Energize Alberta Jan - Feb 2011

Oil & Gas

Power

Renewables

Five oilsands visionaries who changed the industry

Energy conservation could save Albertans billions

Bioenergy sector looks to get back on track

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page 23

page 18

January/February 2011

team where energy, the economy, and the environment intersect

Safety first Enform and the oil and gas sector continue to work to reduce incidents on the job Paul Wells Energize Alberta

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ith operations often conducted in rugged locales, performed in less than optimum weather conditions and requiring complex equipment and machinery to execute, Alberta’s oil and gas industry and its employees in the field must deal with inherent risks uncommon to most other sectors.

So it doesn’t come as a surprise that ensuring the health and safety of front-line workers and the general public is paramount within Alberta’s oilpatch. And while the vast majority of oil and natural gas companies operating in the province follow stringent health and safety guidelines, it’s a

not-for-profit entity called Enform that weaves the intricate health and safety protocols of the various industry players into a net of best practices and training programs.

As the training, certification, and health and safety services arm of the upstream petroleum industry, Enform takes its role seriously.

“We’re a high-hazard industry. The list of potential hazards is pretty easy to highlight — obviously fires and explosions, mechanical hazards, falls from rigs. We have more than our share of really hazardous activities,” says Wally Baer, president of Enform.

“So that ups the ante for the whole industry to make sure that we have the fundamentals of safety in place. It is things like ❯❯ continued on page 2

players Left to right: Lanny McDonald, Srecko Zizakovic and Dan Rashovich

From the ice and the gridiron to the oilpatch majors Jacqueline Louie Energize Alberta

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he competitive arena of the professional sports world can serve as excellent preparation for the business world.

In Western Canada, many former athletes have moved on to successful careers in the oil and gas industry after their pro careers were over. Here are a few of them:

Lanny McDonald What former Calgary Flames captain Lanny McDonald learned playing pro sports has served him well in the business world.

“We have quickly found out when you’re hiring people, that if they’ve played team sports, they get it very quickly,” says McDonald, who handles marketing and business development at oilfield service company Baker Hughes.

Born and raised in Hanna, Alta., McDonald played for the Flames from 1981 to 1989. After retiring from the game, he continued on with the Flames for 10 more years as vice-president of community relations, marketing and business development. Soon after he left the Flames organization, McDonald was approached by a headhunter about going to work in the oilpatch.

McDonald, 57, who is active in the sports community as a Calgary Flames alumnus, thinks that playing sports brings invaluable experience to those who get involved. “Team players are what every company should be looking for,” he says.

“If you play team sports as a youngster, you find out where you fit in and it really sets you up for life. If you have put yourself out there [in sports], you’ve got an inner confidence that you’ll find a way to get this done. And then it’s making sure you surround yourself with good people.”

Dan Rashovich Former Saskatchewan Roughrider Dan Rashovich loves his job in the oilpatch. “It’s kind of like football,” says Rashovich, a business development representative in Baker Hughes’ explorers group, which markets all Baker Hughes product lines to engineering companies and smaller operators. “I like the winning, I like the sense of accomplishment and doing a good job for the customer.”

Rashovich played in the Canadian Football League for 16 years. An allstar linebacker, he played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders from 1987 to 1999, including their 1989 Grey Cup championship team.

Originally from Toronto, Rashovich holds a BA degree in physical geography, and a Bachelor of Education degree, which he earned at the University of Regina while playing with the Riders.

Now 50, Rashovich retired from pro sports in 1999 when he was in his ❯❯ continued on page 4

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Continued from page 1

Safety first hazard identification and control, communication to workers, leadership of management, good supervision — all of which are the fundamentals of health and safety in any industry.

But I’ll say it again — the ante is higher for us just because of the number of serious hazards we face.”

Baer says that Enform acts as the advocate and leading resource for the continuous improvement of industry’s safety performance. Established by industry for industry, Enform helps companies achieve their safety goals by promoting shared safety practices and providing effective training, expert audit services and professional advice.

1988

2003

2009

Drilling

12.50

3.84

1.09

Service Rigs

12.10

2.83

1.01

Oilfield Services

—

2.09

1.00

Oilfield Trucking

—

5.97

2.12

Geophysical

18.80

4.30

1.90 (2007)

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Energize Alberta is published six times a year by an alliance consisting of JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group, Great West Newspaper Group and Farm Business Communications, all members of Glacier Media Inc., in association with an advisory board consisting of industry professionals. Energize Alberta is circulated to approximately half-a-million Albertans, in rural and urban settings.

President & CEO Bill Whitelaw

Injury rates among contracting industries have dropped substantially over the past 20 years — even during the recent boom.

“The industry has made tremendous strides over the past 20 years or so.

The industry, literally by an order of magnitude, has improved its injury rate,” Baer says, adding that while this is an impressive achievement, industry shouldn’t rest on its laurels.

“It’s good to recognize this improvement, but it’s also important to recognize that the things that are left

including industry recommended practices, safety alerts and updates, and petroleum safety conferences. To achieve this, the association’s portfolio of more than 120 industryleading training programs covers safety, operations, technology and environmental management. Each year, more than 150,000 Enform students take advantage of the group’s offerings in an effort to

the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors — all Enform products and services are developed in consultation with industry.

“One of the key benefits of a safety association is we can help the industry — its major corporations to its smaller contractors — standardize some of their approaches towards health and safety,” Baer says, adding that enhanced health and safety performance also requires the “self-determination” of individual companies.

“We don’t go in and dictate to anybody what to do. But if we can get consensus from all the players that are affected by these hazards and are motivated to control them, then we can bring some standardization to the private corporate approaches that both producers and contractors will pursue on their own anyway.”

While the oil and gas sector continues to improve its safety record, Baer notes that it hasn’t done a great job in telling its story about the progress in health and safety performance.

“I think we in the industry need to do a better job about getting the message out about what the industry has actually done. Oil and gas is an easy target for many reasons, and I’m not being defensive of that because I think we bring some of that on ourselves,” Baer says.

“But when we do well, when we have good-news stories, it’s almost like we’re reluctant to speak about it because we don’t want to draw more attention to ourselves. But this is a good-news story and I think it’s something for the industry to be proud of.”

Injury rates among contracting industries have dropped substantially over the past 20 years – even during the recent boom.

Enform’s Wally Baer “Our vision is no workrelated incidents or injuries in the Canadian upstream oil and gas industry,” Baer says.

A lofty goal, to be sure.

But it’s also one that the industry continues to aim toward. Baer notes that over the past 20 years, injury rates have dropped substantially, even during last decade’s boom years when activity in the sector was at a fever pitch and many workers were inexperienced green hands.

According to Workers’ Compensation Board statistics, lost-time claim rates for drilling rig workers have fallen from 12.5 for every 100 person-years in 1988 to 3.84 in 2003 to 1.09 in 2009.

Similarly, rates for service rig workers dropped from 12.1 in 1988 to 2.83 in 2003 to 1.01 in 2009. The services and trucking segments of the oilfield industry also had similar decreases, while rates for geophysical employees declined from a remarkably high 18.8 in 1988 to a more modest 1.9 in 2007.

ABOUT US

Lost-time claim rates (per 100 person-years)

“The vision is zero injuries, and the mission for Enform is to continue to provide the tools to the industry to help achieve that. So let’s not take our foot off the gas pedal.”

— Wally Baer, President, Enform to do to get us to zero are even harder than the fundamentals we’ve put in place to achieve what we have over the last 20 years.

The vision is zero injuries, and the mission for Enform is to continue to provide the tools to the industry to help achieve that,” he says.

“So let’s not take our foot off the gas pedal.”

Enform’s mandate Baer says Enform’s mandate is to develop safe work practices through a range of services and resources,

update their skills and increase their understanding of health and safety issues.

Because Enform is owned, directed and partially funded by the six main upstream petroleum industry trade associations — the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, the Small Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, the Canadian Association of Geophysical Contractors,

Staff Photographer Aaron Parker

Editorial

Sales and Administration

Publisher & Editor Stephen Marsters Associate Editors Deborah Jaremko Paul Wells Editorial Assistance Joseph Caouette

Sales Manager – Advertising Maurya Sokolon Account Executive Rhonda Helmeczi Sales Nick Drinkwater Nicole Kiefuik Diana Signorile Administration Sandy Flaherty

Creative

Art Director Ken Bessie Production, Pre-Press and Print Manager Michael Gaffney Designers Andrew Brien Birdeen Selzer

Website

Web Manager Chris Fleming

Find out more about us online at energizealberta.com, and send your feedback to yourenergy@energizealberta.com.

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Discover more online at energizealberta.com

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heck out energizealberta.com for additional stories, polls, a link to the Energy IQ quiz and a searchable archive of past editions. You can also comment on our stories and forward them to friends.

In addition, the site houses a directory of key players on the energy literacy stage.

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

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Whither energy literacy?

Calling all

students!

Teachers, take note — this makes an excellent class project!

writing contest for students Energize Alberta invites school-aged kids to write an essay on any topic related to energy production or use in Alberta.

Why is it important to know about where energy comes from and how it’s used?

What do you think about Alberta’s oil and gas sector? Should Alberta use more renewable energy?

Essays should be no less than 250 words and not exceed 800 words: 400–600 words would be ideal. Deadline for submission is March 1, 2011. The winning entries will be published online and in the May/June 2011 edition of Energize Alberta.

There are three competition categories: Grades 3–5, Grades 6–8 and Grades 9–12.

Winning entries in each category will receive an Apple iPad. Please mail entries by March 1, 2011, to: Energize Alberta, 2nd Floor, 816 - 55 Avenue NE, Calgary, AB, T2E 6Y4.

You can also email entries to yourenergy@energizealberta.com.

Bill Whitelaw Energize Alberta

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hat will be a key question in 2011 confronting the organizations, companies and individuals who believe heightened levels of “energy literacy” are critical to the way ordinary Albertans will navigate the complexities of new and exciting — but often confusing and confounding — energy challenges.

Energize Alberta was created in 2010 by JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group to contribute to the growing energy literacy momentum. Our philosophy is based on two simple linked premises: a style of “literacy” journalism and storytelling that aims to teach and entertain simultaneously, and a focus on demonstrating how energy impacts and intersects the lives of ordinary people. We tell those stories in the “sweet spot” of where energy, the economy and the environment intersect — not just in an oil and gas context, but for power and utilities, and renewables and alternative energy.

We wanted Energize Alberta to be something of a co-ordinator; that is, we didn’t want to duplicate any of the wonderful energy literacy efforts that already exist. Rather, we wanted to help be part of the process by which these efforts were brought into closer synchronization with each other — and to be another tool for people to

“self-improve” on their own energy literacy efforts.

We also sought to bring together some of the solitudes that define this province, and in this sense, there’s no other publication like Energize Alberta.

First, the size of its circulation is significant: more than 180,000 copies are distributed each issue, reaching nearly 500,000 Albertans. And while in this case, size does matter, the real uniqueness flows from the distribution structure: Energize Alberta links the urban energy and business centres of Calgary and Edmonton with the province’s farm and rural households. Energize Alberta is distributed to more than 40,000 farms and 130,000 rural households, in addition to mailed distribution to the two downtowns. As well, many companies and organizations take thousands of copies and distribute them within their own networks.

With five issues under our belts, it’s clear we’re on the right track.

Reader response has been terrific and demand for copies is growing beyond our existing distribution. We’re sensing a real appetite for people-driven energy content that takes readers beyond the gas pump and light switch to a better understanding of energy and the role it plays in our lives.

Some thanks are in order First, to the very diverse and talented group of advisors who give their time to guide the focus and direction

of Energize Alberta. They’re the real experts, and in many ways, the newspaper’s lifeblood. You can see their names on page 8. Second, thanks must go to the companies and organizations that support this energy literacy effort financially. They understand the importance of telling energy stories in an informative and engaging fashion that brings communities together, instead of dividing them.

New for 2011 We are continuing to improve Energize Alberta’s digital offering (www.energizealberta.com), which makes the publication available to a global audience. As always, we’re interested in your thoughts and comments. As well, in 2011 we will publish two special theme issues: education (April) and water (October).

These editions will allow us to focus specifically on important issues across a broad range of energyrelated dimensions.

On a delightful side note Energize Alberta was guided in its first year by the capable hand of JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group editorial director Stephen Marsters.

