Leader of the pack

GHG Reductions Initiatives Forum Report 2

Suncor Energy Inc. is the unchallenged pioneer in oilsands development. When it first unveiled plans to tap into northern Alberta’s resource four decades ago, it was derided: world crude prices would come nowhere close to covering extraction and processing costs.

Gordon Lambert, vice-president of sustainable development at Suncor, is a biologist who has been intensely involved in the climate change debate since 1990. He pointed out to an Ottawa forum on greenhouses gases that Suncor now employs some 6,500 people and is a key driver not only of the Alberta economy but also the national one.

That’s why Lambert is optimistic even though oilsands has become an element of the climate change debate.

Stating that energy and climate change have always been inextricably linked, he said there is now a more “mature” approach to tackling the issue, but he still would like to see the critics offer up more answers than questions in this “complex and daunting” dialogue as global energy demand rises inexorably.

“The status quo is simply not on,” he said, adding that policies had to have an integrated approach to energy, climate change and the economy. He sees strong signals from Washington that the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, was preparing to take that on, which meant that Canada needed to “look at policies that cross boundaries.”

Admitting that seeing world crude prices go “south of $40 a barrel” is “very unsettling”, he was nonetheless confident of recovery, noting that the Bruntland Commission stated in its seminal 1987 report, Our Common Future, that the link between the environment and the economy was irreversible.

“You can’t protect environment at the expense of the economy and vice versa; you just can’t separate these things,” he said. “That helps us . . . be more creative.”