Canadian government ministers have been actively lobbying the governments of 11 EU member states, European Parliament and Commission to weaken one of the EU’s headline pieces of climate legislation, the Fuel Quality Directive. Friends of the Earth Europe has revealed the details of this lobbying in a briefing made available today. Gordon Campbell, the Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, went so far as to describe tar sands as “a totemic issue, hitting directly on Brand Canada”.
Friends of the Earth Europe and other civil society organisations from Europe and North America advocate that the EU recognise the extreme environmental damage that tar sand oil production causes. To do this, the Fuel Quality Directive must include a specific default value for tar sands as established in the Commission studies.
Tar sands are an unconventional fossil fuel source, and fuels produced from them are more greenhouse-gas-intensive than those derived from conventional crude oil. Tar sands need specific greenhouse gas values to reflect their higher emissions – just like the other unconventional fuel sources, like oil shale, coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids, for which specific default values are already included in the Fuel Quality Directive. The Directive must also ensure robust reporting requirements for companies as an incentive to minimise their greenhouse gas emissions along the supply chain.
Production of oil from tar sands is now no longer limited to Canada, with oil companies investing in development of tar sands around the world.