With its March/April issue, Energize Alberta will be steered by editor Paul Wells, who is stepping out of the group’s reporting pool to take on this new assignment. Stephen is moving on to head the group’s prestigious Daily Oil Bulletin.

Committed to the

people and communities where we work and live. www.conocophillips.ca www.energizealberta.com

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

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Team players late 30s, and moved into the business world after a friend told him about an opportunity to open a temporary staffing agency in Regina. He was transferred to Calgary because he wanted to be close to his sons.

In Calgary, Rashovich taught high school and junior high for a year and a half before he returned to working in sales. Then someone he knew through coaching football suggested that he go to work in the oilpatch. That was five years ago, and Rashovich hasn’t looked back since.

“I’m pretty happy,” he says, listing all of the things he likes about his job. “Our customers expect to have a job well done, and we want to do the best job we can as a service company. If we are both doing a good job, we all win.”

He likes the dynamics at work — “it’s always changing” — and the fact that work sometimes takes him back to Saskatchewan.

Because he played for the Roughriders, Rashovich really enjoys going back into the community, doing football camps and getting involved whenever he can. His wife, Laura Herasymuik, is originally from Saskatchewan, and they have strong ties with family and friends in the province.

Srecko Zizakovic As a coach, “I always tell kids everyone is going to get knocked on their butts and face adversity. That’s a fact of life,” says Srecko Zizakovic, a former Calgary Stampeder. “It’s not so much, ‘Are you going to get knocked down?’ it’s, ‘What are you going to do when you get knocked down?’

You jump back up with more vinegar in you, and work hard to achieve more after that.”

Zizakovic, 44, is used to winning. He was part of championship teams in high school, college and at the pro level, as a member of the Stampeders’ 1992 Grey Cup championship team. The lessons he learned in sports have served him well throughout his life. “It’s that constant pushing of yourself and demanding of yourself to find what the

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next level is,” he explains.

“It’s being a self-starter and goal-oriented. In the world of pro sports, if you’re not a self-starter you’re not going to be in anybody’s program for very long. At the pro level, coaches aren’t there to motivate you, they’re there to teach you the finer points. So if you don’t get yourself ready mentally and physically, then you’re going to be out of a job in a very short period of time.”

Zizakovic grew up in Toronto, where he played high school sports and earned a football scholarship to Ohio State University. He was drafted to Calgary in 1990, where he played defensive lineman in a six-year career with the Stampeders.

After retiring from the Stamps in 1996 at the age of 29, Zizakovic began working in corporate sales, then went to work at furniture manufacturer Smed International as a global

helped me be successful in the sports world, I did in the business world as well, to help take me to the next level.”

Over the years, Zizakovic has maintained his connection to sports by coaching football, and in the last couple of years he has been coaching five- and six-year-olds in novice hockey. “My little guy has gotten into Timbits hockey,” he says. “I was

You’re not always successful, you’re not always going to get your goal. That’s quite common in sports — at the end of the season, only one team can win a championship.”

A western division allstar in 1994, Laird won the Tom Pate Memorial Award for community service, and was a three-time President’s Ring winner with the Stamps, presented annually to the player who

“Team players are what every company should be looking for. If you play team sports as a youngster, you find out where you fit in and it really sets you up for life.

If you have put yourself out there [in sports], you’ve got an inner confidence that you’ll find a way to get this done. And then it’s making sure you surround yourself with — Lanny McDonald, Former Calgary Flame good people.”

Former Eskimo Bayne Norrie, right, receives the 2010 CFL Alumni Man of the Year of Award from his former teammate Hector Pothier. account manager. “I learned a lot. It was tremendous in terms of learning and really understanding sales, marketing, managing clients’ expectations and servicing clients. I loved the company and I loved the people I worked with, but the industry just didn’t pay well enough,” he says. When his second child was born, he quickly realized he needed to find a job in a betterpaying industry, and turned to the oilpatch. He is now an executive key account manager at Baker Hughes, where he has worked for nearly seven years, initially starting out as a technical account representative with Baker Oil Tools.

“It’s been great. All of the things I did that

played with the team from 1990 to 1996. “However, I saw a lot of people my age enjoying success in the oil and gas industry. I felt that if I kept playing football and entered into the industry in my mid- to late 30s, that I would be too far behind.”

After Sapunjis left the Stampeders, he worked as a salesperson at a small private company for several years, selling steel to the oil and gas market.

assistant coach last year for my son’s team, and I’m head coach this year. It’s a lot of fun. I find it a very high position of responsibility, when you can have such an impact on little kids’ minds. At this point, if I can get them to switch on a couple of things then I’ve done my job to turn these little kids into positive teenagers and positive youth moving forward.”

David Sapunjis David Sapunjis, president of Continental Alloys and Services, finished his football career when he was 29 years old. “I believe I could have played many more years,” says the former wide receiver for the Calgary Stampeders, who

In 2004, he went over to Continental Alloys and Services as managing partner for Canada. He now heads the international company, which is focused on the steel sector of the oil and gas business, providing casing, tubing and other steel pipe for oil and gas companies and major service companies.

“I believe that in sports and in business, you have to understand how to get along with your teammates or employees,” Sapunjis says. “You have to support them, and if you are a leader you also have to guide them along.”

Sapunjis was named the Grey Cup’s Most Valuable Canadian three times.

Stu Laird Former Calgary Stampeder Stu Laird says there are many skills that transfer over from the sports world to business, including hard work, dealing with rejection, re-evaluating and committing to do better. “You’ve got to put the time in, particularly with anything related to sales,” says Laird, 50, who played on the defensive line with the Stamps from 1984 to 1996. “There are going to be lots of failures. Not everybody is going to return your call or buy from you.

demonstrates excellence on the football field with leadership, inspiration and motivational skills.

After leaving the professional sports world, he worked in downhole production tool sales for four years, then at a directional drilling firm for six years. Two years ago, he moved over to Compass Directional Services. Laird chose the oilpatch because “that’s where most of the opportunities are,” and he had friends who had played football who were doing well in the industry.

One of his initial challenges was his lack of field experience, which he worked hard to make up for in other areas, such as customer service and communication.

Now Laird handles business development at Compass Directional Services in Calgary, which provides directional and horizontal well performance drilling services to the oil and gas industry.

Laird has been president of the CFL Players’ Association for nearly 10 years.

Bayne Norrie In sports and in business, “there is a different game every day, but you want to win as many of those

games as you can,” says former Edmonton Eskimo Bayne Norrie.

Chief executive officer and co-owner of Edmonton-based Invicta Machining & Valve Manufacturing, which manufactures parts for drilling rigs, Norrie, 66, also thinks the ability to handle stress is important in both sports and business. “In my last two years of university and in the CFL, I played predominantly on the defensive side as a defensive back.

As a defensive back, you end up being in situations where if you mess up, there could be a touchdown,” he says. “So you have to learn how to handle stress. If you make a mistake, you have to be able to put it behind you and move on in the proper direction.” Learning to work productively in a team environment is another essential skill that he gained while playing sports.

Norrie’s resume, in both sports and business, is extensive. He played junior A hockey in North Bay, Ont., and university hockey for two years at Queen’s University. He earned a BA degree in math from Queen’s, a physical education degree and an MBA. He was captain and MVP while on the Queen’s Golden Gaels football team. He played with the Edmonton Eskimos from 1968 to 1976, and was selected to the CFL all-star team in 1972.

While still with the Eskimos, Norrie articled as a chartered accountant and joined a real estate firm as vice-president of finance, later becoming the company’s executive vice-president after retiring from the Eskimos at the age of 31. His business career also encompassed consulting, serving as vice-president of a trust company and starting a holiday charter airline.

Norrie was approached to carry forward a valve design into patent registration and production, and in 1989 became founding director of Invicta.

He helped start the Edmonton Eskimo Alumni Association in 1986, and is the association’s founding president. He is secretary to the board of trustees at the CFL Players’ Pension Plan, and was awarded the 2010 CFL Alumni Man of the Year of Award.

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Five visionaries who changed the path of the oilsands industry, and the wall over which the sixth must lead the climb

Maintaining the faith

O

Peter McKenzie-Brown Energize Alberta

ilsands development continually hits a wall of some kind, presenting seemingly insurmountable obstacles — five times in the past, a visionary has led the charge over the wall, feathering the nest for the next stage of development. This is the idea behind

a presentation titled, “Visionaries: Climbing Over the Wall,” given by Clement Bowman, founding chairman of the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA).

Bowman is also former vice-president of Esso Petroleum Canada, president of the Alberta Research Council and research manager with Syncrude. Bowman is currently chairman of ProGrid Ventures, a consultancy and software provider for more effective business decision-making strategies.

He argues that the oilsands industry has hit another wall today, and is in need of another step-changing visionary.

1928: Dr.

Karl Clark

Karl Clark unlocked the mystery of how the hot-water bitumen extraction process works…. His six statements that defined the process have stood the test of time.

By the 1920s, it was clear that the commonly held theory that the oilsands were underlain by a huge pool of light source oil was not correct. Oilsands deposits were just what they appeared to be: huge amounts of sand saturated with thick, gunky bitumen.

Encouraged by government, some entrepreneurs tried paving roads with the stuff. This proved to not be a viable large-scale commercial enterprise.

Karl Clark Enter Bowman’s first visionary, a research chemist with his eyes on the oilsands.

Between 1923 and 1930, with tremendous determination and limited support from his employer, the newly created Alberta Research Council, he developed and demonstrated the hot-water bitumen extraction process that, with some tweaks, is still used today at Alberta’s oilsands mines. His work made it clear that oil can indeed be extracted from the sands. His name was Karl Clark.

PEOPLE INNOVATION TECHNOLOGY www.savannaenergy.com

SAVANNA ENERGY SERVICES CORP.

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Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

1948: Alberta

Premier Ernest Manning

insistence, Sun Oil filed an application for a 31,500-barrel-per-day project (later amended to 45,000 barrels per day).

A letter from this visionary was read at the Energy Resources Conservation Board hearing for the project, which reportedly changed the dynamics of the meeting. It read, “I believe in the future of this project and I will put up my own money with no reservations if the permit is granted.”

It was, and the Great Canadian Oil Sands plant was built in 1967. Today the installation is known as Suncor. The name of this visionary is J. Howard Pew, then-chairman of Sun Oil.

Ernest Manning commissioned both the Bitumount demonstration plant and an independent evaluation report that said the oilsands were both commercially viable and competitive on the global market.

Over the next two decades a few small mining projects began producing. They were not commercially successful, however, and didn’t use Ernest Manning Clark’s extraction process. Each was eventually destroyed by fire. After the Second World 1972: War, there was no commercial interest in this intractable resource — especially after the 1947 Leduc discovery, which made it clear that large reservoirs of light oil were Frank Spragins maintained the faith and kept anxious available in the province of Alberta. project participants interested. It was he who chose Despite the legacy of failed commercial efforts, a the name Syncrude.

Canadian politician became Bowman’s next visionary.

In 1948, he arranged for the province to commission the Bitumount demonstration plant using Clark’s hot water process, and had the entire legislature visit the plant in 1949. He also commissioned an independent evaluation

by Sidney Blair, an oilsands expert who began his oilsands career as Karl Clark’s research assistant. Blair concluded that the oilsands were “a commercially viable source of crude oil that could compete on the world market.” The visionary’s name was Ernest Manning, Alberta’s longestserving premier.

The industry acquired additional oilsands properties and undertook experiments in minable oilsands development in the 1950s and 1960s. For his part, Manning maintained a life-long belief in the importance of the sands to Canada.

Frank Spragins

Founding Syncrude president Frank Spragins

1967: Sun

Oil chairman J. Howard Pew

J. Howard Pew did not waver in his belief in the potential of, and need for, the Great Canadian Oil Sands plant, the world’s first commercial oilsands installation. That belief and the ensuing project was the cradle of the Suncor oilsands empire.

In the 1960s, Alberta announced that it would only approve small oilsands projects. Light oil production was still growing, and the province didn’t want too much competition between oilsands and conventional oil.

The province’s insistence on small-scale projects led to thin private sector support of the bitumen production industry.

