Alberta Initiatives
In 2004, the Alberta Government instituted a mandatory
greenhouse gas reporting program for major emitters of
greenhouse gases (GHG) under its newly created Climate
Change Emissions Management Act and associated Specified Gas
Emitters Regulation. Under this legislation,
facilities that exceed 100,000 tonnes of direct carbon
dioxide equivalent (CO2E) emissions per year are required to
report their emissions.
This threshold for reporting is expected to drop in order
to encompass more facilities in the next few years.
One of the key concepts to understanding both the provincial
and federal government’s position on regulating greenhouse
gases for the oil and gas sector is that neither government
is capping the total GHG emissions produced by a facility or
company. Instead, they are regulating reductions to
GHG emission intensity (i.e. the amount of GHG emissions
generated per unit of production). In order to conduct
these calculations, not only emissions must be calculated
and tracked, but the production data must also be managed.
Alberta’s Specified Gas Emitters Regulation is the first
piece of environmental legislation in Canada that requires
facilities to reduce their GHG emissions intensity.
Facilities that exceed the 100,000 tonne annual threshold
for GHG emissions are required to generate and submit a
third-party reviewed baseline GHG intensity application to
Alberta Environment prior to the end of 2007. These
facilities then have an annual target emission intensity of
88% of the baseline intensity for subsequent years of
operation. If a facility exceeds their target
emissions limit, it must purchase offsets through an
emissions trading scheme (yet to be developed) or pay a
“compliance cost” of $15 for every tonne of CO2E
that is above its allowable emissions for that year.
This money is directed into a provincial “technology fund”
where it is intended to provide the necessary funding for
the research and development of new technologies for the
reduction of GHG emissions.
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