Try not to faint from shock. The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Canadian oil through the US, will make climate change worse. It will boost global emissions of carbon dioxide by up to 110 million tonnes per year. The finding will step up the pressure on US president Barack Obama to stop the pipeline being built.
That extra CO2 is not a huge amount on a global scale. 鈥淏ut it is a step in the wrong direction,鈥� says of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who was not involved in the new analysis. 鈥淚t is an investment that will lock us into an untenable environmental situation. It鈥檚 a pipeline to nowhere, economically speaking.鈥�
, proposed by the Canadian energy company , is intended to run . There it would link to existing pipes, to carry oil from Canada鈥檚 tar sands to refineries on the US鈥檚 Gulf of Mexico coast.
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It has proved to be enormously controversial. Its supporters argue it will boost the economy, while environmentalists say the toxic oil could be spilled and that it encourages the use of tar sands, which produce more greenhouse gases than normal oil.
Extra carbon dioxide
Barack Obama must decide whether to allow its construction. On 25 June 2013, he mentioned Keystone XL in a speech about climate change. Obama said that the pipeline could be built only if it 鈥溾��. Now it seems it will.
The new study comes from and of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Seattle, Washington. They estimated how much building Keystone XL would affect oil prices. For every barrel of extra oil obtained from tar sands as a result of the pipeline, global oil consumption would increase by 0.6 barrels, because the extra oil would lower oil prices and encourage people to use more.
鈥淭he maths works out. The model is simple and straightforward,鈥� says of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
It makes sense, says Schnoor. 鈥淐ommon sense holds that the Keystone XL pipeline will increase supply from the Alberta oil sands region,鈥� he says. That鈥檚 because the bottleneck in the whole system is getting the oil to the refineries. 鈥淐anada has much more oil sands that could be brought into production if they had infrastructure to get it refined and to market.鈥�
Supply and demand
Yet Erickson and Lazarus鈥檚 study flies in the face of the official assessment by the US Department of State, the final version of which was . The DoS argued that Alberta鈥檚 oil sands would be exploited, and their carbon released, regardless of whether or not Keystone is built.
鈥淭heir sum conclusion is that Keystone doesn鈥檛 unlock the oil sands at all,鈥� says Erickson. 鈥淭hey just wave their hands and say zero. You end up scratching your head.鈥�
The US Environmental Protection Agency in April last year, when it was still a draft. The EPA said the DoS had not accounted for the market effects of increased oil supply through Keystone XL. 鈥淲e note that the discussion鈥� regarding energy markets, while informative, is not based on an updated energy-economic modelling effort,鈥� the EPA wrote.
Erickson and Lazarus鈥檚 analysis confirms the EPA鈥檚 suspicions. They say the DoS study failed to account for the effect of a flood of tar sands oil hitting the market through Keystone XL. Essentially, the DoS ignored the fundamental economic principle of supply and demand. When Erickson and Lazarus took this into account, it turned out Keystone XL will be about four times more carbon intensive than the DoS estimate.
It鈥檚 not clear the emissions would be quite as big as that, says of the University of California, Los Angeles. 鈥淚f this pipeline was not built, the materials and energy and labour would [be] allocated to some other project,鈥� he says. But he says that should not affect the overall conclusion.
Time to cut emissions
Obama is trying to cut the US鈥檚 greenhouse gas emissions, for instance clamping down on emissions from power stations. Erickson says not building Keystone offers instant emissions cuts, of a magnitude that the government is retooling entire industries over many years to achieve elsewhere. 鈥淸It鈥檚] a carbon saving policy that the US has at its fingertips,鈥� says Erickson.
鈥淭he combined effects of the standards for industrial boilers and cement kilns is just 20 to 60 million tonnes of CO2 a year,鈥� Erickson says. 鈥淓ven new power plants to be built by 2020 are expected to save 160 to 575 million tonnes annually.鈥�
鈥淲hen do we begin to stop?鈥� asks Schnoor. 鈥淚f not now, when? If one accepts that climate change is a very serious problem, and I do, one concludes that investing in infrastructure that will last 50 years or more is simply not prudent.
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