Bowman’s next visionary would not waver in his belief in his firm’s proposed project. On his J. Howard Pew + Gas Plants + Refineries + Major Pipelines + Compressor Stations + Batteries + Bitumen Mines + Weigh Scale Locations + Major Interchanges + Permanent Work Camps + Well Disposal Sites + Yukon Territory + Northwest Territories + Western Canada Town Maps + Alberta & British Columbia First Nations + Alberta, British Columbia & Saskatchewan Municipalities + Township & Range Road Guide + Water / Land Feature Index + Parks & Protected Areas + Mapping Terminology + Updated Road Systems + Emergency Contacts + Gas Plant / Compressor Station Elevations

In 1972, a second proposed commercial oilsands plant was losing private sector support because of the alarming escalation of costs besetting major North American projects.

The Syncrude budget had more than doubled to $2.3 billion, and a major corporate partner pulled out. One man more than any other saved the day. He kept the remaining partners onside while marshalling equity participation in the project from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments.

He set up the first lab dedicated to oilsands research, and developed a long-term plan for upgrading bitumen. He was Syncrude’s first president, Frank Spragins.

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1974: Alberta

Premier Peter Lougheed

Peter Lougheed went where no politician had gone before, challenging the traditional role of government.

He established AOSTRA, which commercialized SAGD, the dominating in situ technique of today.

Peter Lougheed In the 1970s, multinational companies had few active development plans for in situ leases. While these deeper deposits represent more than 80 per cent of the resource, there were no viable technologies in commercial existence to develop them. The major exception was Imperial Oil, which was making limited progress at its Cold Lake site.

Once again a provincial politician took the lead. In 1974, he created AOSTRA — the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority — to provide government support for private research. During its 16-year life, AOSTRA provided $670 million of funding for oilsands research.

Dr. Roger Butler’s steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process — now the dominating technique for in situ production — was the single most important advancement from this program. The politician? Premier Peter Lougheed.

2011:

Who will answer the call?

Visionary number six has the opportunity to change Canada over this decade, leading the shift to production of cleaner, higher-value products from the oilsands.

Fast-forward to the present. There are more major obstacles, they are here and now, and they are environmental. As Bowman says, water and air are no longer free; there is a powerful green consciousness demanding that they be protected along with the vast boreal forest and its inhabitants.

Some consumers say they do not want to use products manufactured from Alberta’s “dirty oil.” Financial markets are concerned about the burden of environmental risk.

Who will help the industry overcome these obstacles?

According to Bowman, the next visionary will be able to articulate energy as an integrated system with the oilsands, hydro, natural gas, coal, nuclear and renewable energy all performing key roles. As importantly, that person will have the skills to forge the national will to make Canada a sustainable energy superpower.

Bowman does not conjecture on who this person might be, but his or her name will be marked in history.

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

How it works

advisory board

Horizontal drilling

I

t might sound strange that oil and gas resources found thousands of metres below our feet could be reached by “horizontal” drilling. But the technique has become one of the most valuable technologies ever introduced in the Canadian oilpatch.

Horizontal drilling starts with a vertical well. The drill bit bores through layers of rock until it reaches the “kick-off point” — the start of an arc that levels off the well’s trajectory — whereupon it continues horizontally.

The horizontal “leg” of a well can be thousands of metres long, and sophisticated navigation instruments allow drillers on the surface to expertly guide the drill bit as it creates the well.

The first advantage that a horizontal well has over a vertical one is that the well can penetrate a long way through a layer of rock that contains oil or gas. This allows the well to drain more of the resource.

For instance, a vertical well might produce 100 barrels per day from a well that goes straight through a 50-metre thick layer of oil-bearing rock. If the well is drilled horizontally through that oil-bearing layer, and extends out 1,500 metres, then the production per day may go up to 1,000 barrels. So this allows more oil and natural gas to be produced with fewer wells and less surface disturbance.

The second advantage relates to the way in which fractures form in the rock. Because they are vertical, a vertical well won’t hit very many of them, and since these fractures provide an easy flow of oil and gas to a well, then the well will not show very much production.

If the well is horizontal, however, then it will intersect many of these natural fractures and allow the rock

to be more easily drained of its valuable resources.

The Canadian oilpatch is drilling more and more of its wells horizontally.

Horizontal wells, used in combination with multistage fraccing, which artificially creates fractures in the rock, have opened up new plays across Western Canada and allowed producers to revisit older fields that were uneconomic to produce using vertical wells.

The Canadian oilpatch saw a spectacular rise in horizontal drilling in 2010, with a record of about 6,700 horizontal wells licensed for the year, compared to the previous record of 4,019 permits in 2008.

Members of Energize Alberta’s advisory board come from many energy “walks of life.” This group, with its collective insight and expertise, works closely with the editorial team to suggest areas of coverage that will engage and educate all Albertans about our energy future.

Alice Murray Stakeholder/Community Affairs Coordinator Stakeholder/Shell Bruce Edgelow VP, Energy Group Alberta Treasury Branch Carol Howes Media Relations, Corporate Communications Encana Caroline Grover Executive Director Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta David Huggill Western Canada Policy Manager Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) Evelyn Ferchuk Manager, Oil Sands Communications Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)

1 6

Gail Poon Senior Manager, Corporate Communications Epcor

2

Gary Redmond Executive Director Synergy Alberta Greg Gilbertson Operations Leader Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB)

3

7 4

Karin Gashus Utilities Consumer Advocate Government of Alberta Kym Fawcett Manager, HSE, Regulatory & Stakeholder Relations Enerplus Resources

5

Horizontal versus vertical well

1. Horizontal well 2. Vertical portion of horizontal well 3. “Kick-off” point, beginning of arc 4. Oil/gas bearing rock, reservoir 5. Horizontal “leg” showing maximized area of contact with oil/gas bearing rock

6. Vertical well 7. Vertical well’s “limited” contact area with oil/gas bearing rock

www.energizealberta.com

Ian Todd VP, Government & Media Relations Enmax Corporation

Lynzey MacRae Public Relations Specialist Direct Energy

Mike Doyle President Canadian Assoc. of Geophysical Contractors (CAGC) Mike Finn VP, Exploration Trident Exploration Corporation Nancy Malone Manager, Economic Analysis Canadian Assoc. of Oilwell Drilling Contractors (CAODC) Natalie Falk Business Development Officer Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta Natika Sunstrum Manager, Corporate Communications Enmax Corporation Nicole Collard Public Affairs Specialist Penn West Energy Patricia Poulton Community & Aboriginal Relations Advisor TransCanada Paul Paynter Business Development Manager, Energy Calgary Economic Development Scott Schreiner Director, Consultation & Communications AltaLink Sean McCarry President Sage Planning Group Ltd Stacey Ballash Executive Assistant to the President & CEO Trident Exploration Corporation Tracy Grills President Canadian Heavy Oil Association (CHOA)

Matthew Burns Associate Director (Calgary) University of Alberta

Travis Davies Public Affairs Advisor, Media Relations Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)

Michelle Chidley Event & Communications Director Small Explorers & Producer Assoc. of Canada (SEPAC)

Trevor Williams Chair, Energy & Utilities Sector Relations Olds College - School of Business

Mike Dawson President Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas (CSUG)

Ulrike Kucera Media Relations Officer Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA)

Community Matters …to all of us. We take pride in our reputation and for being good neighbours in your community because our families live here too.

Stronger communities are built by the strength of their members and by our ability to communicate with one another. That’s why we’ve established a program called “Community Matters” which encourages people to come together to exchange ideas and information about the things we all care about—the safety and well being of our friends and family, stewardship of the land, and having respect for our neighbours.

If you have questions or concerns about operations in your community, or would like more information about Penn West, we invite you to contact us at 1-877-454-8844. To learn more about us, please visit our website at www.pennwest.com

www.pennwest.com

For Community Matters, call 1-877-454-8844

10

January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Opportunity beckons Oilsands companies target aboriginals to fill growing labour gap Lynda Harrison Energize Alberta

F

aced with looming worker shortages at their oilsands operations in the Fort McMurray area due to expansion and attrition, companies are hiring locals and often making special efforts to employ the area’s first residents, aboriginals.

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Alberta’s oilsands region is expected to need more than 100,000 workers by 2015. Attracting underrepresented demographic groups such as aboriginals, immigrants and visible minorities will help industry meet its human resources needs.

The Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada (Petroleum HR

Council) estimates that in the next few years about 13,000 additional workers will be required by oilsands producers to meet growth targets. The oilsands sector will also need to do significant hiring to replace workers retiring between now and 2020 because of an aging workforce.

Although oilsands operations are located near to a large aboriginal population, they have not fully participated in the Canadian labour market. Moreover, aboriginals represent a large potential labour supply pool if a number of educational and societal barriers are addressed, says the Petroleum HR Council, a federally funded agency that examines the energy sector’s staffing requirements. It also collaborates with industry and governments to meet those needs.

Oilsands employers generally require at least Grade 12 and trade or technical certificates because there is a lot of technology involved, says Cheryl Knight, executive director of the council. “Given that aboriginals have lower Grade 12 completion rates, that would be a key barrier,” she says.

“Fewer than one per cent of aboriginal students major in science-related courses at the post-secondary level and this is a limiting factor. Even at the high school level, a focus on math and science would really be helpful.

A number of employers have recognized that,” says Knight.

She recommended that oilsands companies communicate to even younger students — in elementary schools as well as junior high schools — the

broad array of job opportunities within the sector.

Companies can reinforce how math and science are fundamental skills to both teachers and students, she says.

Oilsands companies should pursue “anything they can do to provide on-the-job training and hands-on learning to give aboriginal youth a taste of what working for oilsands companies would be like

so they might decide to take an apprenticeship or attend a technical college.

They can highlight aboriginal role models to illustrate success and what it takes to succeed.”

Knight also urges oilsands companies to continue communicating with governments about how they can support aboriginal participation in a meaningful way through policy and programs.

Several companies contribute funding to Keyano College in Fort McMurray to develop the next generation of workers. They fund aboriginal trades programs, provide scholarships and offer work experience and mentorship.

Hiring locally Aboriginal people comprise about eight per cent of Syncrude Canada’s direct workforce, with many more working on site for various contracting companies. At the end of 2009, the company employed about 470 aboriginals: 100 each from Calgary and Edmonton, and the rest from Fort McMurray and the surrounding region.

This also marks the 30th year of its fly-in, fly-out program in Fort Chipewyan. The program began when Fort Chipewyan residents expressed a desire to work in the oilsands without leaving their home and community behind. Rather

Oilsands companies should pursue “anything they can do to provide on-the-job training and hands-on learning to give aboriginal youth a taste of what working for oilsands companies would be like so they might decide to take an apprenticeship or attend a technical college. They can highlight aboriginal role models to illustrate success and what it takes to succeed.”

— Cheryl Knight, Executive Director, Petroleum HR Council

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Energize Alberta • January/February 2011 it was chosen as one of the top employers of new Canadians by Canada’s Top 100 Employers program, an annual competition to recognize the country’s best places to work. The company is involved in an English-as-a-secondlanguage program at Keyano, supports new Canadians applying to be professional engineers and recognizes international education and work experience.

As of February 2010, Suncor Energy employed approximately 300 selfidentified aboriginal people in its oilsands operations in the Wood Buffalo region.

That is slightly above seven per cent of the company’s workforce in that region, says spokesman Dany Laferriere. They are employed in a variety of areas including human resources, communications and stakeholder relations advisors, operations (extraction, upgrading and mining), as well as trade and technical positions such as heavy equipment technicians and welders.

The company is continuing its efforts to increase

aboriginal employment by working in partnership with communities, schools and local governments.

It does so by supporting career fairs, creating management level opportunities and investing in the next generation of aboriginal employees through scholarships, work placement and training programs.

Suncor has been cited as a Top 25 Diversity Employer for establishing an aboriginal affairs department and for providing cultural diversity training to employees.

It is also important to look at indirect employment, says Laferriere, noting that while some 1,600 aboriginals had permanent jobs in the oilsands industry as of 2009, aboriginal companies earned more than $3.7 billion on work for oilsands operators between 1998 and 2009.

Suncor alone accounted for more than $1 billion of these contracts between 1992 and 2008.

Workforce development Hiring aboriginals is a key part of Shell Canada’s ❯❯ continued on page 12

Oilsands operator Syncrude has been recognized as one of Canada's top employers of aboriginals.

Photo: sean mclennan/Keyano College

than relocating staff and their families to a town near the worksite, employees are flown to the mine where they work for a number of days and are then flown back to Fort Chipewyan during their downtime.

Cheryl Robb, Syncrude spokeswoman, says the company is one of the largest employers of aboriginals in Canada.

