Amid new guidelines for hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil wells, experts are warning the petroleum industry to brace itself for more negative publicity against so-called ‘fracking.’
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) at the end of January, 2012, released a set of voluntary operating practices for its member-companies that use fracking to increase production of gas and oil.
“Applying these new operating practices will contribute to improving our environmental performance and transparency over time, both of which contribute to stronger understanding of industry activity and better relationships with the public, stakeholders and government,” CAPP president David Collyer said in a statement.
But at the Canadian Institute’s 8th Annual Shale & Oil Symposium – held in Calgary a few days before CAPP announced its guidelines – experts spoke about the negative fallout from the documentary film Gasland and other media coverage. They warned that more attacks on fracking are coming.
“Gasland 2 is coming this spring. Prepare yourselves,” Lisa Rollins, manager of corporate communications and stakeholder relations at Tamboran Resources in Calgary, told conference delegates.
Rollins and two other panelists discussed “Dealing with the Aftermath of Gasland: Strategies for Overcoming the Negative Image of Shale Development.” Scientific data and facts are inadequate to counter fears and concerns about a controversial issue, the panelists said.
“Addressing emotional issues with technical information doesn’t work,” Rollins told the delegates, including many engineers used to dealing with data and facts. She encouraged her audience to follow in the footsteps of a couple of other presenters at the conference by becoming ‘hybrids’ – technical experts who are also good communicators.
The writer and director of Gasland, Josh Fox, was arrested in Washington, D.C. on February 1, 2012, for attempting to film congressional hearings into fracking.
His controversial documentary, released in 2010, examined the impact of fracking in natural gas production on several U.S. communities. The film attracted international attention after being nominated for an Oscar and winning several awards, including the prestigious Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
Petroleum industry officials have accused Fox of spreading misinformation about natural gas development and fracking, but they’ve acknowledged that his film resonated with the public.
After his recent arrest, Fox told the Huffington Post that benzene, a carcinogen, had been found at 50 times the allowable amount in Pavillion, Wyoming. “Very significantly, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) this time around has said that fracking is the likely cause and that is a landmark moment.” (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/04/josh-fox-arrest-gasland-republicans_n_1251275.html).
Fracking involves the high-pressure injection of a fracking fluid, including water, sand and chemicals, into underground shale rock formations, to open up fractures in the rock so gas and oil can flow more easily to production wells.
Critics contend that fracking has contaminated groundwater and triggered earthquakes in some areas. But the industry says that the gas and oil zones being targeted are typically several kilometres below groundwater supplies.
There have been almost 200,000 wells fractured in western Canada over the last 60 years, CAPP says.
CAPP’s guidelines – which are recommendations that apply to its member-companies – include these operating practices:
• Publicly disclosing chemical ingredients used in fracking fluid.
• Better identifying and managing the risks associated with the fluids and ultimately increasing the market demand for safer fluids.
• Developing domestic water-well sampling programs and participating in regional groundwater monitoring programs.
• Designing and installing wellbores in a manner that maintains integrity before fracking begins.
• Ensuring water withdrawal limits are not exceeded, monitoring water sources and collecting and reporting water use data.
• Identifying, evaluating and mitigating potential risks of transporting, handling, storing and disposing of fluids used in fracking.
The Pembina Institute, an environmental policy research group, has said that while CAPP’s new guidelines are a positive step, public disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking should be required by government rather than be voluntary by industry.
In British Columbia, the provincial government as of January 1, 2012, requires companies to upload, to a public website (http://fracfocus.ca/) built by the BC Oil & Gas Commission, the chemicals used in fracking within 30 days of finishing well completion operations. A similar website exists in the U.S.
In Alberta, companies must report their fracking fluids to the Energy Resources Conservation Board, but the information is not made public.
At the Canadian Institute symposium in Calgary, Rollins told delegates that community groups have a “deep-rooted mistrust” of the petroleum industry.
Whether that mistrust is warranted or not, it is “based on an imperfect and sometimes irresponsible past,” she said, citing the Exxon Valdez tanker spill which dumped between 250,000 and 750,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska in March 1989.
Rollins advised delegates to not ignore the power of negative media attention, particularly social media. “Shale gas is an issue every day and everywhere because that is the nature of social media. So while you’re sleeping, people are talking about the devastation of shale gas and hydraulic fracturing.”
She offered several strategies that industry could employ to overcome people’s fear and the negative image of fracking widely portrayed in the media.
People who are fearful or concerned need time to be angry, she said, adding that companies engaged in fracking need to identify appropriate times to take off the corporate ‘frack jacket.’
Communications people are technical experts’ biggest allies; however, the communications people need the assistance of the technical experts to counter the misinformation in the public domain, she added.
Technical experts need to make every effort to understand the fear behind people’s emotion, Rollins said. “Talk to your friends and family about your industry,” so they know how to respond if someone asks them about shale gas and fracking.
It is important to provide the public with context, she noted. Because shale gas development is a global phenomenon, “there are many different kinds of audiences, and you need to tailor your information for each of those audiences.”
The public has a right to a full spectrum of information, Rollins said. In this context, “Gasland isn’t bad” in addressing the fear that communities face, and some companies actually hand out copies of the documentary as an educational tool, she said. “Now you need to get out there and provide additional information.”
Another panelist, John P. Martin, director of the Shale Resources and Society Institute at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, told delegates about some of the petroleum industry’s questionable historical practices.
Martin described a practice called shooting wells, in which people threw nitroglycerine down well bores to release oil from rock formations – which often resulted in them blowing themselves up.
“The United States government . . . detonated nuclear devices in well bores to frack rocks,” he said. “It’s tremendously frightening that they did it three times . . . the United States government makes you really wonder [about] Dr. Strangelove . . . was it true or not?”
Communities are concerned about three phases of fracking, Martin said. These are: 1) planning and site development (which he called the most important phase); 2) drilling and completion; and 3) operations and site reclamation.
In listing positive and negative impacts in all phases of the process, he said that because fracking is a complex process, it’s impossible to make it completely risk free.
Experience in many jurisdictions in the U.S. has shown that communities can work together with industry, he said. However, he stressed that industry needs to effectively communicate the positive effects such as employment and prosperity, as well as the negative impacts such as dust, noise, traffic and water table concerns.
Lack of effective communications results in widespread mistrust of industry and sensational media coverage that spreads fear, Martin said. He pointed to a cover story from the fall 2011 issue of the Episcopal New Yorker, headlined: “Would Jesus Frack?” (See http://www.evergreeneditions.com/publication/?i=84171&p=18&search_str=Would%20Jesus%20Frac&search_str=Would%20Jesus%20Frac).
New York is such a media centre for the rest of the U.S. that concerns publicized there are taken up by media elsewhere, Martin said, adding that the story of Jesus likely saying ‘No’ to fracking was distributed by social and mainstream media across the continent.
The widespread media attention is likely a factor in the push for stricter regulations for fracking, not only in the U.S. but also in Canada – including Alberta, Martin said.
Panelist Karen Carle, director of public affairs for Questerre Energy Corporation in Calgary, told delegates that because of negative publicity and lack of information, “within four months in Quebec, (people) went from never hearing of shale gas to being opposed to it (being developed).”
A particular problem in working in Quebec was the lack of information in French on fracking, so Questerre Energy made that information available (See http://www.questerre.com/fr/gaz-de-shale).
“Industry needs a cultural change. . . . it’s stuck in the past,” Carle said, stressing that the petroleum industry needs to accept responsibility for its actions.
She pointed to the reaction by Toyota to its massive vehicle recall in 2009 and early 2010 because of sticking accelerator pedal problems, compared with the response by BP to last year’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig explosion and oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico.
Toyota stepped up and took responsibility for the problems and for correcting them, she said. “Toyota didn’t point a finger” and try to place the blame on its subcontractors, she said.
Questerre Energy uses social media such as Twitter and various blogs to provide information to the communities where the company is working, Carle said. For example, Michael Binnion, the company’s president and CEO, offers a blog at (http://blog.questerre.com/en/?gclid=CMre0O7ShK4CFSYaQgodChCn3A).
The company adheres to certain practices in order to get the ‘social license’ to operate, including offering baseline testing, having minimum setback distances, engaging groups in dialogues, and redefining the debate so it’s not so adversarial, Carle said.
Nevertheless, the petroleum industry’s information is competing on the Internet with many other sources, such as this information offered on the official Gasland movie website (http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/):
• more than 3.5 million gallons of water are used in fracking a single well;
• drilling emits nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, resulting in destructive surface smog;
• more than 80,000 pounds of chemicals are injected into the Earth’s crust to frack each well;
• a loophole in the 2005 U.S. energy bill exempts natural gas drilling from EPA rules like the Safe Drinking Water Act;
• researchers suspect 65 of the compounds used in fracking are hazardous to human health;
• fracking fluid requires two million gallons of water transported by up to 100 water haulers;
• upwards of 70 per cent of fracking fluid remains in the ground and is not biodegradable.
For a critical view of Gasland, see Gasland Debunked, a document produced by Energy in Depth, a research, education and public outreach campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. (See
http://www.energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Debunking-Gasland.pdf). EnviroLine

