Stephen Rees's blog

This post is really just a way for me to have easy access to some recent articles which pretty much show that by the time they have finished building the Kinder Morgan expansion, it will be redundant. There are two articles, one in The Tyee and one on DeSmog Blog, which cite research by David Hughes for CCPA.

As part of Alberta’s climate plan, announced November 2015, oilsands emissions are capped at 100 megatonnes per year which eliminates growth of future production.

According to Hughes’ analysis, when considering restrictions placed on Alberta oil production under the province’s greenhouse gas emission cap, “Kinder Morgan overestimated oil supply by 43 per cent in 2038.”

Arguments for the necessity of the Trans Mountain pipeline have also been overstated, according to the new analysis, because of alternate pipeline approvals.

In addition to the Trans Mountain pipeline Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also approved the Enbridge Line 3 project and more recently President Donald Trump approved TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.

“If these projects are built, which seems likely, there will be a 13 per cent surplus of export pipeline capacity without the [Trans Mountain pipeline].”

But even more damning is Bloomberg’s review of the work by Rocky Mountain Institute and the IEA.

“If you take a large bite out of transportation fuels, then suddenly the economics of the whole downstream oil and gas business look dramatically different,”

So while the KM CEO stands up and blusters about “no concessions” it really begins to look all very irrelevant.

A bit like the 45th US President making a song and dance about withdrawing from a voluntary agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quite how a deal that had no teeth at all – there are no mandated penalties for failing to meet obligations under the Paris agreement – can be characterised as “unfair” beats me.

Here are some hostages to fortune: there will not be a great boom in BC LNG. There won’t be a Transmountain  Pipeline expansion and there won’t be a Site C dam. They are all absolutely pointless because the rest of the world has already moved on, and renewable sources of energy are just getting more competitive every day.  And even if they weren’t, sensible people are already reaping the economic benefits of better energy efficiency which we seem to be missing out on.

Just like we seem to have ignored the possibility that BC could get all of its energy from geothermal resources (that links to an article from 2014!).