[Editor’s Note: Peter Johnston is the deputy leader of the Alberta Green Party and ran in the recent provincial election in Edmonton-Glenora. For the next five weeks in this guest column he will offer his ideas about the future direction of energy in Alberta, along with plain-English explanations of the technology involved.] 

When I heard that the federal and provincial governments were going to focus on carbon capture as their main strategy for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) for the next couple of decades, I was aghast.

Okay, that’s a pretty normal reaction for me on hearing the latest kooky idea to come out of either the provincial or federal Tory ministries of the environment. So, rather than pooh-pooh everything out of hand, I decided to look deeper and see if the plan had any merits.

Carbon capture involves catching carbon dioxide, compressing it into a liquid form and pumping it down a deep hole where it will (hopefully) remain out of sight and out of mind for thousands of years. There are other types of sequestration being researched, but this is the basic strategy that the Canadian and Albertan governments are following. 

The system does work. Norway’s Statoil has been pumping carbon dioxide down 1,000 metres below the seabed of the North Sea since 1996. Depleted oilfields offer the right kind of geology for sequestration and the carbon dioxide repressurizes the field and increases the amount of extractable oil. In Saskatchewan this has been done in the oilfield at Weyburn, with carbon dioxide pumped through a pipeline from North Dakota. Not only has this project shown that sequestration is feasible, but it has also doubled the amount of oil being recovered, to 10,000 barrels a day. In such circumstances carbon dioxide is a valuable method for increasing the percentage of recoverable oil and a potential source of income for the companies producing the gas. Five of the companies operating in the oilsands have formed a consortium with the aim of sending the carbon dioxide south so it can be sold to oil companies working depleted fields. 

Locations other than depleted oilfields are also potential storage sites for carbon capture. Salt domes, for instance, offer vast potential, as do deep coal beds. Natural gas companies hope to increase the amount of methane recoverable from coal beds by injecting carbon dioxide into them. 

But the problems with carbon capture outweigh these benefits. The system requires the construction of a very expensive infrastructure of pipelines, compressors, and capturing equipment. And it’s going to be consumers and/or taxpayers who pay for it. Also, All this extra equipment is also going to consume a considerable amount of energy—energy that is becoming more expensive as world oil supplies peak. All this development and construction is going to take years to get up and running—years that we don’t have! The scientific community tells us that we must reduce our GHG emissions quickly and even the provincial government admits that they see no reductions taking place until 2018 at the earliest. In the meantime, our emissions are rising at an increasing rate. 

Another factor that usually never arises during discussions of carbon capture is the technology’s narrow focus. Industrial plants are not the only big producers of carbon dioxide. The meat processing industry produces 18 per cent of the planet’s GHG emissions; that’s as much as transportation, and the sector is expanding. Neither of these sectors will have their carbon dioxide emissions reduced by capture. Look at it this way: the methane in cow farts is 18 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a GHG, and yet there are no plans to reduce methane emissions.

Finally, carbon capture is not a long-term solution to our emissions problem. Indeed, it allows us to continue with business as usual, indiscriminately burning fossil fuels. To achieve a meaningful, long-term reduction in our GHG emissions, we need to develop a sustainable energy industry and plan for a post-fossil-fuel economy, and above all, be much more efficient in our energy usage.

Just because carbon capture is viable, that doesn’t mean we should use it. The technology is very expensive and should be viewed as an interim measure until we have developed a sustainable energy industry. It should not be thought of as a means to allow us to rip northern Alberta apart with a clear conscience. Whatever policies our governments adopt regarding Canada’s GHG emissions, we are going to be relying on burning fossil fuels for the next couple of decades at least. That means carbon capture is a necessary part of the government’s plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Let’s just hope the provincial and federal governments come up with the rest of the plan soon.