Keystone XL Pipeline Owner TransCanada Named 'World Climate Leader'

The London-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which serves as a vehicle for businesses to report their greenhouse gas emissions, has issued its first-ever Climate Performance Leadership Index, revealing its “A List” of corporate citizens who are doing the most to respond to climate change.

kxltc — “It’s fascinating to learn that TransCanada’s relentless push to foul our land, water and climate has earned them the title of ‘world leader’ on climate, and that they actually have a vice-president dedicated to ‘community and sustainability,’” said Bold Nebraska activist Jane Kleeb.

Our experience working with more than 4,500 companies shows the multitude of benefits for companies that report their environmental impacts, unveiling risks and previously unseen opportunities,” writes CDP CEO Paul Simpson in the report’s introduction. “We are standing at a juncture in history. With the prospect of a global climate deal coming from the United Nations process, governments, cities, the private sector and civil society have a great opportunity to take bold actions and build momentum in the run up to the Paris 2015 meeting.”

One of the bold actions taken by CDP is to name TransCanada—the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline—a “global climate performance leader.” While TransCanada has investments in solar, wind and hydro power, it’s best known for the unfavorable attention its attracted over the past six years for its proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline to ship tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. With delays in the Keystone XL, due to environmental and community opposition, TransCanada recently shifted its attention to building the even larger Energy East pipeline across continental Canada to ports in Quebec and New Brunswick.

Yet the report says, “TransCanada is building a competitive advantage over competitors by focusing on investing in low-carbon infrastructure that has and may continue to be a core element of our continued capital program.”

Needless to say, Keystone XL opponents don’t look at TransCanada as a paragon of “low-carbon infrastructure.” Bold Nebraska, which has worked to prevent the pipeline from crossing that state, expressed disbelief in a statement titled, TransCanada Rewarded for Reckless Development With Bizarre Climate Award.

“In a press release that reads like satire, TransCanada announced yesterday that they’ve been ‘recognized as world leader for corporate action on climate change,’ apparently as a reward for fighting tooth and nail to build the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and recklessly expand development of the dirtiest, most carbon-heavy fuel source on the planet with no regard for the impact on the climate or the land and water along risky pipeline routes,” Bold Nebraska’s statement said.

“It’s fascinating to learn that TransCanada’s relentless push to foul our land, water and climate has earned them the title of ‘world leader’ on climate, and that they actually have a vice-president dedicated to ‘community and sustainability,’” said Bold Nebraska activist Jane Kleeb. “I’m very curious to know where that person was when TransCanada was threatening landowners with seizure of their land through eminent domain the first day they rode into town or when they were asking landowners to pray with a fake preacher before offering them a fraction of what their land was worth. I wonder where they were when inspectors found hundreds of dangerous defects in Keystone’s southern leg. Were they being ‘world leaders’ on climate and the environment then?”

“The only thing TransCanada is a leader in is exploiting the world’s dirtiest oil,” added Luísa Abbott Galvão of Friends of the Earth.

The Sierra Club was also not impressed.

“Tar sands are the dirtiest, most carbon intensive oil on earth, releasing up to 22 percent more carbon pollution than conventional oil,” said Kate Colarulli of Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil campaign. “TransCanada, as a company that seeks to expand market access for this climate-polluting fuel, is a climate laggard. The State Department, the U.S. EPA, climate scientists and even Wall Street and industry analysts agree that TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will create massive amounts of carbon pollution and TransCanada’s new proposed pipeline, Energy East, is a climate disaster. Rejecting TransCanada’s tar sands pipelines are some of the most important decisions we can make to protect our kids from a future filled with wildfires, droughts, floods and super storms caused by climate change.”

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Energy East Pipeline: TransCanada’s Keystone XL on Steroids

Judge Sides With Landowners, Strikes Down Eminent Domain Law Allowing Keystone XL

State Department Releases Final Environmental Impact Statement on Keystone XL Pipeline

Comments

Steven Cohen

Plummeting oil prices will doom the planned tar sands expansion and the need for the Keystone pipeline since the oil price will be below the cost of production.
Dutchman61

The Canadian oil sands crude will replace the Venezuelan crude in the market and it will reduce CO2. The ultra heavy goo out of Venezuela is a nightmare and the existing refineries are finding they can meet almost all the new EPA limits by changing to the Canadian oil sands crude. EPA rules will shut down 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports.

There is also a third big pipeline underway to the Pacific that will ship to China. When the Keystone XL is built (and it will be), Canada will have the ability to ship 7 million barrels of oil sand crude a day for the next 250 years. The fight over the Keystone has only delayed things a little while in the grand scheme. While waiting the Canadians have been adding capacity to process the oil sands and they can now produce 4.8 million barrels of crude a day rising to over 7 million barrels by 2020. All that is holding it back is the infrastructure to ship it. If the environmental lobby actually found a way to kill the Keystone, it would not have really mattered. The line to the Atlantic allowed for a second pipe to be added outside the reach of US activists. There was never any real chance of stopping the development of the oil sands. A better solution would have been to have developed cleaner and better refining tech.

And the issue about the price drop is not significant. 10 years ago it cost $78 per barrel to produce the oil sands crude. That cost is now down to $44 and falling. When the pipelines are in place, costs will be comparable to most oil world wide due to shipping costs and only about $6-8 more than Saudi crude delivered to either Europe or Texas. The Canadians have paid for most of the true costs during the $100/barrel era. In fact, efforts to keep oil high to ration customer’s use have in fact backfired. The heavy costs to develop shale oil and oil sands technology are mature and PAID FOR thanks to the $100 stuff, and the costs to add additional production have fallen dramatically. Most shale oil in the US is down to $28 per barrel which compares well to the $25.barrel cost of Saudi oil delivered to the tankers. The Middle east producers face an additional $20 shipping to the US. The true price of a barrel of oil is the cost to buy and deliver it to the refinery.

In addition, most of the oil producers need $80 (Saudi) or higher ($100 Russia, $105 Iran) prices to pay for their welfare and government programs. US and Canadian producers do not carry that burden and make big profits at $60-80 per barrel.
Donald Baker

I always used to believe that our Northerly neighbor was a environmentally conscience nation but I’m having a rude awakening.
- JessFlagg
  
  Not as long as Harper remains PM we’re not. We apologize & will try to vote him out.

Keystone XL Pipeline Owner TransCanada Named ‘World Climate Leader’

The London-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which serves as a vehicle for businesses to report their greenhouse gas emissions, has issued its first-ever Climate Performance Leadership Index, revealing its “A List” of corporate citizens who are doing the most to respond to climate change.

Comments

Insights

SPONSORS / ADVERTISERS