Vancouver — Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver supports B.C.’s NDP government in its battle against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, but when it comes to LNG, he says they “can’t have their cake and eat it too.”

“There’s an incompatibility in having a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and building capacity to increase greenhouse gas emissions. You can’t have it both ways,” he told StarMetro Vancouver.

“It’s much like Mr. Trudeau is trying to argue we need to triple oilsands … production and build the Trans Mountain pipeline in order to have a climate plan, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Last month, Premier John Horgan announced tax breaks as an incentive for liquefied natural gas projects, including LNG Canada’s proposed export terminal in Kitimat, B.C.

In a statement to StarMetro last week Environment Minister George Heyman said his “government has always maintained we would welcome potential LNG development only if fits within our four conditions, which include our climate goals and our legislated GHG reduction targets.”

“We’ve committed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030 and by 80 per cent by 2050. That remains our goal,” he added.

Weaver, however, said that’s “just not possible” with LNG even with forthcoming federal regulations aimed at reducing emissions of methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — by 20 megatonnes a year, the equivalent of removing five million cars from the road each year.

Environmental organizations expect these new regulations as early as this week, but Weaver says those could help reduce emissions from existing industry, not a “massive expansion.” And, even with the existing industry recent studies show emissions have been significantly underestimated, said Dale Marshall, Environmental Defence’s national program manager.

Industry, meanwhile, is confident it can achieve the reductions the federal government is aiming for, said Terry Abel, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers’ executive vice-president. However, companies are looking for more flexibility in the regulations, including different standards for old and new equipment.

“Let us spend our money where we get the biggest bang for the buck but still get you to the exact same target,” he said, explaining it may not make sense to spend a lot on an old facility close to the end of its life, when a company could achieve greater reductions by spending that same money on another source of emissions.

“Without a doubt changes and improvements at old facilities will occur, it’s just more changes may occur at some facilities than they will at others,” he said.

Marshall said environmental groups were open to more flexible regulations if the industry and government could assure them there would be a rigorous monitoring and reporting system in place, but the accountability wasn’t there, he said.

He wanted to new regulations to include reporting based on on-site monitoring and measurement, not formulas established for different devices. That wasn’t adopted because it was too expensive, he said.

In its absence, he’s expecting more detailed regulations requiring more frequent leak detection and specific equipment. But the regulations may not require the best available technology and he’s expecting they will still allow some flaring, when natural gas is burned off at the top of stack.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In a statement, McKenna’s press secretary Caroline Theriault noted methane has 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and that reducing emissions from the oil and gas industry “will make an important contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.”

As Marshall explained, there are costs to reducing methane but companies also have an opportunity to capture it and sell it on the market as fuel to offset those costs.

Ainslie Cruikshank is a Vancouver-based reporter covering the environment. Follow her on Twitter: @ainscruickshank

Read more about: