Oil extracted from tar sands is far more polluting than conventional hydrocarbons. But the EU\u2019s decision to change the way it classifies the fuel is good news for Canadian exports and bad news for the environment. EURACTIV\u2019s partner Ouest-France reports.<\/p>\n
Tar sands oil is the most polluting of all the fossil fuels. The mixture, deposited at the earth\u2019s surface, is 100 times more viscous and dense than conventional oil. Yet, since December 2014, the energy source, which comes mainly from Alberta in Canada, has no longer been labelled by the European Union as particularly harmful to the environment.<\/p>\n
The decision bears the hallmark of the CETA free trade deal between Canada and the EU. Dirty oil has been given a clean label.<\/p>\n
It all started in 2009, when EU lawmakers decided to cut transport emissions by 6% by 2020. In 2011, to limit the consumption of oil from tar sands, the European Commission gave the fuel a carbon value five times higher than conventional oil. The EU executive based this decision on Stanford University\u2019s finding that tar sands generate 23% more greenhouse gasses.<\/p>\n
Brussels denies horse-trading<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is when we saw the oil companies really flexing their muscles,\u201d said Patrick Bonin, the head of Greenpeace Canada. The NGO write to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper \u201cto make him stop this lobbying in Brussels\u201d. But it was to no avail. On 17 December 2014, Canada\u2019s dirty oil was \u201ccleansed\u201d in the European directive, which was adopted by the Parliament by 337 votes to 325.<\/p>\n
French Socialist MEP and member of the Parliament\u2019s environment committee Guillaume Balas (S&D group), recalled the event as a \u201cdemocratic obscenity\u201d. \u201cIt proves the dysfunction of the EU and its lack of political courage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In France, this episode failed to make the front pages, despite the fact that Paris was preparing to host the UN\u2019s biggest ever climate conference, the COP21.<\/p>\n
EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstr\u00f6m said just last month that \u201cno European standards have been lowered\u201d during the negotiations on CETA, which still has to be ratified by the EU\u2019s national and regional parliaments.<\/p>\n
But for Canadian ecologist Patrick Bonin, this change in labelling was clearly accepted by Brussels as part of the negotiations. \u201cThere could be no barriers to trade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Canada produced 2.5 million barrels of oil per day from tar sands. \u201cThis is double what the country consumes,\u201d said the Greenpeace boss. \u201cMost of it is exported.\u201d<\/p>\n
It arrives in Europe via the United States, where it is mixed with lighter fuels in the refineries of the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n
And the rate of these exports may be about to pick up. US President Donald Trump recently gave the green light to the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,900 km conduit from Alberta direct to the ports of Texas. \u201cIt could carry 800,000 barrels per day,\u201d according to Fabrice Bertoncini, an expert at the French Institute of Petroleum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil extracted from tar sands is far more polluting than conventional hydrocarbons. But the EU\u2019s decision to change the way it classifies the fuel is good news for Canadian exports and bad news for the environment. EURACTIV\u2019s partner Ouest-France reports. Tar sands oil is the most polluting of all the fossil fuels. The mixture, deposited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[6406],"supplier":[5585,6064,1122],"class_list":["post-43013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-environment","supplier-european-union","supplier-french-institute-of-petroleum-new-energies","supplier-stanford-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43013"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=43013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}