Mark Carney's Carbon Capture Deal with Alberta Will Fail. Just Like Norway's Did. (Oil#1).
Mark Carney signed a deal with Alberta Big Oil to require that they support a "carbon capture" scheme run by Pathways Alliance. In exchange, Canadian taxpayers will foot the entire bill for another oil pipeline to the southern coast of British Columbia for a projected 35 billion dollars, and counting. It turns out that taxpayers will also pay further billions to cover perhaps three-quarters of the initial (capital) costs of the carbon capture scheme.
In short, in the name of environmental protection through the supposed technological fix of carbon capture, the Canadian people will pay tens of billions to subsidize a massive increase in fossil fuel production and distribution in the Alberta tar sands.
Toronto Globe and Mail business reporter, and multi award nominee/winner, Tim Kiladze published an excellent article in the August 7 2026 edition, titled "Canada's Carbon Capture Compromise". It is written as a subtle private message to Mark Carney that is only partly about the damage to the environment angle. It is especially about the business case. His quietly implied yet urgent message to Carney: Don't Do It.
Lesson from Norway: Carbon Capture Doesn't Work.
Kiladze reports on the leading world example of a carbon capture scheme, the Northern Lights project in Norway, and explains why it has effectively shut down for lack of customers. He provides several reasons why there is near zero uptake. Kiladze then provides key facts about the proposed Pathways Alliance project in Alberta. He also provides facts about the carbon polluting targets and credits trading system, that is the most important part of the Carney-Alberta Big Oil deal.
This is the first of four short articles based on Kiladze's reporting. This article argues that there is no geoengineering technological fix for fossil fuel pollution, certainly not carbon capture. There is no fix that reduces the harm to the environment. There is no business case either, which is one reason why the taxpaying public will always end up paying the entire bill.
No to Net Zero. Only Winding Down to Zero Together Can Work.
There is only one fix, and that is to eliminate fossil fuel extraction and the use of fossil fuels in industry and consumer products (like home heating, cars, planes, buses, trains etc). This will take a long time, and yet it needs to be done in the aggregate very quickly.
The goal must be Zero, or as I will argue, Winding Down to Zero. And because this is the only possible goal, it will require that there is a Global Treaty that includes all nation states and all oil extraction and oil fueled private and state owned companies. The treaty will organize a winding down, a weening off, of oil where no one refuses because they are afraid that a competitor won't wind down as much, or as fast.
The second article will argue that setting the goal as Net Zero, which is the slogan that seeks to sell the pollution credits trading system mandated by the Paris Accord, is a scam. The goal can only be Zero, or rather Winding Down to [near] Zero.
A Green New Deal Is A Distraction.
The third article will argue that the goal and slogan of the left and environmentalist campaigns against fossil fuel extraction and use should not be Fight for a Green New Deal. Unfortunately, 'more green energy will result in less fossil fuel energy' is a false statement. Campaigning as if more green energy will solve the problem simply provides further cover for the pollution credits trading system Net Zero scam. Our campaigns must have two objectives and slogans. Make the Polluters Pay in Proportion to the Pollution They Generate. And Negotiate a Global Treaty to Wind Down to Zero, Together.
The fourth and final article will argue two final points.
Pollution Damage is Qualitative. Money Cannot Measure the Amount of Damage.
The first point in the fourth article will be that the progressive campaign needs to challenge the endlessly repeated subconscious message that the damages due to fossil fuel pollution can be measured quantitatively in money. There is no money price that is acceptable for continuing with carbon pollution. The costs of carbon pollution are almost entirely qualitative and categorical in nature. The costs are measured in how many people and beings and plants die (or go extinct), and how much younger than they otherwise would. The costs are in what diseases humans and animals and plants will get more often, and in how severe the version of those diseases will be, and how much diseases due to poisoning will reduce the quality of life measured qualitatively.
Fossil Fuel Pollution May Be the Most Obvious Threat to Life and Health. But It Is Far From the Only One.
The second point in the fourth article will be that the Left should also widen the frame from just End Global Warming to the broader one of End Global Poisoning (Pollution) of all kinds. Global warming due to carbon poisoning is a subset of that. There is little point in keeping the increase in temperature under three or four or whatever centrigrade degrees, if in the meantime most of the human race is killed off by the Ebola virus, or some other plague. Or by the ingestion of plastics into most human foetuses. There is a very long list of killing and maiming diseases due to poisoning that we need to research and then do public education about.
Carbon Capture is a Pretend Technological Fix. There Are No Customers, for Good Reason.
Here are some important facts drawn from the Tim Kiladze article to show that Carbon Capture is, as he puts it, a "mirage". It does not work as an actual technological fix. Norway has found over 19 years that there are almost no customers. It barely works as a cover-up, as putting "We care about the environment" lipstick on the pig of increasing fossil fuel extraction.