           Grubler, in his talk to the CAFES conference, pointed out that in the history of energy system transitions, large system transformations have been driven by innovations in end use of energy as opposed to the supply side.
          The development of the internal combustion engine drove the use of fossil fuels – “not oil wells” – much like the invention of the steam engine fueled the use of coal, he said.
           Discussions about energy transitions also need to focus on “quality” and not always on “quantity,” Grubler said. The quantity of the energy resource available is important, but the “structuring of quality (of the energy resource) is always more important,” he said, particularly in an increasingly urban global society.
          Future energy innovations will be driven by the increasing urbanization of vast numbers of people who currently live in rural areas with low-quality, high-polluting fuel sources such as wood, he predicted.
          According to the Population Reference Bureau, “It is expected that 70 per cent of the world population will be urban by 2050, and that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries.” (See http://www.prb.org/Educators/TeachersGuides/HumanPopulation/Urbanization.aspx).
          Cities will be required to deliver large amounts of clean, convenient energy, Grubler said. “Energy wise, what has to be one of the most important energy drivers is urbanization.”
           Urban centres out of necessity place strong constraints on energy sources in terms of quality issues such as density and cleanliness, he said, although these centres are also major hubs of innovation. “Innovations happen where many people, bright minds congregate and exchange ideas.”
          Energy system transformations also historically have taken a long time, which is both good and bad news, Grubler said. “If one acknowledges that the (global energy) system turns over in a period of 70 to 100 years, that’s actually already too late for the climate change challenge.”
          However, by learning from past transformations, we could accelerate the rate of change of these massive energy systems, he added.
           Referring to various data from the past 12,000 years, Grubler said that the use of energy does not happen in a linear progression, although it appears to do so. For example, in rural India, people are using energy exactly the same way that people there did 10,000 years ago – using low-value biomass (wood and manure) to cook their foods.
           Reliance on conventional fossil fuel energy systems is still “unfinished business” in much of the rural world, he said. He expects that these are the areas where more efficient, sophisticated new energy systems will take root and expand faster, compared with the far more resistant Western world where fossil fuel systems are entrenched.
          Using a “simple mathematical model” and historical data from Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe, Grubler showed his audience the rate at which coal replaced traditional fuel sources of whale oil and wood, and how coal was in turn replaced by oil.
           Coal development started in Britain and became dominant in the 1820s, followed by fractional amounts of coal use elsewhere in Europe. “The early pioneer (in a new energy system) develops very early on, very slowly, and very massively,” he said.
          “We then have a second group of countries . . . Germany, France and the Netherlands . . . which are basically the first countries to catch up to this industrialization paradigm of Britain.”
          What Grubler called “the periphery” – countries such as Spain, Italy, Sweden and Portugal – much later embrace steam technology and start mining coal to fuel steam engines.
            However, Britain, which was the “lock-in” steam innovator in the world, became a “laggard” in the next energy transition to oil, in what Grubler called the “first in, last out” phenomenon. “It means if you’re the first to develop a new energy system, if you’re the first to embark on a new energy transition, you’re most likely to stay locked in that transition for the longest period of time.”
          The main reason for the delay in embracing a new energy system is the “sunk capital-intensive investments,” he noted. Society has invested huge dollars into the existing energy system and is reluctant to leave those investments stranded.  

