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Global Climate Change

During the last few decades, the petroleum industry has made progress in improving energy efficiency. The amount of carbon compounds emitted to produce a given amount of gross domestic product (carbon intensity) has been reduced throughout the economy. However, rising population and economic growth have increased Canada’s total emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The oil and gas industry faces a major challenge in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions while also ensuring continued economic stability.

The greenhouse effect, which traps heat in the atmosphere, is a natural phenomenon that is essential to life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average temperature would drop by about 33° C, to about -18° C. Most climate scientists believe that increased levels of carbon dioxide (C02) and other gases in the atmosphere produced by human activities are increasing the greenhouse effect. This could raise average global temperatures over time.

Causes of the greenhouse effect include water vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Water vapour is, in fact, the most prevalent factor in the greenhouse effect, but it has not been determined how or if human activities are affecting water vapour in the atmosphere. Among the gases produced by human activities, CO2 has the biggest total effect because it is so much more abundant than the other gases. The warming caused by a tonne of methane, the main component of natural gas, is about 21 times greater than the warming from a tonne of CO2. Methane is released into the atmosphere by agriculture and landfills as well as by oil and gas industry activities. Nitrous oxide, 310 times as potent as CO2, is a by-product of fuel combustion in engines and furnaces. Other, even more potent greenhouse gases released by human activities include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluoro-carbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), ozone (O3) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Canada, with 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, accounts for about 2.5 per cent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, 4.7 per cent of nitrous oxide and 5.1 per cent of methane emissions. This puts Canadians among the world’s highest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases. However, Canada has long, cold winters and occupies 6.5 per cent of the world’s land area. Also, many Canadian industries are big energy users, and the nation is an exporter of crude oil, natural gas, coal, electricity, steel, aluminum and other energy-intensive products.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations agency composed of hundreds of scientists from around the world, has been studying the effects of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. In the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, issued in 2007, the scientists reached these conclusions:

  • Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.
  • Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).
  • Continued GHG emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.

Some scientists disagree that climate change is occurring as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They suggest alternative interpretations, including:

  • The increase in global mean temperature is within the range of natural variations of the Earth’s temperature, some of which are attributable to variations in solar radiation.
  • The current warming trend is simply part of a larger pattern of naturally occurring temperature changes the Earth has experienced over the past million years.
  • In more recent history, there have been fluctuations such as a warming period in the 1940s followed by a moderate cooling period in the mid-1970s and a pronounced warming period in the 1980s.

The world community has decided that the risks of climate change are too serious to ignore. Canadian governments and the oil and gas industry have been pursuing means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since the early 1990s. In December 2002, Canada ratified the Kyoto Accord, obliging the nation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. In February 2003, the federal government committed $1.7 billion towards a climate change action package. The strategy includes measures to encourage conservation in the residential sector and support for renewable energy, in particular wind and solar power, as well as alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, clean-coal technology, hydrogen fuel cells and initiatives that store carbon rather than release it into the atmosphere.

In April 2003, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) released the Calculating Greenhouse Gas Emissions guide, which provides CAPP members with a standardized approach to benchmarking and estimating greenhouse gas emissions.

CAPP and its members said they intend to work with federal, provincial and territorial governments on a plan that allows Canadians to continue to benefit from the production and export of crude oil and natural gas while promoting technological advances that lead to long-term solutions to climate change.