 and expand to $220 billion in 2035. As renewables become increasingly competitive on their own merits, it is important that subsidy schemes allow for the multiple benefits of low-carbon energy sources without placing excessive burdens on those that cover the additional costs. A carefully conceived international climate change agreement can help to ensure that the energy-intensive industries in countries that act decisively to limit emissions do not face unequal competition from countries that do not.
Light tight oil shakes the next ten years, but leaves the longer term unstirred
[quote]The capacity of technologies to unlock new types of resources, such as light tight oil (LTO) and ultra-deepwater fields, and to improve recovery rates in existing fields is pushing up estimates of the amount of oil that remains to be produced. But this does not mean that the world is on the cusp of a new era of oil abundance.[/quote] An oil price that rises steadily to $128 per barrel (in year-2012 dollars) in 2035 supports the development of these new resources, though no country replicates the level of success with LTO that is making the United States the largest global oil producer. The rise of unconventional oil (including LTO) and natural gas liquids meets the growing gap between global oil demand, which rises by 14 mb/d to reach 101 mb/d in 2035, and production of conventional crude oil, which falls back slightly to 65 mb/d.
[quote]The Middle East, the only large source of low-cost oil, remains at the centre of the longer-term oil outlook.[/quote] The role of OPEC countries in quenching the world’s thirst for oil is reduced temporarily over the next ten years by rising output from the United States, from oil sands in Canada, from deepwater production in Brazil and from natural gas liquids from all over the world. But, by the mid-2020s, non-OPEC production starts to fall back and countries in the Middle East provide most of the increase in global supply. Overall, national oil companies and their host governments control some 80% of the world’s proven-plus-probable oil reserves.
[quote]The need to compensate for declining output from existing oil fields is the major driver for upstream oil investment to 2035.[/quote] Our analysis of more than 1 600 fields confirms that, once production has peaked, an average conventional field can expect to see annual declines in output of around 6% per year. While this figure varies according to the type of field, the implication is that conventional crude output from existing fields is set to fall by more than 40 mb/d by 2035. Among the other sources of oil, most unconventional plays are heavily dependent on continuous drilling to prevent rapid field-level declines. Of the 790 billion barrels of total production required to meet our projections for demand to 2035, more than half is needed just to offset declining production.
[quote]Demand for mobility and for petrochemicals keeps oil use on an upward trend to 2035, although the pace of growth slows.[/quote] The decline in oil use in OECD countries accelerates. China overtakes the United States as the largest oil-consuming country and Middle East oil consumption overtakes that of the European Union, both around 2030. The shifting geography of demand is further underlined by India becoming the largest single source of global oil demand growth after 2020. Oil consumption is concentrated in just two sectors by 2035: transport and petrochemicals. Transport oil demand rises by 25% to reach 59 mb/d, with one-third of the increase going to fuel road freight in Asia. In petrochemicals, the Middle East, China and North America help push up global oil use for feedstocks to 14 mb/d. High prices encourage efficiency improvements and undercut the position of oil wherever alternatives are readily available, with biofuels and natural gas gaining some ground as transport fuels.
The great migration in oil refining and trade
[quote]Major changes in the composition of oil supply and demand confront the world’s refiners with an ever-more complex set of challenges, and not all of them are well-equipped to survive.[/quote] Rising output of natural gas liquids, biofuels and coal- or gas-to-liquids technologies means that a larger share of liquid fuels reaches consumers without having to pass through the refinery system. Refiners nonetheless need to invest to meet a surge of more than 5 mb/d in demand for diesel that is almost triple the increase in gasoline use. The shift in the balance of oil consumption towards Asia and the Middle East sees a continued build-up of refining capacity in these regions; but, in many OECD countries, declining demand and competition in product export markets intensify pressure to shut capacity. Over the period to 2035, we estimate that nearly 10 mb/d of global refinery capacity is at risk, with refineries in OECD countries, and Europe in particular, among the most vulnerable. The new geography of demand and supply means a re-ordering of global oil trade flows towards Asian markets, with implications for co-operative efforts to ensure oil security. The net North American requirement for crude imports all but disappears by 2035 and the region becomes a larger exporter of oil products. Asia becomes the unrivalled centre of global oil trade as the region draws in – via a limited number of strategic transport routes – a rising share of the available crude oil. Deliveries to Asia come not only from the Middle East (where total crude exports start to fall short of Asian import requirements) but also from Russia, the Caspian, Africa, Latin America and Canada. New export-oriented refinery capacity in the Middle East raises the possibility that oil products, rather than crude, take a larger share of global trade, but much of this new capacity eventually serves to cater to increasing demand from within the region itself.