          "[It is] a very simplistic historical rule which we could document for many, many individual cases,” Grubler said.
           The time it takes to transition to a new energy system is also a “hopelessly slow dynamic,” he said.
            For example, the global trend toward “decarbonization” – removing carbon as carbon or CO2 either before or after fossil fuel combustion – is about 0.3 per cent per year, Grubler noted. “Now if you look at the growth of an economy [being]three per cent per year, that [amount of decarbonization] is ten times too slow to compensate effectively. So it’s a big challenge.”
“What is required is not a reversal from historical trends. What is required is just an acceleration from historical trends, because the movement [toward decarbonization] suggests societies are headed in the right direction,” he said.
           It took about 160 years for coal to displace 80 per cent of the previous traditional biomass fuel sources used previously, and another 160 years for coal’s share in the energy system market to drop to 10 per cent in the wake of increasing oil use, Grubler said.
           However, that scenario unfolded very differently across Europe. Britain, the pioneer in coal-fired power, became locked into coal for a much longer time than other countries that had the “advantage of late comers.”
           Being late in transitioning to a new energy system means a country can catch up and learn from a pioneer’s mistakes. Being late also means a country can leave early, because it is less locked in and entrenched in the new system, he said.
           Still, the process of energy systems transformation is “frustratingly slow for those people who . . . aspire for rapid development, bringing the poor into the energy system or rapid improvement in the environmental compatibility of energy systems,” Grubler said.
           To accelerate the process, “we have to massively intervene into the system through policy initiatives,” he said.
          The challenge, he added, is that current global energy systems are subject to political influence and special interests. Governments subsidize coal-fired power in some jurisdictions and try to get rid of it in other places, or subsidize nuclear power in some areas and abandon it completely elsewhere.
          The result, Grubler said, is a cacophony of various interest groups that has led to a stalemate in global energy system transformation. EnviroLine
Video and audio of Grubler’s presentation, as well as other keynote speaker presentations at the CAFES conference, are available at: http://www.iseee.ca/cafes/

