Defining the details

Environment Minister Jim Prentice says Canadian and American officials will begin work “almost immediately” on fleshing out the bare-bones Clean Energy Dialogue plan announced by Prime Minster Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama.

He told reporters that 2009 – which will wind down with the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Copenhagen Nov. 30-Dec. 11 – is crucial to any success in controlling greenhouses gases.

“It is a pivotal year in development of a Canadian domestic policy and . . . development of policy in the United States as they work toward a domestic approach,” Prentice said. “All of this happens on a parallel path with Copenhagen, where the world will turn the page on Kyoto and replace it hopefully with a new international protocol.”

The environment minister echoed Obama’s stated enthusiasm for carbon capture and storage as a preferred option for reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations in the U.S. and, by inference, enhanced oilsands production.

 ”Carbon capture is feasible presently,” Prentice said, citing EnCana’s  Weyburn project, which takes pipelined carbon dioxide from a coal gasification in North Dakota and injects it into its Weyburn-area oil fields to boost production.

 ”Its commercial application to coal-burning thermal electricity plants and also facilities such as oilsands . . . requires work and that is why the Prime Minister and the President announced they would be collaborating on this.” He predicted widespread commercial application and said Canada and the U.S. would “lead the world in the coming year in terms of demonstration projects.”