Alberta lowering greenhouse gases

Gary Park

Petroleum News Calgary Correspondent

Alberta, often labeled as the stumbling block in Canada’s efforts to develop a climate change strategy, is setting the pace for other provinces.

Environment Minister Lorne Taylor released an 18-month progress report that he said will lay the foundation for substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next year.

He said the Alberta government has:

• Adopted Canada’s first legislation to tackle emissions.

• Established North America’s largest green power contract by committing itself to buy 90 percent “green power” for government facilities by 2005 at a cost of C$200 million.

• Offered a C$100 million interest-free loan program to help municipalities with energy efficiency initiatives.

• Made more than C$30 million in commitments for technology and innovation.

Taylor said that the work done so far will be a model and a starting point for future discussions with the Canadian government and other provinces in developing a national plan on climate change.

Rather than adopting the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol, Taylor said Alberta prefers to invest in technology and change behavior to achieve permanent and more significant cuts in emissions without taking the Kyoto approach of short-term actions that could carry a heavy economic cost with little or no benefit to the environment.

He said Alberta wants to achieve a 50 percent reduction in emissions intensity below 1990 levels by 2020, or slash “business as usual” emissions by 60 million tonnes.

Also, Alberta aims to lower emissions by 20 million tonnes by 2010.

With the Alberta Energy Research Institute in a coordinating role, the government will invest C$27 million over three years on the research and development of sustainable energy technologies.

In addition, its 2003 royalty credit program offsets up to 30 percent of costs of projects that capture or inject carbon dioxide into oil and gas pools to both improve resource recovery and store the CO2.

The province is also offering royalty reductions for those who use CO2 in enhanced oil recovery projects.