Canadian environmentalists have lost an early battle to translate forecasts of global warming from the cloudy realms of theory into a practical barrier against growth by the natural gas industry in British Columbia.

Barely a week after Prime Minister Jean Chretien pledged to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, the National Energy Board refused to let a B.C. pipeline expansion project be held up for a review of the possibilities of pollution increases. The NEB rejected a demand by an environmental group to make Duke Energy Gas Transmission prove that carbon-dioxide emissions will not grow by harmful amounts as a result of a C$270 million (US$180 million) expansion of its Westcoast natural gas pipeline.

The GSX Concerned Citizens Coalition, a potent intervener in gas cases based in the B.C. capital of Victoria, wanted the board to require Duke-Westcoast to generate projections of new carbon-dioxide emissions that would result from burning the additional gas to be delivered by the 10% increase in the system’s capacity to 2.1 Bcf/d. The NEB acknowledged that the B.C. environmentalists earlier this year won a partial victory in a similar case involving the project that the coalition was formed to resist and was named after.

Sponsors of the Georgia Strait Crossing, a plan to build a second subsea pipeline to Vancouver Island, were required to craft forecasts of greenhouse gas emissions by one of two new power plants that will rely on the link. In the current case the NEB turned down the environmentalists on grounds that they wanted forecasts which were neither relevant to the project, nor possible for the companies to piece together.

The GSX case was different because the power plant involved was an identifiable gas user with a project directly linked to the pipeline and under Canadian jurisdiction. Unlike the Georgia Strait Crossing, the Westcoast expansion is intended to deliver gas to a wide range of energy consumers in the northwestern United States and B.C., that cannot be identified and that can change over time.

“The particular circumstances of the end use of the gas, including the destinations, relative quantities and types of use, are unknown,” the NEB observed. “Even if that information could be obtained, it would be of little value without information on other sources and types of fuel available in the areas that the (Westcoast) expansion gas could be used in order to predict the net effect of the end use of the gas.”

The NEB also ruled that the federal legislation that the industry’s opponents frequently invoke, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, does not automatically hold up developments if critics complain. The board told the environmentalists that, at least as the act is now worded, reviews concentrate on measurable effects of particular projects’ construction, operation, decommissioning or abandonment, rather than venture into guesswork about results in linked industrial or consumer activities.

When it comes to climate change issues, the board said it “recognizes the global spatial scale at which greenhouse gas interactions occur and that emission sources are varied, numerous and widely distributed.” In practice, the fears raised by climate change theories remain too vague to bring down to earth as evidence of harm or benefits which is tangible enough to determine the fate of particular industrial developments.

The NEB ruling in the Westcoast case said that “while it may be important to understand how and to what extent a proposed project may contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, the consideration of global-scale effects would be inappropriate on a project-specific basis. . . the Board recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions over broad spatial scales are closely linked with a country’s industrial, economic and cultural structure and is of the view that the responsibility for addressing such matters lies more appropriately with national and international initiatives.”

Although the industry won this early skirmish, the Westcoast case highlighted sources of anxiety raised by Chretien’s commitment. The prime minister’s pledge, made at an international sustainable development conference in South Africa, ignited hot protests by leaders ranging from EnCana Corp. President Gwyn Morgan to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein.

The ruling in effect declared it would be unfair and impractical to ask even a big pipeline organization, armed with considerable expertise, to make calculations that are at the heart of the Canadian government’s position on Kyoto. Chretien and federal Environment Minister David Anderson want the other signatories to the protocol to let Canada reduce its commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions in recognition of its exports of natural gas as a clean-burning replacement for oil and coal at industrial installations such as power plants.

The government in Ottawa maintains that international recognition of the environmental value of Canadian gas exports to the U.S. should be worth a reduction in the Kyoto emissions reduction target by about 30% to 170 million tonnes per year from 240 million. In refusing to make Westcoast take a stab at calculating its contribution to the proposed credit — something that environmental groups such as GSX do not concede exists — the NEB observed that the use of exported gas is not under Canadian control. The board said it “recognizes that other entities have jurisdiction to regulate facilities and their air emissions in the areas in which the (Westcoast) expansion gas would be used.”

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