The company makes every effort to hire locally and retain these people, says Robb. “There’s a lot more commitment to the company and the community if you’re living there,” she says.

Syncrude is one of 12 companies in Canada, and the only oilsands company, to be accredited at the gold level in the Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) program of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. PAR measures corporate performance in aboriginal employment, business development, capacity development and community relations.

The company also looks to fill its ranks with immigrants. This year

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Continued from page 11

35

Opportunity beckons and service providers due to expansion of in situ plants. For unskilled people, the construction side is the place to be, says Knight. “As a broad rule of thumb, you can assume 2.5 to three times as many people are required for construction and maintenance.”

According to the Petroleum HR Council, the top-10 jobs in demand due to growth and replacement needs, in descending order, are: steam and nonsteam operators (generally power engineers), heavy equipment operators, millwrights and mechanics, heavy equipment mechanics, industrial electricians, welders, petroleum engineers, instrumentation technicians, drilling coordinators/production managers, and mechanical engineers.

The council is projecting that the services sector will increase hiring by 19,000 people in the next 10 years, driven by expansions of in

30 25 Percentage

recruitment strategy now and in the future, says spokesman Phil Vircoe.

Although the company does not disclose in detail its recruitment targets or long-term hiring strategy, he did say Shell uses an integrated approach to recruit aboriginals, including dedicated aboriginal “sourcers,” recruitment marketing initiatives, career open houses in key aboriginal communities and developing relationships with organizations.

These include the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation for scholarships; Aboriginal Lynx, an organization focused on providing career opportunities to aboriginal interns and new graduates; and Aboriginal Link, an organization that provides career opportunities for professionals, graduates and operations crafts.

The oilsands offer lots of opportunities for tradespeople, technical people

Graph: Petroleum HR Council

12

20 15 10 5 0 New Entrants

Immigrants

Aboriginal Peoples

Workers in Canadian "Petroleum Industry-like" Occupations

Women in Engineering, Trades, Technology

Representation in Petroleum Industry

Historically, industry has not attracted its share of workers from all potential labour supply pools. situ operations throughout oilsands areas.

Cenovus Energy will need almost 1,200 construction workers at its expanding Christina Lake in situ project in the next eight to 10 years, nearly triple the current 450 workers. The company tries to hire locally as much as possible, drawing aboriginals from nearby communities such as Lac La Biche, Chipewyan

Prairie First Nation and Conklin.

“It’s better for the communities and it’s cheaper for us,” Drew Zieglgansberger, Christina Lake vice-president, told reporters during a media tour in September.

The company also contracts with local aboriginals to run one of their camps and for work such as seismic-line cutting and earth moving. It supports a

local, government-funded program called Change It Up! (see the November/ December 2010 edition of Energize Alberta) designed to either keep young people in school or prepare them for the workforce. Cenovus also participates in several initiatives aimed at keeping aboriginals in school, providing scholarships, career fairs, driver’s education and safety skills training through partnerships. It

does not track the number of aboriginals on its workforce.

According to the Alberta government, 17 First Nations with a combined population of 16,000 people living on-reserve and six Metis settlements with approximately 6,000 residents live in areas where oilsands are found.

Thousands more live off-reserve and off-settlement in Alberta’s oilsands region.

According to the government, more than 1,500 aboriginal people were employed directly by oilsands operations in 2008, a 60 per cent increase from 1998. This figure does not include constructionrelated employment.

“If you looked at other sectors in oil and gas and compared activity of this nature you would find that oilsands are the leaders,” says the Petroleum HR Council’s Knight. “They are the most progressive and focused employers with respect to workforce development programs that address a variety of workers. I believe they deserve some credit for that.”

We see the possibilities.

As an Operations Manager at Suncor Energy, Stephen Young is one of more than 12,000 employees who have seen how innovation can turn possibilities into reality.

Like turning tailings ponds into solid ground. Suncor has developed a game-changing technology that reclaims former oil sands mines into natural habitat decades faster than before. We’re also marking a significant milestone with the return of our first tailings pond to a solid surface in 2010. Developing these kinds of solutions begins with seeing the possibilities. And we’re just getting started.

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

{ centrespread the

Capturing the enemy

1

Alberta government and the energy sector are investing in carbon capture and storage to fight climate change

T

he need to put the brakes on global warming is prompting governments and industry throughout the world to consider their options and develop action plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

And while there are several GHGs, including methane and water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from the burning of fossil fuels is the main focus of concern due to the broad scientific consensus about its negative impact on the climate and the need to reduce our carbon footprint.

In 2008, the Alberta government released its climate change strategy, which proposes to stabilize GHG emissions by 2020 and includes among its targets emissions reductions of 50 per cent below “business as usual” levels — or 200 megatonnes — by 2050.

The province’s strategy paper says that Alberta’s target of a 200-megatonne reduction is the “largest identified and published by any provincial jurisdiction in Canada,” and will bring Alberta’s emissions to 14 per cent below 2005 levels.

But to get there, the province has hitched its wagon to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which it hopes will deliver the majority of the plan’s

www.energizealberta.com

reductions — about 70 per cent of the 2050 target. To move the development of CCS forward, the Alberta government is providing $2 billion in funding, which is being topped up by the federal Clean Energy Fund.

In its final report to then energy minister Mel Knight in early 2009, the government-industry initiative known as the Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council said that Alberta’s plan to address GHG emissions through the wide-spread implementation of CCS technologies “is achievable.”

“While contributions from renewable energy development and conservation are an important part of Alberta’s carbon intensity reduction plan, some 70 per cent of Alberta’s potential reductions are seen to arise from CCS,” the council said in its report.

Capturing carbon CCS involves capturing and separating CO2 emitted by coal-fired power plants and other large emissions sources, and shipping it by pipeline to an injection site where it is stored deep underground.

There are two main ways CO2 is captured in the CCS process. Post-combustion capture separates CO2 from the flue gas at the source after combustion. Precombustion modifies the fossil fuel combustion technology to make the CO2 easier to capture.

5

3

5 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Enhanced coalbed methane recovery and CO2 storage CO2 storage in depleted gas reservoir CO2 enhanced oil recovery CO2 storage in salt cavern CO2 dissolved in formation water (saline aquifer storage)

Illustration: Alberta Geological Survey (AGS)

Godfrey Budd Energize Alberta

2

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

An in-depth look at issues and people on the energy landscape, connecting you to new ideas and interesting Albertans.

}

Alaska

Northwest Territories

Yukon

British Columbia

Nunavut

Alberta

Saskatchewan

Manitoba

Fort Nelson

5 Fort McMurray

Operational Projects 1

Cenovus, Weyburn

Proposed Projects 2

Agrium/Enhance Energy

3

Shell, Quest

4

TransAlta, Pioneer

5

Spectra Energy

6

Husky Energy

7

Sask Power

8

Swan Hills Synfuels

9

North West Upgrading/Enhance Energy

8 4

3

9

Lloydminster

Red Deer

Saskatoon

Calgary

Legend General EOR locations Operational CO2 pipelines Proposed CO2 pipelines Potential CO2 transport routes Large CO2 emissions locations

6

Edmonton 2

Illustration: ICO2N

The biggest challenge with capture appears to be its cost, and the rule of thumb is that the more pure the stream of CO2, the lower the cost. Capture typically accounts for 70 to 90 per cent of CCS cost.

“Costs can range from $70 to $250 a tonne. No one knows the cost exactly. It depends on stream concentration and whether it’s under pressure,” says Eddy Isaacs, chief executive officer of Alberta Innovates — Energy and Environment Solutions.

Once captured, CO2 is shipped using standard oil and gas pipeline technology.

Isaacs says the gas needs to be shipped under pressure at around 2,000 pounds per square inch. “If it comes out from the source under pressure, it could save 25 to 50 per cent of the operating costs,” he says.

The risks in the event of a serious leak differ slightly from oil and natural gas as CO2 is heavier than air, and could potentially travel along the ground and get trapped where people or animals are and cause death.

But the network of CO2 pipelines supporting enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the United States has been operating successfully for decades. The biggest CO2 pipeline operating in Canada connects a coal gasification plant in Beulah, N.D., to depleted oilfields near Weyburn, Sask., where the gas is then used for EOR. After capture and shipping, the third phase — storage or sequestration, as it is sometimes called — sees the CO2 injected deep underground into geologic formations. These are either depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.

Stefan Bachu, distinguished scientist with Alberta Innovates — Technology Futures, says that the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), which stretches from southwest Manitoba to northeast British Columbia and southern Yukon, has many potential CO2 injection sites because of the subsurface geology of the region.

“Just in Alberta alone, there are more than 40,000 gas reservoirs and 10,000 oil reservoirs,” he says.

Bachu says that depleted gas reservoirs in the WCSB have the potential to store between four and 10 billion tonnes of CO2 over time. Oil reservoirs could eventually store about 500 million tonnes using EOR

15

Regina

Medicine Hat 1

Vancouver

Washington

7 Estevan

Montana

North Dakota Beulah

Active and proposed CCS projects in Western Canada. and could result in recovering an extra 1.4 billion barrels of crude oil. For gas, on the other hand, CO2 should only be injected once the well has ceased production.

Managing Alberta’s CO2 emissions There are several reasons for Alberta’s concern around CO2 emissions and plans for CCS. The province’s annual emissions are the highest in Canada at 244 million tonnes, accounting for about one-third of the country’s total CO2 emissions in 2008, according to Environment Canada.

Although the province’s oil and gas industry has worked to reduce its carbon intensity, the industry remains a major emitter of CO2. So too does the province’s coal-fired power industry. Unlike British Columbia or Quebec, Alberta has little hydroelectric capacity, nor does it have nuclear power, like Ontario.

Looking at emissions on a per­- capita basis is a common way of putting the CO2 emissions of a country, province

three Key Points To Ponder

1. CCS is the process of capturing CO from large industrial sources before it is released to the 2

atmosphere, and then safely transporting and storing it in mature oil and gas reservoirs or in other deep geological formations.

2. Of all the technologies used in CCS projects, capture technology development is still ongoing with

various research institutions and companies developing and fine-tuning these processes globally.

The price of capture is expected to fall as more technologies are developed and implemented.

3. The Alberta government announced in 2008 it will contribute $2 billion to reduce GHG emissions

through new CCS projects. The expected result is five million tonnes in annual reductions by 2015 — comparable to taking one million vehicles off the road.

or state into perspective. Based on Environment Canada figures, Alberta’s annual emissions are about 70 tonnes per capita, the country’s second highest after Saskatchewan, at 73 tonnes. Ontario’s per-capita emissions are close to those of Canada as a whole at about 18 tonnes per capita.

Quebec’s carbon footprint, at about 12 tonnes per capita, is lower than average and comparable to that of California or New York. Two states, North Dakota and Wyoming, have higher emissions than Alberta or Saskatchewan, according to the United States Department of Energy.

While American consumers and their federal government appear to welcome the 1.5 million barrels a day of oil imported from Alberta’s oilsands, along with another one million barrels of conventional Canadian oil, some lobby groups in the United States are pressuring governments at the state and federal level to stop imports from major emitters like oilsands producers.

At the same time, as a day of reckoning for big CO2 emitters might be approaching in the form of a much more carbon-constrained world, demand for oilsands crude appears unabated.

To meet the anticipated demand, more development of the oilsands is under way.

With 80 per cent of the oilsands too deep for surface mining, the more carbonintensive in situ extraction, which burns natural gas for steam injection to first soften then produce bitumen from underground, is expected to surpass volumes produced from surface mining within a few years.

The following is a brief synopsis of the four Alberta CCS projects: • The Swan Hills Synfuels underground coal gasification will produce gas for generating power, and the CO2 emitted in the process will be captured and used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). CO2 has been used for EOR in parts of the United States for decades, particularly where oil wells are within economic pipeline shipping distance of naturally occurring underground CO2 reservoirs. Regarding the storage part of CCS, some of the injected CO2 is produced with the oil while some remains in the oil reservoir.

• A TransAlta project will capture CO2 at its Keephills coal-fired plant west of Edmonton. “This will use post-combustion capture using an ammonia process.

It is newer technology,” says Robert Craig, director of strategy and technology at ICO2N. • The Quest project will capture CO2 from Shell’s upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan and store it in a deep saline aquifer.

