The Canadian province of Alberta faces a number of environmental issues related to natural resource extraction—including oil and gas industry with its oil sands—endangered species, melting glaciers in banff, floods and droughts, wildfires, and global climate change. While the oil and gas industries generates substantial economic wealth, the Athabasca oil sands, which are situated almost entirely in Alberta, are the "fourth most carbon intensive on the planet behind Algeria, Venezuela and Cameroon" according to an August 8, 2018 article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal Science. This article details some of the environmental issues including past ecological disasters in Alberta and describes some of the efforts at the municipal, provincial and federal level to mitigate the risks and impacts.
According to the 2019 report Canada's Changing Climate Report, which was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed by 1.7 C since 1948. The rate of warming is even higher in Canada's North, in the Prairies and northern British Columbia. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) October 8, 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C set a target of that would require "deep emissions reductions" and that "[g]lobal net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050" for global warming to be limited to 1.5 °C.
The Canadian oil and gas industry produces "60 per cent of all industrial emissions in Canada" and Alberta has the largest oil and gas industry in the country. By September 2017, Alberta had already begun "implementing broad climate change policies" including a "sophisticated two-tier carbon pricing system" for consumers and major emitters. This represented a "first step in broadening the tax base". The province set a "target cap for greenhouse gas emissions" and began the transformation to lower-carbon with coal being phased out for electricity production. Some involved in the energy industry were "voluntarily expanding into renewables and lower-carbon energy sources." Reposted by the Conference Board of Canada. The first act introduced by Premier Jason Kenney as promised in his United Conservative Party (UCP) election platform was An Act to Repeal the Carbon Tax, which received Royal Assent on June 4, 2019.
Raw bitumen extracted from the oil sands in northern Alberta is shipped in Canada and to the United States through pipelines, railway, and trucks. Environmental concerns about the unintended consequences of the oil sands industry are linked to environmental issues in the rest of Canada. While pipelines are considered to be the most efficient and safest of the three methods, concerns have been raised about pipeline expansion because of climate change, the risk of pipeline leaks, increased oil tanker traffic and higher risk of oil tanker spills, and violations of First Nations' rights.
Overview
Environmental liabilities include emissions from a number of sources including the oil and gas industry with the oil sands tailings ponds, oil spills and tailings dam failures, pipelines, reclamation including orphan wells. Others environmental issues include melting glaciers, wildfires, extreme weather events—including floods and droughts, species at risk such as the boreal woodland caribou and bull trout, and invasive destructive species, such as the mountain pine beetle.An April 10, 2019 article in The Narwhal listed eight environmental issues of concern including energy efficiency, the oil sands emissions cap, environmental liabilities in the oil and gas sector, wilderness and parks, reclamation, methane regulations, carbon tax, and emissions trends. Potential solutions include energy efficiency, reclamation, regulatory instruments for measuring, monitoring and managing greenhouse gases including methane, carbon dioxide, carbon pricing including a carbon tax, wilderness and parks.
Greenhouse gas emissions Environment Canada monitors greenhouse gas emissions, including "carbon dioxide (), methane (), nitrous oxide (), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)". The sources of GHG were grouped into five sectors: energy; industrial processes and product use (IPPU); agriculture; waste, and land use, land-use change; and forestry (LULUCF).
Air quality By September 9, 2015, then-Environment Minister Shannon Phillips warned that Alberta was "on track to have the worst air quality in Canada". The 2015 Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standards report showed that the Red Deer area had "exceeded the acceptable amount of particulate matter and ozone exposure" from 2011 through 2013. Although the health risk was low, Phillips called on the Red Deer area, "the lower Athabasca, upper Athabasca, North Saskatchewan and South Saskatchewan" whose air quality was also at risk, to develop plans to prevent their air quality levels from deteriorating.Stolte, E. June 14, 2016. "Checkup finds Edmonton falls far short of target on greenhouse gas emissions." Edmonton Journal. Canadian Press Staff September 9, 2015. Todd Loewen, then-Wildrose environment critic, said Phillips was over-reacting. By 2018, the Alberta Environment and Parks research on the composition of the fine particulate matter that endangers health at any levels, indicated that "nitrogen dioxide and volatile compounds"—that are "associated with industry—make up a lot of the fine particulate matter in the Red Deer region".
A May 14, 2019 Data Trending and Comparison Report by Fort Air Partnership (FAP) showed that in their study area—which includes a "4,500 square-kilometre airshed near Edmonton", "levels of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide" have been decreasing since the late 1980s.
From 2017 to May 2019, Bluesource's Methane Reduction Program retrofitted 4,000 high-bleed pneumatic controllers with units that emitted less CO2e for 15 oil and gas producers which cut estimated emissions by "180,000 tonnes of CO2e in 2018 and saved oil and gas producers over $4 million in capital expenditures."
