In recent years, governments and industry have become more and more interested in supporting so-called nature based climate solutions. So what are such solutions? The Nature Conservancy provides a concise definition: Nature-based climate solutions “are actions to protect, better manage and restore nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and store carbon.”

Such solutions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) fall into two categories: 1) those that the enhance the uptake and storage of carbon within natural ecosystem; 2) those that reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide and methane) from natural ecosystems.

While the above definition recognizes the link between natural ecosystems and the global carbon cycle, nature based solutions also play a critical role in climate change adaptation strategies. A more complete definition that includes both their roles has been offered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and subsequently used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Nature-based Solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously benefiting people and nature.“

Below I attempt to highlight the important role that such solutions play in both climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. But I try to put such solutions in the bigger context of what needs to be done to meet the challenge of global warming. I’ll attempt to outline why governments and industry appear to be so supportive of such solutions, yet point out the danger of over-relying on them.

To be clear, nature-based climate solutions have a crucial role to play. Cumulative anthropogenic fossil carbon emissions from 1750 to 2021 have been 474 GtC (billions of tons of carbon), while deforestation and land use changes have contributed another 203 GtC. That is, anthropogenic disruption of natural ecosystems has accounted for about 30% of historical greenhouse gas emissions, so it seems reasonable to expect nature-based climate solutions to have an important role to play moving forward. But there are limits. In fact, a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that nature-based solutions could be used to meet 20% of the required emission reductions to be implemented prior to 2050 to keep global warming to below 2°C. I’ve pointed out for years (and summarized these views again recently), that the 1.5°C target was not attainable even when proposed in the 2015 Paris Accord, due to socioeconomic inertia in our built environment, the role of atmospheric aerosols, and potential effects from the permafrost carbon feedback.

Examples of Nature Based Climate Solutions

To start, I thought it would be illustrative to provide a few examples of nature based climate solutions in action. This list is by no means comprehensive, but rather serves solely to give the reader a sense of what such solutions entail.

The most obvious example of a nature based solution is planting trees. Widespread deforestation, particularly in the creation of pastures for cattle grazing and land for farming or other human uses, has provided the lion’s share of the historical 203 GtC released to the atmosphere. Reforestation (planting trees where they once were) and afforestation (planting trees in places where they weren’t historically present) both have the potential to draw carbon from they atmosphere as they grow. But of course, if we want to use tree planting in carbon budget accounting, we would also have keep track of the carbon released during forest fires.

Urban planners also incorporate tree management in their climate adaptation strategies. For example, they recognize that increasing the tree canopy can help keep cities cooler in the summer than they would otherwise be. Homeowners, for example, might plant deciduous trees in their front yard that blocks the sun from their main windows in the summer, but allow the sunshine in during the late fall and winter once the leaves have fallen.

The use of biochar to enhance the properties of soil has also been proposed as a potential nature-based climate solution. Biochar (a charcoal like substance) is created through a process known as biomass pyrolysis. (high temperature decomposition of plant material). The addition of biochar to agricultural soil leads to enhanced soil carbon uptake and storage, reduced requirement for fertilizer use (and hence reduced nitrous oxide emissions), and improved water use efficiency. Other agricultural nature-based solutions involving tiling practices, crop/grazing rotations, cover crops etc. have also been proposed.

In the coastal ocean, mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows more efficiently capture and store carbon than land based, slow-growing forests. Many of these so called “blue carbon” sinks have been stressed by human activity in research decades and steps have been taken to both preserve and enhance their health and extent. These rich, biodiverse ecosystems also play key roles in climate change adaptation as they serve to protect coastal erosion from storms and sea level rise.

Recognizing the importance of nature-based solutions, the Canadian federal government developed a natural climate solutions fund to protect, enhance and preserves Canada’s biodiverse and carbon rich wetlands, grasslands and forests, in addition to a commitment to plant two billion trees over a ten-year period.

