The world’s governments are facing increased pressure to reach agreement on phasing out the production and consumption of fossil fuels. And countries like Canada, whose plan for fossil fuel production runs counter to its stated climate goals, will increasingly be under fire on the international stage.
In advance of this year’s COP28 climate summit, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that a steady phase-out of coal, oil and natural gas production is critical to put the world on a path to limit the increase in average global temperatures to 1.5 or even 2°C.
The fourth annual Production Gap Report, released November 3, adds fuel to the heated debate in Canada surrounding the medium-term viability of the oil and gas industry’s plans to boost production and exports.
At its release, UNEP and its partners in non-governmental organizations urged governments at COP28 to endorse a negotiated phase-out of fossil fuels. The phase-down should begin immediately, proceed urgently and be completed in the second half of this century, they said. Previous COPs have failed to address the production of fossil fuels.
Canada isn’t alone in its climate contradiction.
The 2023 Production Gap Report, released by UNEP, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other partners, found that 19 leading energy-producing countries are planning to extract twice as much fossil fuel supply in 2030 as the maximum that can be burned to keep the world on a 1.5°C track. Their production plans for 2030 would result in 70% more fossil fuel than the maximum limit for a 2°C pathway, the report says.
Canada’s expectation with regards to higher production and exports of oil and gas to 2030 would put Canada in the top five countries in terms of increases over the next six years. And based on current emission- intensity levels, such fossil fuel production would be wholly inconsistent with Canada’s pledge to reduce overall emissions by 40 to 45% by 2030 and become a net-zero emitter by 2050, the UNEP report notes.
At the global rate of fossil-fuel production and consumption, the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will wreak havoc on weather patterns and bring killer heat waves and droughts, severe flooding from rising sea levels and extreme rainfall, and rapid biodiversity loss.
“The addiction to fossil fuels still has its claws deep in many nations,” UNEP’s executive director, Inger Andersen, writes in the forward to the report.
“These [production] plans throw the global energy transition into question. They throw humanity’s future into question. Governments must stop saying one thing and doing another, especially as it relates to production and consumption of fossil fuels.”
Much of the focus for climate mitigation -– in Canada and around the world -– has been on reducing demand for fossil fuels.
Indeed, the International Energy Agency has said consumption of fossil fuels will likely peak this decade and would have to decline dramatically over the next 25 years if the world is to meet its stated climate goals.
However, major increases in production would make progress more difficult by locking in additional fossil fuel infrastructure, increasing resistance among producing jurisdictions to the transition, and keeping prices low.
“COP28 could be the pivotal moment where governments finally commit to the phase-out of all fossil fuels and acknowledge the role producers have to play in facilitating a managed and equitable transition,” says Michael Lazarus, a lead author on the report.
Hopes for a consensus remain a long shot. COP28, which begins November 30, is being held in Dubai, in the oil- and gas-rich United Arab Emirates. Presiding over the summit will be Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, head of the Emirates’ state oil company, ADNOC.
Al Jaber said recently the COP28 should reach an agreement to phase out “unabated” fossil fuels. That’s a vague term used to defend the continued, and even increased, use of fossil fuels so long as it includes technologies to capture carbon emissions from large production facilities, power plants or industrial factories.
For the Liberal government, the demands for a phase-out of fossil fuel production brings increased political headaches.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has said that governments at COP28 should endorse the phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuels, a characterization that drew criticism from both sides of the issue. While environmentalists slammed the limited commitment as wholly insufficient, Western premiers protested that it demonstrated Ottawa’s intention – as Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe put it on social media – “to completely shut down our energy sector.”
COP28 could be the pivotal moment where governments finally commit to the phase-out of all fossil fuels.
- Michael Lazarus, lead author of the 2023 Production Gap Report
The Liberals are already on the defensive for watering down their carbon tax with a heating oil exemption for Atlantic Canada.
Canada’s Constitution gives to the provinces the jurisdiction over resource ownership, management and production. Liberal ministers insist that their plan for a cap on oil and gas emissions is not aimed at production levels but rather at the industry’s carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
Provincial governments and industry officials argue that the federal government’s target for a 42% reduction in oil and gas emissions by 2030 could be achieved only by shutting down some production.
For Ottawa to endorse an unambiguous call to phase -out production would fan the political firestorm. Undertaking negotiations toward a gradual phase-out of production would undoubtedly provoke a constitutional challenge.
Nor should governments rely on hopes for a massive increase in facilities that capture carbon either from emission streams or directly from the atmosphere to save us. Carbon capture and storage technology works only for large-scale facilities – not the millions of oil and gas wells that yield the global supply – and it will take decades and billions of dollars for the technology to be deployed at scale.
Let’s be clear: UNEP and its partners are not suggesting the oil and gas industry be shut down in the short term. The target is 2050, and even then, they call for oil and gas production to be cut by 75%, with carbon capture and storage used on the rest.
However, we urgently need to start the process to ensure we meet short- and medium-terms climate goals.
COP28 should send a strong signal: for the sake of all global citizens and the species we share this planet with, the fossil fuel era must come to a timely end.