The power sector adjusts to a new life with wind and solar
[quote]Renewables account for nearly half of the increase in global power generation to 2035, with variable sources – wind and solar photovoltaics – making up 45% of the expansion in renewables. [/quote]China sees the biggest absolute increase in generation from renewable sources, more than the increase in the European Union, the United States and Japan combined. In some markets, the rising share of variable renewables creates challenges in the power sector, raising fundamental questions about current market design and its ability to ensure adequate investment and long-term reliability of supply. The increase in generation from renewables takes its share in the global power mix above 30%, drawing ahead of natural gas in the next few years and all but reaching coal as the leading fuel for power generation in 2035. The current rate of construction of nuclear power plants has been slowed by reviews of safety regulations, but output from nuclear eventually increases by two-thirds, led by China, Korea, India and Russia. Widespread deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would be a way to accelerate the anticipated decline in the CO2 emissions intensity of the power sector, but in our projections only around 1% of global fossil fuel-fired power plants are equipped with CCS by 2035.
Economics and policies, in different doses, are key to the outlook for coal and gas
[quote]Coal remains a cheaper option than gas for generating electricity in many regions, but policy interventions to improve efficiency, curtail local air pollution and mitigate climate change will be critical in determining its longer-term prospects.[/quote] Policy choices in China, which has outlined plans to cap the share of coal in total energy use, will be particularly important as China now uses as much coal as the rest of the world combined. In our central scenario, global coal demand increases by 17% to 2035, with two-thirds of the increase occurring by 2020. Coal use declines in OECD countries. By contrast, coal demand expands by one-third in non-OECD countries – predominantly in India, China and Southeast Asia – despite China reaching a plateau around 2025. India, Indonesia and China account for 90% of the growth in coal production. Export demand makes Australia the only OECD country to register substantial growth in output.
[quote]Market conditions vary strikingly in different regions of the world, but the flexibility and environmental benefits of natural gas compared with other fossil fuels put it in a position to prosper over the longer term.[/quote] Growth is strongest in emerging markets, notably China, where gas use quadruples by 2035, and in the Middle East. But in the European Union, gas remains squeezed between a growing share of renewables and a weak competitive position versus coal in power generation, and consumption struggles to return to 2010 levels. North America continues to benefit from ample production of unconventional gas, with a small but significant share of this gas finding its way to other markets as LNG, contributing – alongside other conventional and unconventional developments in East Africa, China, Australia and elsewhere – to more diversity in global gas supply. New connections between markets act as a catalyst for changes in the way that gas is priced, including more widespread adoption of hub-based pricing.
Brazil is at the leading edge of deepwater and low-carbon development
[quote]Brazil, the special focus country in this year’s Outlook, is set to become a major exporter of oil and a leading global energy producer.[/quote] Based mainly on a series of recent offshore discoveries, Brazil’s oil production triples to reach 6 mb/d in 2035, accounting for one-third of the net growth in global oil production and making Brazil the world’s sixth-largest producer. Natural gas production grows more than five-fold, enough to cover all of the country’s domestic needs by 2030, even as these expand significantly. The increase in oil and gas production is dependent on highly complex and capital-intensive deepwater developments, requiring levels of upstream investment beyond those of either the Middle East or Russia. A large share of this will need to come from Petrobras, the national oil company, whose mandated role in developing strategic fields places heavy weight on its ability to deploy resources effectively across a huge and varied investment programme. Commitments made to source goods and services locally within Brazil add tension to a tightly stretched supply chain.