-- Only a very small subset of industries are possible candidates to be customers for a carbon capture project. The Norway Northern Lights project has had almost no actual customers that went beyond announcing intent to do carbon capture to provide political cover, and never following through.
Canada Will Be the Only Customer of Pathways Alliance. The Public Will Pay Billions to Provide Cover for Big Oil.
The only possible users are very large carbon polluters (who need fake environmentalist credentials to cover this up, to protect their brand). They have to be heavily capitalized enough to afford liquifying their carbon waste and then paying the high price to ship it in special ships, or to be willing to accept the contamination of their own soil by burying it, as is apparently what Pathways pretends to want for Alberta/Canada.
In the Carney-Alberta case, the Canadian government will be the customer, and probably the only customer. The taxpayer will pay what Kiladze estimates to be many billions to provide cover for expanding Alberta tar sands production, and shipping the increased production by a new pipeline to the BC coast. As already noted, Kiladze points out that the Canadian taxpayer is on the hook for at least 35 billion to pay for the new pipeline.
The Norway Carbon Capture Project Was a Political Disaster. Advice to Carney -- Don't Do It.
-- Norway set up the carbon capture project as far back as 2007 because they recognized that their own offshore oil mining was going to come to an end in the not too distant future. They hoped to create a carbon capture industry that would attract lots of customers from other countries who still had reserves, and who needed a technological fix (environmentalist cover).
Northern Lights has had to open and shut down altogether at least twice since (they are currently basically closed, maintained as a research facility). "[B]y 2013, Norway had to retreat. Its plans for a carbon-capture project in Mongstad had gone wildly over budget… [it was] described at the time by a Norwegian environmental group as 'one of the ugliest political crash landings we have ever seen'".
-- [T]ransporting carbon is expensive… the Pathways pipeline [not to be confused with the oil pipeline to the BC coast, this is the pipeline to the location where the liquified carbon waste will be processed and buried] is still estimated to cost between $20 billion and $30 billion. It's tough to recoup that money. While there are some uses for captured carbon, such as carbonated beverages, most gets buried, which means the process is just a cost".
There Is No Business Case for the Alberta Carbon Capture Scheme.
-- In short, there is no business case for a carbon capture project. There are many red flags that signal this.
The Pathways Alliance was set up by Alberta tar sands oil producers, with no participation from unions or environmentalists or other groups representing any public interest. Yet none of the oil companies are willing to spend a penny to pay for it. They will pay a small percentage, and only after the phase 1 of capital construction is finished. Kiladze estimates that even in the second phase, the oil companies will contribute only 25 percent.
The oil companies know that carbon capture is a fig leaf, that is otherwise a total money loser.
-- The Carney-Alberta deal ensures that the oil companies will not likely have to pay even the pittance of 25 percent of phase 2 to maintain the illusion of "ethical tar sands", the illusion that Alberta oil is not Very Dirty Oil. "Initially, Pathways was supposed to help capture 22 megatonnes of carbon per year by 2030. The new agreement makes it six megatonnes [Sic!] annually by 2035, then rises to 16 megatonnes by 2045".
Carbon Capture is Useless Against Carbon in the Air.
-- Carbon capture directly from the air [mostly related to blocking the rays of the sun with a chemical cloud above the level of the air we directly breathe] used to be one of the miracle solutions to global warming, and more specifically to air pollution, a decade or so ago. Kiladze reports that Norway has found that there is no such benefit to be had from its carbon capture project. "(C)apturing emissions from a cement plant can be economical, because the pollution that comes out of its smoke stacks has a high concentration of carbon. But dreams of capturing carbon directly from the air have dimmed because the concentrations [as opposed to the amounts] are so small".
-- The Alberta government and the Pathways Alliance have used misleading statistics that mix up the relative amounts of carbon dioxide generated (the emissions intensity) that results from carbon capture and from "improved production practices" with the absolute amount of carbon pollution generated. "In June [2026], S&P Global reported that emissions intensity, or the CO2 per barrel, has been falling for 17 years, dropping 31 percent since 2009 [wow, a whole 1.8 percent of the original intensity level every year]. The efficiency comes from improvements to things like drilling technology. But a different statistic also stood out. Even though the intensity is falling, absolute emissions climbed in 2025, relative to 2024, because the oil companies are producing more".
Lowering Carbon Dioxide Per Unit is a Misleading Statistic. Absolute Emission Levels Still Go Up.
The Pathways Alliance carbon capture project should be cancelled right now. Norway's Northern Lights example is proof enough that carbon capture is a fig leaf, that covers for higher carbon emissions by Big Oil. Let us at least save Canadian taxpayers the billions of dollars that they will have to pay for the boondoggle.