By Elona Malterre

Industrial greenhouse gas emitters in Alberta should be prepared to pay a higher ‘tax’ on their emissions under a new ‘Canadian Energy Strategy’ being pushed by Western provinces.
“We do support a higher price on carbon, but other jurisdictions have to be on board,” Jessica Potter, spokesperson for Alberta Environment and Water, said in an interview with EnviroLine.
Potter was responding to a report, Responsible Action? An Assessment of Alberta’s Greenhouse Gas Policies, released Friday, December 16, 2012 by the Pembina Institute, an environmental policy group based in Alberta.
Pembina’s report calls on the province to increase its existing price on carbon and implement tougher regulations to ensure Alberta meets its greenhouse gas reduction targets.
The report says that Alberta, which had 244 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2008, is on track to achieve less than one-third of its stated emissions-reduction target of 50 Mt by 2020.
The report, co-written by Simon Dyer, policy director at the Pembina Institute, praised Alberta for being a leader in addressing climate change by being one of the first jurisdictions in the world to put a price on carbon.
Large emitters in Alberta with 100,000 tonnes or more of CO2e emissions per year are required to pay $15 per tonne on their emissions into the province’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation Fund. The fund supports technology development, including that of clean and renewable energy technologies.
However, “Alberta has built a car that is missing an engine” in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Dyer said at a news conference in Edmonton available via the internet to reporters.
“Alberta has a lot of machinery (to manage greenhouse gas emissions) here . . . but without a strong carbon penalty price, we’re not going to see the real value of that infrastructure that could drive down those emissions,” he said.
Pembina’s report criticized Alberta for keeping its carbon price relatively low while other jurisdictions, including British Columbia, Norway, Australia and Sweden, now all have higher prices.
B.C.’s price on carbon is scheduled to increase from $25 per tonne of CO2e emissions to $30/t on July 1, 2012. (See http://www.bcenergyblog.com/uploads/file/British_Columbia_Carbon_Tax.pdf), a move which was confirmed by an email from Suntanu Dalal, Communications Officer for the BC Ministry of Environment to EnviroLine.

Dalal explained that BC's Premier Christy Clark, "wrote an open letter to British Columbians committing to the scheduled carbon tax increases to 2012, and highlighting that, should it be increased beyond 2012, the B.C. government is open to considering whether these increases should be used for regional initiatives such as public transit.
•    No decision has yet been made on the revenue-neutral carbon tax after 2012; however, both the BC Jobs Plan and the September 2011 Speech from the Throne commit that British Columbia will continue to be a leader on climate change."
Alberta Environment and Water appreciates the constructive criticism offered by Pembina’s report, Potter said, adding “we hope to continue further dialogue with the Pembina Institute and others on how to make our strategies better.”
Alberta intends to maintain its leadership position in climate mitigation, and “we do intend to press forward” with the province’s emissions-reduction targets, she said.
Potter said the provincial department agrees with the Pembina report’s assessment that Alberta took a leadership role in setting a price on carbon, but now needs to do more. “We will continue to work hard to ensure that we’re doing our fair share.”
Asked whether the Alberta government had any plans to increase the province’s price on carbon, Potter replied: “We’ve always said that our price ($15 per tonne) is a starting point . . . We need to ensure that we make changes that ensure long-term reductions, but keep Alberta on a level-playing field” with other jurisdictions.
However, Alberta Premier Alison Redford says that her government is not considering an increase in the province’s carbon price “at this point.”
“It’s important from my perspective, that as we’re a part of a North American energy economy, that we’re not pricing ourselves out of markets,” Redford told the Calgary Herald.
On December 13, B.C. Premier Clark and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall met with Redford in a closed-door meeting at Government House in Edmonton.
The three provincial leaders discussed “ways to advance western Canada’s economy and shore up opportunities to capitalize on the west’s energy proaction,” according to CNews (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2011/12/13/19120481.html).
The three western premiers are planning a trip to Ottawa in the new year in an effort to push a new ‘Canadian Energy Strategy.’
Environment Canada is working on developing a carbon policy on the national level. To be successful, this policy would need to include a nation-wide price on carbon that’s fair and agreeable to all provinces and industry sectors, observers told EnviroLine.
Saskatchewan, like Alberta, has set a $15-per-tonne price on carbon emissions.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), on its website, says: “As an industry, we account for 23 per cent of Canada’s emissions and 0.5 per cent of total global emissions. It’s a big number and industry understands it must improve its performance.”
CAPP also says that a national framework to regulate carbon emissions should apply broadly and not single out a particular province or industry.
The Pembina Institute’s report, which in addition to Dyer was written by Matthew Bramley, Marc Huot and Matt Horne, makes six recommendations for Alberta.
The first recommendation is that Alberta should increase its price of carbon to at least double its current level, to align it with B.C.’s price of $30 per tonne.
Alberta’s emissions-reduction strategy includes more use of energy conservation.
