On “soft climate denial”, regionally-appropriate renewables and marginalizing potential allies in the climate change debate

While reading my Twitter feed I was recently introduced to a brand new label in the climate change discussion: “soft climate denial/denier”. The label, based on my admittedly limited research, appears to have been introduced to our lexicon by a person familiar to the readers of this blog, the inimitable Eric Doherty, “Transportation planner & @TankerFreeBC Transportation Campaigner”. It appears to be used to describe anyone, regardless of their stated opinions on climate change, who disagrees with the user’s preferred policy options for addressing climate change. The term is very interesting because, in my mind, it pretty much typifies all that is wrong with the politics of climate change in our modern Canadian society. Historically, political and environmental movements have sought to open up their tents to encourage like minds to join their causes. The basis for this was a recognition that in order to achieve gains in a modern, democratic society you need to convince a majority (or at least a plurality) of the population as to the righteousness of your cause. The modern environmental movement, however, seems to have mostly abandoned this approach.

 

Consider me, according to some activists I am described as a “soft climate denier”. Now consider where I stand on the major issues. As I have described elsewhere at this blog, I acknowledge the scientific principles underlying the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and believe it is inarguable that anthropogenic climate change is occurring. I have been clear that I believe that human causes are responsible for the majority of the climate change observed in the modern era. In this my viewpoint represents the “consensus” view, as per the most recent IPCC report. My sole potential deviation from the general “consensus” is that based on my technical knowledge, and on my reading of the trends in the recent academic literature, I believe that climate sensitivity will eventually be determined to be at the bottom end of the range reported in the IPCC Working Group I Report. I am thus, in all respects, a purveyor of the “consensus” view of climate change.

As I have pointed out before, one of the goals of this blog is to help alleviate the root causes of climate change (the anthropogenic increase in Tyndall gas concentrations) through the advancement of regionally-appropriate renewable technologies. I use the term “regionally-appropriate” here to acknowledge that not all technologies are ideal in all situations. In British Columbia we have an abundance of hydro, geothermal and wind resources. These resources are so abundant that our government-owned utility (BC Hydro) already generates over 86% of its electricity from hydro power (ref). Moreover, with planned run-of-the-river and static hydro projects (Site C in particular) we already have the potential to supply over 100% of our provincial energy needs through the use of hydro power alone. That being said, numerous wind energy projects are either operating or in development and some limited efforts are underway to exploit the bountiful geothermal resources available in the southern interior. One area where BC is not as well blessed is in solar potential. While much of the Peace Region and southern interior gets plentiful sunshine, other parts of our province are not as blessed. Consider the City of Prince Rupert. Based on the references I can find it has one of the lowest average levels of solar insolation in North America with an average value of approximately 3.7 hours/day (ref). So while a photovoltaic power installation might be an acceptable energy option in the Okanagan, in Prince Rupert this might not be the case. I’m sure any number of readers are going to disagree with me on this so let me explain my reasoning.

The first thing we must recognize is that photovoltaic solar cells don’t just magically appear, they have to be manufactured and the fabrication of solar cells is a very energy-intensive process. It has been calculated that the total equivalent CO₂ emissions for a square meter photovoltaic solar panel (imported from China) adds up to between 1,243 kg and 1,809 kg of CO₂ (ref is in German but translates nicely in Google translate). In order for the solar panel to make environmental sense it has to produce more energy over its lifetime than was used in its production. Given the level of solar insolation and average lifespan of a solar panel in Prince Rupert, covering your roof with solar panels will actually generate much more CO₂ than simply relying on the power supplied by BC Hydro. In the reference cited above, the author actually examines photovoltaic solar installations in Germany and establishes that in much of that country solar energy may be less environmentally advantageous than producing the same amount of energy using natural gas or even, surprisingly, high-efficiency coal power generation. Thus in my mind further hydro generation or geothermal would be a regionally-appropriate renewable technologies in BC while any solar installation would have to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, that it actually improved our net carbon position.

Being interested in evidence-based decision making, I have striven to provide the most reliable information on both the strengths and weaknesses associated with renewable energy alternatives. Because I put all the information out there, my blog has been cited both by people who support enhancing these technologies and by those who challenge this orthodoxy. Apparently to some this is a bad thing. As an example, I have been sent messages by observers when they see my work on pipelines cited by “pro-oil sands groups”. The messages typically blame me because my information is being “misused”. To be clear when they say “misused”, it does not mean “used out of context”, but rather it means “used in context by someone with an opposing viewpoint”. I find this complaint problematic because one of the critical features of evidence-based decision making is that the information generated in the process is intended to be used in making decision, by people on both sides of the discussion.

Since I am admitting my sins, let me admit to my biggest one in the eyes of the activists out there: I am a pragmatist. I acknowledge that in the foreseeable future we are not going to see a complete phase-out of fossil fuels for automotive, aviation and cargo ship uses. We simply lack the infrastructure and technologies to provide a viable alternative source of energy-dense fuels to power our trucks, airplanes, diesels and other small engines. Since fossil fuels are going to be necessary for the foreseeable future, I believe it is imperative to ensure that our necessary fuel and crude supplies are transported in the most environmentally sound manner possible, which in BC means by pipelines and double-hulled tankers and not by rail. To double this sin, I am also something of a nationalist. I believe that until the world can get a handle on controlling carbon it is better that the fuels used in North American automobiles and the crude refined in North American refineries comes from sources with North American environmental standards rather than those of Nigeria or Venezuela and that the profits from that production goes to help pay for our Medicare and not to fund foreign dictators or export civil wars.