What’s required to stabilize atmospheric temperature

As most everyone is aware, the goal of the internationally-negotiated Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C. Yet we’ve known for more than 15 years that such a target would ultimately require rapid decarbonization and the introduction and scale-up of negative emission technology. In a paper entitled Long term climate implications of 2050 reduction targets that we published in 2007, we note in the abstract (and discussed below):

“Our results suggest that if a 2.0°C warming is to be avoided, direct CO₂ capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% global carbon emissions reductions by 2050.“

Earth has already warmed by ~1.1-1.2 °C since preindustrial times and if worldwide fossil fuel combustion was immediately eliminated, the direct and indirect net cooling effect of atmospheric aerosol loading would rapidly dissipate through gravitational settling and precipitation scavenging of these aerosols. As such, the source of the ~0.5 °C aerosol cooling realized since the preindustrial era would be eliminated (see Figure 1), thereby taking the Earth rapidly to ~1.6-1.7 °C warming. The Earth would warm further as we equilibrate to the present 523 ppm CO₂e (NOAA 2023) greenhouse gas loading in the atmosphere (only 417 ppm of which is associated with CO₂), and that is not including the committed warming from the permafrost carbon feedback that would add another 0.1 to 0.2 °C this century (Macdougall et al, 2013).

Figure 1: Observed global warming (2010-2019 relative to 1850-1900) and the contribution to this net warming by observed changes to natural and anthropogenic radiative forcing. Reproduced from IPCC (2021).

Let’s once more explore the level of decarbonization required to keep warming below 2°C (recognizing that 1.5°C is no longer attainable).  I present results from the UVic Earth System Climate model discussed in Weaver et al. (2007) and my book Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World.

Starting from a pre-industrial equilibrium climate, I force the UVic model with observed natural and human-caused radiative forcing until the end of 2005. After 2005, future trajectories in emissions must be specified. Each of the post-2005 scenarios I use assumes that contributions to radiative forcing from sulphate aerosols and greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide remained fixed throughout the simulations. An alternative way of looking at this is that any increase in human- produced, non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases is assumed to be balanced by an increase in sulphate aerosols (or some other negative radiative forcing). This assumption should be viewed as extremely conservative, since most future emissions scenarios have decreasing sulphate emissions and increasing emissions of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases.

We’ll start by examining the effects of a hypothetical international policy option that linearly cuts emissions by some percentage of 2006 levels by 2050, and maintains emissions constant thereafter until the year 2500 (see Figure 2a). Of course, my baseline case of constant 2006 emissions is substantially more optimistic than the IPCC scenarios, some of which have 2050 emissions at more than double 2006 levels. The various pathways in emissions lead to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in 2050 ranging from 407 ppm to 466 ppm, corresponding to warming relative to 1800 of between 1.5°C and 1.8°C (Figure 2b and Figure 2c). As the twenty-first century progresses, the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and warming begin to diverge between scenarios, and by 2100 the range is 394 ppm to 570 ppm (we are presently at 417 ppm), with a warming of between 1.5°C and 2.6°C. None of the emissions trajectories lead to an equilibrium climate and carbon cycle in 2500, although the 90% and 100% sustained 2050 emissions reductions have atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are levelling off. Of particular note is that by 2500, the scenario depicting a 100% reduction in emissions leads to an atmospheric carbon dioxide level below that in 2006, although global mean surface air temperature is still 0.5°C warmer than in 2006 (1.5°C warmer than 1800). While this version of the UVic Earth System Model only calculates the thermal expansion component of seal level rise and ignores contributions from glacier and ice sheet melt, the results shown in Figure 2d indicate that sea level rise still has not equilibrated even after 500 years. Figure 2: (a) Observed anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from 1800 to 2006 (red) followed by linear reductions of 0–100% of 2006 levels by 2050. From 2050 onwards emissions are held constant. Transient evolution of globally-averaged (b) atmospheric carbon dioxide, (c) surface air temperature, and (d) sea level rise due to thermal expansion for all experiments. Note that the sea-level curves have no contribution from the melting of land-based ice.

All simulations that have less than a 60% reduction in global emissions by 2050 eventually break the threshold of 2°C warming this century. Even if emissions are eventually stabilized at 90% less than 2006 levels globally (1.1 billions of tonnes of carbon emitted per year), the 2°C threshold warming limit is eventually broken well before the year 2500. This implies that if a 2°C warming is to be avoided, direct CO₂ capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to 90% reductions in global carbon emissions.