• The fourth project will capture CO2 in Fort Saskatchewan and ship it by pipe for EOR near Clive in central Alberta

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasts that oilsands production will almost double from the current 1.5 million barrels per day in 2010 to 2.9 million in 2020 and 3.5 million by 2025. ❯❯ continued on page 16

www.energizealberta.com

16

January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Continued from page 15

According to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based sustainable energy think tank, the oilsands currently produce 37.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.

But with the anticipated production growth from the oilsands, the institute forecasts that oilsands emissions will rise to about 108 million tonnes per year by 2020 — a figure slightly north of half the 190 million tonnes of CO2 emissions Environment Canada reported for Ontario in 2008.

“This is based on past trends and increased in situ production, which will likely overtake mining in about 2016,” says Jennifer Grant, Pembina’s oilsands program director.

Natural fit?

A more carbon-constrained world could present Alberta’s oil and gas industry and coal-fired power sector with some challenges.

To meet this goal, the Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council’s report says that 139 million tonnes in reduction “would be achieved by implementing CCS on an extensive basis in Alberta’s oilsands, in its power sector and in industrial facilities.”

An Alberta and federal government task force paper, titled Canada’s Fossil

Canadian CCS storage potential

Energy Future: The Way Forward on Carbon Capture and Storage, presents government and industry’s case for CCS. It notes that the country’s CO2 emissions have gone up by about 25 per cent since 1990 and that CCS is a “natural fit for Canada” for many reasons.

“CCS can enable Canada to build on its existing energy infrastructure and its fossil energy endowment while managing the associated GHG emissions.”

The report also suggests that Canada has the potential to become a world leader in CCS. The Integrated CO2 Network (ICO2N), an alliance of 16 of Canada’s largest industrial companies who support the development of CO2 capture, transport, distribution and storage, says CCS is one of the key tools for meeting GHG reduction targets for Canada.

ENERPLUS - COMMITTED TO HEALTH AND SAFETY At Enerplus, we believe our on-going commitment to health and safety is critical to the success of our business. We are dedicated to protecting the health and safety of our employees, contractors and the public in the communities in which we live and operate.

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Illustration: ICO2N

Capturing the enemy

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not about a single tool to solve the climate change issue — there will be many tools and we need to move quickly to grow them all,” says Stephen Kaufman, chairman of ICO2N. “But studies clearly show that CCS can contribute significant CO2 reduction volumes and is an important part of Canada’s suite of greenhouse gas reduction options.”

One such study done by the Delphi Group last year looked at the potential supply, timing and cost of GHG reductions in Canada from a variety of alternatives, and concluded that CCS has the most significant potential for annual reductions, closely followed by nuclear, wind power and vehicle fuel-efficiency improvements.

“While CCS will be expensive in the early stages of development, its costs are

comparable to those of other GHG reduction options such as wind and solar,” Kaufman says. Alberta is a global leader in progressing CCS, and there are four large-scale demonstration projects under development. Carbon capture and storage is not a new or untested idea, Kaufman adds.

“CCS is a technically viable and environmentally safe means of reducing greenhouse gases. There are many CCS projects of varying sizes under way around the world, including a large project in Weyburn, and underground storage of CO2 has been done for more than 30 years in the United States,” he says.

“In Canada, the geologic formations being considered as candidates for longterm CO2 storage — namely depleted oil and gas reservoirs and deep geological sequestration sites — have already proven safe for storing other gases and liquids.

These same formations have trapped crude oil and natural gas underground for hundred of millions of years.”

Players On The Stage 1. Integrated CO2 Network (www.ico2n.com) 2. Alberta Energy (www.energy.alberta.ca) 3. Pembina Institute (www.pembina.org) Going Broader, Deeper 1. Canadian Carbon Capture and Storage Network (www.ccs101.ca) Feedback What’s your opinion on carbon capture and sequestration? Send your comments to yourenergy@energizealberta.com.

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

17

Recommended reads A Cubic Mile of Oil: Realities and Options for Averting the Looming Global Energy Crisis

Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands

By Hewitt Crane, Edwin Kinderman and Ripudaman Malhotra

By Ezra Levant

Oxford University Press, June 2010

“An original, illuminating and entertaining way to experience the energy debate. Cubic Mile is more than an introduction to a new unit of measurement.

It is an encyclopedic embrace of energy issues, with dispassionate but compelling analysis of the energy conundrum.”

McClelland & Stewart, September 2010

“Exposes the lies and hypocrisy of the media-coddled opponents of the vast resource, but raises the uncomfortable question of what alternatives to the oilsands these moralists prefer.”

— Peter Foster, Financial Post

— Neil Reynolds, The Globe and Mail One cubic mile of oil (CMO) corresponds very closely to the world’s current total annual consumption of crude oil. The world’s total annual energy consumption — from all energy sources — is currently about three CMO. By the middle of this century, the world will need between six and nine CMO of energy per year to provide for its citizens. A Cubic Mile of Oil describes the various energy sources and how we use them, projects their future contributions, and delineates what it would take to develop them to annually produce a CMO from each of them. The authors also examine how improved efficiency and conservation measures can reduce future demand substantially, and help distinguish approaches that make a significant impact as opposed to merely making us feel good.

In Ethical Oil, author Ezra Levant focuses his attention on the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well. With his trademark candor, Levant asks hard-hitting questions: With the oilsands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can’t live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable?

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Save easy Energy conservation measures could save Albertans billions Jim Bentein Energize Alberta

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lbertans could be saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year if governments and businesses would take energy efficiency and conservation more seriously, according to the head of an organization that promotes energy efficiency.

John Rilett, chair of the Calgary-based Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance, says if the Alberta government provided the same level of funding for energy-efficiency programs as some other governments in Canada the savings for homeowners and businesses would be eye-popping.

“We could save Albertans billions of dollars between now and 2015 just by not consuming as much energy,” says Rilett, who is also vice-president of Calgary-based Climate Change Central, a non-profit organization involved in consumer rebate programs, demonstration projects and educational outreach related to climate change.

Rilett says the concept is easy to understand.

“It focuses on the ‘negawatt,’ meaning the watts of energy you don’t consume,” he says. “Efficiency is always less expensive than building new power plants and other infrastructure.”

Alberta lags behind much of Canada and North America in conservation and efficiency of energy consumption, also called demand-side management.

In 42 of the 60 state and provincial jurisdictions in North America, the power and gas utilities operate under what is called performance-based pricing, where government agencies similar to the Alberta Utilities Commission, which regulates utilities in the province, offer incentives to utilities to get their customers to use less energy.

While that might seem counterintuitive — after all, companies rarely want their customers to use less of their products — it makes a great deal of sense in such capitalintensive businesses, says Rilett.

“For instance, BC Hydro goes to its regulator and says, ‘If you give us an incentive, we think we can charge consumers six cents per kilowatt hour [kWh] instead of 13 cents per kWh.’” istockphoto.com

TWO Key Points To Ponder

1. An increased emphasis by Albertans on energy conservation could help save money and reduce the need for additional power generation facilities.

2. More stringent building code requirements would help

homeowners save money over the life of their mortgages.

It’s called a cost-of-service regulatory structure and no such system exists now in Alberta, although the Department of Energy has asked the Alberta Utilities Commission to produce a report in 2011 on ways of developing “new rules and regulations of consumer choices” for both natural gas and electricity.

As the deregulated electricity system in the province is structured, there’s no incentive for the power generators to build fewer power plants, comments Rilett.

“In Alberta, if you’re a power generator and you spend $100 on new facilities, you might get a guaranteed nine per cent return. If you spend $109, you still get the same percentage return. But in states and provinces with a costof-service structure, if the utility produces power for 90 cents [because of conservation initiatives] it gets to keep the 10-cent difference and still gets a rate of return.”

In Canada, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan all have systems

www.energizealberta.com

in place to encourage utilities to get their customers to conserve.

There is no province-wide program in Alberta, although the City of Medicine Hat, which owns its own gas and power utilities, operates a conservation program called HAT Smart, which is aimed at getting the city’s 60,000 residents to consume less gas, electricity and water. The utilities impose an energy conservation charge on residential customers who consume more than 950 kWh of power a month or over 22 gigajoules of natural gas monthly.

Medicine Hat also has in place its Smart Growth initiative, which encourages the development of more compact neighbourhoods, the construction of green buildings and the use of public transit.

Conservation programs The most aggressive conservation programs in North America are operated by the State of California and were launched in the 1970s.

“California uses half of the electricity, on a per capita basis, that other states in the U.S. use,” says Rilett. “If it didn’t have those programs in place, it would have had to build four to six new nuclear power plants and 10 to 12 coal-fired plants.”

BC Hydro’s Power Smart program, launched in 1989, has saved enough electricity to power 380,000 homes and avoid the construction of at least two power plants. But the Crown-owned utility receives government incentives.

Going Broader, Deeper 1. EnerGuide (www.nrcan.gc.ca)

In Ontario, meanwhile, the Ontario Energy Board and Ontario Power Authority were directed in April 2010 to work with about 100 local distribution companies in the province to achieve 1,330 megawatts (MW) of conservation by 2015, enough to power 410,000 homes and to avoid the construction of several new power facilities.

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011 Ultimately, the government says, conservation will reduce peak electricity demand by 6,300 MW by 2025, about 30 per cent of the province’s existing power production.

There is no comprehensive plan for conservation and efficiency in Alberta, and — worse yet — little funding to accomplish it and no incentives for companies to promote it, says Rilett.

“In Alberta, we spend $6 per capita on energy conservation programs,” he notes. “Both B.C. and Ontario spend more than $40 per capita on such programs. The B.C. government allocates $180 million a year for such programs and Ontario sets aside $300 million a year. In Alberta, meanwhile, we set aside $14 million a year.”

Players On The Stage 1. Climate Change Central (www.climatechangecentral.com) 2. Alberta Energy Efficiency Alliance (www.aeea.ca) Much of that funding, from both the federal and provincial governments, as well as from industry, is managed

by Climate Change Central, which has a variety of conservation-related programs in place.

The programs are funded by a $36-million, three-year commitment set up in 2009 by the Alberta government, as well as funding from the federal government’s ecoENERGY Retrofit program, set up in 2007 when Ottawa allocated $220 million for home retrofits and $60 million for businesses. In total, about 140,000 homeowners across the country received grants of up to $5,000, supplemented by provincial grants, to carry out energy efficiency improvements to their houses.

Although the federal Tories have announced they will stop receiving new applications in 2011, they allocated another $300 million for home improvements in the 2009 federal budget, expected to lead to efficiency improvements to 200,000 housing units across Canada.

Rilett says Climate Change Central has been able to get 100,000 households in Alberta involved in a number

of energy-efficiency improvements, ranging from funding for new Energy Star high-efficiency furnaces, washers and dryers, and other appliances, to audits that have led to the installation of insulation and energy-efficient windows in homes across Alberta.

Creating a conserver culture One of the problems the organization has dealt with is the province’s inadequately built housing stock, Rilett says.

“Alberta has some of the worst-performing homes in the country, from an energy-efficiency standpoint,” he says. “That means Albertans consume more gas and electricity than other parts of the country.”

Part of the reason for that is the province has not updated its building code standards in any significant way since the 1960s, and many building-envelope improvements have been made since then, he says.

As the ecoENERGY program expires in 2011 amid a torrent of criticism from the environmental community and others, he says it behoves the Alberta government to step in to fill the void.

“The Alberta government needs to take a long-term view,” Rilett says. “They need to establish a longer-term focus on program funding.”

In addition, he says the Alberta Utilities Commission, which the government has also charged with developing a place for the rollout of so-called smart meters and smartgrid technology, as well as a regulatory review, should be tasked with developing a long-term strategy to help Albertans conserve more.

Ironically, Rilett points out that, despite the province’s woeful performance in the area of energy conservation, Alberta is a leader in another conservation area.

It leads the country in recycling, through the Alberta Recycling Management Authority, first established in 1992 to manage the province’s tire recycling program. It now manages an electronics recycling and paint recycling program as well.

19

In addition, the 15-year-old Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation oversees one of Canada’s longestrunning beverage container recycling programs.

“It’s a model that can be adopted for energy efficiency and conservation,” he says.

To convert Alberta to a “conserver culture,” he says the emphasis has to be on deploying technologies such as smart meters, which will help homeowners track their power use, on education about the benefits of conservation, and on a “behaviour fix” aimed at getting people to turn off lights when rooms are empty and to only plug their vehicles into power outlets for an hour or so when it’s cold, instead of all night.

