Thank you.
I'm going to speak about proposed subsidies and tax credits to support CCUS in the oil sands. I invite the committee to examine the plan in the context of Canada's climate predicament.
We need deep reductions, nationally and globally, within the next nine years. Our ability to make essential cuts by 2030 should be the decisive criteria for this committee's study of CCUS.
An objective of CCUS deployment is to facilitate continued expansion of oil production for another 10 years, and maintain high production levels through to 2050, but CCUS can only decarbonize the production process inside Canada. Those emissions represent less than 15% of emissions associated with every barrel we produce. The other 85% occur after our exported oil is burned as fuel, and the emissions are released as tailpipe emissions.
Those downstream emissions from our exported oil cannot be removed from the atmosphere once they are released. Direct air removal technologies do not exist. The fact that we do not count them does not halt the warming.
The IEA's “Net Zero by 2050” report warns that to have a realistic chance of keeping warming below 1.5°C, global consumption must decline 25% by 2030, 50% by 2040 and 75% by 2050.
In contradiction to that, the CER's new evolving policy scenario shows Canada's oil production will continue increasing until 2032. The CER has refused to examine what future pathways of oil production in Canada would be consistent with staying within 1.5°C.
The IPCC 2018 report found all releases of CO2 must reach net zero by 2050 to give us a chance of meeting the 1.5°C goal. That's trite. We are all talking about that.
A second crucial finding was that in order to achieve net-zero by 2050, annual global emissions must be reduced 50% by 2030. The unforgiving 2030 deadline is explained by the rising atmospheric carbon concentration load. It tracks the rising amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere that is driving the heating of the earth. The recorded level for 2020 was 413.2 ppm CO2. It is now rising on an average rate of 2.5 ppm every year. To stay within the 1.5°C warming threshold, the carbon concentration level must be kept below 430 ppm. At the present rate of increase, it will exceed 430 ppm by 2028.
Our government says Canada has no legal responsibility to counter downstream emissions as part of our national emissions, but the accounting rules are not an answer to the problem we face. The downstream emissions from our oil are a core problem. They contribute directly to climate change in Canada to the same extent as if those emissions were released in Saskatchewan or Nova Scotia. Emissions from our exported oil will contribute directly to climate breakdown in B.C. and northern Quebec. This catastrophic outcome, which crosses all national boundaries, is being driven by the physics of climate change.