According to an expert study published in the journal Energy Policythese 12 hydrocarbon exploitation projects would generate billions and billions of tons of greenhouse gases (GHG).
They are part of a list of 425 “carbon bombs”, projects located all over the world but mostly in China.
Three-quarters of these projects are concentrated in ten countries, including Canada.
According to the researchers, if all the fuels expected from these projects are extracted and burned, the countries that signed the 2015 Paris climate agreement will not be able to meet the planned targets, which were to be used to limit to 1.5 degrees Celsius the warming of the average temperature of the planet.
Among the 12 projects on Canada’s “carbon bomb” list is the oil and gas project Montney Play, in British Columbia, with 13.7 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of GHGs. In the ranking of the 425 “carbon bombs” listed worldwide, it is one of the most polluting.
In second place in the country is the coal mine of Murray River (8.5 gigatonnes of GHG) and, in third place, the Spirit River formation (three gigatonnes of GHG).
In this lackluster list, Canada’s other “carbon bombs” are the Gething coal mine (2.1 gigatonnes of GHGs), the Horizon oil sands project (2 gigatonnes of GHGs), the Kearl and Duvernay projects (1 .9 gigatonnes of GHGs each), the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (1.4 gigatonnes of GHGs), the Christina Lake Project (1.2 gigatonnes of GHGs), the Liard Shale Gas Project (1.2 gigatonnes of ), the Mildred Lake project (1.2 gigatonnes of GHG) and the Fording River coal mine (1 gigatonne of GHG).