Jesse Row, director of the sustainable communities group for environmental organization the Pembina Institute, says increasing building code standards would go a long way towards helping conserve both power and gas.

“The Alberta government said in its climate change plan it was going to toughen building code standards, but they got cold feet after the builders complained,” he says.

The standards haven’t been upgraded since the early 1980s and those changes were minor ones, he says.

Pembina and others have estimated that bringing residential building code standards up to an 80 rating based on the federal government’s EnerGuide standard — an EnerGuide rating shows a standard measure of a home’s energy performance — would save Alberta homeowners at least $70 a month on their power and gas bills, while the higher building code standards would cost them an average of $35 a month over the life of their mortgages.

Since there are more than one million houses in Alberta, if all were brought up to EnerGuide 80 standards, it would lead to billions of dollars in energy savings, Row notes.

“Improving building code standards is the low-hanging fruit of energy conservation,” says Row.

Feedback What ways are you conserving energy use?

Let us know by emailing yourenergy@energizealberta.com.

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

One simple act lasia kretzel Energize Alberta

A

s carbon emission estimates rise, garbage piles high in city dumps and our energy demand continues to climb, the thought that one single person, business or community can make a difference might seem ridiculous.

Yet if you add up all those single actions, you can get some rather dramatic and positive changes.

This is the idea behind the province’s One Simple Act initiative, a public information and education program encouraging and celebrating Albertans who want to lead more environmentally friendly lives. The program helps ordinary citizens realize their goals of saving energy, reducing waste and conserving resources though various online presentations and workshops.

Already, thousands of Albertans at home, at work and within their communities have taken a stand and committed to reducing their own waste.

Environmental awareness Complete environmental awareness is exactly the philosophy employed by Industry Images, a national printing shop with locations in Calgary and Edmonton.

Bib Patel, manager of the Calgary location, says the company has made environmental awareness a natural part of its employees’ work and home lives.

“Business and personal life can be very much parallel,” Patel says.

At work, Industry Images has gone to great lengths to minimize its environmental footprint.

“We are a printing company, so us reducing waste is like saying, ‘Butter with five per cent less fat,’” Patel says. “We’re going to have waste product regardless. It’s the nature of our business.”

To help mitigate the company’s impact, however, company president Gavin Harrison introduced My Liife,

a program designed to streamline environmental efforts within the company.

Efforts include using Forest Stewardship Council certified paper (from trees grown in sustainable climates) as a standard, while offering clients upgrades to recycled paper, working with Scouts Canada to plant two trees for every equivalent of one tree used, using manual cutters to save electricity and encouraging clients to reuse large print jobs such as banners. Blue bins are also a common sight around the small office located above Crossroads Market in Calgary.

The company has also signed up with Bullfrog Power, which provides 100 per cent green energy. When customers sign up with Bullfrog, the company’s power-generator partners inject electricity from renewable sources into the grid to match the amount of power a home or business uses.

On a national level, Industry Images reduces its transportation emissions by printing at the closest location to its client.

If the client is national, the same print job will be done at multiple locations.

Patel says this is also financially beneficial as it means the company pays less for transportation.

But he says it’s not just about saving money. Everyone in the company has made a conscious effort to lessen their environmental impact.

At home, employees are encouraged to use enviro-friendly soaps and cleaners.

INFORMATION ABOUT CANADA’S EMERGING ENERGY RESOURCES www.energizealberta.com

photo: lasia kretzel

Government initiative celebrates Albertans who’ve found it ‘simple’ to be environmentally friendly

Sophie Barry’s environmental passion began at home.

Patel says it’s not just a business strategy, but a way of life.

He says it’s not difficult for companies or individuals to find ways to reduce their waste, but a person’s heart and priorities must be on the environment.

“I think it’s just a matter of taking the time, sitting down and looking to see where you can reduce your impact,” he says. “Start taking a look at what kind of legacy you want your company to leave — one that just makes a lot of money as opposed to one that is very successful on multi-levels.”

Starting small, starting local Calgarian Sophie Barry says the key to environmental protection is to start close to home before focusing on global environmental issues.

“I believe that it should start small. It’s not like one day you wake up and go, ‘OK, I’m going to take all the cars off the road.’

If everyone does one small thing, it will make a big impact rather than all these people wondering what to do because their heads are in something much too large.”

At 12 years of age, Barry’s environmental passion began right at home with her family’s recycling habits. Encouraged by her parents and teachers, Barry hosted an environmentally friendly 11th birthday party. Guests ate locally grown food off compostable plates and enjoyed an afternoon nature scavenger hunt.

Rather than presents, Barry asked her friends to bring a donation for the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation. Together they raised $250.

This one act caught the attention of local environmentalists, and since then, Barry has spoken about local environmental action at multiple events, including the Calgary Low Carbon Future Summit and the Symposium to Enhance Global Citizenship and Environmental Education in Alberta.

The summit “was kind of the big boom that made me go, ‘OK, I need to do something about all this because there’s not enough happening,’” Barry says.

Her results included inviting representatives of One Simple Act to Elboya School in Calgary to speak to students, as well as the creation of a three-phase plan to reduce her school’s environmental footprint.

“I really wanted it to be localized,” she says.

Phase one of the three-year project created a Green Team for the school and encouraged recycling. The second phase is about integrating environmental education into the curriculum, and the third phase, which Barry is hoping to focus on in the coming year, is about getting students to take their eco-knowledge and apply it on both a local and global scale.

Although it may seem like she has a lot on the go, Barry says she has made each project manageable and simple. She says environmentalism doesn’t need to be complicated and can become part of people’s everyday life at home and around the world.

Barry says she also believes the only way individuals will have any impact is if they start looking at their simple acts in a global context. “Say if I had a gum wrapper and there’s no garbage can in sight and I chuck it on the ground. But if everyone in your school, in the city or in the world threw that gum wrapper on the ground, we wouldn’t be able to see the ground.”

She says she encourages everyone, but especially the youth today, to speak up for the world they will inherit.

“Kids like me, we are the leaders of tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be leaders today. You can still bring something into your school or do a project and be a leader in this whole environmental movement. You can do that even if you’re a kid. And I think it’s about getting people to realize that they can make a difference without taking all the cars off the road.”

Visit www.onesimpleact.alberta.ca to find out more about the program and read success stories.

Cutting consumption

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

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Utility companies developing programs to help residential and small-business customers reduce energy use Jim Bentein Energize Alberta ATCO Mark Antonuk, program manager for ATCO EnergySense, a service offered

by ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric to their 1.3 million gas and electricity customers in Alberta, says the company has a number of programs aimed at helping consumers conserve.

Perhaps the highestprofile initiative is its “mobile energy classroom,” a travelling classroom

designed to teach students about the province’s energy sources and to teach them about conservation (see the September/October 2010 edition of Energize Alberta).

Topics are designed to tie in with Grade 4 science and social studies curriculum.

Developed by ATCO’s EnergySense unit in consultation with Alberta teachers, the biodieselfuelled vehicle visited about 6,500 students by the end of 2010.

Using computers and interactive games, students are learning to identify where Alberta’s energy comes from and why it is important to minimize waste.

Two ATCO employees act as co-ordinators and facilitate the learning experience, answering questions and helping students engage with various learning stations.

“Students can make choices about electricity in their homes,” says Antonuk. “The modules show them how they can reduce their power consumption by, for example, 150 kWh a month,” he says.

The thinking is that by reaching young Albertans, ATCO can help sow the seeds at an early age for a life-long commitment to energy conservation. The youngsters may also pass along what they’ve learned to their parents.

One of the modules is a model of an average home,

where participants can see where heat is being lost and recommend what to do about it.

Another one has the young “energy detectives” look at a number of photos and asks them to identify what is more energy efficient (for example, a refrigerator with a closed door and one with an open one).

“The target is to visit 100 schools a year,” says Antonuk. “But we also take the energy classroom to major events, such as the Calgary Stampede.”

ATCO is also offering workshops and over-thephone advice to its gas customers (ATCO Gas has more than one million customers).

In addition, the utility is currently involved in the ecoENERGY Retrofit program, a federal government initiative aimed at

ATCO’s Energy Education Mobile

Ron Liepert, Alberta’s energy minister, and ATCO president Nancy Southern visit with children in the Energy Education Mobile. helping homeowners to upgrade their houses and key appliances to make them more energy efficient.

A key part of both programs is the energy audit, where ATCO experts identify the steps that can be taken to improve energy efficiency (they do an assessment after the improvements have been made, too).

One of the most common improvements is a shift to an energyefficient furnace, which can cost about $5,000.

Grants of up to $790 from Ottawa and a $600 grant from the Alberta government make installing them much more affordable.

Antonuk says homeowners can reduce their heating bills by about 30 per cent with the more efficient furnaces.

ATCO also has a program for its commercial and institutional customers.

“We spend a substantial amount of time doing a comprehensive assessment,” says Antonuk. “It can take a month to six weeks.”

That assessment involves looking at a building’s envelope, furnaces, lighting and anything else that consumes energy.

“We’ve done assessments of more than 20

million square feet of commercial building space,” he says.

ENMAX Calgary-based ENMAX will be rolling out a program early in 2011 that will be aimed at helping its 650,000 customers reduce their energy consumption by at least 10 per cent, with the goal of increasing that substantially over time.

The utility, which is owned by the City of Calgary and provides electricity, natural gas and other related services to customers in the Calgary area, is going ahead with the program, aimed at electricity consumers, without any direct encouragement from the provincial government.

“The program isn’t fully designed yet,” says Helen Bremner, executive vice-president of smart grid initiatives for the company. “However, it would likely be a component of our EasyMax business.

If customers commit to reducing their consumption 10 per cent below their baseline use, we would give them a credit at the end of the year.”

The EasyMax program, which about 200,000 customers have signed up for, involves committing to five-year contracts in return for discounts, ❯❯ continued on page 22

read more online at energizealberta.com Where energy, the economy, and the environment intersect. www.energizealberta.com

22

January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Continued from page 21

Cutting consumption

rather than being subject to the ups and downs of the market.

The average power consumption by residential customers is 600 kilowatt hours (kWh) a month, meaning average consumers could reduce consumption by 720 kWh a year.

As part of the program, ENMAX will offer an energy audit to determine where the most logical savings might be. Bremner says the company hasn’t determined yet what it will charge for that audit, or even if it will charge.

It offers energy audits now, which customers pay a nominal charge for.

The auditors usually recommend such

low-cost moves as cleaning furnaces, shifting to highefficiency lighting and adding weather stripping to windows and doors.

“We think 10 per cent is an easy target,” says Bremner.

She cited one recent study that determined most homeowners and renters could reduce their utility bills by 30 per cent through such steps as installing high-efficiency furnaces and appliances, or making other energysaving investments.

The company hasn’t yet done the calculations, but reducing energy bills by 10 to 30 per cent could save Calgary-area customers several million dollars a year.

By the numbers Q: What’s a kilowatt hour (kWh) anyway?

Source: EPCOR; Government of Alberta

A: The amount of energy consumed by a load of 1,000 watts operating for one hour.

Television (26” colour) 4 hours/day

$1.45

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FortisAlberta FortisAlberta, which transmits electricity to about 485,000 residential, farm and business customers, mostly in rural Alberta, is just beginning to ramp up its conservation programs.

It recently launched a program that sees it donating power monitors to libraries throughout its service area, starting with the Calgary-area communities of Okotoks, Airdrie, Black Diamond and others.

Power monitors are small devices that measure and display the electrical usage of household appliances, as well as the cost of running them. Fortis plans to donate the devices to libraries throughout its service area.

Library members will be able to borrow the monitors from the libraries, just as they would a book.

$0.70

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*

*

*

*Average monthly cost (at $0.06/KWH)

Old refrigerator (circa 1988), top-mount freezer, 17 cubic feet Continuous

$7.25

*

$4.25

make certain changes to their building and furnaces, as well as take other steps. They pay a fee based on their total energy savings.

The usual improvements involve changes to the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems and lighting.

In addition, because saving water is a priority for EPCOR, the company might recommend such things as reusing stormwater or other sources of grey water.

Short says his department is also planning to focus on getting its commercial clients to look at using renewable energy.

“To me, solar energy is the [renewable energy source] with the greatest potential, because Edmonton gets more sunshine than many places in the world,” he says.