So let me recount my myriad of "sins" in the eyes of the dyed-in-the-wool, dedicated, climate change activists. I am a believer in AGW and the “IPCC consensus” but I do not subscribe to the most extreme interpretations provided by the Bill McKibben’s of the world. I have looked at renewable technologies in sufficient detail to recognize that not all technologies are going to be applicable in all situations and that any decision about renewable energy choices should be informed by data rather than ideology. Most sinfully, I care enough about our shared ecological heritage to be unwilling to sacrifice it on the altar of some demonstrably ineffective attempt to “strangle the oil sands”. For these heresies I, among many, am considered a “soft climate denier”. I am considered unworthy to be heard in the councils of the pure and for some am considered no better than the worst of the denialists out there, someone to be muted, blocked or ignored. The problem is that if you are trying to build a movement to address an important and far-reaching problem like anthropogenic global warming it seems sensible to try and expand your tent. You should be looking to recruit people like me rather than excluding us because we don’t pass some ideological purity test. Unfortunately, that is not how the modern environmental movement works, for them you are either with them in ALL things, or you are not.....

On the economic and environmental folly of trying to “strangle the oil sands”

I was in a discussion online with Dr. Andrew Weaver, “BC Green Party MLA for Oak Bay Gordon Head. Deputy Leader, BC Green Party. Lansdowne Professor, University of Victoria” and Eric Doherty, “Transportation planner & @TankerFreeBC Transportation Campaigner”, on the topic of pipeline expansion in Canada. The discussion followed a comment by Dr. Weaver about the fact that Tom Mulcair was not coming out against the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion (ref). What appears to have angered Dr. Weaver is that Mr. Mulcair appears to want to wait until the environmental assessment process has run its course before making a decision on the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion. While I am not a supporter of the NDP, my position on the topic is very similar to that of Mr. Mulcair. As regular readers of my blog know, I have strong reservations about the Northern Gateway pipeline. They also know I am leaning strongly towards supporting the Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion. The basis of my support is that it is the best of a bad set of alternatives. As I have discussed in a previous post, given the investment already in the ground, none of the current oil sands facilities (or facilities already well into development) are going to disappear, even in a world of $50/barrel oil (ref). Given this reality, the next question lies with how to move the outputs from these facilities in the most environmentally sensitive and least damaging manner.

At the start of the discussion Mr. Doherty emphasized that building new infrastructure to transport oil is not necessary because apparently any moment now a “phase out” is going to start and we will no longer have a need for fossil fuels. This argument falls flat in my mind because it represents wishful thinking. To date, no international plan exists for a global phase-out of fossil fuels, moreover, no reasonable plan is on the books anywhere in the world. To abandon our need to ensure for a safe, clean environment in the near future, based on a hope that a plan will be made in the far future, makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe a phase-out of fossil fuels may happen, sometime in the future, but it is not happening in the next 10 years. So helping to ensure the environmental integrity of our province, by avoiding the transport of all that oil-by-rail, seems a reasonable choice. To supplement his argument, Dr. Weaver linked to his personal web site where he has a post describing “British Columbia and the Alberta Tar Sands”. The confusing thing about this link is that it fully supports my current understanding of the law. As described in the post, there is no method by which the government can legally stop the transportation of oil-by-rail, as long as the railways meet certain statutory requirements. This reinforces my concerns that lacking a pipeline, bitumen derived from the oil sands will move via rail. So once again, the facilities that currently exist, and are in development, are going to continue to produce bitumen, this bitumen is going to get out. So let’s make sure it moves in the most ecologically and environmentally safe manner possible.

Over the course of our wide-ranging twitter discussion, it became more and more clear that both Dr. Weaver and Mr. Doherty were ultimately ignoring the elephant in the room, specifically the law of supply and demand. In the discussion, and in other conversations, I have heard environmentalists of all stripes talk about “strangling the oil sands” by stopping the building of pipelines. The problem with this argument is twofold: first and foremost, as described above, an alternative to pipelines already exists: the railway system. Since the facilities already exist, all reducing pipeline availability does is force the bitumen to be shipped by rail, which we have already demonstrated is a less environmentally protective way to move the material. The second problem is that even if you did try and strangle the oil sands the demand would be met in some other way. The activists fighting the fossil fuel industry in Canada appear to have forgotten the lessons of the “war on drugs” and the Eighteenth Amendment of the US Constitution (prohibition). Unless you can address the demand side of the supply and demand curve you are not going to make a difference. Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine, through some magic trick, that the Athabasca Oil Sands were made to disappear tomorrow, what do you suppose would happen? Well the quick answer is that since the demand has not been addressed, the oil would have to come from somewhere else. Instead of Fort MacMurray it will come from Guárico. You see the only way to stop oil from flowing is to price carbon so that alternative technologies become viable and global demand goes down. Anything else is simply a fool’s game. So it is time the activists stop fighting the wrong fights. If they really want to “strangle the oil sands” they have to do it via the free market. Stop risking the Canadian environment by forcing oil to be shipped by rail and deal with the underlying issue, the demand for oil. Everything else is just posturing and posing for the cameras.  

