Carbon Footprint of Canada's Oil Sands Is Larger Than Thought

From:  Inside Climate News 

John H. Cushman Jr.

BY JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.

New climate change evidence from recent government studies could affect the coming legal fight over President Trump’s revived permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Unused pipe for the Keystone XL pipeline sits in a lot. Recent government studies of a different tar sands pipeline have found that the project's greenhouse gas emissions may be as much as 20 percent higher than previous estimates. Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

The Donald Trump administration approved the Keystone XL pipelineknowing the tar sands crude oil it would deliver from Canada is even more polluting than the Obama administration thought when it turned the project down in 2015.

Recent government studies of a different tar sands pipeline found that the project's greenhouse gas emissions "may be five to 20 percent higher than previously indicated," the State Department noted on March 23 in its decision approving the Keystone XL permit.

Because both projects would carry tar sands crude, that suggests a similar understatement of emissions in the detailed but dated environmental review of the Keystone XL, which the Trump administration does not want to revisit. The final environmental assessment of the TransCanada project was published in January 2014.  MORE