Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
5/8/2015
PITTSBURGH, Pa.— The Canadian province of Alberta has taken significant steps to support the deployment of carbon capture and storage but as far as provincial funding of CCS projects is concerned, the province will likely be taking a step back for a while, James Allen, Assistant Deputy Minister of Alberta Energy’s Electricity and Sustainable Energy Division, said here last week at the 14th Annual Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Conference. “We want to actually bear the fruit from [the projects that have been funded] so in terms of another big surge [in funding] it’s not on the plate for now,” Allen said “In terms of funding any other large-scale commercial projects for the first generation I don’t think that’s the plan but certainly as we look forward to the second or third generation, I don’t like to speculate but … Canada views CCS as being a foundational part of our action on climate change.”
This week’s election of Alberta’s New Democratic Party (NDP) to lead the government may also serve to halt provincial funding of CCS. The party platform states that the party will “end the [Progressive Conservatives’] costly and ineffective Carbon Capture and Storage experiment and reinvest the 2015/16 component of this project into construction of public transit, which will help reduce families’ transportation costs and reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollutants.”
Province Has Help Fund Two CCS Projects
The Alberta government has provided $1.3 billion in funding to the province’s two CCS projects, Shell’s Quest project and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line. These two projects emerged from a provincial plan developed in 2008 initially intended to support five fully integrated projects. The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which is due to begin injecting CO2 next year, will capture CO2 from a bitumen refinery in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland and transport it 240 kilometers for use in enhanced oil recovery. The Quest project is a retrofit of capture technology onto Shell’s existing Scotford oil sands upgrader near Edmonton. When completed, the project will remove an estimated 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually from the bitumen upgrader and transport it nearly 40 miles north to a storage site. It is projected that the project can run at this capacity for 25 years. The project is on schedule to begin CO2 injection this year.
In its support of CCS, the government of Alberta hoped to solidify its position as a early leaders in the adoption and development of the technology. Of the provincial government’s support of the Quest project, Allen said, “Fundamentally this is a phenomenal opportunity where Albertans and Canada see a commercial-scale project starting full-scale operations by the end of this year and that’s after significant investment. … We think we’ve actually demonstrated the willingness to start and lead the way.”
Further, due to large fossil fuel resources within the province, Alberta is well suited for the leadership position it strives for. “We’ve got an absolute wealth of natural resources in Alberta and with that tremendous wealth also comes the responsibility to develop our resources in a responsible way, to use them in a responsible way,” Allen said. “When people say that within the next 20 to 30 years that we’ll be off fossil fuels, I don’t think that’s possible. However, I do want to emphasize the fact that the world does need to move toward a lower carbon future and for us, CCS is an absolute foundational aspect of making that happen.”