As for the talking point about “protecting the Salish Sea”, well as I have written elsewhere, the Puget Sound has a refinery capacity that requires on the order of 725,000 barrels/day of crude oil. The refineries were built and tuned to use heavy oil from the Alaska North Slope, which has served as their primary source for the last 30 years. This oil has travelled from Alaska to the Puget Sound along the west coast of BC for that entire time. This oil needs to be replaced with a similar blend. A proportion of that is going to be made up with Bakken crude. Infrastructure to transport that Bakken crude by rail is being built. That oil will travel over any number of rivers including the headwaters of the Kootenay River and alongside the Columbia Rivers to the Puget Sound. The route risks both our Canadian and American ecological heritage. Since the Bakken crude is too light for the refineries, it has to be supplemented with heavier crude and that crude is going to come in via tanker. Any argument about protecting the Salish Sea has to address these facts and frankly none of the activists appear to even be aware of these facts. Finally, I hate to go back to this trope but it does ring true, until we can eliminate the demand it is better that our oil comes from an ethical source rather than the alternatives. If I have a choice between sending dollars to Alberta and Ottawa or sending it to Caracas or Moscow I am quite certain that I want those dollars going to help pay for Canadian health care and not some less ethical alternatives.  

On K-Cups, imperfect solutions and the hubris of the environmental movement

There has been a lot of talk in the news in the last couple weeks about the Keurig K-Cup coffee pods. As everyone knows, these pods have taken the world by storm with their ease of use and convenience. According to a “The Atlantic” article on the products, in 2014 Keurig Green Mountain “sold 9.8 billion Keurig-brewed portion packs—which include the new multiple-cup pods” (ref). In the same article the creator of the K-Cup admitted that he regretted his invention partly because of the waste associated with its use. While almost completely biodegradeable alternatives to K-Cups exist (ref), now that the patent has expired on the original K-Cup design the coffee aisle of my local grocery store is filling up with different brands of K-Cups. To my chagrin, even our company has moved to them as they allow us to serve clients coffee without having to make a big pot that just sits burning on the element through meetings.

While I am mildly embarrassed to be a regular user of K-Cups, I am not embarrassed about the fact that our company, like many, pays extra to ensure our K-Cups aren’t thrown in the trash. Rather we collect them in a special bin and they are shipped to the Lafarge Cement Plant in Kamloops where they are used as an alternative fuel source. For those of you unfamiliar with cement plants, they are ubiquitous, energy-hungry and a tremendous source of greenhouse gas emissions. They are ubiquitous because everywhere you go in our modern society we have a need for cement since it is the primary ingredient in concrete and each plant is limited in the volume it can produce. The production of cement is a very energy-intensive activity as the lime kiln needs to be heated up to 1400 ^oC and held there for a long period of time since the calcium carbonate (read limestone rock) needs to reach a temperature over 900 ^oC in order for the chemical reaction necessary to produce quicklime to occur. What most people don’t realize, though, is how this energy-intensity reflects in carbon dioxide emissions. As an Earth Institute report (ref) details:

Producing a ton of cement requires 4.7 million BTU of energy, equivalent to about 400 pounds of coal, and generates nearly a ton of CO₂. Given its high emissions and critical importance to society, cement is an obvious place to look to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

The cement industry has managed to keep its head down in the climate change debate but as noted in the Earth Institute report, as an industry it represents 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions and has been growing at a rate of 2.5% annually. That is not to say the industry is not trying, indeed they are (ref). The issue they face is that about half of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the cement industry are based on the chemical processes involved (calcium carbonate is converted to qiuicklime with the release of a carbon dioxide molecule); these chemical-based emissions cannot be eliminated. Instead the industry has to concentrate on the other half of their emissions, the greatest part being associated with the fuel being burned to generate the heat. So one of the big goals of the cement industry is to move away from combustion fuels like coal or natural gas towards renewable fuels like wood waste or...you guessed it K-Pods. Ironically enough K-Pods make up a very reasonable source of combustible material for a cement kiln. They are made of hydrocarbons (which burn) and the excess coffee grounds don’t really hurt as they actually serve as useful biomass.  So here we have an industry that is producing a waste stream (K-Cups) that would otherwise clog up our waste chains and fill up our landfills and we have a second industry looking for an alternative fuel source. What we have is a good, but imperfect, solution to an otherwise intractable environmental problem. You see, K-Cups aren’t going anywhere until public perception makes it impossible for environmentally aware companies and individuals to use them; and even then they will not disappear completely as they are (as described by the creator) like a cigarette for coffee. Moreover, our society cannot operate without cement. As described in the Earth Institute report concrete is the second most consumed substance on earth after water.

One of the big fears expressed with burning plastics in cement kilns involve the off-gases from the combustion. What most people don’t recognize is that the heat and retention time needed to heat solid rock to over 900 ^oC is also ideal for breaking down fuel sources to their base components with few or no nasty by-products. You see the reason most engines give off nasty gases is that they do not get hot enough, long enough to get complete combustion of the fuel. Instead, in most auto or diesel engine, they get partial combustion and all sorts of interesting and distressing combustion byproducts are produced. In a cement kiln the combustion is contained to prevent loss of heat. This results in as close to an ideal combustion chamber as we will see in modern industry. These near-ideal combustion chambers were actually tested for use in eliminating PCBs and other hazardous wastes in the 1980’s and 1990’s and were determined to combust the compounds with essentially 100% efficiency (ref). The main reason the plants were not turned into giant hazardous waste disposal facilities had to do with optics and politics rather than the actual chemistry involved in the processes.

