Fake Carbon Cuts Set Back Real Climate Action
We need more renewable energy projects and faster carbon cuts. But with the risk of greenwash at every turn, the devil is in the details.
When is a carbon cut not really a carbon cut?
As we dig into the specifics of driving down climate emissions—as we pivot from what we need to do to how we get it done—the risk of greenwashing and the lure of false solutions seem to crop up at every turn.
For far too long, climate policy and advocacy were tied down in time-wasting debates to establish that the crisis is real, it’s caused by human activity, and it won’t be solved without phasing fossil fuel production down and out. When the focus finally shifted to action, it was all about passing legislation, adopting climate emergency declarations, and setting 2050 targets.
Now we’re finally down into the specifics of translating those 2050 targets into 2030 results, getting projects on the ground, and scaling up solutions. But it turns out those details are a lot more complicated than drafting a statement of principle.
We know that the worst impacts of climate change will only be averted when fossil fuel companies get serious about shutting down production. For investors, that urgent call to action translates into decarbonizing their portfolios. So what happens when a colossal fossil like Repsol SA, a Spanish multinational that is quite serious about the renewable side of its business, burnishes its climate credentials by selling off oil and gas fields to a much smaller, local oil and gas operator?
Our exclusive report earlier this month found that those fields will continue producing carbon pollution, with backing from Canadians’ retirement savings. Meanwhile, the original owner gets to wash its hands of any responsibility to operate the fields safely or clean up the mess when the wells are abandoned.
Repsol isn’t the only big fossil playing that game, and fake solutions aren’t the only problem. Sometimes the carbon cuts are real, but the devil is in the details.
What happens when a wind farm developer pitches clean electrons for a green hydrogen plant in Newfoundland and Labrador, without troubling too much about the wildlife and migratory bird areas that will be affected? Or when the Canadian prime minister and the German chancellor go all-in to support the hydrogen project?
We need the turbines, and we need green hydrogen that is really green, not dependent on a coal-fired power grid. But why would the wind developer not expect determined community opposition that will only slow the project down, in a moment when everything depends on renewable energy deployment speeding up?
We know that the first and often the fastest step in decarbonizing everything is to drastically increase energy efficiency. It won’t happen without deep energy retrofits in existing homes and commercial buildings.
But how fast can Canada and other countries build the training programs for the massive work force to get the job done? It’s tough to write a compelling headline about insulation, vapour barriers, or prefabricated exterior cladding, and no one will ever storm Parliament Hill with hundreds of peaceful protesters demanding retrofit training programs now. (GAME ON to anyone who can prove that wrong.) But it’s also true that without those programs, we won’t get the faster, deeper carbon cuts we need.
Electric vehicles of all kinds—from cars, to delivery vehicles, to the F-150 Lightning that showed up in our neighbourhood this week—have hit a tipping point, with governments across the political spectrum taking interest. They help starve the fossil industry of a market it depends on, show investors visible evidence that the shift off carbon is under way, and give households and even the occasional wedding party a measure of resilience when power grids fail.
But we can’t tap into those powerful gains by building new supply chains that devastate local communities and ecosystems with lithium or cobalt extraction instead of oil and gas. While we speed up EV deployment, we also need streamlined but honest and effective environmental assessment processes that make those supply chains work for resource communities, many of them Indigenous, as well as urban car buyers.
All of these practical obstacles are moving to centre stage while major banks and pension funds continue falsely framing their fossil fuel investments as a path to decarbonization. While the federal finance minister and deputy PM opens a door to new investment in “high-stakes” liquefied natural gas exports. And while the 2030 deadline to cut global emissions by 45 to 50% draws ever closer.
Things were bound to get more complicated. In that sense, this is a moment we’ve been asking for and working for.
But the takeaway for climate and energy investors, policy-makers, practitioners, and advocates is that it’s no longer enough to say “just do it”. The details matter, and now we’re into the tricky balancing act of slowing down to listen while we speed up the results we need.
Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he scans 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender.
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Tweet of the Week
TC Energy Hid Conflict of Interest from U.S. Regulator, Think Tank Claims (Energy and Policy Institute)
Climate May Force People in Vulnerable Communities to Move: Guilbeault (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
Some First Nations Leaders, Elders Oppose Treaty 3 Nuclear Waste Deal (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
Ottawa Presses Provinces to Modernize Grids (Globe and Mail)
China Needs $17T to Hit Climate Goals (Reuters)
France Restricts International Public Finance for Oil and Gas (Oil Change International)
Wildfire Smoke Erases U.S. Progress on Clean Air (New York Times)
Video of the Week
Farmers in France cope with today’s climate impacts while preparing for a very uncertain future. Video: #WorldWeWant
Climate Solutions = Climate Action
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