Pacific Link pipeline adds 27.7 million tonnes; Pathways removes 22

A pipeline moving one million barrels per day would add 27.7 million tonnes of annual emissions, according to Environment Canada estimates tabled before the House of Commons environment committee. That figure exceeds the 22 million tonnes per year the same department projects the Pathways carbon capture project will sequester.

Dawn Farrell, CEO of the federal major projects office, told MPs on Tuesday that Ottawa will need to find new reduction measures to close the gap by 2050. Her office assessed the greenhouse gas footprint of the proposed Pacific Link pipeline directly.

"We did assess what the greenhouse gas emissions would be from the pipeline itself, and it does bring up the emissions a bit," Farrell told the committee.

"And of course, Canada, through its various greenhouse gas strategies, will have to find a way to reduce that by 2050, given our goals for 2050."

For scale: one million tonnes of carbon dioxide equals the annual output of 233,000 passenger vehicles. The pipeline's projected 27.7 million tonnes, then, corresponds to roughly 6.5 million cars on the road each year.

Whose numbers govern the ledger?

The committee received two different figures for Pathways. Farrell, citing the energy agreement between Canada and Alberta, put the project's annual reduction at 16 million tonnes. Environment Canada's analysis, submitted to the committee and provided to The Canadian Press, projected 22 million tonnes.

Either way, the arithmetic runs one direction. At 16 million tonnes, Pathways offsets barely 58 percent of the pipeline's 27.7 million tonnes. At the federal department's more generous 22 million tonnes, the capture project still falls 5.7 million tonnes short. The ledger does not balance on either reading.

The backdrop compounds the shortfall. Canada must still cut 227 million tonnes annually to meet its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, based on the latest 2024 estimates. The pipeline does not help that number. It adds to it.

What holds the two projects together?

In July, Ottawa and Alberta signed an agreement with five of Canada's major oil companies to advance the Pathways project. That agreement made the Pacific Link pipeline conditional on Pathways being built.

Farrell confirmed the condition carries real weight in the permitting process. If the oil companies reversed course and abandoned the capture project, she said, her office could embed the requirement in the pipeline's final conditions document.

"If Pathways wasn't going to be underway, it would have to be a condition in our mind of the final conditions document that the Pathways project would be built in order for the (pipeline) to go ahead," Farrell said.

"That's what that conditions space is for."

Can cabinet overrule the conditions?

Manitoba Conservative MP Branden Leslie pressed the point that the conditions document remains a recommendation, with federal cabinet holding the final decision.

"Does cabinet have a veto on those conditions ultimately?" Leslie asked.

"Can cabinet say, 'No, in fact, never mind. We don't need to build the pathways project. Go ahead with the pipeline'?"

"Well given that the Prime Minister is the one who's very determined to have Pathways, I'm not sure why that would happen," Farrell replied.

"But certainly cabinet, it's at their discretion. They make the decision."

There is the structure in plain terms. The major projects office writes the conditions. The cabinet can discard them. The conditional link between pipeline and capture project survives only as long as cabinet wants it to.

The watch item is the final conditions document itself, and whether the Pathways requirement appears in binding language when it lands.