ENVI Committee Report

Supplementary Report of the New Democratic Party of Canada

New Democrats would like to thank all the witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development and those who submitted written briefs during the Committee’s study of clean technologies in Canada to reduce domestic and international greenhouse gas emissions.

While we support the recommendations made in the report, we would like to emphasize the point that carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) should not be considered a proven technology. From Luisa Da Silva (Director, Iron and Earth): “Despite federal and provincial governments providing an estimated $5.8 billion for CCUS projects since 2000, CCUS captures only 0.05% of Canada’s greenhouse gases.”

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CCUS “currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological-environmental and socio-cultural barriers.” The IPCC has indicated that carbon capture technology is the most expensive and least efficient option of emissions reduction. The Standing Committee’s report also fails to acknowledge the downstream emissions from CCUS projects. Carbon capture in the oil and gas sector has no impact on the 80% of oil and gas emissions that result from downstream use. The study aimed to understand the use of clean technologies in Canada to reduce our own emissions as well as international gas emissions, and as such the downstream fossil fuel emissions must be taken into account.