According to an Alberta government website, “While much of Alberta’s energy policy has focused on supply, increasingly we need to integrate the ‘demand side’ in our thinking. The demand side spans a complex range from the choice of energy sources to extract bitumen to household and transportation energy conservation measures.
“Albertans . . . are among the highest per-capita energy consumers on the globe. We’d like to set a more appropriate example. Energy resources may need to be consumed, but they should be consumed with emphasis on efficiency, conservation and overall wise use. It is possible for Albertans not only to set the standard in development of its energy sources, but in their consumption.” (See Section 3.2 at http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Initiatives/1509.asp).
However, with carbon at only $15 per tonne, there’s no incentive for companies or individuals to use energy more efficiently, Pembina’s report says.
Pembina’s second recommendation is that Alberta should transition its “current partial carbon tax,” which was created by the province’s Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, into a full carbon tax.
The rationale for this recommendation is that B.C. has shown that a “full carbon tax is feasible without use of offsets for compliance” while Alberta allows the use of offsets for compliance, Pembina says.
Alberta’s partial carbon tax has four main weaknesses, Pembina’s report notes:
• Only 12 per cent of large emitters’ emissions are taxed (oilsands producers currently pay about 18 cents per barrel for their greenhouse gas emissions, Dyer said);
• Some emissions, such as industrial process emissions, are exempted;
• The $15-per-tonne tax can be avoided by acquiring offset credits that cost less than the tax rate;
• Only the large emitters (100,000 tonnes or more of CO2e per year) are taxed.
Pembina’s third recommendation is that Alberta should implement stringent mandatory greenhouse gas intensity standards for all new large industrial facilities in the oilsands, coal-fired power, natural gas processing and potentially other sectors.
These standards should be set at a level corresponding to large-scale carbon capture and storage, and offset credits should not be allowed as a compliance options, Pembina says.
Estimated carbon capture and storage (CCS) costs are approximately $75 per tonne, according to Pembina’s report, which notes that there’s a huge discrepancy between the cost of CCS implementation and the current $15-per-ton carbon surcharge.
This discrepancy is a “failure whereby today’s investors in new industrial infrastructure are not able to correctly anticipate the carbon prices that will be required to achieve increasingly deep emission reductions a decade or more from now when that infrastructure is still intended to be operating,” Pembina maintains.
Pembina’s fourth recommendation is that Alberta should moderate the rate of approval and construction of new oilsands facilities, to ensure that development stays within clear cumulative limits that acknowledge environmental as well as social impacts.
A more moderate rate of development will allow for “sober second thoughts” in assessing a wide range of issues, including watershed management, First Nations’ concerns, wildlife management, impacts on housing, transportation, consumer goods and labor, and social issues such as medical facilities, Pembina’s report says.
The fifth recommendation is that Alberta should strengthen the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation Fund (CCEMC) to include more members and stronger representation from the clean energy sector.
Pembina’s report contends that “the current stipulation in (the CCEMC’s) bylaws that large emitter industry sectors appoint a majority of board members is unacceptable for a body playing such an important public policy role.”
Pembina also recommends that the CCEMC should take steps to ensure:
• near-and longer-term emission reductions are appropriately balanced;
• emission reductions clearly attributable to the CCEMC’s fund are rigorously quantified;
• emission reductions that could be counted under other policies are clearly identified; and
• projects are selected systematically, from all sectors, with reference to their cost per tonne of emissions reduced.
The CCEMC, which is a non-profit organization, announced in June 2011 that it had invested just over $126 million in 27 projects at all stages of innovation.
These projects included Alliance Pipeline and NRGreen Power’s 14-Megawatt power-generating facility at a compressor site near Whitecourt in northwest Alberta; the facility will capture byproduct heat which would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere. (See EnviroLine’s website: http://envirolinenews.ca/20111202/investment-in-innovation-boost).
Pembina’s sixth recommendation is that Alberta should adopt a clear process to urgently develop, implement and update a full plan to meet the province’s greenhouse gas-reduction targets.
The report says that in keeping with the structure of Alberta’s climate change plan, the full implementation plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions should include fully fleshed-out sets of policies for energy conservation and efficiency, CCS and renewable energy.
Alberta Environment and Water’s Potter said that while CCS “is still a tool” that the government wants to use to reduce emissions, “we do need to look at other clean energy programs.”
In July 2008, the Government of Alberta announced $2 billion over 15 years in funding to help kick start large commercial CCS projects. Bart Johnson, a spokesman for the Department of Energy told EnviroLine that contracts have been signed for three projects: Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Shell Quest and Swan Hills Synfuels. (http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/Initiatives/1438.asp). "Contracts will be paid out as the projects are developed," Johnson said.