Ironically, using renewable energy sources like PCBs, K-Cups and used tires in the combustion process can actually reduce the negative emissions from the kilns. One of the historic issues with these kilns has been the release of gaseous mercury from the combustion. As many of you know, amongst their many downsides, all coals contain some mercury, with concentrations in US coals ranging from 0.08 μg g for coal in the San Juan and Uinta regions to 0.22 μg g−for the Gulf Coast lignites (ref). Mercury, unlike the coal, does not burn, so by replacing coal with renewables we actually see a reduction of mercury emissions from the cement kilns (ref).

The inspiration for today’s post was a news story I watched last night on my local television station (ref).  It was all about the effort by Lafarge Canada to use K-Cups in their Kamloops cement plant. As I write above, while not the perfect answer it is the best, imperfect solution to an otherwise intractable environmental problem. At the end of the story the reporter interviewed a local environmental leader who tried to throw cold water on the project. He said (pardon my poor transcription):

 In this case when you talking about, you know, burning plastic instead of coal it is perhaps a tiny little step in the right direction but it comes with a lot of consequences....It is not the kind of stuff you want in the atmosphere

It was clear from this answer that the environmental leader had no idea how a cement kiln works and rather than saying “I don’t know enough about this to comment, let me look into it and get back to you” he spouted off a negative answer. This hubris amongst the leaders of the environmental movement is one of the things that really turns me against the movement. One of the most important things I was taught in graduate school was the ability to admit “I don’t know” rather than trying to bluff my way through problems. Once you learn to say “I don’t know” you can learn much more quickly and oddly enough, it adds tremendously to your personal credibility. People will feel comfortable coming to you when they know that you will not set them on the wrong course rather than admit to not being fully informed. The funny thing is that given the size and complexity of the environmental field, much of the time any one individual will not have the skills needed to accomplish a task. In our office we have civil, chemical and mechanical engineers, we have a chemist, a couple biologists, a toxicologist, a couple geographers, a couple geologists and a hydrogeological specialist. Even with all this in-house expertise we are willing to bring in outside help when the need arises. This is because we have all learned the importance of recognizing our own limitations and the perils of hubris. To maintain this culture we all have been told again-and-again stories of failures based on hubris until they were drilled into our heads. We are told stories of other companies drilling without proper daylighting and hitting tanks or utility lines, stories of consultants who tried to do it all and failed in one spectacular fashion or another because someone was not willing to admit when they needed help. We emphasize this to remind ourselves that no one is all-knowing or competent in all things. The problem with the environmental movement of today is that instead of recognizing their limitations these folks wander around in a Dunning-Kruger haze and instead of making us trust them we become less and less trusting in their knowledge or expertise. When a Council of Canadians handout tells me that benzene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (ref) I start to wonder what else they may be saying that is completely wrong. When an environmental group trumpets a “cancer cluster” that is ultimately proved to be no such thing I know not to trust them the next time. When an environmental leader goes on television and dumps on a win-win attempt to reduce waste going into our landfills while reducing greenhouse gas and mercury emissions from a necessary industry then I begin to wonder how anyone can trust these people on other big issues.

In high-school, like many of my peers, I read Shakespeare’s Macbeth and learned early on that hubris is a great failing. In university, and my current occupation, I have been taught that hubris can be controlled by the simple action of admitting that I don’t know everything and recognizing that sometimes I need technical help. Until the leaders of the environmental movement learn this truth they will continue to trip over their own feet, delaying good projects because those projects may not be perfect and slowing environmental improvements because they are unwilling to admit that they aren’t all-knowing.

On Killer Whales, the Brontosaurus and the Tar Sands

When I was a child, growing up in Coquitlam in the 1970’s, our family had a membership at the Vancouver Aquarium. One of our favourite things was going to see the “killer whales”.  We loved to go see Skana and later both Skana and Hyak. When we were little we did not know the scientific name for killer whales (Orcinus orca) until it was used in the action/horror movie “Orca”. Orca was a Canadian version of “Jaws” and featured a wild, unstoppable, killing machine. You see that is what we were taught killer whales were all about back then. In the public perception they were fish-stealing terrors that were only good for machine-gunning. For those of you not familiar with that story, at one time Fisheries and Oceans Canada mounted a 50-calibre machine gun at Seymour Narrows north of Campbell River with the aim of shooting killer whales to save more salmon for fishers (ref). The one place where we were taught differently about these “killer whales” was the Vancouver Aquarium. There we came to know and love these majestic, empathetic and clearly intelligent mammals and I was always so proud of the orca sticker on our car (the Aquarium membership came with a stylized orca sticker for your car).  Happily, thanks to organizations like the Vancouver Aquarium, our knowledge of these majestic animals has grown and we have come to learn that rather than killers, they are loving, family-oriented, animals and it is now considered passé to call them anything but Orcas. Sure there are some old fuddy-duddies who will use the old name, but their use of the name says so much more about them than it does the animal they describe.

As I child of the 1960s-1970s, I also grew up loving dinosaurs, but not in the way my kids understand dinosaurs. When I was a young boy we all knew that the greatest of all the dinosaurs was the “Thunder Lizard” known as the Brontosaurus. We watched the Flintstones who ate Brontosaurus burgers and knew that Brontosaurus ribs were so big they would tip the car over. Unlike modern kids, we only knew a few dinosaurs: the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Triceratops, the Pterodactyl and the Brontosaurus and we loved them with the affection known only to young children and their favourite things. As most everyone these days knows, the Brontosaurus never really existed. The most famous example was actually an Apatosaurus with a mismatched Camarasaurus skull (ref). But for a kid from the 1970s this beast was a thing of grandeur and long after it was considered unscientific, I insisted on using the term Brontosaurus for any Apatosaurus that I saw on TV (just like in XKCD (ref)). Now that I have kids and they watch “Dinosaur Train” on PBS Kids, I know more about dinosaurs than I would care to admit and know that it was childish of me to have taken so long to adopt the correct technical name.

