Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing MP, Carol Hughes writes a regular column about initiatives and issues impacting our community.
Last week, world leaders came together for the United Nation’s ongoing climate conference, the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to debate how we reach reductions in emissions targets under the Paris Agreements.
While agreements reached at these conferences are important, the proof is in the pudding, because promising action on climate change and actually doing the hard work needed to reduce our own carbon emissions are two very different things.
Two years ago, at the COP26 summit, the Government of Canada signed an agreement for a Global Methane Pledge, designed to create a framework to reduce methane gas emissions.
Methane traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide while in the atmosphere but has a much shorter half-life (10.5 years for methane versus 120 years for CO2). Methane has a significant impact on our ability to fight climate change, representing around 30 per cent of the current rise in global temperatures, according to the International Energy Agency. It should also, theoretically, be easier to deal with, as the majority of methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil.
Two long years after that pledge, we finally have draft details of the government’s methane reduction plan that seeks to reduce Canada’s methane emissions from the oil and gas sector from 2012 levels by 75 percent by 2030. The government plans on doing this by eliminating routine venting and flaring of oil and gas infrastructure, which causes a significant amount of methane to be released into the atmosphere.
Venting and flaring is the act of releasing or burning the byproducts of the oil extraction process, predominantly natural gas. Gas leaks are also quite common in oil production and are a significant emitter of methane. According to the World Bank, the amount of gas burned to flaring worldwide could power the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa.
These new proposed regulations come at a time when Canada is being singled out as having the worst climate record in the G7, with greenhouse gas emissions rising rather by 2.1 percent in 2022, predominantly from increases in oil and gas production. While this government has consistently touted its efforts in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they continue to grow.
Much of the government’s focus on reducing emissions from the largest emitters, oil and gas producers, has been on funding carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). The CCUS approach fundamentally hands oil and gas companies hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to build technology to capture carbon emissions that has yet to be proven to work at a large scale in the real world. It’s expensive and lets major emitters off the hook. While there may be a use case for CCUS, reducing our dependance on fossil fuels should be the ultimate goal.
Continuing with the status quo isn’t going to work. We need to ensure that Canada’s oil and gas sector is actually working to reduce emissions. Forcing them to reduce their methane emissions is at least a start.
It's good to finally have those draft regulations in place for methane reduction, but it does feel like it’s a day late and a dollar short. Canada's emissions reduction plan calls for a 110 megatonne reduction from the oil and gas sector by 2030, and sensible regulations need to be put in place to accomplish this.
Additionally, Environment and Climate Change Canada are accepting feedback on their draft regulations on methane until mid-February. Stringent methane reduction regulations can ensure we actually start doing our part to fight climate change, but we must ensure those regulations aren’t weakened by the time actual legislation is tabled, particularly through lobbying by the industry.
Canada can no longer be seen as a laggard on reducing carbon emissions. Methane regulation is needed now more than ever, and can help us achieve net zero by 2050, but that work cannot be delayed any longer.