[quote]Brazil’s abundant and diverse energy resources underpin an 80% increase in its energy use, including the achievement of universal access to electricity.[/quote] Rising consumption is driven by the energy needs of an expanding middle class, resulting in strong growth in demand for transport fuels and a doubling of electricity consumption. Meeting this demand requires substantial and timely investment throughout the energy system – $90 billion per year on average. The system of auctions for new electricity generation and transmission capacity will be vital in bringing new capital to the power sector and in reducing pressure on end-user prices. The development of a well-functioning gas market, attractive to new entrants, can likewise help spur investment and improve the competitive position of Brazilian industry. A stronger policy focus on energy efficiency would ease potential strains on a rapidly growing energy system. Brazil’s energy sector remains one of the least carbon-intensive in the world, despite greater availability and use of fossil fuels. Brazil is already a world-leader in renewable energy and is set to almost double its output from renewables by 2035, maintaining their 43% share of the domestic energy mix. Hydropower remains the backbone of the power sector. Yet reliance on hydropower declines, in part because of the remoteness and environmental sensitivity of a large part of the remaining resource, much of which is in the Amazon region. Among the fuels with a rising share in the power mix, onshore wind power, which is already proving to be competitive, natural gas and electricity generated from bioenergy take the lead. In the transport sector, Brazil is already the world’s secondlargest producer of biofuels and its production, mainly as sugarcane ethanol, more than triples. Suitable cultivation areas are more than sufficient to accommodate this increase without encroaching on environmentally sensitive areas. By 2035, Brazilian biofuels meet almost one-third of domestic demand for road-transport fuel and its net exports account for about 40% of world biofuels trade.
In its latest report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave global greenhouse gas emissions a worldwide limit, know as the global ‘carbon budget.’ In order to prevent temperatures from rising above the 2 C threshold scientists have designated to avoid “dangerous” climate change, total global emissions need to stay within about 921 billion tonnes or gigatonnes (Gt).
As Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently pointed out, the carbon budget “should be a wake-up call for Canada.”
“With a development model based on ever more fossil fuel extraction, Canada’s economy and financial markets are on a collision course with the urgent need for global climate action,” he said.
As Lee explains the global carbon budget of 921 Gt gives the planet a 66 per cent chance of staying within the 2 C limit. But that chance gets drastically worse if we surpass the budget: emitting as much as 1068 Gt leaves us with a mere 50 per cent chance.
The warming potential of all global carbon assets, from the Carbon Tracker report Unburnable Carbon
Canada’s portion of the emissions pie would depend on negotiations, but would likely end up being between 4 (given our population size) and 24 Gt (given our gross domestic product).
When pooled together, however, Canada’s proven reserves of bitumen, oil, natural gas and coal add up to 91 Gt. If you add our probable reserves in you end up with a whopping grand total of 174 Gt.
Even if Canada’s negotiators were shrewd, Lee allows, and end up with a 30 Gt national budget because Canada relies on fossil fuel exports, still two-thirds of Canada’s proven reserves, and 83 per cent of proven-plus-probable reserves would need to remain unburnt.
As Lee writes, this has significant impact on Canada’s financial market:
[quote]This math should alarm institutional investors, and pension funds in particular – because stock market valuations are premised on fossil-fuel-producing companies extracting those resources. Analysts have called this a ‘carbon bubble’ in our financial markets.
This is bad news for the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), which is highly weighted toward the fossil fuel sector, with total market capitalization of fossil fuel companies of about $400-billion to $500-billion. Fossil fuel companies account for about 24 per cent of the total value of the S&P/TSX composite index.[/quote]
A report recently released by the Carbon Tracker Initiative shows that “currently financial markets have an unlimited capacity to treat fossil fuel reserves as assets.” This unchecked incorporation of what are already considered unburnable carbon reserves is a major market failure, write the report’s authors, that is “creating systemic risks for institutional investors, notably the threat of fossil fuel assets becoming stranded as the shift to a low-carbon economy accelerates.”
