According to a recent international study, there are 425 known projects with the potential to release more than one gigatonne (Gt) of carbon dioxide if fully realized.
Only ten countries have more than ten of these projects, of which Canada ranks seventh.
Some of these projects are oil and gas, including the Montney Play, a roughly 130,000 sq km area stretching from just south of Fort Nelson to well south of Grande Prairie, including Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, and the area east of Tumbler Ridge.
According to the paper Carbon Bombs—Mapping key fossil fuel projects, the Montney is the world’s sixth largest of these carbon bombs, with the potential to release 13.7 Gt of carbon dioxide.
One of the proposed mines in the Tumbler Ridge area is also on the list. The underground Murray River project, which is still moving forward, albeit slowly, is Canada’s second largest carbon bomb, and the fifteenth largest in the world, which has the potential to release 8.5 Gt of carbon dioxide if all the coal reserves were extracted and burned. That’s more than ten times the amount of carbon dioxide the entire country produces in one year.
It is also the fourth largest coal mine project on the list, behind only Mongolia’s Tavan Tolgoi coal mine (16 Gt), currently not active, and two mines in China, which are.
Unlike the Montney, which is actively being developed, the Murray River project is moving along at a slow pace, as the mine’s owner—HD Mining—seeks backing to fund the mine. Over the next two years, the company plans to construct the ventilation shaft, in the hopes that this will meet the province’s rules of having a “substantial start” on the mine before the Environmental Certificate expires in 2025.
It’s one of three coal mines on the Canadian list. Also on the list are the proposed Gething Mine, west of Hudson Hope, being developed by CKD Mines, and the Fording River project, which tilts the scales at an estimated one Gt of carbon dioxide.
It is the only active coal mine in Canada considered a carbon bomb.
The other projects include two other natural gas formations in BC. The Liard Basin (1.2 Gt) shared with the Yukon, which is currently suspended, and the Spirit River Project (3 Gt), currently active, which is shared between BC and Alberta. The remaining projects are all in the Athabasca Oil Sands.
The largest projects are in the US. The Permian Delaware Tight project (27.8 Gt) and the Marcellus Shale (26.7 Gt) are the only two projects with a projected release of more than 20 Gt of carbon dioxide worldwide.
Despite ranking at the top of the list, with a potential of 332.9 Gt stored in carbon bombs, (more than twice that of the second place US) China has no project greater than 10 Gt. Instead, it has a whole lot of smaller (though still quite large) projects.
Between them, the 425 carbon bombs are forecasted to release 1,182.3 Gt of carbon dioxide, or twice the amount needed to push the world’s global temperature past the 1.5 degree target laid out in the Paris agreement.
But, say the paper’s authors, nearly half—40 percent—of these proposed carbon bombs are not yet active. The paper’s authors are part of a movement called “Keep it in the Ground”, which would see carbon resources not being mined.
“Defusing the [carbon bombs] could become an important dimension of climate change mitigation policy and activism towards meeting the Paris targets,” write the international array of authors, which includes Julia Higson of the University of British Columbia. “So far, few actors, mainly from civil society, are working on defusing carbon bombs, but they are focussing on a very limited number of them.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
