Climate change and Energy East

The oil sands in Alberta, a project so vast its impact on the natural environment can be seen from space.
The oil sands in Alberta, a project so vast its impact on the natural environment can be seen from space.

TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline would significantly increase Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Primarily an export project, it would facilitate a 40 per cent expansion of the oil sands in western Canada, increasing national greenhouse gas emissions by 32 million tonnes — more emissions currently generated by all four of the Atlantic provinces combined.

Canada’s oil sands are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.  Increasing the number of pipelines enables the product to flow and aids in the expansion of oil sands extraction and the burning of fossil fuels. It is now well-accepted by the scientific community that a large portion of our fossil fuel reserves – about 80% — must remain in the ground in order to keep below a a 2-degree increase in global temperatures and avoid catastrophic climate change.

Despite such widespread consensus about our energy future, the National Energy Board has refused to conduct an analysis of the project’s contribution to our greenhouse gas accounting and even barred Canadians from commenting on the pipeline’s contribution to climate change in its recent call for public participation in the national review process.

In March 2015, more than 100,000 Canadians called on the National Energy Board to consider climate change in its review of Energy East.

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