Dear Prime Minister and Ministers Guilbeault and Wilkinson
I am writing to express my concerns along with many other Canadians about Carbon Capture technology.
My concern is the level of credibility and funding that your Federal government is willing to give what is basically unproven and unsuccessful technology.
Just as concerning, is your government’s about face in allowing Federal carbon reduction subsidies to flow to oil producers who only permanently store 10% of captured carbon while using 90% to recover more oil!
For our delegates to appear at COP28 and say we believe the science and know we need to reduce our dependence on gas and oil, funding another way for oil companies to make more oil and more money, it seems more than a little counter productive.
My question is does the present Liberal government believe Canadian citizens are bereft of any analytical abilities , and our frontal cortex only good as a pin cushion?
The carbon capture story is one of baffle gab, real action delay, and selling snake oil.
For me the narrative now should Not be “We the public need to deal with Our Fossil Fuel Addiction.” .. with all due respect, it should be… ‘ Liberal Party Government officials are the ones who need to go to Rehab Centers to get off Oil Money!’
Carbon Capture will be too little too late…Don’t Look Up….when our Prime Minister says “Sorry it Didn’t Work “, it will be too late to change course to avoid Climate Hell.
Kim deLagran
Utterson, Ontario
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A sensible/practical analysis, Hugh.
About 50 million years ago, before the last ice age started, northern Alberta was a tropical zone. The Alberta oil sands are the decomposed carbon remains of tropical vegetation and the dinosaurs that fed on it. The proof lies in the dinosaur skeletons in museums across Canada and around the world. Those decomposed and compressed carbon remains in Alberta and other fossil fuel locations have been sequestered under ice and soil for millions of years. But in only 100 years, we have dug up and burned most of that sequestered carbon for transportation and heating, and the carbon emissions released are now forming a layer of gases around the earth that acts like a greenhouse. For 60 years, we have ignored and denied the warnings of the world’s top meteorologists, and so now have a very urgent problem.
Fossil fuels have become a blessing and a curse for the 15 countries including Canada that have 85% of remaining proven oil and gas reserves. Governments of those countries, WHETHER LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE, are caught between those that want to “leave them in the ground immediately”, which would bring every economy in the world to a standstill, and those that want “to keep enjoying fossil fuel money indefinitely”. Obviously neither extreme will work. Over the next 25 years we must replace everything that produces and uses fossil energy with devices that produce and use zero-emission energy. The incremental cost of replacing old tech with new tech will be significant, but MUCH LESS than constantly repairing damage from rapidly increasing extreme weather and dealing with the resulting conflicts and mass migration.
1/3rd of Canadas natural gas consumption goes to melting bitumen in the oil sands. That can be replaced by Zero-emission deep geothermal wells now being built by the Eavor-on company in Calgary (and others around the world) and by small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) from Terrestrial Energy in Oakville Ontario (and others around the world). Deep geothermal and SMRs cut energy input in half by co-generating both industrial heat and electricity at the same time.
Carbon capture and storage is not perfect, but it is a viable interim solution that can re-sequester carbon emissions while the permanent solutions are being ramped up.
Good analysis, Brian.
I see there has been a Japanese (in cooperation with the EU) breakthrough on fusion power. They’ve now been able to heat plasma to the required 200 million degree Celsius level, to initiate fusion reaction. There would be unlimited clean energy from fusion–unlike fission which, as you’ve pointed out, produces a lot of highly radioactive waste. Fusion would produce a tiny amount of not very radioactive waste but it would be manageable. The Americans are working on fusion prototypes of a different sort, as well. Unfortunately, it will probably be some time before it becomes part of the energy picture though.
There is only one way to effectively reduce or eliminate the production of carbon gases into the atmosphere and that is simply to “leave the fuel in the ground” and replace the needs to use this fuel with something that is more carbon free.
Think about it. Your going to do all the usual things to extract a carbon based fuel from the ground, transport it and burn it and this will absolutely unavoidably produce carbon based gases. You cannot avoid basic chemistry.
Now your going to tell me that you are going to collect all these gases, deliver them to some yet to be decided locations where you can compress the hell out of them and inject them back deep underground where hopefully and somewhat wishfully, they will stay for all of time.
AND all the energy you use to do this you will somehow capture all of it’s Carbon and add it to the lot of it going into the ground.
Really?
This makes reprocessing of nuclear fuel and storage of the waste part for a mere 30.000 years look like a child playing in a sand box.
Also, while you are doing all this, inventing new technology etc. with which to do it, you are saying you can somehow pay for this without affecting my living ability and taxes?
Add to this that you are going to pay the third world or whatever you like to call it, the one sinking under rising sea levels, damages to help them because we in the developed world caused all this problem. Again funding this massive expenditure somehow that makes Bitcoin look simple?
Lastly, given the governments that many of these third world countries have been blessed with, while you are doing the above items, you are going to instill a trustworthy and democratic government in all these countries? Heck we don’t even have that here and the USA is one giant and sad joke in this department.
Do the Liberals actually expect me to believe in this plan?
Go back to the drawing board and come up with something that might actually have maybe a 20% chance of working as this scenario has a big zero.
Well said, Kim, I concur, 100%, carbon capture is disingenuous, smoke and mirrors, scam. The energy return on investment (EROI) makes no sense and is not cost effective.