A drilling rig gets packed up after drilling an oil well near Calgary on Nov. 13, 2019.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Akshay Dubey is the chief executive officer of CVW CleanTech Inc., a company based in Alberta whose technology aims to reduce emissions and recover byproducts from oil production.
It is critical that the oil sands industry prioritizes implementing innovations to decarbonize the production and use of Canadian oil, and that society holds industry accountable for reducing their environmental impact through tangible action.
Over the past two years, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Suncor Energy Inc. and Imperial Oil Ltd., the three largest Canadian oil sands mining companies, have collectively returned over $41-billion to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. Even with their strong financial position, oil sands operators have been reluctant to deploy new technology at a commercial scale since paraffinic froth treatment – a technology used to produce a higher quality bitumen product – was pioneered at the Albian Sands mine in the early 2000s.
This focus on shareholder returns at the expense of innovation may seem like a reasonable strategy in the short term with stocks in the industry trading at historically low valuations, but innovation and driving sustainable change is the real cure to investor apathy and meeting commitments to decarbonize.
The oil sands industry has not always been so indifferent to implementing valuable innovations. The development of the sector itself is a lesson in ingenuity and determination exemplified by political visionaries like former premier Ernest Manning and entrepreneurs like J. Howard Pew, alongside some of the brightest technical minds in Canada. These key figures recognized the importance of this valuable resource at a time when the world’s energy needs were under threat.
Since the 1967 opening of Great Canadian Oil Sands, the first oil sands mine, the industry has been paramount to the Canadian economy. Recently, it accounted for approximately 3 per cent of Canada’s GDP from 2016 to 2021, contributing an average of $56-billion per year and providing up to 700,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Although the industry has done a commendable job reducing its emissions over the past 10 years, it must show the world that it is truly committed to reaching net zero. Today, the oil sands industry is focused on the Pathways Alliance’s foundational project – a carbon capture and storage solution that has the potential to deliver significant carbon reductions. This will require billions of dollars of federal and provincial funding for construction and running costs with an optimistic timeline of being operational at the end of the decade. The reality is that the oil sands industry will not reach net zero commitments with this project alone, and must move faster to meet its commitments.
At this critical juncture, I call on industry to show their commitment to its net zero targets by implementing deployment-ready technologies today that can deliver significant and positive environmental and economic impacts. In addition to our work at CVW CleanTech, where we have developed a tailings-management technology, there are many examples of Canadian cleantech innovations that can be part of this solution.
Ekona Power offers a methane “pyrolysis to hydrogen” technology which can help decarbonize heavy industry, and Svante has engineered a novel dry adsorption material which can significantly reduce the cost of carbon capture.
These clean technologies have been developed in Canada through the support of both public and private investments. To drive the maximum value to oil sands operators and increase the likelihood of adoption, clean technology companies often focus on the hard-to-abate emission sources.
I strongly believe that governments and industry should prioritize the implementation of clean technologies that provide society with benefits beyond emissions reduction. The most commercially viable clean technology companies have taken on this challenge and are focused on driving positive economic value from what is currently an environmental liability.
Working together with oil sands operators, new technologies and innovations can collectively make the oil sands industry a point of pride for Canadians again if the industry is willing to go back to its roots and embrace Canadian innovation.