Over the past several weeks, Michael Holden has been highlighting some of the information and key findings of the Canada West Foundation’s recently-released publication, State of the West: Energy – 2012 Western Canadian Energy Trends. This week he rounds out the series with a discussion on the environmental impact associated with energy production and consumption in western Canada.

The production and consumption of energy of any type has an impact on the environment. Public attention at present is focused heavily on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion, as well as on the large-scale use of water and land in energy production.

However, the environmental impacts of energy use are not limited to these types of disturbances; some are more indirect. Wide-scale land use in oil sands production is a form of environmental impact, as is concerns about the “visual pollution” of wind turbines and their impact on local bird and bat populations. For its part, hydroelectricity may be emissions-free, but the creation of new dams can flood entire valleys and have a profound effect on local ecosystems. Nuclear power is also emissions-free but carries with it a waste disposal issue as well as concerns about potential nuclear accidents. Moreover, all forms of energy production require the construction of facilities and the manufacture and transportation of equipment and materials, none of which can happen without affecting the environment.

While detailed statistics are published on GHG emissions across Canada, many other direct and indirect environmental impacts are not well-understood. In some cases, environmental impacts are difficult to quantify while in others, the impacts are highly variable and good-quality data are not available. As a result, there is no reliable way to measure or analyze such environmental considerations as the impact of nuclear waste disposal; ecosystem damage; habitat loss; and a host of others. In State of the West: Energy, we look at greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy use, as well as the impact of energy production on water and land.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Previous blogs have established that Alberta and Saskatchewan are Canada’s largest producers of oil and gas; and are the largest users of coal and natural gas as an input into electricity generation. With that in mind, it should hardly come as a surprise that those provinces are the source of a significant share of Canada’s total GHG emissions. Alberta alone accounted for more than one third of Canada’s total emissions in 2009 while an additional 11% came from Saskatchewan. However, these high emissions levels are not just because of fossil fuel extraction; even when it comes to activities unrelated to energy production, Albertans and Saskatchewanians generate more GHGs than their counterparts in other provinces.

On a per capita basis, the gap between Alberta and Saskatchewan on the one hand, and the rest of Canada on the other, is especially pronounced. Saskatchewan is Canada’s largest per-capita emitter of GHGs, at 71.0 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person in 2009. After Alberta (63.7 tonnes), the next largest per capita emitter was New Brunswick, which produced about one third the per capita emissions of Saskatchewan. For their part, BC and Manitoba are relatively small emitters of GHGs on a per capita basis, in part because both provinces are important producers of emissions-free hydroelectricity.

As energy and mining activity expands in the West, greenhouse gas emissions from the region are following suit. While total GHG emissions have been declining in most provinces since 1999, the decrease has been offset by growth in emissions from the three westernmost provinces.

In terms of energy intensity, however, Alberta has seen the second largest decrease in per capita emissions of any province since 1999. BC and Manitoba have also seen lower emissions intensity over that time. By contrast, Saskatchewan is one of the few parts of the country where per capita GHG emissions were higher in 2009 compared to a decade earlier.

One of the reasons behind Alberta’s falling emissions intensity is that there have been considerable improvements in lowering the carbon footprint of oil sands extraction over the years. The oil sands produced 38.9% fewer GHG emissions per unit of energy in 2008 compared to 1990. Emissions intensity is likely to continue to fall in the years ahead as well; a growing share of oil sands production is expected to come via in situ bitumen extraction, which is less emissions-intensive than oil sands mining.

Water Use

Water is a critical input into nearly every form of energy production. It is used in the production of the raw materials from which energy is derived—oil, gas, coal, uranium and other goods—as well as in the transformation of raw materials into a form useable by consumers. This transformation includes the use of water as a source of steam and a coolant in thermal and nuclear power plants; the process of refining fossil fuels; as well as the direct production of electricity through hydroelectric dams.

The oil and gas sector in particular is a major user of water. Although water consumption varies considerably from site to site, it is estimated that production of one cubic metre of synthetic crude oil (upgraded bitumen) by surface mining requires, on average, 2.5 cubic metres of water. Water demands for in situ production are lower—an estimated 0.5 cubic metres per cubic metre of synthetic crude oil.[1]

However, other forms of energy production can be even more water-intensive. Research suggests that although they may operate on a much smaller scale, biofuels and hydroelectricity (through evaporation from reservoirs) consume more water per unit of energy produced. [2]

Land Use

All forms of energy production are associated with some disturbance of land, whether in the construction of the required machinery and equipment or in the direct production of energy itself. Historically, large-scale hydro projects have had perhaps the greatest, and most irreversible, impact on land through the disturbance of waterways and forest/habitat loss associated with flooding ravines to create reservoirs.

However, oil sands production, especially open-pit mining, is easily the most significant and growing source of energy-related land disturbance in the present day. Approximately 662 km2 of land in northeastern Alberta have been disturbed by oil sands mining operations, equivalent to about 97% of the size of the city of Edmonton.[3] An estimated 4800 km2 of land in the area could be surface mined.[4]

This land disturbance also includes the creation and maintenance of tailings ponds—man-made containers where waste water from oil sands operations is stored to allow particulate (“tailings”) to settle and clean water to be recycled.  At present, tailings ponds cover an estimated 170 km2 of land in Alberta and hold 5.5 billion m3 of tailings.

Conclusion

As global awareness of the environmental impacts of energy production grows, international attention has increasingly focused on ways to mitigate those effects, with particular emphasis on reducing both the intensity and the volume of GHG emissions. While there has been progress on this front in many parts of the world, that focus has cast a somewhat harsh spotlight on major global energy producers, including Canada and Alberta’s oil sands in particular.

Minimizing the environmental impacts of energy production and use needs to be a policy priority in western Canada. Not only do these impacts affect our quality of life, but the negative attention that oil sands production and other extraction activities attract could affect companies’ social license to operate in the region and their ability to sell their products in international markets. Resistance to pipeline construction is just the most recent example of the growing obstacles energy producers and distributors could face if their efforts fail to garner widespread public acceptance. Given that all Canadians are energy consumers and that energy production is an important driver of national economic activity, these issues need to be part of both a regional and a broader national discussion.

– Michael Holden