A fourth project, Pioneer, is still in negotiations but Johnson said, "If an agreement is not reached, in that case," Premier Redford "said we could consider using money that would have gone to that agreement to some other clean fuel initiative or clean energy initiative."

Pembina’s 61-page report is available at (http://www.pembina.org/pub/2295). EnviroLine

By Elona Malterre

The world is poised on a post-fossil fuel era, a “Third Industrial Revolution” that will likely bypass developed nations and take root in developing countries, says prominent American author and thinker Jeremy Rifkin.
“Fossil fuels are just a chunk of history,” Rifkin, author of 19 books and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, told the inaugural Clean Energy Congress in Calgary in November 2011.
Investing in what he called sunset industries “is not a recipe for success,” he said, exhorting his audience to invest in “sunrise industries” that will drive a world of “democratized,” distributed energy.
Rifkin, who holds an undergraduate degree in economics and a graduate degree in international affairs, has lectured at hundreds of the world’s leading corporations and at more than 200 universities in about 30 countries in the past 30 years, according to the Foundation on Economic Trends website (http://www.foet.org/). He is the founder and chairperson of the Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable, and he has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade.
Speaking via a video link, Rifkin told his Clean Energy Congress audience that the Third Industrial Revolution will be based on a post-carbon economy. Emerging technologies will be used to distribute energy laterally and democratically, in the same way that social media, using wireless and Internet technologies, now distribute information, he said.
Democratized or distributed energy will replace the hierarchical, highly structured, top-down current energy systems, Rifkin said. It will be the goal of builders “to convert every single building into a power plant,” and the job of utility companies “to use as few electrons as possible.”
For society to make the transition to a new carbon-reduced economy, however, five crucial pillars must be in place, Rifkin said.
First, he said, there must be a significant shift to renewable energy. While acknowledging that this shift can’t happen at once, he said that it requires increased resources being committed to new energy systems as opposed to keeping the fossil fuel industry on “life- support systems.”
Rifkin lamented that Canada and the United States, which he said were once flagships of new technology development, have lost their way. The way to win in this century is to invest “sunrise” industries; otherwise, the developing countries will leapfrog over the developed world, he said.
The second pillar in transitioning to a carbon-reduced economy is the major redesign of buildings, which will jump-start construction and create millions of jobs, he said.
Rifkin advocated “solar on the roof, wind (energy) on the walls (and) geo-thermal heat,” with even garbage becoming a source of power. He pointed to buildings being constructed in Europe that generate enough power it can be sold to the electrical grid.
The third pillar includes new energy-storage technologies, including for hydrogen, he said.
Some experts contend that such storage technologies would be “a game changer” in addressing the problem of variability of wind-power systems. (See EnviroLine’s website: http://envirolinenews.ca “Alberta is Good Location For ‘Game-Changing’ Energy Storage Technology” posted on June 13, 2010).
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories recently held a symposium for discussion of a broad portfolio of energy-storage technologies with utility-scale applications (See http://www.sandia.gov/ess/events_news.html#news).
The fourth pillar in transitioning to a carbon-reduced economy is ‘smart’ grid technologies, which Rifkin said will serve as the nervous system of the new energy systems. Such technologies include “off-the-shelf technology . . . and installed software to share energy . . . and transform the entire . . . power grid,” so that energy can be both supplied to and removed from the grid as needed.
The fifth pillar is redesigning and investing in mass transit, he said. “Together, these five pillars represent a mega-technology platform supplying a critical infrastructure for a completely new economic paradigm of energy.”
While much of Europe has invested in expanded and new mass transit systems, the idea is meeting resistance in the U.S.
About a month after Rifkin spoke at the Clean Energy Congress, the Los Angeles Times reported a survey which found that Californians would reject a planned ‘bullet’ train project in a re-vote. Fifty-nine percent of registered voters said they’d oppose the high-speed rail project because its cost has soared to more than $98 billion and the completion date has been moved from 2020 to 2033. (See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-train-poll-20111207,0,3366380.story).
President Barack Obama “made a mistake in the U.S.” by spending “millions and millions of U.S. tax dollars” on stand-alone clean energy projects that weren’t connected, Rifkin contended. “He didn’t have the narrative, he didn’t understand.”
Rifkin, using his most recent book, The Third Industrial Revolution: Leading the Way to a Green Energy Era and a Hydrogen Economy, as the basis of his talk to the Clean Energy Congress, told his audience of about 500 that two recent events during the past three years “signaled the economic end-game of the fossil fuel era.”
The first event was the July 2008 rise of oil to $147 per barrel, which he called an earthquake that then led to the collapse of the economic markets 60 days later in an “aftershock.”
The cost of $147-per-barrel oil resulted in an unprecedented increase in prices that moved through the entire supply chain that Western civilization takes for granted – everything from fertilizer to pharmaceuticals and from power to plastics, Rifkin said.
“Costs became prohibitive and people stopped buying,” he said, adding that 60 days after oil hit $147 per barrel came the ensuing economic aftershock.
Governments and industry, which are still dealing with the aftershock, haven’t come to grips with the earthquake itself, Rifkin said. Until society does come to terms with the end of the fossil fuel era, it can’t begin to model the future for the 21st century, he added.
The second event which he said signaled the economic end of the fossil fuel era was the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Leaders from 192 countries met to address what Rifkin called “the entropy bill.” Throughout the 20th century, he explained, nations have emitted vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to support a carbon-based industrial economy.
“The result is we have so much entropy in the form of CO2 . . . in the atmosphere that we simply can’t get the Sun’s heat to escape the planet.”
As a result, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change has forecast a three-degree Celsius increase in average temperature on the planet, a global warming prediction that Rifkin said many scientists believe is “too optimistic and too low (in forecasted temperature increase).”
For every one-degree shift in Earth’s temperature, there’s a seven-per-cent shift in the hydrological cycle he noted. “Seven per cent more precipitation is simply sucked up into the atmosphere,” which he said results in violent weather changes that includes droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.
Rifkin said that if developed nations continue to rely on fossil fuels to drive the engines of their economies, the developing countries will leapfrog over them because the developing world hasn’t made the same enormous investment in existing infrastructures for the fossil fuel industry.
Developed nations should increase investment in clean and alternative energy sources while weaning themselves from coal and oil, he said.
However, Michal Moore, an economist and senior fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary, pointed out in a 2008 talk that societies which have made a huge capital investment in infrastructure – as in the Western world – are reluctant to abandon that infrastructure because of the enormous amounts of “stranded capital that are almost as big as the national debt.” (See EnviroLine: http://envirolinenews.ca/file/page/archives/volume_17_issue_20_volume_18_issue_1.pdf?search=%22stranded+capital%22).
Nevertheless, Rifkin exhorted his audience to “share the narrative” of the Third Industrial Revolution. “The legacy we will leave is we’ll be able to re-shift priorities. We’ll be able to live more sustainably with our fellow nations. We’ll be able to globally mitigate the ravages of climate change. (We’ll) create a more heterogeneous society and we’ll learn to be able to be good players and partners on this planet.”
The Third Industrial Revolution only needs to link new industrial skills to the new communication skills, Rifkin said.
The Industrial Revolution from the 18th to the 19th century was accomplished because of the widespread use of coal, combined with the invention of the printing press, he said. The Second Industrial Revolution (also known as the Technological Revolution) began in the late 1800s with oil replacing coal, and the telegraph and telephone becoming commonplace items in the consumer market.
The world is ripe for the Third Industrial Revolution because the young generation has the ability to produce and share their own energy, as they do now with information via the Internet, he said.
The question every nation needs to answer is, ‘Where does it wants to be 10 years from now?’ Rifkin said: “In the sunset energies and industries of the Second Industrial Revolution, or (in) the sunrise energies and industries of the Third Industrial Revolution?” EnviroLine