Greenhouse gases emissions in Alberta (1990-2017)
According to the federal data published in the National Observer on February 20, 2019, in 2016 the provinces total emissions of equivalent amounted to 262.9 megatonnes (MT) with 17 per cent from the electrical sector and 48 per cent from the oil and gas sector.
Alberta's CO equivalent kilotonne (kt) increased to kt in 2017 from kt in 1990. From 2005 to 2017 it increased by 18%, mainly because of "the expansion of oil and gas operations."
The total of CO equivalent emissions in 2017 for all of Canada was kt. In contrast, Ontario, the second largest emitter, had a total of CO equivalent kt in 2017 representing a decrease from 1990 when it was kt. Between 2005 and 2017, Ontario saw a decrease of −22% largely because of the closing of "coal-fired electricity generation plants".
Alberta yearkt CO equivalent19901995200020042005200620072008201220132014201520162017
Canada Some emissions are only reported at the national level. yearkt CO equivalent 1990 19952000 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
"According to the Alberta government, the impact of methane as a greenhouse gas is, "25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period." In 2014, Alberta's oil and gas sector emitted 31.4 megatonnes of methane (measured in carbon dioxide equivalent)." Alberta set 45-per-cent-by-2025 methane emission reduction targets.
The oil and gas sector
The oil and gas industry produces "60 per cent of all industrial emissions in Canada" and Alberta has the largest oil and gas industry.The Alberta oil industry has made technological improvements. According to a May 2019 The Financial Post, the "two most recent oil sands mining projects now "produce diluted bitumen blends" similar to an average barrel of US crude oil's emissions.
According to Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), because of increased oil and gas production from 2005 through 2016, GHG emissions in Canada increased 16%, particularly through in-situ extraction.
By 2015, Venezuela accounted for 18%, Saudi Arabia for 16.1%, and Canada for 10.3% of the world's proven oil reserves, according to NRCAN. Based on a May 2019 report, Alberta's total oil production in March, 2019 was 17.09 million cubic metres and 17.088 million cubic metres in March 2018.According to a Washington, DC-based U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report, In 2018, the United States imported about 4.28 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of petroleum Canada representing 43% of US oil imports. Saudi Arabia accounted for 9%; Mexico accounted for 7%, Venezuela for 6%, and Iraq for 5%.
Oil sands tailings ponds
By 2016, NRCAN reported that the growth of annual production of oil sands, in spite of significant technological advances, presents several environmental challenges to land, water, air, and energy conservation. One of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil industry is the management of the oil sands tailings ponds, which hold large volumes of tailings, the byproduct of bitumen extraction from the oil sands, which contain a mixture of salts, suspended solids and other dissolvable chemical compounds such as acids, benzene, hydrocarbons residual bitumen, fine silts and water.
Tailings ponds in Alberta held c. 732 billion litres in 2008 and by 2013 they covered about . By 2017 this increased to c."1.2 trillion litres of contaminated water" and then covered about . In 2009, as tailing ponds continued to proliferate and volumes of fluid tailings increased, the Energy Resources Conservation Board of Alberta issued Directive 074 to force oil companies to manage tailings based on aggressive criteria. In 2015, regulators replaced 074 with Directive 085, which allowed the oil industry to release fluid fine tailings (FFT) into tailings ponds. In a June 3, 2019 The Globe and Mail article, limnologist David Schindler expressed concerns about new regulations at both the provincial and federal level authorizing the "discharge of treated effluence" from oil sands tailings ponds into the Athabasca River.
The industry has been fined under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act (MBCA) and Alberta's Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act in 2018 and 2010 for the deaths of great blue herons at the MLSB, and over 1,606 ducks in Syncrude's oil sands tailings ponds. Syncrude's fine of $3 million was the largest to date.
Oil sands emissions
The Athabasca oil sands, which are situated almost entirely in Alberta, are the "fourth most carbon intensive on the planet behind Algeria, Venezuela and Cameroon" according to an August 8, 2018 article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal Science. Their research concluded that "Canada's rating was nearly twice the global average".
Scientists from Environment Canada and Queen's University published their research in the January 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS) in which they described innovative methods to measure the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in core samples from lakes including a remote lake, Namur Lake, which is situated 50 km from the sampling site, AR6, on the Athabasca River, and had a "high atmospheric PAH deposition. They found that the sedimentary profiles from the core samples revealed "striking PAH trajectories" that "reflect the decades-long impacts of oil sands development on lake ecosystems, including remote Namur Lake. This temporal PAH pattern was not recognized previously by industry-funded oil sands monitoring programs."