I purposely kept emissions constant after 2050 in my idealized scenarios to illustrate that cutting emissions by some prescribed amount by 2050 is in and of itself not sufficient to deal with the problem of global warming. Even if we maintain global carbon dioxide emissions at 90% below current levels, we eventually break the 2°C threshold. This is because the natural carbon dioxide removal processes can’t work fast enough to take up the emissions we emit to the atmosphere year after year. Any solution to global warming will ultimately require the world to move towards net zero emissions carbon which requires the introduction and global scale up of negative emission technology.

Figure 3: As in Figure 2 but the emissions in (a) continue the linear decrease until zero emissions are reached. The year in which zero emissions is reached is indicated in the table below.

Now let’s examine the effects of another hypothetical international policy option that starts from the results obtained in the previous suite of experiments at 2050 but now continues to linearly decrease emissions at the same rate until zero emissions are reached. The resulting emissions are shown in Figure 3a and the date at which emissions fall to zero is given in table to the right.

If we keep emissions on a linearly decreasing emissions path to carbon neutrality, it turns out that in the UVic model about 45% or larger reductions (relative to 2005 levels) are required by 2050 if we do not wish to break the 2°C threshold. And peak atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach a little over 450 ppm before settling down to slightly above 400 ppm. Notice that in all cases, even though emissions have gone to zero, sea level continues to rise. It’s further important to note that these simulations were conducted and published in 2007 and assumed the hypothetical scenario of an immediate curtailing of emissions. The reality is global fossil carbon emissions (excluding land use emissions) were 10.1 GtC (billions of tonnes of carbon) in 2021 which is a 25% increase from 2005 levels (when they were 8.1GtC).

In this section I have tried to emphasize that the only means of stabilizing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is for humanity to achieve net zero carbon emissions. While the implementation of nature-based solutions provides some additional time before net zero must be reached to avoid breaking the 2°C guardrail, there is a danger that such efforts are being overly promoted by governments and industry to allow them to maintain the status quo of oil, gas and coal exploration and combustion.

It’s a question of timescale

Millions of years ago when the atmosphere had much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, trees, ferns, and other plants were abundant. These plants used the sun’s energy, together with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water, to create glucose or sugar and release oxygen back to the atmosphere (photosynthesis). As the years went by, plants would grow and die, and some of these dead trees and other vegetation would fall into swampy waters depleted in oxygen. In this environment, the organic matter only partially decayed and so turned into peat, a precursor for coal formation. Over time, shallow seas covered some of the swampy regions, depositing layers of mud or silt. As the pressure started to increase, the peat was transformed, over millions of years, into brown coal, then soft coal, and finally hard coal.

A similar process occurred within shallow seas where ocean plants (e.g., phytoplankton) and marine creatures would die and sink to the bottom to be buried in the sediments below. Over millions of years, the sediments hardened to produce sedimentary rocks, and the resulting high pressures and temperatures caused the organic matter to transform slowly into oil or natural gas. The great oil and natural gas reserves of today formed in these ancient sedimentary basins.

Today when we burn a fossil fuel, we are harvesting the sun’s energy stored from millions of years ago. In the process, we are also releasing the carbon dioxide that had been drawn out of that ancient atmosphere (which had much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today). So, unless we can actually figure out a way to speed up the millions of years required to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and to convert dead plants back into peat and then coal (or oil and gas) the idea that we can somehow stop global warming solely through nature-based solutions isn’t realistic.

Nevertheless, and I reiterate, there are many positive reasons for planting new forests (afforestation), replanting old forests (reforestation), or reducing the destruction of existing forests (deforestation), including the restoration of natural habitat and the prevention of loss of biodiversity. However, trees only store carbon over the course of their lifetime. When these trees die, or if they burn, the carbon is released back to the atmosphere.

The danger of over reliance on nature based solutions

While nature-based solutions have an important role to play in climate change adaptation and the preservation of biodiversity, there is a growing danger that governments, industry and the general public will come to rely on them as a means to maintain the status quo.

Let’s take British Columbia’s LNG experience as an example.

