The Alberta government and the oil industry have just been paid an unintended compliment by two of their most prominent environmental critics. Carbon capture and storage, the flagship of Alberta’s industry-supported greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy, has emerged as the star measure in a cleanup approach advocated by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute.

Numbers and details differ. But as in the Alberta Conservative regime’s green plan, CCS tops all other technologies and industrial exhaust control strategies in the scheme crafted for Vancouver-based Suzuki and Drayton Valley-born Pembina by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, with support from TD Bank Financial Group. The report was released Dec. 4 as a new round of international negotiations began in Poznan, Poland on global greenhouse gas reductions.

Jaccard produced a 62-page report, studded with statistics generated by variations on widely accepted mathematical models of the Canadian economy, to answer the question posed by Suzuki and Pembina. Can a 25-per-cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions below their 1990 level be enforced over the next decade without destroying livelihoods and industry across the country?

The projections rely heavily on developing a network of carbon capture installations, waste gas transportation systems and disposal sites. The Alberta government has earmarked $2 billion to help start CCS pilot projects this winter. The environmentalists do not specify whether or how to use public money on the waste disposal network, although they call for “targeted regulations and investments to expand the use of clean technology.”

Under the environmentalist scenarios, Canada can lop 105 million tonnes a year off national carbon emissions by 2020 with CCS if member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development work together on climate change strategies. The second-biggest reduction, 62 million tonnes, would be achieved by energy efficiency measures such as better vehicles, public transit and buildings.

Even if OECD collaborative policies come up short and Canada acts alone, the green groups’ study identifies CCS as still the top technology for cutting emissions. The country can unilaterally reduce carbon-dioxide waste vented into the atmosphere by 94 million tonnes in the next decade, the report predicts.

In both scenarios, CCS achieves nearly one-fourth of the environmentalists’ total national emissions reduction target of 444 million tonnes per year. As a force for driving development of disposal systems, the green groups call for gradually rising emissions penalties starting at $50 per tonne in 2010 then increasing to $200 in 2020.

Suzuki and Pembina also maintain the Canadian economy can also have 20-per-cent growth by 2020, partly as a result of redirecting investment into installing emissions reduction technology. “This study shows the targets established by the scientific community are realistic and achievable,” the green groups say.

But the study, titled Deep Reductions, Strong Growth, acknowledges not all industrial and employment sectors will benefit if all the green groups’ recommendations are followed. Over the 10 years of 2011-20, the report projects sharp cuts in “labor expenditures” of 15 per cent in oil production, 25 per cent in natural gas extraction, 36 per cent in coal mining and seven per cent in electricity. The environmentalists’ candor stops there. Neither they nor Jaccard publish estimates of the job losses represented by those spending cuts.