Advocate’s Corner

Microwave oven 20 minutes/day

$1.28

Clothes dryer 8 loads/week

EPCOR Edmonton-based EPCOR Utilities, which operates electrical transmission and distribution networks and provides service to 600,000 residential and small business customers in the Edmonton area, offers its EnVest energy-efficiency consulting service to businesses.

However, as a water provider, EPCOR also emphasizes reducing water consumption. John Short, manager of the EnVest program, says conservation is a more complex issue than it might appear.

“For example, just by doing the right landscaping you can reduce your energy [and water] use,” he says.

After a comprehensive audit, customers are shown what their energy savings could be if they

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$3.40

www.energizealberta.com

FortisAlberta is donating power monitors to select libraries within its service territory.

The basic unit of electric power is a watt. The higher the wattage, the more energy the electrical device will need to operate. Of course, how long a bulb or other device is operating also determines the amount of electricity used.

The amount of power consumed multiplied by the duration (measured in hours), creates a kilowatt hour.

For example, a lamp using a 100-watt bulb that is left on for 10 hours will use 1,000 watt hours of energy, which translates to one kilowatt hour. Similarly, a lamp that uses a 40-watt bulb and is left on for three hours will use 120 watt hours of energy, which translates to 0.12 kilowatt hours.

The average home uses about 600 kilowatt hours of power each month, while the average farm uses approximately 1,800 kilowatt hours per month.

Here’s how the use of household appliances may impact residential electricity bills:

Computer and printer 3 hours/day

New refrigerator, top-mount freezer, 18 cubic feet Continuous

Part of the company’s Energy Your Way program, the initiative will be followed by others in the coming months and years.

Clothes washer (e.g., heating water) 8 loads/week

$0.50

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O

ne of the questions we hear frequently from consumers is, “How do I make sense of my electricity bill?” The Utilities Consumer Advocate (UCA) receives between 125 to 150 calls per month on this topic alone.

With all the different line items, fees and unexplained charges or credits on the bill, it can be quite difficult to understand what exactly you are paying for.

A recent study conducted by Ipsos Reid indicated that 47 per cent of Albertans are confused about the terminology and fees included on their monthly bills.

Consumers aren’t asking for more information, they just want a better understanding of the information currently being provided. Many of the terms used are unfamiliar or not explained in enough detail for consumers. Though the intent is to ensure consumers know exactly what they are paying for, the language — rate riders, access fees, fixed and variable delivery charges — can be intimidating.

The UCA is working with the electricity industry to create a standardized plain-language bill that clearly explains all the individual charges and credits. The goal is to simplify the billing format to help you better understand what exactly is on your bill. Consumers can expect to start seeing the new bills in the spring of 2011.

You can find an explanation of electricity bills on our website at www.ucahelps.alberta.ca. You can also contact your electricity provider directly, or call the UCA helpline at 310-4-UCA (310-4822).

Growing pains As Alberta’s renewable fuels standard is about to kick in, the province’s bioenergy sector looks to get back on track

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

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“It looks like [cellulosic biofuel] may cost $2.30 a litre and that just doesn’t compete with gasoline or diesel.”

— Morley Kjargaard, Leader, Bioenergy Commercialization Team, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development

Jim Bentein Energize Alberta

F

ive years ago, after the Alberta government had announced a $239-million program to spur the development of plants to produce fuel, power and heat from field crops, animal and human waste, forestry waste and other biomass, it looked like the bio­energy sector was on a roll.

On the heels of an announcement shortly afterwards by Florida-based Dominion Energy Services that it and partners would spend $400 million to develop a 374-million-litre ethanol and biodiesel plant near Innisfail, Alta., a government official promised it would be the first of many such plants built in the province.

“There are at least six projects now [that have been announced] in Alberta and there are a flurry more coming,” Ed Philipchuk, senior manager of technology and development with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development’s Bio-Industrial Development Branch, told a reporter then.

But the Innisfail plant, which would have been the first integrated project in North America to produce ethanol, biodiesel, canola meal and animal feed while also capturing carbon dioxide to be used in enhanced oil recovery, is on hold, as is most of the “flurry” of plants that were talked about at the time. And Philipchuk has retired.

Other plants the government official said would proceed are also on the back burner, including a $275-million plant near Strathmore that would have produced 113.6 million litres a year of biodiesel and 95 million litres of ethanol annually, a planned $65-million plant near

FIVE Key Points To Ponder

1. Modern forms of bioenergy include converting biomass to motor fuels and electricity. There are three main types of biofuels derived from bioenergy: ethanol, biodiesel and biogas.

2. Ethanol is a form of alcohol, fermented and distilled from a wide range of plant life such as wheat, corn or woody material.

3. Biodiesel is manufactured from vegetable oils, recycled cooking greases or oils, or animal fats.

4. Biogas (also referred to as “renewable natural gas” or “green methane”) contains approximately 70 per cent methane. Biogas is created through fermentation of organic feedstock, including manure, food processing waste or various plant life. Biogas is often used in the generation of electricity. In this application, biogas is used to generate heat and steam to drive turbines.

5. The Alberta government says the use of renewable fuels in the

province has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about one million tonnes each year.

Best prospects Bioenergy projects that are built around generating power and that include other components have had the most success, says Jim Jones, senior development officer with the bioenergy branch of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.

For instance, Growing Power Hairy Hill, located near Vegreville, Alta., has partnered with ATCO Group’s midstream division to build a project that will use organic wastes and high-starch wheat to generate electricity and produce biofertilizer and ethanol (see the July/August 2010 edition of Energize Alberta).

Another project that has already gone ahead is the Enerkem Alberta Biofuels plant

Kyoto Fuels, based in Lethbridge, will open its biodiesel plant this year.

Edmonton that would have produced 114 million litres a year of biodiesel, and a proposed 175-million-litre-a-year biodiesel plant in central Alberta.

But two other projects that were touted at the time have gone ahead — and there are signs the sector is stirring back to life.

Lethbridge-based Kyoto Fuels will open a 66-millionlitre biodiesel plant in 2011, a project being built as a result of an alliance with a local oilseed crushing plant and a trucking company.

Also, two years ago Western Biodiesel opened a plant near the Cargill meat processing plant near High River, Alta., which converts beef tallow and other animal wastes into a targeted 19 million litres a year of biodiesel. (The company ceased operations in late 2010, however, due to tough market conditions. Western Biodiesel says it is also awaiting outstanding payments from the federal government through its biofuel incentive program. The company hopes to re-open the facility once it gets the infusion of federal money.)

Then there’s the legacy biofuel producer in Alberta, Permolex, which has operated a 12-million-litre-a-year ethanol plant near Red Deer for many years.

But that’s hardly a “flurry.”

Slow progress What happened to the optimism that emerged from the government’s announcement of its bioenergy plan?

“It has been a lot slower progress than anyone thought,” says Morley Kjargaard, leader of the bioenergy commercialization team for Alberta Agriculture and Rural

near Edmonton. Construction started this past summer on the $80-million facility. The Quebec-based developer of the project, which will take 100,000 tonnes a year of municipal solid waste from the City of Edmonton and convert it to 36 million litres a year of ethanol, received $23.35 million in grants from the province and the city.

Also, Ottawa-based Plasco Energy Group, which first proposed a similar project for the Red Deer area in 2007, recently said it plans to proceed with that facility, which would treat 300 tonnes a day of trash from area municipalities and produce 15 megawatts of power.

Players On The Stage 1. Alberta Department of Energy (www.energy.alberta.ca) 2. Alberta Biodiesel Association (www.albertabiodiesel.org) Development. “Some of that is due to the economy and some of it was due to high steel prices and labour costs in Alberta prior to that.”

However, the Alberta government soldiers on with its bioenergy program, which has since been tweaked to extend the bioenergy producer credit program, originally set to expire March 31, through to 2016.

Two other programs — to help offset facility start-up costs and to assist with commercialization and market development for those developing biorefineries in the province — are set to expire in April.

The government’s intent in establishing its bioenergy plan was to stimulate the development of “value-added opportunities” for Alberta’s forestry and agriculture sectors.

In addition to the economic diversification potential of the bioenergy sector, the government committed the funding to help tap domestic sources for ethanol and biodiesel production, since it has established a renewable fuel standard that will require (starting in April 2011) that five per cent of all gasoline sold in the province contain ethanol, while diesel contains two per cent biodiesel.

Now virtually all of that renewable fuel will have to be imported.

After the program was announced, it appeared as if accessing domestic sources of biofuels would not be a problem, says Kjargaard. ❯❯ continued on page 24

Jones says projects that use agricultural, forestry and municipal waste materials now appear to have the best economics.

“There will still be projects that use crops, but those tapping wastes seem to have the best prospects,” he says.

Dave Patterson, bioenergy project specialist with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, remains bullish on the sector, particularly because of recent technological advances.

He says the forestry sector holds the greatest potential.

One of the forestry-based projects that is on track is planned by Minnesota-based Otoka

Energy for the Drayton Valley area. The plant would gasify 380,000 a year of waste wood to produce 25 megawatts of power, synfuel and chemicals. It would cost $100 million to build, and the provincial and federal governments have provided $25 million in grants to Otoka.

Another forestry waste project is planned

by Tolko Industries, Alberta’s largest sawmill operator, and Ottawa-based partner Ensyn Technologies (also see July/August 2010 edition of Energize Alberta). The two plan to use a process called pyrolysis to convert 400 tonnes a day of biomass into 85,000 litres of liquid fuel, which would be used to provide power and heat for Tolko’s sawmill at High Level, Alta. www.energizealberta.com

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

Continued from page 23

Growing pains “We had over 200 applications, with a cumulative request [for capital funding] of more than $300 million,” he says.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to Alberta’s new bioenergy development boom.

First, the recession made it difficult for developers to access capital, even with substantial government backing. Next, much to the surprise of the province’s crop

Going Broader, Deeper 1. A lberta Innovates — Bio Solutions (www.albertainnovates.ca/bio/introduction) 2. Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (www.greenfuels.org) producers, a worldwide commodity price boom sent the prices for canola and grain crops to levels never imagined.

It was good news for producers of those crops, but bad news for those wanting to build bioenergy facilities tapping them.

“After the prices of corn, wheat, canola and other crops rose substantially, the developers had to look for other alternatives,” says Kjargaard. “The focus now is on waste streams from the forestry sector as biomass sources. The forestry sector is in a funk [economically], so they were willing to look at alternatives.”

Other developers are looking to so-called cellulosic sources — essentially crop wastes such as wheat straw, or even plants that are considered to be weeds, such as pennycress (stinkweed). For instance, a company called TPA, headed by James Padilla, former chief executive of Ford Motor, is looking at developing a plant near High Prairie, Alta., that would cost $30 million and produce 66 million litres yearly of biodiesel from pennycress and

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off-grade canola. It is also looking at developing other plants in Alberta.

But Kjargaard says the dream of developing cellulosic biofuel, by using thermal and chemical processes to break down the core elements of plants, may still be a few years away.

“It looks like it may cost $2.30 a litre and that just doesn’t compete with gasoline or diesel,” he says.

However, he notes there are about 50 companies worldwide working on cellulosic technology, including Ottawa-based Iogen, which has had a pilot plant operating near that city for several years.

Moving forward Meanwhile, developers have sharpened their pencils.

For instance, Dominion Energy Services, the company which proposed the $400-million ethanol and biodiesel plant for Innisfail, has revised its project and is now proposing a smaller facility that would cost $200 million.

The amended project would produce 140 million litres a year of ethanol, 40,000 tonnes of wheat gluten, 145,000 tonnes of dried distillers grain with solubles, and 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The facility would tap feed wheat, normally used in the livestock sector. The downturn in Alberta’s livestock sector has left surplus amounts of feed wheat available.

The company is now trying to raise $33 million from local farmers, which would make it eligible for a federal grant of $25 million.

Several others are proposing smaller projects, one tapping camelina, related to mustard seed.

“There are a hundred different ways to structure a [processing] plant, even using wheat and canola as a feedstock,” says Kjargaard, who remains optimistic about the sector, despite the problems it has encountered.

Feedback Email yourenergy@energizealberta.com and let us know what you think about bioenergy use in Alberta.

Talking energy talk

Renewable Fuels Standard

A

renewable fuels standard (RFS) is a government requirement to blend renewable fuels such as ethanol or biodiesel into fuels that are sold to customers, like gasoline and diesel.

