Mike Kennedy - Leveraging Alberta’s Oil & Gas Advantage to Support the Green Economy

measuring environmental values

About Green Analytics

measuring environmental values

COPYRIGHT ÂŠ GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

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Alberta’s Oil & Gas Resource Examine the current and future footprint Strategies to leverage this footprint BRIMS as a key Big Data resource for the province

Alberta’s Oil & Gas Advantage • Oil & Gas is a key driver of the Alberta economy. • It’s reach of economic and environmental impact extends across the province. • Recent concerns of market access pose considerable risk for the province. • How do we transition to a broader economic base? COPYRIGHT © GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

Conventional Oil Resource • $1.6 billion contribution to government revenues (2007) • 450K to 500K barrels of production per day. • Represents 24% of AB’s oil production/ 17% of Canada’s • Remaining reserves are an increasingly important source of low cost oil. COPYRIGHT © GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

Natural Gas Resource • $1.4 billion to government revenues in Fiscal 10/11 • Convention and nonconventional reserves are estimated to be 30 trillion ft3 • 20% of the marketable gas consumption takes place in AB. • Increasingly important resource for energy production.

Oil Sands Resource • Third largest proven oil reserves in the world. • Production upwards of 1.9 M BBl/day. • In 2010 companies spent $34 Billion in net cash expenditures. • Globally significant resource. • Production expected to reach 3M BBl/day by 2018.

Approx:393,870 ha’s

Approx:314,191 ha’s

Approx: 221,379 ha’s

Approx:262,950 ha’s

Social Licence to Operate • Companies are experiencing public resistance to development. • Communities want to see local benefits – Clean forms of development – Progressive minded companies. – …but continued economic development. COPYRIGHT © GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

Finding Green Win-Wins • How do we build a green economy on an inherently brown economy? – Purposeful planning – Promote efficient resource use – Reduce environmental risks – Encourage clean forms of resource development

Three Strategies to Consider • Biomass Strategy- capture waste and adding value to forestry and agriculture systems • Integrated Land Management- coordinating development to minimize disturbance

• Conservation Offsets- balance linear disturbance and ecosystem services

Alberta’s Biomass Potential •

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Alberta has vast quantities of biomass in many forms: – Agriculture based – Forest based – Municipal solid waste Biomass can provide multiple product streams: – Energy – Bio-products – Bio-chemicals

Alberta’s Biomass Potential • Major Challenges to using biomass includes: – Data and Information barrier about quantity and quality of the resource – Policy barriers to ownership – Market incentives to drive feedstock substitution – Cost barriers to transport biomass

• Data and information is critical to unlocking a biomass strategy for Alberta

Integrated Land Management (ILM) • Facilitated and collaborative land management planning for multiple land uses and values.

Source: www.waterbucket.ca

ILM- Benefits Benefits • Increasing the potential for land planning collaboration • Reducing land use conflict and unnecessary disturbance • Reduce overall cost of resource use • Can enable the integration of a broader suite of benefits COPYRIGHT © GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

ILM - Challenges Challenges • Silo approach to industrial development • Distributing the costs and benefits appropriately • Data and information to inform planning • Pace and scale of development • No regulatory requirement

ILM – Path Forward

Conservation Offsets Definition: To balance increased linear disturbance and the associated loss to ecosystem services.

Source: Dyer et al. “Catching Up: Consevation and Biodiversity Offsets in Alberta’s Boreal Forest” 2008

Conservation Offsets- Benefits • Social license to operate • Lower cost of environmental compliance • Ease of cross-compliance • Potential for better conservation outcomes • Support to environment sector (good jobs)

Conservation Offsets- Challenges • Public perceptions- a shell game • Data and information systems to validate and verify transactions • Regulatory driver to make transactions a requirement

Green Analytics Role • Leading the development of data and information systems • Identify key strategies and opportunities for governments and business to play a role in the green economy • Analyzing opportunities for socio-economic and environmental benefits • Communicating opportunities, benefits and challenges to a broad audience COPYRIGHT © GREEN ANALYTICS CORP. 2012

Alberta’s Bio-Resource Information Management System

Compilation of existing data sources

Annual automated inventory

Publicly accessible data

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