At an estimated cost of $16.5 billion, the largest proposed carbon capture project in the country is the Pathways Alliance\u2019s proposal to pipe carbon dioxide captured from oilsands sites in northern Alberta to an underground storage site south of Cold Lake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The proposal will be considered as a project in the national interest, Carney announced earlier this month, and though he did not confirm it would be designated as such, he said he has asked the Major Projects Office to assemble a business development team to develop a strategy to advance it. If it can be built, it offers the potential of \u201cdecarbonized oil,\u201d Carney said.<\/p>\n
Simon Donner, co-chair of the federal government\u2019s Net Zero Advisory Body, said \u201cdecarbonized oil\u201d is an oxymoron at odds with climate science,\u00a0calling it<\/a> \u201cOrwellian.\u201d<\/p>\n In a wide-ranging interview ahead of the launch of her memoir, former climate minister Catherine McKenna warns consequences are coming for the fossil fuel industry, even as the federal government pursues a grand bargain with it. <\/p>\n That\u2019s because carbon capture technology is irrelevant to more than 80 per cent of the oil industry\u2019s emissions \u2014 those produced when the product is burned. Just as adding a filter to a cigarette doesn\u2019t promise cancer-free smoking, pairing oil production with carbon capture doesn\u2019t actually decarbonize the fuel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Canadian oil is \u201camongst the dirtiest and most expensive,\u201d in the world, further challenging any plan to make it both cleaner and more affordable, McKenna said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I would be very careful of any grand bargain \u2026 the only bargain should be \u2018You guys have not done your part like every single other sector,\u2019\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sectors such as transportation, electricity, buildings and heavy industry have all seen emissions decrease, while oil and gas emissions continue to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to an estimate of Canada\u2019s 2024 greenhouse gas emissions,\u00a0published last week<\/a> by the Canadian Climate Institute, the fossil fuel industry has singlehandedly wrecked any chance of the country hitting its\u00a0legally-binding 2030 emissions reduction<\/a> targets (barring a radical change in direction), due to increasing oil and gas production.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we are seeing the trajectory of national emissions flip from decline to rise, primarily driven by oil and gas and the oil sands,\u201d said Dave Sawyer, CCI\u2019s principal economist, in a pre-launch briefing with the media.<\/p>\n For McKenna, the state of play is clear. The fossil fuel industry committed to climate action, then raked in \u201cobscene\u201d profits. Those could have been used for clean energy diversification, but the sector chose instead to return billions to largely US-based shareholders.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy does anyone think they’ll uphold any of their side of any bargain that is made?\u201d she said. \u201cThey did nothing other than fight every single policy, and there are none of these policies now in any serious way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018No end of drama\u2019<\/p>\n As a federal minister tasked with developing a climate strategy, McKenna has witnessed previous attempts to strike a grand bargain fail. In her memoir, she recounts returning from the United Nations climate summit where the Paris Agreement was signed in late 2015 and needing to develop a climate plan for Canada to slash emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n In her telling, she spent 2016 in “extraordinarily intense negotiations with provinces and territories that had no end of drama.\u201d The central plank of the plan was carbon pricing, which faced resistance from Conservative politicians, particularly in Saskatchewan. She writes that she tapped Carney, then governor of the Bank of England, to help sell carbon pricing to Bay Street audiences at a meeting of the Toronto Board of Trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n McKenna writes she was proud of the plan that was put forward. But looking back now, it\u2019s clear that the oil and gas industry\u2019s promises to limit emissions and support a price on pollution \u2014 in exchange for the Liberal government purchasing and building the Trans Mountain expansion project \u2014\u00a0have been abandoned.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was Liberals that got the pipeline built, and they have done nothing except increase emissions and make massive profits \u2026 and then demand subsidies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/screenshot_2025-09-23_at_5.43.35_pm.png\")
Catherine McKenna and Mark Carney, photo via\u00a0Run Like a Girl<\/p>\n