OTTAWA – A shift toward natural gas to meet growing energy demands could damage natural ecosystems and take Canada and other jurisdictions further away from meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals, says a new study to be released Thursday by two major Canadian environmental research groups.
The study, a collaboration between the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation, concluded that significant growth in natural gas production, despite its smaller environmental footprint compared to other fossil fuels such as oil and coal, would interfere with goals agreed to by major countries around the world to slash greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous warming of the planet’s climate.
"Put simply, governments should not be approving gas production levels that are incompatible with their GHG targets, especially since production is likely to cause substantial non-climate environmental impacts," said the report, titled, Is Natural Gas a Climate Change Solution for Canada?
Lead author Mathew Bramley, the director of research from the Alberta-based Pembina Institute, said the report also suggests that governments should no longer consider natural gas a "bridging fuel" toward a cleaner and more sustainable energy mix in the future.
"What we found is there’s very little in the way of clear analysis out there as to whether this claim that natural gas is a transition fuel, whether that stands up to scrutiny," Bramley told reporters during a technical briefing.
The report based its findings on existing research about natural gas supply and demand, economic modelling, and a new modelling study by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, an economic consulting firm, based in British Columbia.
"The trend away from natural gas to renewables is stronger than the trend from coal to natural gas if you have robust climate policies in place," said Dale Marshall, climate policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.
Industry stakeholders say that technological breakthroughs in unconventional gas exploration, such as shale gas, have "revolutionized" Canada’s natural gas supply.
Critics have suggested that the Canadian government should do more to examine the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, which is used to extract the gas from shale rocks underground.
Scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are now in the midst of studying potential impacts of the fracking process on drinking water and groundwater. The process requires the injection of enormous amounts of water laced with potentially toxic chemicals.
Canada’s Environment Minister Peter Kent has said the federal government has an interest in the process and can intervene if a toxic threat is "perceived and reported."
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