30 Fairmont Park Lane S
Lethbridge, AB
T1K 7H7
Phone: (403) 328-1804
Saturday, September 18, 2004
The Editor
The Lethbridge Herald
P.O. Box 670
Lethbridge
AB, T1J 3Z7
Know your greenhouse gas emissions
The Red Deer Advocate gives far too much credit to Canada’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol as a driver of innovation to extract additional oil from old wells. (Lethbridge Herald, Another Opinion: Sweet Irony, 04/09/13)
I moved south to undertake studies to become a rocket scientist in 1967. I had just completed the design of an insulated tanker for the transport of liquefied carbon dioxide. It was under construction in Calgary. It was to be deployed as part of a research and development project evaluating the role of carbon dioxide injection as a means of enhanced oil recovery. Development of these techniques has thus been underway for a very long time. As the Advocate points out, financial credits for reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide a supplementary incentive to develop this technology. The Advocate does not mention who will pay for the credits.
It does not take a rocket scientist to understand who will foot the bill. The cost of carbon dioxide reduction credits, including appropriate markups to cover the costs of accounting, marketing and profit, will be passed to you and me as a charge on carbon dioxide emissions. We can anticipate increases in our utility bills and fuel costs, should Canada go ahead with plans to implement Kyoto.
Albertans need to be aware of this proposed new toll on their income. A first step is to know your emissions. We have calculated our household emissions over the past three years from our electricity, natural gas, and gasoline bills. The data, results, calculation methodology, and some discussion of government policy implications are provided, as a public service, at www.computare.org under the menu item “GHG Emissions”.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast