Danielle Smith Boosts Carbon Capture Over Renewables at CCUS Event

Despite a growing global consensus that carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology is too expensive and inefficient to be a viable climate change mitigation strategy, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith promoted CCUS over renewable energy sources in a public address on Tuesday.

Speaking to the crowd at the third annual Carbon Capture Canada conference in Edmonton, Smith said interest in CCUS “has never been greater” and that the controversial technology is “critical to decarbonization.”

The Prime Minister’s statements on CCUS contradict the evidence presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading source of information on climate change. The IPCC has determined that CCUS is the most expensive and least effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Alberta government created a carbon capture incentive program and spent C$1.8 billion over a decade to support CCS projects, namely Shell Canada’s Quest project and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL). In 2022, it was revealed that the Quest project, which converts fossil fuels into hydrogen, had emitted more carbon dioxide than was sequestered. A report by Environmental Defence found that ACTL, which received $495 million from the Alberta government, was operating at about 10 per cent of its capacity and was primarily used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). EOR extends the life of otherwise neglected oil wells and was the original application of CCUS.

DeSmog has been working on carbon capture for over a decade and consistently finds evidence that the fossil fuel sector is clearly committed to CCUS as a way to continue oil and gas production. In addition, major CCUS projects in Canada—such as the Pathways Alliance project—have been successful in avoiding environmental reviews by either the provincial or federal governments.

Despite significant opposition from experts, when asked why she still supports the development of CCUS, Smith responded that new technologies are expensive.

“When you look at the oil sands, they were never intended to generate any royalty revenue for our province,” Smith said. “And look where we are today.”

Subsidized failure

Canada’s oil sands are widely considered the dirtiest oil in the world, producing what some call a “carbon bomb.” In addition to its incredibly negative environmental impact, it is also incredibly expensive. Direct and indirect subsidies from the Canadian federal government exceed $65 billion between 2019 and 2023.

“We want to preserve the ability of our energy sector to continue to grow while reducing emissions,” Smith said. “I think we’ve been given a kind of false choice, that we have to choose between our emissions and developing oil and gas. I look at it differently. We can develop oil and gas and reduce emissions.”

Smith’s belief that carbon emissions can be reduced while maintaining cuts in oil and gas production is at the heart of the controversy surrounding CCUS. The industry has consistently exaggerated its carbon capture efficiency—a recent Greenpeace report found that while Quest avoids less than a million tons of emissions per year, oil sands emissions have increased by 50 million tons since Quest began in 2006, and by 16 million tons since it came online in 2016.

In addition, Greenpeace found that Shell made about C$200 million selling carbon credits for reductions that never happened. When this amount is added to direct subsidies given to Shell for the Quest project, Canadian taxpayers footed 93 percent of the total cost of this nearly billion-dollar project.

Smith’s anti-renewable position

Although CCUS has consistently failed to live up to politicians’ expectations and the promises of the oil and gas sector, in her speech at the convention, Prime Minister Smith argued that it was renewable energy that had failed. She repeated this later in the scrum when asked whether CCUS was worth the cost, rather than building wind turbines or equipping homes with solar panels, two climate change solutions widely supported by environmentalists, as is the IPCC.

“It’s also pretty expensive,” Smith said. “I think we have to be realistic. I know there’s an ideology out there that suggests solar, wind and batteries are the answer to all problems, and we know that’s not true.”

DeSmog interrupted, saying the issue was not one of ideology but of science.

“I’ll tell you what the science says,” Smith said. “When it’s minus 30 degrees in January, wind turbines don’t work. Solar panels don’t work.”

That’s not true. While winter conditions can be harsh, with proper cold weather preparation, wind turbines can operate normally, even if it’s sleet or snow. And because solar cells act like semiconductors, they actually perform better at lower temperatures, even with reduced daylight hours. Solar panels have been powering space stations for more than 50 years.

Continuing her opposition to renewables, Smith also claimed that batteries only provide one hour of power in cold weather. Smith has made similar claims about battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the past, which have been questioned by experts as “ideologically driven.” While operating in extremely cold environments poses significant technical challenges to implementing BESS in polar or northern climates, a recent study published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development suggests that significant progress has been made.

“We’ve had 15 near-misses on our grid in the last 18 months,” Smith said, “and I can’t operate in a fantasy world. I have to operate in a world of affordability and reliability, and natural gas is going to be a necessary part of being able to mitigate emissions.”

While extreme cold has strained Alberta’s power grid in the winter of 2023 and 2024, it doesn’t appear to be due to an overreliance on renewable energy. In fact, the Smith government imposed a moratorium on renewable energy development in the province in August 2023, a decision that put billions of dollars in clean energy development at risk in the province. Citing internal documents obtained through an freedom of information request, The Narwhal revealed that the Smith government made false statements and that the halt was not initiated — as it claimed — by the provincial utilities regulator. DeSmog also reported that Smith’s statements opposing the use of batteries as part of the transition from fossil fuels to power generation were ideologically motivated. The ultimate culprit for the province’s electricity woes was not an overreliance on renewable energy — which had been halted before the winter — but rather inaccurate supply forecasts by Alberta Electric Systems Operator, significant exports to other jurisdictions, and the simultaneous shutdown of several gas-fired power plants in the province. Ironically, it was the province’s wind and solar assets that apparently prevented a complete grid collapse.

DeSmog asked Smith why Alberta is reluctant to shore up its power grid with additional renewable energy systems, but one of the premier’s aides interrupted his answer.

As she walked away, she said, “We’re just not going to agree on this. But I appreciate your questions.”