          Ecoimagination was an initiative launched in 2005 to build innovative solutions that benefit customers and society at large. It encompassed both a business strategy for growth as well as a societal commitment to contribute positively to the environment in the process, according to the iniatiative web site. (http://ge.ecomagination.com/_files/downloads/reports/ge_2005_ecomagination_report.pdf)

          “That $5 billion, which was a big bet, generated $85 billion of revenue just with those products” by 2011, Allan said. “That’s a huge win of what we thought was a risky investment at the time.”
           Allan was in Calgary to also celebrate a collaboration with Alliance Pipeline to build a 14-Megawatt power-generating facility, at a compressor site near Whitecourt in northwest Alberta, that will capture byproduct heat which would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere.
           Alliance Pipeline uses GE’s jet turbine engines to run its fleet of 31,000- to 46,000-horsepower compressor stations to move natural gas from Alberta to Chicago.
           Alliance, through its corporate affiliate NRGreen Power, will use the first global application of GE’s eco-certified and patented ORegen system to capture heat and turn it into power at the Whitecourt compressor site.
           Alberta’s Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation contributed $7 million to the $54-million project.
           GE has learned some important lessons since implementing its ecoimagination initiative, Allan said, including that investing in R&D for environmentally beneficial products is also a win-win situation in generating revenue.
           The collaboration with Alliance Pipeline is a revenue-producing arrangement that enables Alliance to be more profitable in a highly competitive environment, she noted.
          Another lesson, Allan added, is that clean energy isn’t just about being ‘green;’ it’s also about industrial innovation. Focusing on “green talk” in promoting new technology can obscure other benefits, including greater productivity, more jobs, a strong economy and energy security, she said.
           GE’s ecomagination initiative also has showed that partnerships fuel innovation, Allan said.
           She pointed to a collaboration between GE, the University of Alberta and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, on a $4-million carbon dioxide capture project.
           The project is leveraging new advances in nanotechnology to tackle two of the most pressing environmental challenges facing the oilsands – reducing CO2 emissions and treating produced water. The technology includes utilizing naturally occurring zeolites that university scientists identified in the laboratory.
           Zeolites are rocks with molecularly sized pores that allow small molecules to enter while excluding larger molecules; they are widely used in the chemical industry as catalysts. The project GE is involved in aims to form zeolite materials into membranes that can be used for high-temperature gas separation and, potentially, as filters for contaminated water.
           The technology could potentially reduce CO2 emissions associated with oilsands extraction by up to 25 per cent, Allan said, adding that GE and the project team are “incredibly excited” about building a prototype for field-testing in the near future.
           GE also has launched a 50-MW solar photovoltaic project in Ontario and helped propel B.C.’s largest wind farm, the Dokie Wind Project; both projects are collaborations with Plutonic Power.
           As part of its ecoimagination initiative, In July 2010, GE launched its ecoimagination Challenge, an opportunity to engage businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students with breakthrough ideas for home energy creation, management and use.

          After GE launched its challenge , the company reviewed more than 5,000 business plans from over 150 countries around the world, Allan said. From this, GE made 22 investments that have full funding and provided additional ‘seed’ funding for 10 start-ups.
          The first phase of the ecoimagination Challenge included raising venture capital that resulted in the development of $71 million in breakthrough technologies, she said. In January 2011, GE launched a second phase of ecoimagination with $63 million.
          Allan said that another lesson GE learned is that combining energy efficiency with imagination can be transformative for a company, by energizing its employees and providing a big competitive advantage.

         GE has realized more than $130 million in operational savings, including a 24-per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since 2004, she noted, while water reuse has improved by 22 per cent from the 2006 baseline.

          Having more efficient operations helped in turn to open up more capital for GE to make additional investments, she said. Also, GE’s Ecoimagination initiatives enabled the company to recruit the “best and the brightest” among graduates.

