Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am pleased to be here on behalf of the Pathways Alliance today.
Pathways represents Canada's six largest oil sands companies. That includes Suncor, which spoke here earlier this morning, as well as Canadian Natural, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial and Meg Energy. Collectively, our six companies operate 95% of the oil sands production in Canada, which is the majority of Canada's total oil and gas production. Our companies contribute tens of billions to Canadian GDP and to federal and provincial revenues and royalties. They employ tens of thousands of Canadians.
However, we recognize that we are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and to the problem of climate change. Oil sands operations emit about 80 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, which is about 11% of Canada's total GHG emissions. We are a significant contributor to Canada's emissions challenge; therefore, we have to be part of the solution.
That's why, in 2021, our six companies came together and decided that we had to jointly tackle the challenge of emissions reduction. All Pathways companies have a goal of net-zero emissions from oil sands operations—that is, eliminating all scope 1 and 2 emissions—by 2050.
In the short term, we have a plan to reduce emissions by 22 megatonnes between now and 2030, starting with our foundational project, which is a carbon capture and storage network that will be the largest in Canada and one of the largest in the world. This project will capture carbon from 16 different oil sands sites, 14 of which will be connected by a 400 kilometre-long pipeline going from Fort McMurray to south of Cold Lake in eastern Alberta, where CO2 will be sequestered underground in deep saline aquifers. This project will initially store 14 megatonnes per year of carbon, which could be expanded to 40 to 50 megatonnes per year as additional capture is added in the 2030s and 2040s.
Our foundational project will add $16 billion to Canada's GDP and create over 100,000 person-years of labour during the construction phase from now to 2030, so this project would not only be a major emissions reduction. It would also be a huge economic driver for Alberta and Canada.
We are pursuing other technologies from electricity cogeneration, energy efficiency and the use of solvents in the extraction process, to newer technologies like the use of hydrogen as a fuel source, small modular nuclear reactors and, eventually, direct air capture to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere. We will need all these levers if we are going to meet our goal of net-zero operations by 2050.
While CCS is now proven technology—we have four major CCS projects in Canada already—it is costly technology. To be competitive, we'll need federal and provincial governments to coinvest with industry in this important opportunity.
We've had strong dialogue with both levels of government and also with 26 first nations and Métis communities in our project region. Both the federal and Alberta governments have helped support the project. The investment tax credit for carbon capture and storage announced by the federal government two years ago will be essential to building these projects, as will be a recently announced Alberta sequestration incentive.
We're also pleased that the federal government has announced that it is exploring carbon contracts for difference as a mechanism to help shore up Canada's industrial carbon price, which would help support the ongoing operations of carbon capture.
These are great proposals, but none of these measures are currently in place. Other jurisdictions, such as the United States with the Inflation Reduction Act, and also the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands and others, have introduced incentives for carbon capture that are actually much more generous than what Canada and Alberta currently have in place. When Canadian companies are competing for capital investment globally, we need to be able to demonstrate that we have as attractive an environment as possible for carbon capture and other new technologies.
The federal, Ontario and Quebec governments have made the decision to match the Inflation Reduction Act when it comes to battery technology for electric vehicles. We think that carbon capture—a technology in which Canada is already a global leader and that is probably the single biggest emissions reduction opportunity Canada has—needs similar treatment.
With the right combination of federal ITCs or other incentives, Alberta incentives, carbon contracts for difference and other measures, we think Canada can compete with anyone in the world.
With that, I'm pleased to answer any of your questions. Thank you.