Bill Rees, the father of the ecological footprint, likes to say that fossil fuels are a powerful hallucinogenic drug. We are all addicted to cheap and abundant fossil fuels, and so have reshaped our economy and society in fundamentally unsustainable ways.
When emissions are reported for BC or Canada, there is an accounting convention that restricts the total to emissions released within the borders of that jurisdiction. This means that BC’s major exports of coal and natural gas are counted only to the extent that fossil fuels are used in the extraction and processing, not the combustion of the final product in the US. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil fuels are due to their eventual combustion.
A recent study takes a consumption (or lifecycle) approach to GHG emissions to see how much has been “outsourced” to countries like China that make the stuff we consume:
Over a third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to goods and services consumed in many European countries actually occurred elsewhere, the researchers found. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders.
The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.
The full study has to be purchased through the publisher (here), but a good (free) summary of the main findings is here.
This got me thinking about how much GHG emissions are embodied in our exports that are consumed elsewhere (a lifecycle analysis from the producer perspective). For a province like BC, with its spanky clean green image, there is already a contradiction between stated climate action objectives and the historical (and ongoing) industrial policy of resource extraction.
When it comes to law and order, we have learned not to crack down on the users of drugs, but focus our efforts on the dealers. So what if it turns out that beautiful BC is running the resource economics equivalent of a meth lab?
As a baseline, consider that BC’s official greenhouse gas emissions totaled just over 63 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (63.1 Mt CO2e, to be geeky about it) in 2007, the last year for which we have data. Emissions from extraction and processing of fossil fuels were almost 13 Mt of this total. I was able to get export volume data from Statscan for both coal and natural gas, and then multiplied these volumes by emission factors from BC’s GHG inventory report to estimate downstream emissions (data for natural gas go back to 1980, whereas a break in the coal dataset meant that I only got 2008 and 2009 data).
For natural gas combusted in the US, BC was the source for 53 Mt CO2e in 2008. Interestingly, that is down from an all-time high of 74 Mt in 1998, though I suspect that interprovincial exports to Alberta may make up some or all of the difference. Coal exports led to another 52 Mt of emissions elsewhere in 2008. So bottom line for BC fossil fuels is 105 Mt CO2e in 2008; exports of these two commodities alone led to emissions elsewhere that are 166% larger than BC’s overall emissions within our borders, and about eight times the BC emissions associated with getting those fossil fuels out of the ground and to market.
To put that in perspective, BC’s much-lauded carbon tax is only estimated to reduce emissions by 3 Mt per year after 2020 relative to business-as-usual emissions growth.
So what’s an ethically minded crack dealer to do? The standard industrial growth model of digging it out and shipping it to the US or Asia needs to be broken. For starters, the government should reverse its recent approval of a natural gas processing plant in the Northeast that will add more than 2 Mt to BC’s domestic inventory, and 16-18 Mt of downstream emissions.
The good news is that these resources are not going anywhere, and will only be worth more as time goes on. So there is no reason why we should not dramatically slow down coal mining and oil and gas extraction – until some point when we can sequester the emissions from their combustion. This technology (aka carbon capture and storage) is already out there and is poised to become widespread over the next couple decades. Until then, however, we should think the unthinkable and consider leaving those resources in the ground.
William Hayes // Mar 17, 2010 at 11:07 am
“When it comes to law and order, we have learned not to crack down on the users of drugs, but focus our efforts on the dealers. So what if it turns out that beautiful BC is running the resource economics equivalent of a meth lab?”
Interesting question.
Quebec might ask a similar question about out-of-province sickness and death that results from exports of asbestos.
The U.S. similarly might ask about the out-of-country sickness and death resulting from exports of cigarettes.
Erich Burton // Mar 23, 2010 at 4:07 pm
How about the sickness and malnutrition from dumping de-nutrified food aid to developing countries, driving local farmers out of business!
Iglika Ivanova // Mar 17, 2010 at 2:08 pm
That is an interesting way of thinking about it.
But how do you propose to achieve equality in consumption or standard of living or what have you among different jurisdictions (provinces, countries) starting out from different resource endowments? Somebody has to export for the people in the resource-poor places to consume.
Granted, the current pattern of exports doesn’t contribute towards equalization of living standards. But penalizing exporters by full GHG accounting at the point of origin may fly in the face of redistributional objectives if it ends up leading to countries only extracting resources for domestic consumption.
William Hayes // Mar 19, 2010 at 11:21 am
You have asked a good question, Iglika Ivanova.
My answer: Instead of starting our thinking about resources from a perspective of existing power relations among the nations of the world, we can start from a perspective of existing human needs of the peoples of those nations.
Some one must make the first move. I propose that it be Canada–and B.C..
Kevin Washbrook // Mar 18, 2010 at 12:04 pm
This is an important story that needs to be told. BC’s coal exports are a dirty secret that contradict our image as a green leader.
The fundamental truth we need to acknowledge is that if we are to be certain to avoid runaway changes in the earth’s climate, all of the carbon trapped in coal needs to stay out of the atmosphere. Since we don’t currently have any effective way of capturing that carbon, the coal needs to stay in the ground.
Eric Doherty // Mar 18, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Sequestering carbon dioxide is unlikely to be feasible on the scale needed to ever again burn fossil fuels on the scale we are now. Or at least we should not count on it.
Most of the coal probably needs to stay in the ground for ever, and the first step is to stop opening new coal mines. Good timing, the Wilderness Committee has a campaign on this – http://wildernesscommittee.org/publication/british_columbia/coal_bc%E2%80%99s_dirty_secret
JFK // Mar 20, 2010 at 2:18 pm
The small towns that have to drive excessive distance to get to civilization compared to countries that are crammed like sardines with 2 or 3 generations living together in one apartment because there’s no room to build anymore. Then there are acres of cattle, pigs and poultry compared to places that have no place to grow anymore. There are acres and acres of grain to be harvested; Canada is about the world’s fifth largest producer of food which has repercussions on GHG (Canada’s Greenhouse Gas). In a recent Iowa State University of Science and Technology broken down the United States Department of Agriculture report as US importing 5.7% of its food from European Union which is its highest import and then 4.7% from Canada which is its second option for imported food and agriculture has high GHG. Vegetarian used high GHG as a negative for live stock for many years, its nothing new. I’ve heard the oil sand but there claim is GHG: 80% of GHG comes from use of the product rather than production: http://www.kairos-calgary.ca/event20100206Notes.php and considering 80% of GHG comes from the burning of fossil fuel and a country like Canada that is so widely spread out it would make sense that our GHG is a little higher population than other countries like Asia that has no room to move.
JFK
twitter.com/economicblow
Scott Andrews // Mar 22, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Yes it makes sense that our GHG emission be higher, but it is the scale to which we emit that is embarrassing. We emit three times the CO2 per person than France does! The days of lining up for the tunnel by yourself in your van or station wagon have to end if we are to preserve our reputation as a progressive global citizen.
Scott
gudrun // Mar 28, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I was at Globe 2010 ( a fair/conf in Vancouver) and saw a large number of companies that help with clean-up of the environment, carbon offsets/ traders and get this, even a company that purports to engage in “sustainable” mining.
Seems to me that we would be much further ahead if we didn’t mess up this stuff in the first place…
I just started to read a book: Bozo Sapiens, Why to Err is Human by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan – so far it is a fantastic read! I highly recommend it – get it from your public library.
\gl