         Allan encouraged Clean Energy Congress participants to foster “a culture of innovation in our companies as a foundation of growth. . . . We also have to help shape public policies . . . that will encourage innovation and technology investments.” EnviroLine

           Technology innovation is making oilsands development more energy efficient while significantly reducing its environmental impact and will continue to do so, says the recipient of the 2011 Canadian Energy Person of the Year Award.
           Rick George, president CEO of Suncor Energy Inc., said he has seen “dramatic and positive change” in technology during his 20 years as the oilsands producer’s chief executive.
          In the early days, the focus was on developing new technologies to reduce production costs in order to survive, George told an audience at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary in October 2011, when he received the award presented by Energy Council of Canada.
          While that focus is still important, the industry’s perspective is moving more and more toward “reducing energy inputs and land disturbance, as well as improving land reclamation and other changes to reduce environmental footprint,” he said.
          George described how last year Suncor perfected ‘dry tailings’ technology “that will significantly reduce the need for ponds to store liquid mine tailings. Five new storage ponds that would have been built (by Suncor) under business as usual (conditions) will now never happen,” he said.
          In September 2010, Suncor and the Alberta government celebrated the renaming of the company’s Tailings Pond Number One as Wapisew (a Cree word meaning ‘swan’) Lookout. The reclaimed area includes a wetland hosting ducks and geese, and green rolling landscape planted with more than 600,000 seedlings of various species including black spruce, cranberries and trembling aspen. (See http://envirolinenews.ca/20110510/new-technologies-promise-an-en).
          Yet there are critics who choose “to ignore the improvements that have been made and assume that decade-old data (about the oilsands industry) can simply be extrapolated into the future,” which is neither “true nor fair,” George said. Such criticism is like comparing the cars of tomorrow with a 1985 Chevy, he added.
          With Alberta’s oilsands industry making huge investments in time and money in developing new technologies, all seven oilsands mining companies recently committed to “unprecedented” levels of cooperation in addressing key issues such as tailings ponds, George noted.
          In the future, 80 per cent of oilsands deposits will be mined by in situ techniques that have a much smaller and far less intrusive footprint than mining, he said. New approaches for in situ production range using methane and solvent injection rather than pressurized steam to extract the bitumen, to improved well design and partnership pilot centres.
         The audience at the Telus Convention Centre included Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, and Ron Liepert, then Alberta Energy minister (since replaced by Ted Morton). Both politicians underscored the importance of the oil and gas industry as “the economic engine of Canada” responsible for seven per cent of the country’s GDP. 
          The Canadian Energy Person of the Year is nominated based on their remarkable accomplishments in the energy and business or government sectors, as well as the community at large, the Energy Council of Canada says. One of their foremost characteristics is their strong sense of social responsibility and belief in giving back to the community by focusing on environmental and social issues, and economic development.
          The audience heard how George spoke with the same sincerity and concern for the truck drivers on Suncor’s site that he showed in discussions with other energy leaders and international politicians. He and his wife Julie have established a charitable foundation for high-achieving young women who hurt themselves through activities such as cutting or unhealthy eating.
          In accepting the award, George emphasized the importance of having a long-term vision, including sound government policy, and a collaborative effort that supports knowledge sharing among industry, government and educational institutions.
          “One thing I’ve learned over the years as a president and CEO is that a leader is only as good as the people on his team. This (award) really is all about the people around me who have accomplished many great things over the past two decades,” he said.
           George listed three things as being essential to Suncor’s ongoing success, the first being people – particularly the training and education of young people. He advocated continued partnerships between energy companies and post-secondary institutions, along with encouraging governments to help expedite and streamline bringing skilled workers to western Canada.
           “In the oilsands industry, the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada expects to see up to 10,000 new positions” being created over the next decade, he said.
           Developing new and alternative technologies will demand high numbers of skilled workers, George said, adding that 10 years ago it seemed impossible to imagine that by 2011, Canada would go from almost no wind generation to having enough wind to power 1.5 million homes.
          Given the pace of technological advances in the rest of the world, he said that it is imperative for governments in Canada to continue to encourage research and investment to enable the country to exploit its huge energy resources. 
          A long-term energy vision must look beyond basic energy production in drafting government policy, George said. Governments, he said, need to start thinking broadly about the cars we make, how we plan and build cities, the role of mass transit, and a stronger conservation ethic from business and consumers.
          Industry needs to look beyond annual balance sheets, governments beyond elections, and environmental groups beyond what they’re “against” and focus on solutions, he said.
          “As a society, we need to get to a constructive dialogue on greening our economy and the energy we need to fuel it,” in practical and realistic terms, George said, in calling for sound government policy.
           In November, just over a month after George’s comments, the U.S. State Department said it was re-examining concerns about TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s oilsands, and would delay a final decision on the project until early 2013, after the U.S. presidential election.
           John Hofmeister, founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy and former CEO of Shell Oil, had told EnviroLine in September 2011 that the protests in Washington, D.C. against the pipeline would likely only make President Barack Obama delay a crucial decision about the project.
           Hofmeister said the pipeline was needed for America’s energy security and, if it did not go ahead, “America will be faced with even higher (oil) prices and less secure energy sources.” (See http://envirolinenews.ca/20110904/aboriginal-environmental-group). EnviroLine