This brings us to the topic of today’s post the “Athabasca Tar Sands”. Because petroleum science is not a topic of popular discussion, most people don’t recognize that tar is not a natural product; rather it is a distillation product. The traditional method of making tar involves high temperature decomposition of wood products or coal. A cool, try-it-at-home technique to make tar is presented at this web site and should be tried by every junior chemist to see what you can make in your own backyard. Back when the first Western explorers wandered into the Athabasca region they came across the expanses of bitumen and not being chemists called them “tar sands”. In a similar way, when early settlers stumbled upon bitumen seeps full of heated, semi-liquid asphalt they called them tar pits (ref).  The problem is that the “tar sands” contain absolutely no “tar”. They are not a distillation product of oil, coal or wood, but rather they are composed of bitumen mixed with sand. Bitumen is a very heavy, viscous form of crude oil, so to call a mix of bitumen and sand “tar sands” is about as accurate as calling an Apatosaurus a “Brontosaurus”.  

In a purely technical sense, the material should really be called “bituminous sands” as bituminous means “containing bitumen”.  Thankfully, for folks like me they didn’t choose this term as “bituminous” is quite the tongue-twister (I had a childhood stutter and still struggle with certain word combinations). Alternatively, one might consider calling the material “bitumen sands” (or “bit sands” as suggested by a person on Twitter). That being said, the Alberta Government didn’t go that route. As described above, bitumen is a form of crude oil. Since the material is made up of crude oil mixed with sand, the material could also be called “oil sands” and still be chemically correct. Ultimately this is the direction the Alberta government chose and similarly, the area was re-named the “Athabasca Oil Sands”. I’m not sure about my readers, but I am of the opinion that you call a person by the name they ask to be called. So even though someone might have a given name, I will use the name they ask me to use.  As such, based on the wishes of the Alberta Government, I call the material “oil sand” and the area the “Athabasca Oil Sands”. In a perfect world, the material should be called “bituminous sands” (or bitumen sands) but failing that, it is technically correct to call them “oil sands” and it is not to call them “tar sands”.  While I would love to rename the material it is really not my place to do so. That being said, if someone with some standing suggested a name-change (particularly to Bitumen Sands), I would be an early adopter, much in the same way as I use the term “Tyndall Gas” rather than the chemically incorrect term “Greenhouse Gas”.

The funny thing about the “oil sands” versus “tar sands” debate is that based on recent research, the name might not actually have the effect some people hope it will. As described in this article depending on where you live “oil sands” may have a more negative connotation than “tar sands”. This is very ironic given that the people who use “tar sands” are almost always the people who most strongly want the material to be left in the ground. What is even more counter-intuitive is that the activists who call bitumen sands “tar sands” are the same ones who will explain to you, in excruciating detail, that "it is not a killer whale, it is an orca". Meanwhile a scientist who would never walk up to a paleontologist and call their Apatosaurus a “Brontosaurus” will attend a presentation and tell an Albertan that bituminous sands are “tar sands”. Frankly, I am pretty tired of the discussion. As suggested in this article, the term isn’t doing what it was supposed to, which is to tarnish the industry. Instead, whenever I hear the term it just serves as an indication of the motivation of the individual doing the talking and their lack of insight and chemical knowledge.

 

Addendum: Several readers have suggested that the renaming of the “tar sands” to the “oil sands” was part of a formalized public relations campaign or “strategy”. Every reference to this strategy I have been able to locate, to date, has gone back to a single reference prepared by the Pembina Institute in 2005 (ref) that had the following line:

The strategy also called for efforts to improve public perception of the dirty sounding “tar sands.” The term “oil sands” was selected as the new brand name for tar sands, and they were framed as “a national prize14.”

As indicated, the Pembina Institute report references an Endnote (number 14) as support of this line. Endnote 14 references page 5 of a 2005 Report prepared by the National Task Force of Oil Sands Strategies of the Alberta Chamber of Resources (ref). A read of page 5 of the 2005 Alberta Report does indicate that the oil sands represent “a national prize” but says absolutely nothing about any “strategy” to rename the oil sands. If anyone can direct me to any original documentation about this public relations campaign I would appreciate it, but until they do so, I will suggest that the claim of some formal public relations campaign, while interesting and compelling, remains unproven in my eyes.

 

The Energy East Pipeline: Dispelling Some Myths

Another couple oil train derailments (Gogama and Galena) in the last week have brought my attention back to the topic of oil pipelines. As I have written elsewhere, the safety record of oil-by-rail is one of the reasons why I have supported moving as much oil as possible by pipeline. Put in the simplest terms, pipelines are the lowest cost, safest and least environmentally damaging method of transporting fuel across North America (ref). I know, I know, someone is going to point out the reference that came out a while ago that said that the normalized amount of oil spilled in the US indicates that trucks are worse than a pipeline are worse than rail are worse than boats (Congressional Research Service). That research, however, is dated and is heavily influenced by two significant pipeline spills (Kalamazoo and Yellowstone River) that occurred over the time period covered by the report and by the date of the report. Specifically, the research underpinning the report mostly pre-dates the explosive rise in oil-by-rail across the US and does not include the most recent spate of rail incidents (ref). This means that it was influenced by the small sample size of the oil-by-rail sector at the time it was being prepared. As the volume of oil-by-rail has increased, oil-by-rail safety has regressed to its mean and the recognition of it as being a less than optimal method of transport has become more apparent. Based on my research, I would suggest that in order of pure safety (human health and ecological harm) the optimum methods to get oil from a source to the market go: double-hulled tanker, pipeline, rail/barge and truck. From an energy-efficiency point of view, pipelines also win out big time over oil-by-rail as in order to move oil-by-rail you have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to move the heavy rail cars. The energy expenditure involved in moving oil-by-pipeline is substantially smaller and thus oil-by-pipeline wins out in that respect as well.

