Western Canada Facing Spike In Acid Rain Thanks To Alberta Energy Sector

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The “gold rush” to exploit oil resources in Canada’s Alberta province is driving up emissions of acidifying pollutants—and may have already begun to damage sensitive ecosystems in western Canada, according to Environment Canada documents.

The internal documents, intended for briefing the new environment minister, caused quite a stir when they landed in the hands of the Canadian press in June, in part because they state, “There is... growing concern about the potential for acid rain impacts in western Canada due to expected increases in acidifying emissions from industrial sources.” Acid rain is caused when the burning of fossil fuels releases SO2 and NOx.

Until now, acid rain has not been seen as a problem for western Canada, thanks to low pollution levels and calcium-rich soils that buffer acid precipitation, explains Dean Jeffries, a geochemist at Environment Canada. But urban and industrial growth have made Alberta the top provincial emitter of NOx and SO2, and over the next 10–20 years, these emissions from Alberta’s petroleum industry are projected to surpass current levels by 3–5×, says Kerri Timoffee, manager of the acid rain program at Environment Canada.

The sheer size of Alberta’s oil deposits—the equivalent of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia—has made them an attractive source, despite the difficulties in extracting petroleum from them. Mining the deposits, known as tar sands for their consistency, requires massive amounts of natural gas to heat steam in order to move the tar-like bitumen out of the ground and process it into synthetic crude oil. Production from northern Alberta’s tar sands could triple to >3 million barrels/d by 2015, according to Canada’s National Energy Board. The tar sands are directly upwind of areas in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Northwest Territories that are considered sensitive to acid rain. This region, roughly the northern third of the western provinces, is covered by thin, poorly buffered soils atop granite bedrock, says Pierre Pinault, the chief of acid rain and stratospheric ozone at Environment Canada. “If we don’t have a problem yet, we certainly have the potential for one in the future,” he says.

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http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/science/jp_acidrain.html