Oilsands Emit More Greenhouse Gas Emissions Than Some European Countries
September 15th, 2009Just wait until they hook up a few nuclear power plants to that apocalypse. Welcome to Alberta: “The worst of all worlds.”
Via: CBC:
Alberta’s oilsands produce more greenhouse gas emissions than some European countries right now and will produce more than all of the world’s volcanoes in just 11 years if the pace of development continues, a new report says.
“Dirty: How the Tarsands Are Fuelling Global Climate Change” is set to be released Monday.
Greenpeace commissioned award-winning author Andrew Nikiforuk, a business and environmental reporter, to write the report.
“Nobody in Canada wants to talk about the scale issues,” he said in an interview Saturday.
“The emissions are bigger than Estonia and Lithuania right now and in 2020 will be larger than countries like Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Denmark.”
The report documents the “real” cost of the oilsands, which Nikiforuk said are the world’s largest energy project.
“The major energy projects in the Middle East,… they don’t come anywhere near. None of them approach the scale and capital intensity of the oilsands.”
The report says almost $200 billion has been or will be invested in the projects in northern Alberta, including not only the oilsands but pipelines, refinery expansions and other associated infrastructure.
It adds that the liabilities are a nearly threefold increase in greenhouse gas emissions, enormous amounts of natural gas used and wasted to produce synthetic oil from bitumen — which consists of tarry pitch, or asphalt — and the “economic nightmare” of carbon capture and storage, a technology that has yet to be developed.
Research Credit: Lagavulin
