Introduction

Natural gas is today the darling of governments, corporations, and of course, shareholders. For governments, gas means big royalties into government coffers, a tax-paying, busy workforce, and a business lobby without much to whine about. For corporations - exploration and drilling companies, pipeline companies, electrical cogeneration vendors, and construction outfits, gas means busy and profitable. For shareholders, its a happy move to Easy Street.

Andrew Nikiforuk had a look at the resource on which all this buoyancy and optimism is floating, and concluded that there's trouble ahead. The resource, natural gas, is not in limitless supply. Like all the other natural bounty that we have exploited - salmon and cod, beaver and bison, gold and timber - natural gas, too, will run out. And we're rushing toward the day of reckoning faster than those making hay while this particular sun is shining, would have us believe.

Mr. Nikiforuk's article, Running on empty - when Canada's natural gas reserves hit the crisis point, Canadian Business, July 10/24, 2000, is on the Canadian Business website at http://www.canbus.com/magazine_items/2000/july10_00_nogas.shtml

Mr. Nikiforuk got one thing wrong, though. He said that natural gas was "clean", without mentioning that it is a major greenhouse gas contributor, just like all the other hydrocarbons. So I wrote a letter to Canadian Business, to correct that error. You can find that letter below, on this page. I was asked for some references for statements I made, and it seemed like there might be enough interest to put together a companion webpage for readers who would want to follow up on some of the issues discussed in both Mr. Nikiforuk's article, and my letter. That explains this page.

SqWALK!, incidentally, is a website originally developed as an online resource for discussion of issues of concern to the community of Cobble Hill. When BC's electrical utility, BC Hydro, and an American pipeline company, Williams, arrived in town with their glossy brochures to tell us they were putting a natural gas pipeline through our community, we balked. SqWALK! found a mission as it quickly became the communications hub for individuals and organizations who were concerned about, and mostly opposed to, the pipeline. You can find out a lot more about the Georgia Strait Crossing (GSX) Pipeline Project elsewhere on SqWALK!.

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Good article, but wrong on one very important issue

August 3, 2000

Editor, Canadian Business

Andrew Nikiforuk's article (Running on empty - when Canada's natural gas reserves hit the crisis point, July 10/24, 2000, http://www.canbus.com/magazine_items/2000/july10_00_nogas.shtml) is a necessary message to a continent, a country, governments, regulators and an industry besotted with the potential earnings from Canada's natural gas supply.

The conventional opinion is that current high gas prices are due to inadequate infrastructure (read: pipelines) to move gas to urban markets. Nikiforuk quotes a number of analysts and industry insiders who know better. Today's prices are pointing to a more insidious trend - we're running out of gas.

On one very important issue, though, Nikiforuk is dreadfully wrong with his facts. He says: "...a gas-fired generator doesn’t ... pollute the air or saddle future generations with horrendous environmental burdens." Wrong. wrong, wrong.

Burning natural gas creates carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas (GHG), which causes global warming. And global warming is the most serious environmental problem the earth faces. Just like burning oil, burning gasoline, burning coal, or burning anything else, carbon is released into the atmosphere when burning natural gas. Natural gas is nearly as bad as any other combustible in that respect. Because it burns more efficiently than other hydrocarbons, however, the net GHG output per unit of heat energy, is less.

But natural gas may be worse in some respects, because natural gas consists mainly of methane (CH4), which leaks out of everything. In storage, in transmission, everywhere - natural gas is leaking methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas with a nominal "carbon dioxide equivalent" rating of 21, meaning its GHG effect is deemed 21 times that of CO2.

Natural gas nets out to about two-thirds the GHG contributor of oil or coal. In parts of the world where natural gas is a replacement for oil, coal, or nuclear generation of electricity, there is a valid environmental argument for switching to natural gas from a less efficient hydrocarbon. Of course, if you are not burning anything to make electricity, there is a strong environmental argument not to start using natural gas.

In terms of the relative quantity of other polluting or toxic byproducts, natural gas is relatively "cleaner" than the other hydrocarbons. Nitrous oxides (NOX), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO2), other volatile organic compounds (VOC) like formaldehyde and benzene, and particulate matter (PM) - these are all part of the airborne toxic stew that results from burning natural gas. "Cleaner", perhaps, but by no means clean.