As far as I can tell, the majority of the activists trying to stop pipeline development in Canada are doing so based on their concerns over climate change. For these people, pipelines aren’t really an issue, per se, but rather represent the only opportunity they have to fight the battle they actually want to fight, against climate change. It is in effect a proxy war. The activists have been told that if they can block the pipelines in Canada they can choke off the further development of oil sands as a resource. They have been told they can strand this resource and in doing so kill off the “tar sands”. The funny part is that they believe this because that is what the proponents of the pipelines told them when they initially pushed for the development of these pipelines. The problem is that this was never the truth. As indicated in the Maclean's article by Dr. Andrew Leach (ref), given the investment already in the ground the best these protestors can do is to choke off some theoretical further growth of the oil sands. With the money invested to date, existing oil sands facilities, and the majority of underway developments, are not going to stop, even with $50/barrel oil and no pipelines.

There are also those who believe that the transportation of fossil fuels for export must be restricted due to dangers of spills. I tend to agree with the people protesting the Northern Gateway project in that I think it is heading in the wrong direction. I would be amenable to a Northern Gateway that connected to a refinery that shipped refined products out of the north but I admit to not being the biggest fan of bitumen being shipped out of the Port of Kitimat. As I have mentioned previously, I am less concerned about the Trans-Mountain twinning project. This is somewhat ironic since, as I have pointed out elsewhere, I live less than 50 m from that pipeline and cross it by foot on a daily basis. I see it as a realistic and safe way to get crude to the West Coast and as a source of raw material for the refineries in the Puget Sound that have been tuned to the lower API gravity crude from Alaska rather than the lighter crudes that are being supplied by rail from the Bakken fields. However, of all the pipeline proposals out there the one I think has the greatest likelihood of being built is the Energy East pipeline.

For those of you not familiar with the project, Energy East is a 4,600-kilometre pipeline designed to carry 1.1-million barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries in Eastern Canada (ref). It is unique amongst the eastward pipeline proposals in that its entire length remains within Canadian boundaries (does not cross the US border) and would thus not be affected by US political concerns. Backers of Energy East point out that Quebec and New Brunswick currently import more than 700,000 barrels of oil every day – or 86 percent of their refinery needs – from countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. (ref). For a full breakdown of the countries of origin of Canadian oil imports see Table 7.2a of CAPP Stats Handbook (ref). As indicated in the Handbook, the direction is swinging towards the US but it still represents imports. While the supporters of the pipeline are predicting over 700,000 barrels/day (b/d), CAPP reports that refineries in Québec and Atlantic Canada currently import 90 per cent of their requirements. This translates to a potential 640,000 b/d domestic market opportunity for Canadian suppliers (ref).

While there are a lot of people fighting Energy East, by far the most entertaining group, and the one I will concentrate on in this post, is the Council of Canadians who present what I feel are some truly intellectually inconsistent arguments in their battle against the Energy East pipeline (ref). Let’s start by remembering who the Council of Canadians are. They are the people who have fought relentlessly against free trade with the US or anyone else for that matter (ref). They have demanded that we never consider the idea of bulk export of water (ref). They rail constantly about the threat of two-tiered medical care (ref). Most entertainingly they have called for an immediate halt to crude shipments by rail (ref). Why is this entertaining? Well let’s look at their talking points (ref) against the Energy East pipeline. We will ignore their factual errors, although being a chemist I would be remiss if I did not point out to their writers that benzene is not a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) as indicated on page three. Benzene is a monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. This may sound like a minor concern to the non-chemist but to me it shouts out their ignorance of the topic in that they don’t have the expertise to catch even the simplest error in their talking points.

Their headline talking point is that Eastern refineries would only have room for 122,000 b/day of oil from Energy East. This is based on a “report” prepared in combination with Environmental Defence Canada (ref). The “report” relies on two major assumptions, 1) that the Line 9b reversal will occur resulting in 250,000 b/day going to the eastern refineries and 2) that US oil-by-rail will supply a further 200,000 b/day. So to be clear, to counter the Energy East Proposal they are arguing that the Line 9b proposal (which they are also fighting) will go through. If they win their Line 9b reversal battle they will actually weaken their anti-Energy East argument? Can you be any more disingenuous? Actually you can, because in order to produce numbers against Energy East they are arguing that it is better to have 200,000 b/day of US sourced oil shipped by rail to the eastern refineries. So the people against free trade are demanding that Canadian refineries depend on US imports to function. Eastern Canadians are asked to rely on US imports for the fuel they need to run their businesses and keep their homes warm during cold winters. Most incoherently, they acknowledge that this oil will be shipped via a route (oil-by-rail) that they are, in the same breath, demanding be halted immediately?  To continue the thought, in the Globe and Mail newspaper Maude Barlow (ref) suggests that Energy East will not stop oil-by-rail, insisting that Bakken crude will still be shipped by rail if the Energy East pipeline is built. She apparently misses the fact that if the Canadian refineries are getting their crude supply via Canadian pipelines then there will be no need for Bakken crude to travel by rail in Canada. As I have written elsewhere, refining capacity in Canada is limited. If the refineries can be supplied with their crude by Canadian pipeline there will be no reason for Bakken crude to be shipped through Canada to them. So when she says it will not reduce oil-by-rail she may be correct in an absolute sense but from a Canadian perspective, that crude will not be crossing the border. It will be shipped via US railways, across the US countryside and exported by US ports. This is something you would expect the Council of Canadians to praise: a system that reduces the risk to the Canadian human health and the environment while building a stronger, more unified Canadian industry. They want 100% government-financed health care, but want to undercut the Canadian industries that provide the financial support for that health care.

