Oilsands alliance can’t handle the truth

The once-ubiquitous ad campaign boasting of how the oilsands are on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions has gone dark. Faced with the new truth-in-advertising provisions in Canada’s updated Competition Act, the lobby group that represents the major oilsands producers took the extraordinary step of erasing all its social media posts and gutting its website on June 19. The Pathways Alliance website was reduced to a short statement blaming the move on “uncertainty on how the new law will be interpreted and applied.” On June 20, they added a line stressing that the scrubbing of their online identity “is not related to our belief in the truth and accuracy of our environmental communications.” That’s a bold claim, because it sure looks like they folded after their bluff was called. Keith Stewart is a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada. Photograph courtesy of Keith Stewart The changes to the anti-greenwashing provisions of the Act were requested by the federal official responsible for implementing the Competition Act, so that Parliament could provide clarity on how he was to apply the rules around environmental claims. While still not as strict as the greenwashing rules in Europe, companies making general claims like being “net zero” or “carbon neutral” must now provide proof using an “internationally recognized methodology.” Pathways’ member companies were probably worried about how people like me might use the new rules. I am one of the signatories to the March 2023 Greenpeace Canada complaint against the Pathways Alliance’s ad campaign that is currently under investigation by the Competition Bureau. Part of that complaint is that Pathways invented their own definition of “net zero” which ignores the vast majority of pollution from their product. Under the revised legislation, they wouldn’t be able to be their own judge and jury when it comes to defining what it means to be on the path to net zero. What probably freaked them out is that there already is a relevant “internationally recognized methodology.” Last November, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a special report,The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions, that laid out criteria for assessing whether a company’s business plan is aligned with net zero. In March, Greenpeace Canada published a report showing that Pathways members Suncor, Cenovus, and CNRL fail that test. Badly. The IEA says that net-zero aligned companies shouldn’t invest in new long-term fossil fuel projects, yet all of the oilsands companies are planning to expand production of oil and gas. Suncor even sold off all its wind and solar assets, and pumped that money into buying a bigger share of the Fort Hills oilsands mine. The IEA also says companies serious about the energy transition should be investing at least half of their capital budgets in clean energy by 2030. The most ambitious oilsands firm is planning to invest 10 per cent by 2030, though it’s likely less as they use a self-serving definition of what constitutes clean energy. And finally, the IEA says that companies should reduce emissions from their oil and gas production by at least 60 per cent by 2030. Pathways members are vigorously opposing the federal government’s proposed GHG cap that would require them to reduce emissions by 20-23 per cent by 2030. Pathways could try to pick another internationally recognized methodology, like the one established by the United Nations’ High Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities, but we have a report showing that the oil companies—and the banks that finance them—don’t come close to meeting it either. Asking oil companies to provide evidence for their green claims isn’t censorship, it’s an inoculation against misinformation. We shouldn’t forget that oil companies recognized climate change as an existential threat to their business models in the 1970s, but instead of pivoting to renewable energy, they invested in a decades-long public relations campaign to cast doubt on the science. Canada’s new anti-greenwashing rules will make that kind of deceptive marketing harder. Hooray. Keith Stewart is a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, and teaches a course on energy and environmental policy at the University of Toronto. The Hill Times