Second comes “transition.” Industry expands the best-performing field trials and adds facilities starting in about 2016. Annual emissions are reduced by up to 40 million tonnes in the early 2020s.
Third, “commercialization” begins in about 2025. By building full-sized carbon collection, transportation and disposal facilities, emissions reductions gradually accelerate to hit the goal of 139 million tonnes a year in 2050.

In the blueprint under development by Carter’s group, government contributions to the cleanup projects start out as half of their costs or more then taper off. Industry is weaned off the assistance gradually. In the carbon council’s blueprint, the cleanup systems improve with practice. Increasing use lowers the technology’s costs.

At the same time, clarified environmental regulations raise the value of cutting emissions as measured by the penalty for failing to do so. The yardstick will be the price of carbon credits or offsets that have to be bought by plants that keep on venting waste gas into the atmosphere. Economic models used to develop the Alberta Tory green plan foresee the value of emissions cuts rising from a current $15 per tonne to $30 by 2030 and $100 in 2050.

With such steeply rising penalties for failing to do cleanups on the horizon, Carter says, “The industry is strongly behind the fact that we’ve got to get this started and begin learning from it.”

The lineup to start projects includes the biggest corporate consortium in the provincial energy industry’s history, the 35-member Alberta Saline Aquifer Project led by pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. The group takes its name from its proposed carbon disposal site, vast sponge-like geological formations in Alberta’s bedrock that currently hold only salt water.

The group, while awaiting decisions on applications for provincial and federal aid, is marching in step with Carter. Action is under way before all the formalities are completed.

This fall, Alberta Saline hired five contractors – Norwest Engineering, Schlumberger Carbon Services, Colt WorleyParsons, Hatch Energy and Oxand Canada – to design a disposal project. After field trials for up to $50 million in 2009-12, the schedule calls for a 2013 start on a commercial emissions reduction system for up to $200 million.

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