Shell sold millions of carbon credits for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that never happened, allowing the company to turn a profit on its fledgling carbon capture and storage project, according to a new report by Greenpeace Canada.
Such sales would not have been illegal, but amounted to a "hidden subsidy" within the program which undercut the effectiveness of industrial carbon pricing, says Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace and the author of the report. In all, taxpayer funding has covered 93 per cent of the costs of Shell's Quest project to date, Greenpeace said.Ryan Fournier, a spokesperson for Alberta's Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz, said the report is a "smear job by Greenpeace."
He said that as "a result of innovative fiscal and regulatory frameworks, nine million tonnes of CO2 have been captured at Shell's Quest facility that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere."Canadian oilsands companies want to build a $16.5-billion carbon capture project near Cold Lake, Alta. Residents fear that pumping millions of tonnes of CO2 underground will endanger their communities.
A spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said "the oil and gas sector needs to move forward on achieving reductions in absolute emissions."