While climate disasters unfold in Canada and around the planet, the federal government is entertaining false solutions from the fossil-fuel industry that risk making things worse instead of better.
The federal government has committed to ending fossil fuel subsidies. But now they’re rolling out new policies, spending programs and tax breaks to incentivize carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen and “advanced recycling.” The truth is, these are just new fossil fuel subsidies in disguise that will continue to lock us into dirty fuels.
Take “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), touted by the industry as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by capturing some of the gases from polluting facilities before they escape into the atmosphere. CCS does nothing to stop the emissions created from burning the fuel — most notably for heating and transportation — and yet the oil and gas lobby wants at least $50 billion from taxpayers to make it happen.
But CCS is not a climate solution. In fact, CCS perversely increases emissions, since most of the captured carbon is actually used to get more oil out of the ground.
And despite decades of research and tens of billions of dollars in subsidies globally, CCS is neither economically sound nor proven at scale. In fact, globally only 0.1 per cent of annual emissions from fossil fuels are being captured. And while the costs of renewables and real climate solutions have plummeted, carbon capture technologies remain very expensive.
And then there’s “blue” hydrogen. Hydrogen, like electricity, can be used to store or transport energy, and when burned, it doesn’t create any greenhouse gas emissions. But the vast majority of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels — with huge emissions. Industry promises to deal with those through unproven CCS.
A recent study from Cornell and Stanford found that blue fossil hydrogen is even worse for the climate than burning coal or natural gas directly and concludes there is no role for fossil hydrogen in a carbon-free future. If hydrogen is to play a role in a future energy grid, it will be “green” hydrogen from renewable electricity.
Not to be left behind, the petrochemical industry is touting a troubling technology to rid the world of plastic waste. We’re on track to see plastic outweigh fish in the world’s oceans by 2050, but the industry’s proposed strategy will allow them to continue producing more and more plastic.
The industry has long used the promise of recycling to justify plastic, especially single-use products and packaging. But recycling has never worked. Only 9 per cent of all plastic is recycled in Canada. The rest ends up in landfills, incinerators or the natural environment.
Now the industry is selling “advanced recycling,” which isn’t really recycling at all. There has been a flurry of announcements around the world in recent years about pilot projects to make a small amount of plastic waste “disappear” by turning it into fuel and chemicals.
These projects burn a lot of energy to get a small amount of fuel, some of which might be sent back to refineries that make new plastic and untold byproducts, most of which will end up in landfills. Similar to CCS, “advanced recycling” also doesn’t reduce our need to extract and refine fossil fuels. All we get in the end is more and more plastic, more and more waste and more and more pollution.
To stop the damage to our planet, the federal government must refuse false solutions and instead pave the way for a fair transition for workers and communities away from oil and gas. That means no tax breaks, spending or regulations that provide a benefit to CCS, blue hydrogen or advanced recycling.