The real environmental alternative, though, is to avoid GHG production altogether; to get into wind, tide, solar generation, and fuel cell technologies. Wind in particular, is the alternative of choice in much of northern Europe.

The real cost/benefit alternative, given the price predictions for gas in Mr. Nikiforuk's article, is also to move away from hydrocarbons.

An interesting practical case is British Columbia. BC Hydro, British Columbia's electrical utility, plans to utilize natural gas for most future electricity production in the province. The two fundamental arguments they use to make the case for natural gas are that it is the "clean" option, and the "lowest cost" option.

But they forecast natural gas prices of a mere $2.00 (US) per thousand cubic feet in 2007. Mr. Nikiforuk observes prices as high as $5.80 (Cdn?) already this year, and worse to come. The "lowest cost" argument seems unfounded, and badly flawed.

As for the "clean" option, BC produced less than 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year from electricity production, in 1996. The three natural gas burning cogeneration facilities planned for Vancouver Island alone will generate around 4 million tonnes. Cleaner than what?

Arthur Caldicott

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Comment

With respect to the specific question of the carbon dioxide equivalency of methane, the standard reference is: "The Science of Climate Change" Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1996) JT Houghton, LG Meira Filho, BA Callender, N Harris, A Kattenberg and K Maskell (Eds) Cambridge University Press, UK. pp 572

It is this reference (table 4, page 22) that forms the basis for the calculations and agreements of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1), and for virtually all official GHG measures and representations. Unfortunately, it is not available online, so I can only quote documents that cite the reference. There are many online references to "global warming potential" that will get you this same information, however.

A very good general discussion of climate change, is Environment Canada's "The Science of Climate Change" (2). The following is from that document:

See the attached table of relative global warming potentials:

"The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is an attempt to provide policy makers with a means of comparing the relative climatic effects of the various greenhouse gases with that of an equivalent emission of CO2. "The indicated GWP values are calculated by integrating the effect of emissions on the climate over the next 100 years. "Molecule for molecule, CO2 is the least effective of the major greenhouse gases. Methane, by comparison, absorbs and reradiates about 21 times as much heat energy."

The Greenhouse Gas Division of Environment Canada, (http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/), sometimes uses a methane equivalency factor of 24.5 (3), rather than the more generally accepted factor of 21.

While we're on the subject, let me also point out that Canada is doing a deplorable job of meeting its commitments made in Kyoto in 1997. There we agreed to reduce our GHG output from 1990 levels. 1990 levels were 577 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2e (4). In 1994, they were 615 Mt (5). By 1997 we were up to 682 Mt (and had fudged our 1990 level up to 601 Mt from 577) (6).

Methane (CH4) is the primary constituent (90-95%) of natural gas. When methane is burned, the principal products of combustion are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O). All three of these are greenhouse gases when in the atmosphere.

Examination of ancient ice cores from Arctic and Antarctic ice masses, suggests that nature passes through cyclical phases of increased and decreased amounts of GHG, and associated global mean temperatures (7). What is different today, is that the GHG mix has changed, with the addition of unnatural and unprecedented levels of methane due almost exclusively to burning hydrocarbons.

Atmospheric methane does not so readily or naturally become reabsorbed into non-atmospheric "sinks", and the greenhouse warming effect of increased methane could be more severe than the "21 times" factor would indicate.

The big global warming domino that we are increasingly likely to topple, is the "runaway effect". If the earth gets too warm, there will be nothing we can do (or stop doing, more accurately) to stop it. Once the polar ice packs melt too far, the oceans get too warm, the oceanic and atmospheric currents slow down or stop suddenly - we will have pushed our lovely planet past a point of no return.

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References

(1) http://www.unfccc.org/resource/convkp.html

(2) "The Science of Climate Change", http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/saib/climate/Climatechange/CC_presentation_e.PDF

(3) "Development of Canada's National Action Program on Climate Change", http://www2.ec.gc.ca/climate/resource/cnapcc/c1part03.html

(4) ibid.

(5) "Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas", http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/ghgdoc/bigtabl.html

(6) "Canada's Greenhouse Gas Inventory", http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/english/docs/gh_eng.pdf

(7) "The Science of Climate Change"

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