The concept of “stranded assets” made international headlines last week after a coalition of 70 investors worth $3 trillion pressured 45 of the biggest oil and gas companies to deal with this concern.
The very real limitations placed on the value of Canada’s carbon assets due to their impact on climate change also casts the Harper Government’s position on resource development in a new light.
Recently Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told the World Energy Congress in Daegu, South Korea that “expanding and diversifying our energy exports is a top priority of the Canadian government.”
[quote]Canada is well placed to meet the growing demand for oil and gas. Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of oil and has the third-largest proven reserves – 172 billion barrels, of which 168 billion are from the oil sands. Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of natural gas, with recoverable gas resources approaching 1,300 trillion cubic feet – some 200 years of production at current rates.[/quote]
In addition to having enormous carbon reserves, Canada is failing to adequately manage its current emissions output. According to a new Environment Canada report, Canada’s carbon emissions in 2020 will be 20 per cent higher than the Harper Government’s promised reductions under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.
Canada’s emissions are set to be 66-107 per cent higher than its required reductions to avoid more than 2 C of warming.
Naoto Kan testifying at a Japanese hearing to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan (2010-2011) addresses the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis which happened on his watch. While his decision to continue propping up the grossly negligent Tokyo Electric Power Company is disappointing, his bold vision for an end to nuclear power should be a clarion call for the world’s nuclear powers.
The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the most severe accident in the history of mankind. At Unit 1, the fuel rods melted down in about five hours after the earthquake, and molten fuel breached and melted through the reactor pressure vessel. Meltdowns occurred in Units 2 and 3 within one hundred hours of the accident. At around the same time, hydrogen-air blasted in the reactor buildings of Units 1, 3 and 4.
Each reactor building contains a fuel pool to store spent fuel. At one point, there was a possibility of meltdowns in those fuel pools as well. If a meltdown occurs in a fuel pool, which sits outside a reactor, a tremendous amount of radioactive material would be released directly into the atmosphere.
The continuation of such a release could mean the realization of the worst-case scenario: a situation where 50 million people within a 250-kilometer radius of Fukushima, including Tokyo and its greater metropolitan area, would have to be evacuated.
[quote]The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was the most severe accident in the history of mankind.[/quote]
Fortunately, the situation was prevented from developing further thanks to the tireless self-sacrificing efforts of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Self Defense Forces, the firefighters and the police force to supply cooling water into the reactors and the fuel pools. Indeed, we were so close to seeing the worst-case scenario unfold. Had it reached the worst-case scenario, Japan would have had to suffer from long-term chaos and the tremendous amount of radioactive material released would have impacted other nations as well.
Kan does 180 on nuclear power
Before the Fukushima accident, with the belief that no nuclear accident would happen as long as the safety measures were followed properly, I had pushed the policy of utilizing nuclear power. Having faced the real accident as Prime Minister, and having experienced the situation which came so close to requiring me to order the evacuation of 50 million people, my view is now changed 180 degrees. Although some airplane crashes may claim hundreds of casualties, there are no other events except for wars that would require the evacuation of tens of millions of people.
Avoiding accidents “technically impossible”
In spite of the various measures taken in order to prevent accidents, it is technically impossible to eliminate accidents, especially if human factors such as terrorism are taken into account. Actually, it is not all that difficult to eliminate nuclear power plant accidents. All we need to do is to eliminate nuclear power plants themselves. And that resolution lies in the hands of the citizens.
[quote]It is not all that difficult to eliminate nuclear power plant accidents. All we need to do is to eliminate nuclear power plants themselves.[/quote]
There is another issue. Operating nuclear power plants means creating spent nuclear fuel. It takes enormous amounts of money and time to deal with nuclear waste. What this means is that we are leaving the huge problem of nuclear waste for future generations to care for. There is no other way but to go down in the path toward achieving zero nuclear power, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
The ability to exterminate ourselves
We humans have created nuclear weapons that have the ability to exterminate ourselves – it’s a fundamental paradox of our existence. People have done many things to prevent nuclear wars. One of the examples is The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. On the other hand, rules governing nuclear power plants, except for the ones that prohibit the use of nuclear material for military purposes, are basically left to each nation.
