A standard of perfection

Let's review a very interesting turn of events in the fate of Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMEP).

If you recall, back in May of 2017, the Federal Government (actually, a Trudeau-appointed “expert panel") wanted to uproot the National Energy Board from its  Calgary, AB headquarters and move it to Ottawa, ON to "provide a stronger connection to the seat of the federal government". The outpouring of letters from industry and concerned public cited this move as "irresponsible and misguided". The panel's report determined that Calgary-- a city with the highest per capita concentration of oil and gas engineers, operators, scientists, traders, equipment manufacturers, service companies, etc. --is a "biased" location to serve as command centre to the organization who exists to regulate pipelines, energy development and trade in the Canadian public interest (in comparison to the well-suited environment that Ottawa could have offered with its welcome wagon of politicians who are "experts" in oil and gas).

The good news is that this moving plan has been scrapped. The bad news is that the Liberals are now chewing on the idea of replacing the NEB entirely. We'll discuss this another day.

Under the original ownership by KinderMorgan, the TMEP project has suffered a litany of court injunctions, delays, appeals, public hearings, political grandstanding, conditional approvals, and protests (excellent summary of events here).  On May 29, 2018 the Federal Government purchased the TMEP project from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion. The transaction was motivated by the government’s belief that they were the entity best positioned to complete construction of the project. The government announced that the project was in the national best interest after remaining fairly silent on the matter for years during the original strife (and mass exodus of foreign investment across the energy industry as a whole).

Today, August 30th, the Government of Canada found itself in the interesting position of falling short on their ability to meet their own rules. How ironic. At the Federal Court of Appeal, the Government of Canada was told the approval of Trans Mountain was overturned on the basis that the "Government of Canada failed to fulfil the legal duty to consult Indigenous peoples". The title of today's post was inspired by this line in the Federal Court of Appeal's executive summary:  "while in law Canada is not to be held to a standard of perfection it failed to engage in meaningful dialogue  and grapple with the real concerns of the Indigenous applicants so as to explore possible accommodation of those concerns".  Second to that, the decision to overturn the approval rests with the failings of the NEB's process and findings which  were "so flawed" that the Governor in Council could not reasonable rely on the Board's report.

Does this count as gross incompetence? The Government sets the mandate for the NEB, is aware of the conditions to get the pipeline constructed, and fails to meet their own standards on consultation. Specifically, the government fell short in a stage called Phase III-- which is the part where stakeholders engage in meaningful two-way dialogue.

In regards to the NEB's fatal error-- the exclusion of tanker traffic from the scope of the assessment-- are we misguided in expecting there to be airtight science when the assessment limits remain undefined? I continue to scratch my head over the logic of upstream and downstream impacts. Someone please tell me where that stream, in either direction, begins and ends. Take it from someone who has spent their career going ten thousand feet deep on one very tiny branch of science (anti-corrosion coatings) and I could find many examples myself of areas that the report fails to address. The NEB's report, according to the Governor in Council, came to the conclusion that "notwithstanding the operation of project-related marine vessels likely to result in significant adverse affects to the Southern resident killer whale, the project was not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects“.

Let's pretend for a minute that a similar pseudo-governmental body exists to regulate the manufacture of petroleum based consumer products (I'm laughing out loud here because Canadians are now obsessed only with the environmental cost of carbon liberation in their backyard, yet oblivious to the ecosystem of lifecycle impacts of their favourite products). Today, this fictitious organization is tasked with deciding on approval of the manufacture of an iPhone. The consultations begin, taking time to engage all countries to ensure fair process and stakeholder engagement-- China, Mongolia, US, Korea, Taiwan, France, Italy, etc. The environmental lifecycle assessment (LCA) impact report, developed by this company's team of leading scientists and economists, cites issues:

•  in extraction of raw materials (chemical slurry leaching into groundwater during rare earth metal extraction in China and Mongolia, just to name one small example),

• recycling difficulty (final product mix becomes complex and difficult to segregate individual recyclable components)

• environmentally costly materials (hazardous chemical inclusion)

• GHG emissions associated with distribution (Apple most often choose air freight to shorten delivery times, at the cost of about $121,000 in fuel each time a Boeing 777 leaves China for the US)

• short lifespan of product (marketing intent to replace every 1-2 years)

Shut it down. No iPhones today. 

Well obviously, we do not live in this world. The oil and gas industry is the only segment of our economy that answers to a Board that bears the burden of having to assess and deliberate on “lifecycle costs”.

Infinitely flexible are the standards and conditions with which we continue to burden the development of Canadian energy. For any of you who closely follow my work and many be wondering, "hey Chels, aren't you the one that advocated at the Federal level for the development of lifecycle impact tools to help differentiate good vs bad in the clean tech world?" Yes, that was me. And this story proves my point. The definition of start and end are abstract, clearly. The tools by which we measure impact are under construction. The very people I spoke to agree that the scorecard for lifecycle impacts is still in the early stages of development. As are the acceptance criteria!

So why are we expecting the NEB alone to develop, implement and perfect the use of cradle to grave thinking? This is crippling our economy.

References:

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/73760/462_ready.pdf