Cenovus aims for ‘net zero’ GHG emissions by 2050

January 10, 2020
Business

Oilsands writer Cenovus Energy says it’s aiming to grasp “net zero” hothouse gas emissions by 2050 — and retrieve hundreds of decommissioned wells sites — as partial of new sustainability targets announced Thursday.

The pierce comes amid flourishing inspection of Canada’s oilpatch and a impact on a environment, from immature organizations and also investors.

Calgary-based Cenovus says a devise is to revoke a emissions per tub by 30 per cent by 2030, while gripping prosaic a sum emissions.

The association says in that time-frame it will also reclaim 1,500 decommissioned good sites, representing three-quarters of its existent good sites that are no longer in use and set for reclamation.

Alex Pourbaix, a company’s arch executive officer, says a targets the association has set are dictated to “position us to flower in a transition to a lower-carbon future.”

“I’m assured we have a right business indication and talent in place to grasp them,” he pronounced in a statement.

But one environmental organisation says while a proclamation reflects a kind of “heat” oil companies are feeling from investors, it doesn’t volume to some-more than a “tweak” of a firm’s business plan.

Holding emissions solid when Canada is ostensible to cut them doesn’t assistance much, says Keith Stewart, comparison appetite strategist at Greenpeace Canada.

“I collate it to saying the captain of a boat has speckled a iceberg and has affianced to contend march and speed,” he said.

Cenovus’s plan includes a multi-pronged proceed including operational optimization, incorporating electricity cogeneration ability into destiny oilsands phases, some-more use of well-off record to revoke steam indispensable to furnish bitumen, and methane emissions reductions in a required drilling operations.

Cenovus says it has reduced a GHG emissions during a oilsands operations by about 30 per cent per tub over a past 15 years, nonetheless aloft prolongation means sum emissions have increased.

Al Reid, a company’s executive vice-president of environment, corporate affairs and legal, says Cenovus’s 2050 emissions goals are aspirational though combined there is a “path” to reaching them.

“The reason that it’s aspirational is we know there’s technologies that are in a nascent state currently that could concede that to happen,” he told CBC News. “But they’re not blurb today.”

He pronounced a primary instance of that would be CO constraint and storage, a routine that could stop carbon from entering a atmosphere and afterwards store it underground.

“Those are a kinds of things that we’re operative on,” he said.

Reid pronounced carbon offsets could also be partial of both the 2030 and a 2050 plans.

In an speak with The Canadian Press, Reid said the association is carefree that a commitments — that embody ramping adult spending by $1.5 billion with Indigenous businesses — will assistance make assent with opponents and concede expansion to take place.

Other oilsands producers on-board

This is a latest in a fibre of oil association announcements about commitments to urge environmental performance.

Fellow oilsands writer Canadian Natural Resources has also affianced to work toward a zero-emissions target, though giving a specific date, regulating record and a CO trapping and storage operations. It says it has lowered emissions per tub from a oilsands mining operation by 37 per cent given 2012.

In December, Spanish appetite hulk Repsol, that has operations in Canada, also announced it would try to grasp net 0 emissions globally by 2050.

In September, Suncor Energy pronounced it would spend $1.4 billion to implement dual cogeneration units during a Oil Sands Base Plant in northern Alberta, so shortening hothouse gas emissions by 25 per cent.

Canada’s oil and zone is confronting larger scrutiny, generally amid flourishing meridian change concerns.

Last fall, Norway’s largest grant fund removed 4 Canadian appetite names from a investment list and says it will no longer put income in companies that get some-more than 5 per cent of their income from a oilsands.

Former Bank of Canada administrator Mark Carney, who recently assimilated a United Nations as a special attach� on meridian change and finance, told BBC final month that the financial zone had begun to quell investment in hoary fuels, though distant too slowly.

Decarbonizing a economy

Warren Mabee, executive of a Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, calls Thursday’s proclamation a certain pointer that Canada’s appetite zone — and Cenovus in sold — are holding severely issues around meridian change and a need to decarbonize a economy.

“Clearly, there’s some-more and some-more vigour on these companies to demeanour during their CO footprint and to start to come adult with some genuine strategies to residence those CO footprints,” Mabee told CBC News.

Mabee says he believes a goals Cenovus has laid out are achievable.

If so, those efforts can also assistance Canada in a bid to strech a Paris agreement goals, he said. The Paris aim requires Canada to cut hothouse gases constructed from 730 million tonnes in 2005 to 511 million tonnes in 2030.

“So if we wish to grasp that Paris aim of a 30 per cent reduction, and if we wish to set ourselves adult to be means to do even some-more as we pierce toward a center of a century, we need a oil and gas sector, a appetite sector, to start entrance adult with these solutions.”

Greenpeace’s Stewart pronounced he’d like to hear some-more companies speak about transitioning out of oil prolongation and into other forms of energy.

“What we should be conference from Cenovus and from others … is, ‘We commend we need to get out of a oil business. It’s not going to occur tomorrow. But we have to start formulation for it now. And we have to start changeable a investments in that direction,'” Stewart said.

Senior researcher Benjamin Israel of the Pembina Institute said Cenovus’s joining is a step in a right instruction though a attention needs to contend reduction about emissions power and do some-more to residence a comprehensive emissions.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cenovus-oilsands-sustainability-strategy-1.5420652?cmp=rss