In the lead up the the 2013 provincial election I repeatedly pointed out the economic and environmental folly of somehow believing that BC would build prosperity through liquifying natural gas and shipping it to Asia. In fact, I quantified my concerns in one of the first blog posts I wrote in the BC Legislature. British Columbia residents were being told that at least five major LNG facilities would be built in BC by 2020. Today we have none, so I would suggest that my concerns about the economics of LNG were spot on.

In 2018, when it was clear that BC’s plans for LNG were not going to materialize, the BC NDP picked up where the BC Liberals left off and further sweetened the tax credit regime for LNG Canada, the one remaining major LNG company left in BC. It was clear to me that British Columbia could not meet its legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets if the LNG Canada project was ever built and I wrote a detailed blog post pointing out that it was time for both the BC NDP and the BC Liberals to level with British Columbians about LNG. The BC NDP government remained adamant that BC could still reduce emissions to 40% below 2007 levels by 2030. I remained skeptical and feared that this target can only be achieved through creative carbon accounting and appealing to “nature-based solutions”. I believe I was and remain correct. The analysis above and my earlier blog posts should make that obvious. And nobody should be surprised to see Shell Canada now promoting its efforts to ensure “the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and wetlands” as a central component to its greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. Of course, there is no mention of greenhouse gas emissions from the ever increasing area burnt by Canadian wildfires, nor the emissions being triggered as permafrost thaws and the previously frozen organic matter begins to decompose.

The Darkwoods Forest Carbon project offers a glimpse into what is likely being considered by BC government and industry decision-makers as a means of offsetting emissions from the natural gas sector. The problem with this is threefold.

First, claiming that the preservation of a forest should be considered a carbon offset using an argument that the wood would otherwise be harvested is a bit like me say to you: “give me $10,000 or I will buy a gas-guzzling SUV”! Second, if you want to claim a carbon credit for planting a tree, then you have to also accept a debit if that tree, or another, burns down. Third, their is no international mechanism to get credit for such a nature-based offset and these are purely considered voluntary.

Summary

In this post I have tried to outline the important role that nature-based climate solutions play amid the suite of policy options available to government and industry. The cautionary tale is that while these represent important contributions to a jurisdiction’s overall climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy, they cannot take away from the requirement to decarbonize energy systems immediately. As outlined in a recent article published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B by researchers from Oxford University in the UK, “there are concerns over their reliability and cost-effectiveness compared to engineered alternatives, and their resilience to climate change.”

For years I have noted that the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 had immediate consequences for oil, gas and coal exploration. At the time of its signing, and given the availability of existing technologies, the Paris Agreement translated to the notion that effective immediately, no new oil, gas or coal infrastructure could be built anywhere in the world if we want to keep warming to below 2°C. This follows since such major capital investments have a long payback time; you don’t build a natural gas electricity plant today only to tear it down tomorrow. Socioeconomic inertia in the built environment also suggests that the capital stock turnover time would be decades, not years.

Nature based-solutions are really a natural branch of other so-called Carbon Dioxide Removal geoengineering projects. Another solution that has received some attention of late concerns increasing the alkalinity of surface waters through dissolution of limestone. This geo-engineering fix was one of many examined by the IPCC in a 2005 special report assessing the possibility of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. To sequester 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide without the negative effects associated with acidification 3.5 kilograms of calcium carbonate (limestone) would have to be artificially dissolved in the ocean. Today, about 6.6 Gt of limestone is mined annually. If the entirety of this global production was dissolved in the ocean, about 1.9 Gt of carbon dioxide could be sequestered annually (or 0.5 Gt of carbon equivalent). This represents about 5% of the world’s 2021 global carbon dioxide emissions. A twenty-fold increase in limestone mining to sequester our present-day emissions would have enormous energy implications (with their concomitant emissions), not to mention the potential environmental impacts of such expanded mining activities. We would also have to stop producing cement, which uses this limestone, throughout the world, meaning that concrete could no longer be used in construction. It should be clear that attempting to modify surface alkalinity using the world’s limestone resources is not a serious proposition to combat global warming.