The part I find most confusing in the Council of Canadians talking points is that they are particularly angry that Energy East may increase oil exports? I am not sure why this is a bad thing?  I suppose from a climate change perspective there might be a case but from a Canadian perspective a stronger national economy can only be better for Canada. If the Council of Canadians really cared about climate change they would not be fighting pipelines they would be fighting for carbon pricing. The only way to reduce fossil fuel use (and resultant carbon emissions) is to cut the demand side of the ledger. In a world with plentiful oil supplies, from numerous markets, cutting off the Canadian industry from its markets represents cutting off your nose to spite your face. The only realistic way to reduce carbon emissions has to be on the demand side of the ledger. But I suppose a group that fights against freer international trade would not understand that the world represents one big market and unless you treat it as such, any work done in Canada can be just as easily undone in Nigeria, Kuwait or Algeria. It is time the climate change activists stopped fighting these proxy wars and started fighting the actual war they want to fight. Don’t fight against the safest, most environmentally protective form of transport for this necessary resource, fight to reduce the market for the resource. If the demand exists then supply will be found to meet that demand. The only way to address the issue of fossil fuels is on the demand side of the ledger.

Wind Energy and Avian Mortality: Why Can't We get any Straight Numbers?

In my writing on renewable energy, I have not yet spent much time on wind energy. I did establish that a single large wind turbine (rated at about 3.5 megawatts) typically contains around 600 kilograms of rare earth metals (ref) and that the production of rare earth metals has pretty major environmental consequences. As well, I noted in my post on energy and power density that wind is strongly limited by its energy density. A study of wind farms in England, Scotland and Wales indicated that most efficient systems have trouble generating more that a maximum of about 4 W/m² (ref). My lack of commentary shouldn't be read as a negative since I cannot foresee a future, free of fossil fuels for energy production, that does not include a significant use of wind as a source of energy. Moreover, when combined with less intermittent power generating technologies (hydro, geothermal, nuclear or if necessary natural gas) wind can add nicely to a good power mix.

Wind energy does have some drawbacks. As mentioned, wind is notoriously intermittent and needs to be paired with a comparable generating capacity that can cut in when the wind chooses not to blow. In British Columbia, we also have a disadvantage in that our best wind resources are not necessarily located convenient to our population centers. This means that major wind projects will often entail transmission lines. As I wrote in my post on geothermal energy, transmission lines can be very expensive to build and maintain but are a necessary compromise in the goal to move away from fossil fuels. I will note that these two sources (geothermal and wind) seem to be obvious next options for British Columbia power production. Admittedly nothing is going to push hydro to the backseat and between run-of-the-river and Site C there may not be a lot of room on the grid for wind and geothermal, but any reasonable economy does better when it is diversified and having an excess of energy (to export?) is always better than having a shortage of energy and suffering from brown-outs.

Having dealt with the introduction, I want to consider the most repeated complaint in any discussion about wind power, that of bat and avian mortality. The topic is a very heated one, but one that is of tremendous interest to me as it hits at the heart of my research on how data is used in environmental decision-making. Depending on whose research you read the avian and bat effects of wind energy are either a major concern or a trivial non-consideration. The estimates of bird mortality in the US (I will stick with US bird data in this discussion as it is the source of much of the debate and there is not enough space to consider bats) can vary wildly with figures ranging from as few as 20,000 birds per year to over 573,000 birds per year (ref). The low number comes from a paper by Benjamin Sovacool (2013). The high number comes from a paper by Smallwood (2013). I have not had the time to deal with the high number but would like to spend a little time analyzing where that low number comes from.

The 2013 paper by Sovacool (which due to publishing schedules is titled "The avian benefits of wind energy: A 2009 update") and a second paper "The Avian and Wildlife Costs of Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power" (which is dated 2012 (ref) but once again thanks to publishing schedules includes data from the 2013 paper) serve as a fascinating example of science on the edge. Neither paper crosses the line but both present the science with just enough of a question mark to make you wonder. The 2012 paper has a pretty inauspicious start with the following appearing in the first paragraph of the Introduction:

Use of wind turbines means less consumption and pollution of water resources – a real concern since about half of water use in the United States involves producing electricity in thermoelectric plants (US Geological Survey 2005).

