Equinor and Norway are Fighting a Climate Policy in Canada that Could Save Thousands of Lives

Even though the policy could actually benefit offshore oil and gas

Equinor Norway Canada Policy picture of climate survivors calling for an emissions cap

Canadian climate disaster survivors (pictured) are calling for an emissions cap – coverage of their calls in Canadian news media included below.

Canada is in the process of putting a cap on corporate oil and gas sector emissions (podcast on this below), but lobbying groups like Energy NL and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers are actively fighting to kill the policy. That’s despite the fact that for many oil and gas companies the emissions cap can be met through further methane efforts. Extremely cheap given their corporate profits, and there are other easy steps they can take like electrifying operations.

Those are lobbying groups in which Equinor has membership. That means Equinor is actively fighting against Canadian climate policies aimed at getting fair emissions reductions from our largest polluters. Because Equinor is a majority state-owned company this also means the Norwegian Government is actively undermining Canada’s domestic climate policies.

The ironic part? Under the emissions cap policy offshore oil operators could even be able to make money selling carbon credits to bigger polluting oil and gas projects in Canada like the oil sands. Equinor is so intent on undermining climate progress in Canada it’s actually hurting the offshore oil industry itself. 

Listen to our Podcast with the climate-survivors (pictured above) of wildfires and floods in Canada who are calling for an emissions cap below.

Recent polling shows 53% of Canadians want governments to phase out the use and production of fossil fuels (only 36% oppose a phaseout) and only 35% have any degree of trust in oil and gas companies (Abacus Data: November 29 to December 4, 2024).

Two independent polls found a majority of Albertans support a cap on emissions, 7 out of 10 Canadians also support the cap, and 89% of Canadians also back tougher methane regulations according to a survey. A fair cap on emissions from oil and gas, at the same level as Canada’s national climate target (45% below 2005 levels by 2030), would avoid the premature deaths of approximately 4,860 people in Canada over a decade, and come with economic benefit of CAD $45.1 billion, according to an analysis from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), this is before considering the climate change and non-fatal impacts of the air pollution prevented by a strong cap.

Canadian Coverage of Survivors’ Calls for an Emissions Cap:

Here are some more facts on the emissions cap:

  • This is a cap on wealthy corporations, it is NOT a cap on individual people. The cap is more than fair: Oil and gas corporations, while only 5% of Canada’s economy, are Canada’s most polluting sector causing around 30% of national emissions. Between 1990 and 2022, emissions from oil sands production grew by 467% and conventional oil production by 24% – since 2005 emissions overall increased 11%. Per-barrel emissions from oil sands also increased since 2018. Meanwhile, other sectors, and individual Canadians, cut their emissions.
  • The emissions cap is easy for oil and gas corporations to implement and will NOT hurt Canada’s competitiveness: The heavy lifting is done by methane reductions and “the IEA has shown that nearly half of the global oil and gas industry’s methane emissions can be reduced at no net cost…. Oil and gas companies in Canada can eliminate 75 per cent of their methane emissions at an average cost of only $11 per tonne.”

Without an effective cap on oil and gas corporations other sectors and Canadians would need to carry the weight of reducing their emissions to offset the emissions of oil and gas corporations. An emissions cap is about fairness – it’s about making oil and gas corporations do the same work the rest of us are doing to cut our emissions.

  • Oil and gas corporations have also seen huge profits while Canadians by contrast are facing hard economic times: Of every additional dollar of inflation over the last two years in Canada [from 2023 back], 25 cents of that has gone to oil and gas and mining extraction profits. Average world incomes will drop by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, and the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.
  • The emission cap is NOT a production cap and will NOT harm the economy or jobs: Oil and gas corporations said previously they could meet the emissions targets in this cap, this holds them to that promise. The recent claims of industry sponsored studies which used rigged assumptions do NOT change this fact under any realistic scenario. Oil and gas corporations have accepted mass sums of taxpayer money for carbon capture and storage based on the claim, those same corporations made, that they could reduce emissions. Listen to our recent podcast for details.
  • The federal government has already been regulating air and water pollution in many other sectors for decades as lawyers Anna Johnston and Andrew Gage, pointed out in The Globe and Mail recently. The federal government also has a role to play in combating climate change through pollution reduction policy as upheld previously by the Supreme Court. Legal threats against the cap have been further dismissed by many other analysts since.
  • Canada needs an emissions cap and it WILL help bring down emissions: The commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada has concluded that “the federal government is set to miss its 2030 target to cut carbon emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030” and that the emission cap needs to be implemented soon.
    • Canada has very high per capita emissions relative to other countries, and historical emissions, but our country’s failure to meet emissions targets is not individuals’ fault, this failure is the fault of large oil and gas companies which fail to act. We can’t ask other people with much lower per capita emissions to act on climate change if we don’t act to regulate these companies in Canada. Many other countries are already making progress on cutting emissions.
    • Our emissions don’t just impact climate change, they also cause severe health problems here in Canada, which we can reduce with a cap. Emissions reductions here can also help provide solutions to other places to make sure they never need to grow their emissions.
    • The International Energy Agency is calling for a 60 per cent reduction in oil and gas emissions by 2030 to avoid the worst climate catastrophes.
    • Thirteen oil and gas corporations operating or based in Canada are also on the list of 88 big carbon polluters being called out for a major share of the forested lands lost to wildfires in North America between 1986 and 2021.

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