So in summary, despite the many benefits of nature-based solutions, what is required to keep global warming to below 2°C (or, frankly, to stabilize it at any level), is the immediate transition towards the decardonization of global energy systems along with the widespread introduction of negative emission technology, such as direct air carbon capture and deep underground storage. At this stage, I am of the belief that this remains the only hope humanity has for a long term solution to this problem. We can take comfort in the very real successes of nature-based solutions, and their many co-benefits, but we cannot take our eyes off the scale of the challenge before us. Fortunately, all the solutions are known. It is a matter of individual, institutional, corporate and political will as to whether or not we will achieve the goals of net zero emissions in the future.

Today during question period I rose to ask the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources about what appears to be regulatory inconsistencies facing the advancement of Pacific Booker’s Morrison Mine project. As you will see from the exchange below, I was not particularly impressed with the Minister’s response to my questions.

I intend to explore this issue further in the coming weeks.

Below I reproduce the video and text of the Question Period Exchange.

Video of Exchange

Question

A. Weaver: I’m sure every member of this House will agree that a stable regulatory environment is key to maintaining B.C.’s reputation as a welcoming place to do business. This means that the approval of natural resource projects must be based on scientific evidence and not politics. Yet in 2012, upon recommendation from the executive director of the environmental assessment office, the B.C. Liberals rejected the Morrison mine project proposed by Pacific Booker Minerals, despite it having received a positive environmental assessment. In justifying their decision, they cited environmental concerns about the effects of the mine on water quality in Morrison Lake and local salmon populations, despite already having a positive environmental assessment.

Despite their rejection of the Pacific Booker project, in 2013 the B.C. Liberals went to Ottawa to lobby the federal government to approve the Prosperity mine, a project that had received two negative assessments by federal review panels. There’s some suspicion that the decision around the Morrison mine had less to do with environmental concerns and more to do with political calculation.

My question is to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. Has this government been able to determine why this company was treated so differently from others at the time? And how will it prevent situations like this from happening in the future?

Answer

Hon. B. Ralston: I’d like to thank the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head for his question. I’m sure the member will appreciate that I’m not in a position to advise what led the former government to make its decision about the proposed Morrison mine. What I can say, though, is that their approach was shortsighted and certainly didn’t bring certainty to the sector.

Our government has taken a different approach. My predecessor, as minister, initiated the Mining Jobs Task Force, which worked hard with First Nations, industry and communities to find ways to strengthen this fundamental, foundational industry.

There were 25 recommendations emanating from the task force. They’ve all been accepted by government, and almost all of them have now been implemented. We have made two mining tax credits permanent, bringing immediate benefits to the B.C. mineral exploration sector by adding more certainty. We’ve invested $1 million for the mining innovation roadmap, $1 million for the Regional Mining Alliance.

As further evidence of the strengthening of the sector, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan just signed a $300 million investment deal to provide an investment in the New Afton mine, just outside the civic boundaries of Kamloops.

Supplementary Question

A. Weaver: I must admit that was a lot of information about a lot of mines that weren’t the mine I’m actually talking about. Maybe I can try again.

A key element of the previous government’s unrealistic strategy for natural resource development revolved around, as we all know, LNG. We know that certain natural gas projects were located in areas close to the Morrison mine. Comments from groups engaged in the Pacific Booker project have indicated that the province was facing significant pressure to avoid reopening discussions around the Morrison mine in order to obtain the support necessary for the Prince Rupert gas transmission line.

The decision to reject the project had serious repercussions for Pacific Booker. Their share price plummeted, from $14.95 to $4.95 in one day, and many investors lost their life savings. What’s more is that the ministry failed to inform Pacific Booker of its intention to issue an adverse recommendation and did not provide the company with an opportunity to respond to it.

After a legal battle in which the Supreme Court found that this conduct violated standards of procedural fairness and that the environmental assessment office recommendation be presented to cabinet for reconsideration, the government once again rejected the project in order to undergo further assessment. However, in its order, the government appeared to issue unclear directions that substantially delay the process. As of 2019, in September….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

A. Weaver: As of Sep 2019, Pacific Booker had yet to be fully provided with this opportunity. My question, again, is to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. When is this firm going to have the chance to have their project undergo further assessment, as put forward by the Supreme Court?