Beginning in April, Alberta’s RFS will require five per cent ethanol content in gasoline sold in the province and two per cent renewable content in diesel.

Renewable fuels used to meet the RFS must demonstrate at least 25 per cent fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than the equivalent petroleum fuel.

The RFS is expected to reduce GHG emissions by about one million tonnes per year, which is the equivalent of taking 260,000 vehicles off Alberta’s roads each year.

The government says the use of advanced chemical and biological processes to create biofuels will lead to further reductions in GHG emissions, due to processes that improve efficiency and yield.

All gasoline vehicles made since the early 1980s can use gasoline that contains ethanol. All major vehicle manufacturers approve the use of up to 10 per cent ethanol in their warranties.

Alberta’s RFS comes on the heels of one enacted by the federal government last year. Ottawa’s RFS of five per cent ethanol content in gasoline came into effect on Dec. 15. This adds nearly two billion litres of renewable fuels into the country’s gasoline pool each year.

A start date for the two per cent renewable content in diesel has not yet been set by the federal government, although it has committed to implementing it in 2011.

Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

25 photo: School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

The biofuel conundrum Report suggests ‘ethics’ of large-scale biofuels production must be considered

Paul Wells Energize Alberta

W

hile biofuels like ethanol are often lauded by advocates as a viable green alternative to gasoline, two university researchers say the benefits of such fuels have been “overstated” and that the “ethical risks” of large-scale ethanol production have been ignored.

In a paper released Dec. 14 by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, authors Michal Moore, senior fellow, and Sarah Jordaan of Harvard University’s department of Earth and planetary sciences, look at the basic question of whether biofuel energy sources are ethical.

“If policy is designed to create better outcomes for everyone, then we need to subject policy to ethical tests. In many respects, current policy around biofuels fails those tests.”

In addition to arguing that the reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using biofuel are trumped-up by many policymakers and green groups, Moore stresses that there are questions that need to be considered before encouraging and supporting the production of more biofuel.

For instance, the authors pondered what the effect of large-scale biofuel production would be on food costs and other social factors. As an example, Moore

“A widely debated issue is the effect of increased biofuels production on agricultural markets. If demand [for biofuels] increases, the price of the feedstock will increase in response.”

— Report by School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

And their conclusions might come as a surprise.

“Policy-makers, especially in the U.S., have been in a rush to expand biofuel production. But they need to start thinking outside of the box of climate change and the corn lobby. In the worldwide race to develop energy sources that are seen as ‘green’ because they are renewable and less greenhouse gas intensive, sometimes the most basic questions remain unanswered,” Moore says.

points to an influx of subsidies in 2007 that promoted corn-based ethanol production in the United States, which resulted in a land rush that displaced food crops, caused corn prices to soar and saw smaller farms being displaced by corporate agriculture.

“A widely debated issue is the effect of increased bio­f uels production on agricultural markets. If demand [for biofuels] increases, the price of the feedstock will increase in response,” the report says.

“In the absence of new cropland or if land conversion lags increased demand, this can be expected to increase the price of food produced from the same feedstocks. Shortages will affect regions and countries dependent on trade of these commodities.”

The report also advises that Canadian policy-makers should consider the following when determining the future of largescale biofuel production: • Should more land be used for biofuel when the return of energy per acre is low? Are there better uses for that land?

• In addition to worrying about the impact of global warming, should we not consider the impact on land of massively expanding biofuel production?

Michal Moore says biofuel policy must be subjected to ethical tests.

• What are the other economic impacts of large-scale production of biofuel?

“Our central point in the paper is that good decision-making, whether if it’s local, regional or even national, must take all these things into account,” Moore says.

A key driver for increased global biofuel demand comes from the United States, where a federal fuel standard that mandates increasing renewable energy content for transportation fuels has stimulated new investment in and accelerated growth of the corn ethanol industry. Between 2000 and 2009, U.S. ethanol production grew exponentially, from 1.6 billion to 10.6 billion gallons per year. To provide some context, while ethanol production has increased nearly sevenfold since 2000, bitumen production from Alberta’s oilsands has tripled.

“Right now we have a biofuel industry, especially in the ethanol area, that has progressed or expanded largely in response to subsidies for production,” Moore says. He points to large subsidies in the corn industry, which compensate for crops that are vulnerable to seasonal ups and downs or can’t compete in the fuel marketplace.

Moore says that expansion of the biofuel industry is also directly related to increasing demands for new land conversion, and corresponding intensification of investment in processing facilities. Increased production of some biofuels raises “important social as well as economic issues” that should be addressed within the policy and regulatory process.

“Some of these issues may be grouped under the term ethics or ethical choices in decisionmaking,” he says.

Moore is also convinced that the focus on renewable energy sources might be taking away from any efforts to promote demand reduction as a means to decrease GHG emissions.

“Since we’re all worried about global warming these days, should we not consider the impact of simply responding to demand for new fuels by adding to supply?” he says. “Should we not be asking a different set of questions which revolve around the area of diminishing demand over time, as opposed to simply meeting any new demand with new supply?

The report, called Ethical risks of environmental policies: The case of ethanol in North America, can be found at www.policyschool.ca under “Latest Papers.”

Feedback Email yourenergy@energizealberta.com to let us know what you think about biofuel production. Is it good way to reduce GHG emissions? Does it make sense to convert agricultural lands to fuel production from food production?

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January/February 2011 • Energize Alberta

1

Enviro watchdog Monitoring system for oilsands recommended

all images: istockphoto.com

Each edition of Energize Alberta contains a listing of 10 topical energy stories — key trends, events and initiatives — that are shaping the province’s energy future.

2

A federally appointed advisory panel has told Ottawa and Alberta to put politics aside and set up a worldclass environmental monitoring system for the oilsands.

Former environment minister Jim Prentice appointed the panel to review concerns about oilsands pollution entering the Lower Athabasca River basin and connected waterways, and whether environmental monitoring systems are well designed and implemented. The panel, which released its results before Christmas, recommended a new system be set up to establish baselines, collect relevant data and refer it to a group of renowned scientists for review.

Getting windy Companies plan Alberta’s largest wind farm

Why it matters? “How Canada addresses the environmental issues surrounding the current and projected growth of the industry is of fundamental importance to Canadian trade and national and international energy security,” said the panel. “Until this situation is fixed, there will continue to be uncertainty and public distrust in the environmental performance of the oilsands industry and government oversight.”

Calgary-based Greengate Power will work with Edmonton-based Capital Power to develop, build and operate what it expects will be the largest wind farm in Alberta, located 275 kilometres northeast of Calgary. The 150-megawatt Halkirk 1 project is scheduled for commercial operation in late 2011 or early 2012. It will produce enough electricity to power about 50,000 homes.

Why it matters? Companies continue to pursue wind power development in Alberta. Privately held Greengate is developing nine wind projects in Alberta with an aggregate capacity of 1,550 megawatts. The Halkirk project will contribute to the municipal tax base and create jobs, while diversifying the province’s energy production base.

3 4 The three amigos

Western provinces to seek new energy markets

Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have agreed to unite to improve access to Asian markets and promote interprovincial and energy industry collaboration. A memorandum of understanding was signed in December between the three provinces. The pact builds on the New West Partnership agreement signed earlier in 2010 by the premiers of the same provinces to promote cooperation between them.

Why it matters? “It’s never good business to be reliant on only one customer,” said Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert. He underscored the importance of finding Asian markets for the provinces’ natural gas rather than relying exclusively on the gasglutted United States market.

The provinces also want to reduce cross-border regulatory burdens.

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Tailings target Industry collaboration to target challenge of oilsands tailings management

Seven oilsands mining companies announced in December that they plan to work together in a unified effort to advance tailings management as well as to foster innovation and collaboration in research and development relating to tailings. The companies include Canadian Natural Resources, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, Syncrude Canada, Teck Resources and Total E&P Canada.

Why it matters? The oilsands miners believe the partnership is a key step towards tailings solutions that will allow them to accelerate the pace of reclamation using the most advanced environmental measures. Each company has pledged to share its existing tailings research and technology and to remove barriers to collaborating on future tailings research and development.

6

Extreme makeover Juniors succeeding with shift towards oil production

Junior producers have been swinging their budgets away from natural gas for the past year and appear to be having success both expanding oil and liquids production as well as beefing up the percentage of liquids content in their total output. Some of these smaller companies are dedicating their entire capital program to oil-related pursuits in 2011.

Why it matters? In light of the low natural gas price outlook, many junior producers have repositioned for oil production growth — even companies that were known as pure gas companies — to ensure their long-term survival.

5

Upgrader action

7

Total and Suncor form alliance, but Strathcona upgrader shelved

French oil giant Total and Calgary-based Suncor Energy have strengthened their oilsands alliance, inking partnership agreements to develop the Suncor-operated Fort Hills mining project, the Total-operated Joslyn mining project and the Suncor-operated Voyageur upgrader project. As a result of the agreements, however, Total will no longer proceed with its planned construction of a 295,000-barrel-per-day upgrader at Strathcona, near Edmonton, since its Joslyn mine will use Suncor’s Voyageur upgrader near Fort McMurray.

Why it matters? While the news isn’t the best for those trying to promote an upgrader hub near Edmonton, the alliance is another shot in the arm for the oilsands sector and leaves little doubt that that the industry is back on track. Suncor’s Voyageur project was halted in 2008 as the worldwide economic downturn flattened construction plans.

Land bonanza

Producers spent $2.41 billion at Alberta land sales in 2010

Oil and gas producers spent $2.41 billion on Alberta oil and gas rights in 2010, a sign of industry’s renewed interest in the province following the introduction of a revised royalty regime. The 2010 tally was second only to the amount spent in 2006, when Alberta attracted $3.43 billion in bonus bids thanks to heavy spending for oilsands acreage.

Why it matters? The land sale results solidify Alberta’s status as a jurisdiction that industry wants to invest in. It also signifies that oil and gas producers are encouraged by opportunities in the province, and bodes well for the Alberta economy in 2011.

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Energize Alberta • January/February 2011

27

Getting to the route of it AltaLink chooses power link routes

Calgary-based AltaLink has identified preferred and alternate routes for a $1.1-billion north-south power line in Alberta. The Western Alberta Transmission line would run from the coal-fired power plants in the Genesee area west of Edmonton to the Langdon area east of Calgary. Both routes go straight south from Genesee, with the preferred path cutting east across Highway 2 just north of Crossfield, 50 kilometres north of Calgary, and the other turning east earlier, north of Ponoka.

Why it matters? The AltaLink project is the first stage of a $3.5-billion upgrade that includes another north-south high-voltage DC line running the length of the east side of the province. ATCO was assigned to build the second line. If the Alberta Utilities Commission approves the AltaLink application, construction could begin in the summer of 2012 and power start to flow by 2015.

9

Jobs, jobs, jobs Alberta job growth to lead Canada in 2011

Increased oilsands development will brighten Alberta’s employment picture in 2011. The province is expected to lead the country in employment growth in 2011 with an increase of 2.3 per cent, up from a “scant” 0.5 per cent in 2010, says a report released in December by RBC Economics. The anticipated increase represents the creation of 37,000 jobs.

Why it matters? Alberta’s economy continues to recover from the worldwide recession that began in 2008.

Improvements in the employment market will help spread recovery more widely throughout Alberta’s economy next year, with a positive effect on retail sales.

10

Fuelling green growth Federal government’s renewable fuels standard comes into force The federal government’s renewable fuels standard (RFS) officially came into force on Dec. 15. The RFS will add some two billion litres of renewable fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, into the Canadian gasoline pool each year and change the way Canadians drive going forward.

Why it matters? Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, says ethanol and biodiesel will help diversify the country’s fuel supply, add new income for farmers and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to a recent third-party study, Canadian ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 62 per cent compared to fossil fuels and biodiesel generates a 99 per cent reduction. The RFS represents an annual GHG cut of 4.2 megatonnes — the equivalent of removing one million cars from Canada’s highways.

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building our future

The world is watching Alberta.

We are the kind of place that can attract and hold investment – whether it be time, money or human capital. To realize our potential we need to remain competitive.

Being competitive means jobs for Albertans – not only in oil and gas production and construction, but also hotels, restaurants, accounting firms, transportation companies, and more.

Every dollar invested in the province’s oil and gas industry creates three dollars of value for Alberta’s economy.

Alberta is Energy is supported by several Alberta business associations, many of which are focused on the oil and gas sector.

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