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Publish date: September 1, 2010
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The paper examines how various choices about the scale and type of the life cycle analysis applied to oil sands determine the GHG emissions results, as well as the technologies deemed adequate to reduce those emissions, and the perspectives and strategies of stakeholders.
The authors explain that this is why the literature offers widely diverging results. Estimates on oil sands emissions range from being over 5 times more emissions intensive than conventional oil, to being as low as 10% more intensive. According to the paper, both extremes can be defended “from an artful choice of the scale of analysis.”
The paper explains that the core of the discrepancy is whether or not energy intensity and GHG emissions are measured from well-to-tank (WTT) or over the full life cycle (well-to-wheels (WTW), from extraction of the resource through to the use of the fuel in a vehicle). About 60-80% of full life cycle emissions result from driving/operating a vehicle; if only the extraction emissions (WTT) are examined, oil sands show a relatively high value.
Bearing in mind this point, Bergerson and Keith move on to discuss whether it is worth investing in CCS to reduce these emissions even if it makes sense on paper. After all, conventional oil is drilled and used in greater quantities than oil from oil sands.
“Why then the focus on oil sands? One reason it makes strategic sense to focus on oil sands is that they represent the world’s first major step into extra-heavy unconventional oil. […] A growing supply of unconventional transportation fuels would tend to moderate oil prices and would drive up emissions on a life cycle basis”, reads the paper.
“We hope that developing better public domain life cycle analysis of the technical potential, costs, and environmental impacts of oil sands technologies along with transparent methods to describe the trade-offs involved in decarbonizing the transportation sector will help clarify the messy interaction of strategic interests and contradictory claims at play in the oil sands debate, increasing the chance of choosing an economically sound path to a carbon-neutral future,” the paper continues.
“CCS is a good alternative for capturing combustion-emission, but production emission are better solved by electrifying the production. Burning natural gas to extract heavy oil from tar sands does not make sense, with or without CCS,” says energy expert Goril Tjetland from Bellona.
Access the full paper here.
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