Answer

Hon. B. Ralston: The short answer is that the company is currently working through the required regulatory processes for further assessment. The further assessment for the proposed project includes the requirement for a supplemental application information requirement. There are a number of requirements. The EAO continues to work with the company on this, and I’m advised that the latest submission was received by the EAO in December 2019.

On Friday, November 8 I had the opportunity to deliver a keynote address over lunch to delegates of the Clean Energy BC, Generate 2019 Conference. As evident in the video and slides of my presentation (reproduced below), I started the talk with a framing of what is happening in the climate system, why we should care about it and what has been done in terms of greenhouse gas mitigation. I then moved on to a discussion of potential opportunities in electrification and innovation within the emerging field of negative emission technologies.

Presentation Video

Slides Used in presentation

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Yesterday in the BC Legislature I rose during Question Period to ask the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy about the inconsistency between British Columbia’s CleanBC plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the fact that the Deputy Minister of  Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources recently went to Japan to tout the idea of even more LNG development in B.C.

Below I reproduce the video and text of our exchange. The BC Liberals were quite boisterous in heckling the Environment Minister as he tried to respond to my question.

Video of Exchange

Question

A. Weaver: It’s been troubling to hear some B.C. organizations recently push the false narrative that by exporting LNG we are somehow helping to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not surprising to see them puppet the LNG rhetoric from the previous government, since the signals being sent by this government are often in conflict with one another. For example, we know that increasing an LNG export capacity is inconsistent with CleanBC and our goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030. Yet despite this, earlier this month the Deputy Minister for Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources went to Japan to tout the idea of even more LNG development in B.C.

My question is to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. How can British Columbians have confidence that this government is serious about being a climate leader when a deputy minister is travelling abroad stumping for further fossil fuel development?

Answer

Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you to the Leader of the Third Party for the question.

As the Leader of the Third Party knows well, both his party and our party on the government side were convinced going into the last election that we had a serious climate credibility problem in British Columbia, despite the fact that B.C. was the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax. We felt that way because we had seen a complete reversal of intention to do anything whatsoever about reducing…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. G. Heyman: …emissions in B.C.

In fact, don’t take my word for it. Even former Premier Gordon Campbell expressed disappointment with his party’s approach under Christy Clark. That led to the Green Party caucus and our caucus agreeing that it was important to have a serious, quantifiable climate action plan in British Columbia, and we set about to do exactly that together. That resulted in CleanBC.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. G. Heyman: That resulted in a plan that’s measurable to meet our climate targets.

I’m pleased to have worked with the Leader of the Third Party and their caucus on putting in place a robust accountability framework so British Columbians won’t have to take our word for it. They will be able to rely on regular reporting and verification that we are on a path to do what we say we will do. What we have said we will do is reduce emissions, and what we have said we will do is that the development of LNG must fit within our CleanBC plan.

The BC NDP government released the 2017 greenhouse gas emissions data today. To no one’s surprise, BC’s 2017 GHG emissions increased by 1.2% from 2016 to 2017 to a total 64.5 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e), or roughly 13.1t CO2e per capita. Leading the way was a year-over-year 29% increase in emissions from natural gas flaring. Of course, this too is unsurprising as there is a glut of natural gas in the market and the predominant value from the drilling activity in the northeastern BC’s Montney Formation is in the liquids. A significant fraction of these liquids are shipped to Alberta where they are mixed with bitumen to form dilbit, the less viscous substance that can flow through pipelines. The gas, for which there is no market (and for which we have slashed royalty payments to the province and so literally give away), can be pumped back underground or burnt on site (flaring). And all of these activities are subsidized by the BC taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars.

As I’ve outlined numerous times over the years on this blog site, with BC’s expansion into LNG, I do not believe the BC NDP government will be able to deliver a plan that will cut GHG emissions to 40% below 2007 levels by 2030. The premier claims that he will. I remain unconvinced.

Nevertheless, I remain very supportive of the CleanBC economic plan, which the BC Greens played an integral role in developing. However, I fear that it may be all for naught. As you will see in the above graph, the trend in emissions from the natural gas sector is on the rise, even without a single LNG facility in place. The trend in emissions from residential buildings is on the decline as we would hope.