If international rules govern nuclear war, why not power plants?
I believe that we need to have international rules regarding the construction of nuclear power plants, too. Nuclear accidents will happen sometime, somewhere, even though no one can predict when or where. Can we prevent the disastrous situation of forcing many people to evacuate when an accident happens? Is it possible to safely treat nuclear waste? We need international rules to address these concerns.
Healthy energy alternatives exist
China leads the world in renewable energy investments
It is possible for mankind to get enough energy without relying on nuclear power – by using natural energy such as solar, wind, and biomass. To help curb global warming, we need to stop the use of not only nuclear power but also fossil fuels. If all nations make serious efforts to develop new technologies, I believe it’s more than possible that in fifty years we mankind will have all our energy needs met entirely by natural energy.
[quote]I believe it’s more than possible that in fifty years we mankind will have all our energy needs met entirely by natural energy.[/quote]
For the sake of the human race and of our planet earth, the desirable path is for the entire world to walk in the direction of zero nuclear reliance. I have become firmly convinced of that.
Frack water pit in BC’s Horn River Basin (photo: Damien Gillis)
By Anna Novacek – republished from Energy Law BC
As the only province in Canada that does not regulate groundwater use, BC has been referred to as the “wild west” of groundwater.
Groundwater has and will continue to be relied on heavily by the LNG industry as a key source of the extensive amount of water necessary to conduct hydraulic fracturing. While the amount of water will vary between wells due to the changes in geology and the size of the reservoir, the volumes can be immense. EnCana Corp. states that between 200,000 and 1.2 million litres of water (roughly 1/10th to one half of an Olympic swimming pool) is needed to complete one well.
Surface water is regulated by short term water use approvals found under Section 8 of the Water Act [RSBC 1996] c. 483 (“the Water Act”). Surface water licensees are required to use water in accordance with the Water Act, the terms and conditions of their licence, and to pay annual water rentals. None of these requirements currently apply to groundwater users, even those using it on a large scale.
With a legislative proposal for a new Water Sustainability Act, however, this may be changing.
Updating century-old Water Act
BC’s current Water Act is 104 years old. The Water Act Modernization process began in 2009, and has included on-going workshops and consultations with the public, First Nations and stakeholders, resulting in a Water Act Modernization Report on Engagement in September 2010, and a Policy Proposal for the new Water Sustainability Actin December 2010. The original plan was to introduce the new Water Sustainability Actin 2012; however the “complexity of developing legislation with widespread implications for British Columbians” resulted in delay.
Public feedback sought
On October 18th, 2013 the province released a legislative proposal for a new Water Sustainability Act. A summary of this proposal can be accessed here. The proposal is open for public feedback until November 15th, 2013. It is expected to be submitted to the legislative assembly as a bill in 2014 for debate and final approval.
Key changes
The changes to provincial regulation of groundwater outlined in the legislative proposal for a Water Sustainability Act include:
Large volume users would be required to obtain authorization and pay application fees and annual water rentals to access groundwater. Groundwater use for ‘domestic purposes’ would generally be exempt from this requirement
Information will be collected from all well owners to help improve understanding of aquifers and how they interact with lakes and streams
A database of all groundwater wells in the province will be established to help inform future water allocation decisions
The minimal standards under the Ground Water Protection RegulationBC Reg. 299/2004will be expanded to require the mandatory submission of well records for new wells, as well as requiring testing and disinfection of a water supply well after drilling to reduce the risk of contamination, and guidelines for ensuring contaminants are stored away from water supply wells.
The requirement regarding well drilling and the protection of groundwater will be updated. It is proposed that the WSA would clarify that drilling into or penetrating an aquifer is a ‘disturbance’ and requires a qualified well driller.
The complete legislative proposal is available here.
Devil’s in the details
The key question is whether the new Water Sustainability Act will be designed to restrict or minimize groundwater use in any way, or instead focus more on initial approvals, the provision of information and increasing reporting requirements. The application of exemptions within the new legislation will also be an important factor determining how industry will ultimately be affected.