Now this quotation is technically correct, but might be construed as being a tad misleading. Most people interpret "consumption" as using something up. In the case of thermoelectric plants the Geological Service points out that “[a]bout 195 Bgal/d, or 48 percent of all freshwater and saline-water withdrawals for 2000, were used for thermoelectric power. Most of this water was derived from surface water and used for once-through cooling at power plants (ref)” So yes, the water was “used”, but it was not “consumed”. Rather it was borrowed for an hour or two and then returned to the same surface water body from whence it came (albeit marginally warmer than when it went in). The paper can leave the reader with a misconception that all that water is being consumed. Later in the same paper, comes another interesting line:

“Unlike fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, which spread their avian-related impacts across an entire fuel cycle, most of a wind farm’s impact occurs in one location. (p 257)” 

This struck me as missing some very important data. You see in the paper the author considers the entire life-cycle for nuclear plants including the mining of the uranium and effects of the tailings ponds or as put at another web site:

The most dominant contribution to Sovacool’s analysis of nuclear power impacts comes from uranium mining and milling operations which he claims “can poison and kill hundreds of birds per facility per year” (ref).

Now as I pointed out in my previous post on rare earth metals, rare earths are incredibly environmentally damaging to mine, extract and refine. For the author to suggest that 600 kilograms of rare earth metals (not to mention all the incredibly energy-intensive aluminum), do not pose a risk to birds is simply inconsistent with environmental reality (for a terrifying description consider this reference). Any analysis that includes the mining, extraction, refining and decommissioning of uranium facilities should, by all measures, do the same for the aluminum and rare earth metals used in the production of wind turbines.

The meat of the two papers, however, is the calculation of an estimate for average number of birds killed per gigawatt/hour (GWh) by wind (0.279 in one paper and 0.269 in the second paper. I am not sure what serves as the basis for difference between the two numbers). This is the number upon which the entire paper builds and was the number that really perked up my ears. I immediately went to the original source material used to generate the number (Erickson 2004 in this ref). Looking at the figures from the source material I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that resulted in a value of almost 0.700 avian fatalities per GWh. Recognizing that I may have missed something I looked around to see if I was alone in this calculation and found a reply in the same journal by Willis et. al. (ref). They did a more detailed calculation than me and came up with the following:

Sovacool’s (2009) estimate of the average number of birds killed per GWh of.wind power is incorrect and omits a large body of easily. accessible, published data. For five of the six sites listed in his Table 2, Sovacool used fatality estimates that were uncorrected for searcher efficiency and scavenger losses, despite the fact that corrected data are available. Surprisingly, he then points out that failure to correct for searcher efficiency and scavenging is a flaw in published mortality surveys. Using corrected estimates (Barclay et al., 2007 and references therein), and Sovacool’s estimated capacity factor (33%), the actual estimated number of birds killed at those 6 sites is 0.653/GWh, more than double Sovacool’s estimate of 0.269/GWh. Using all 21 sites for which data are presented in Barclay et al. (2007), the average number of birds killed is 1.46/GWh, or over five times Sovacool’s estimate. 

What this tells me is that the results from this paper have to be considered in light of other evidence. I was somewhat surprised to see that the number (0.269) has already appeared in the Wikipedia article on the topic. To be clear, the author clearly qualifies his numbers (he is entirely upfront but in a way that is hard for outsiders to understand) but as indicated by Willis (et. al.), the better numbers were all readily available. In my case, I simply went to the his referenced source (the Erickson paper) and then sought the original references that Erickson had used. It was neither taxing, nor challenging as the Erickson paper actually included many of the corrected values and virtually all of the reports were in the public domain. Moreover, the Erickson paper included additional information that was not included in the analysis. As an example, in the Sovacool paper the following was presented by the author:

Finally, the seventy-three 300 kW wind turbines in Buffalo Ridge, Minnesota, were responsible for 14 deaths per year.

But the Erickson report had the following text:

The Buffalo Ridge, Minnesota site is comprised of 73 300-kW turbines with 33-m rotor diameters and a maximum height of 52.5 m. A four-year study at this site yielded 55 fatalities representing 31 species, with 71% being migrants and just 2% raptors (Johnson et al. 2002). …Fatality rates ranged from 1 fatality per turbine per year (f/t/y) for Phase I to 4.45 f/t/y for Phase III. (The Phase III f/t/y was heavily influenced by one incident involving 14 birds at two adjacent turbines one night.) 

The reference thus had two numbers, one based on the uncorrected search data for the Phase I facility only (55 fatalities/4 years = 14) and a second  based on the corrected rate for the Phase I facility only (1 f/t/y times number of turbines = 75). Going to the original reference (Johnson et al 2002) I discovered reported data on all three phases of the facility. They reported a corrected fatality rate of 72 birds a year for Phase I (versus the 14 presented in the paper) while Phase II was reported to kill 324 birds a year and Phase II 613 birds a year for a total of 1009 birds a year. This is a pretty significant step up from the 14 birds/year used in the calculations or the 75 birds a year based on the annual rate. While you might say 14 birds/72 birds/1009 birds what is the difference, but remember, he used those numbers to extrapolate national number; this makes the potential difference a pretty substantial thing.

So what does all this mean in the end? Well I’m going to make a wildly impolitic comment here. In my mind the biggest hindrance to the advancement of wind power in Canada may, ironically, be the people pushing hardest for its implementation. They are a very ardent lot and can be aggressive in support of their technology. Unfortunately, their aggressive tendencies can result in them downplaying the necessary compromises associated with, and limitations of, the technology. When I read papers like those of Dr. Sovacool it leads me to wonder what other information is not being discussed? I know that cats kill tens of millions of birds a year in North America and that wind energy is a necessary next advancement in the goal to reduce fossil fuel use, but I am less than confident that there aren’t other skeletons hiding in the darkness waiting to pounce? When the seminal papers in the field ignore the life-cycle analysis for the wind turbines but include it for the nuclear plants, and then compare the two? what am I supposed to think about the output of the analyses?