Do we believe that it is fair for British Columbians to be burdened with the requirements and cost of reducing GHG emissions while we continue to offer subsidies and corporate welfare to the oil and gas sector? I think not for we have to work even harder as individuals to curb our emissions to account for the continued growth of emissions in the oil and gas sector.

Below I reproduce the media statement that I issued in response to government’s release of these new greenhouse gas emissions data.

Media Release

BC’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb
For immediate release
September 9, 2019

VICTORIA, B.C. – At a time when citizens are calling on their governments to ambitiously decarbonize – and every international panel has stated doing so is the only way to meet our agreed upon international climate targets- the provincial government’s recently released greenhouse gas data  shows that BC, as of 2017, has failed to correct its emissions trajectory.

The data released today show total emissions in British Columbia increased 1.2 per cent from 2016 to 2017 to a total 64.5 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e), roughly 13.1t CO2e per capita. Emissions are now back up to 2007 levels when 64.8 Mt of CO2e was emitted, despite the BC NDP government last year committing to reduce emissions by 40% from this amount by the year 2030.

“We designed the CleanBC economic plan to start to tackle this challenge. Now that it is being implemented I expect we’ll start to see some slight emissions reductions, but it is clear we have a long way to go and we need to remain diligent in our commitment to our reduction targets,” said Dr. Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Greens. “The timing of the release of these new emissions numbers is also particularly ironic as it comes on the heels of British Columbia announcing it’s sending a delegation to Japan to tout the potential export of highly subsidized LNG. As I’ve identified numerous times in the past, we cannot expand investment in the fossil fuel sector and hope to reduce our domestic emissions to promised levels.”

“British Columbians say they want to fight climate change. Looking at this data, they should be enraged that the lack of regulations in the oil and gas sectors means their footprint is two to three times larger than that of the average person living in the UK, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden. The average British Columbia emits about 29 times the CO2e compared to an average citizen in Bangladesh.

“Our individual carbon footprint per British Columbian barely come in under our neighbours to the south, by a measly 12%. These numbers show us that we are not the concerned environmental stewards that we think we are, and it is because we have had governments that fail to regulate industry and fail to implement a vision for a new, green economy rooted in sustainable practices.”

This summer, government released its strategic climate risk assessment for British Columbia . Analyzing the climate risks likely to face British Columbia between 2040 and 2059, the report stated:

“British Columbia is already experiencing the effects of global climate change: average temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, and variable and extreme weather is becoming more frequent. Scientists expect these changes to accelerate and intensify in the years ahead, creating risks to society, natural resources, and ecosystems.”

British Columbia is contributing to global emissions rising when they need to be falling dramatically. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly reported that carbon pollution needs to be cut by 45 percent by 2030 if we are to stay below 1.5C warming, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen climate change impacts and drag hundreds of millions of people into poverty.

“Now is not the time to protect the status quo or invest billions in expanding the oil and gas sector,” Weaver said.  “Now is the time to rise to the challenge before us. Climate change is an immense risk if we don’t do anything about it. But it is also an incredible opportunity if we act. We can- and must- build cleaner and healthier communities and vibrant, resilient, sustainable economies.”

CleanBC was developed in collaboration with the BC NDP government and supports the commitment in the Confidence and Supply Agreement to implement climate action to meet B.C.’s emission targets.

Quick Facts

In 2016, the most recent global data available from the International Energy Agency, the United Kingdom’s per capita emissions were 5.65t CO2e, New Zealand’s were 6.45t CO2e, Norway’s were 6.78t CO2e, Denmark’s were 5.84t CO2e and Sweden’s were 3.83t CO2e. For comparison, per capita emissions in Bangladesh were 0.45t CO2e and in the United States were 14.95t CO2e.

This puts the average British Columbian’s carbon footprint 2.3, 2.0,1.9, 2.2 and 3.4 times larger than that of the average person living in the UK, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden, respectively.

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Media contact
Macon L.C.  McGinley, Press Secretary
B.C. Green Caucus
+1 250-882-6187 |macon.mcginley@leg.bc.ca