Good intentions gone wrong with city fuel order

JOHN BARBER
Globe and Mail
December 11, 2008

'The tar sands is one of the greatest ecological crimes in North American history," declares Councillor Gord Perks, a veteran environmental activist now serving as the uncompromising green conscience of Mayor David Miller's city hall.

So why did the City of Toronto just go out of its way, following the strictest environmental protocols, to buy $17-million worth of tar-sands oil to run its large, allegedly green fleet of vehicles?

The answer is a parable of good intentions gone, if not awry, certainly wide of the intended mark - one that keeps moving as industry, activists and government wrestle over the meaning of green.

Everybody wants to do the right thing, says Matt Price of Environmental Defence Canada, which protested against what it considers to be a dirty-oil deal.

"But it's unhelpful when you have people with good intentions coming up with unfortunate results."

Good intentions in this case date back almost a decade, when the city decided to specify low-sulphur diesel fuel, then a rare commodity in Canada, in its tenders.

Since then, new federal regulations have come into effect, phasing out more polluting fuel.

"Once again, the City of Toronto set a benchmark and all the other governments ran to catch up," Mr. Perks boasts.

Then the city ran even further ahead, demanding its supplier deliver diesel fuel laced with maximum amounts of vegetable oil, called biodiesel, and gasoline diluted with the maximum amount of ethanol, which is also derived from vegetable sources.

The stated aim is to reduce airborne pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions relative to unblended fossil fuels.

While the federal government has promised to mandate a minimum 5-per-cent ethanol content in gasoline, the city specified a blend containing 10 per cent.

Put your latest good intentions out to tender and what do you get? A single bidder for the 2009 fleet fuel contract, Suncor Energy Products Inc., a company that describes itself as "strategically focused on developing Canada's Athabasca oil sands."

It also so happens that Suncor is Canada's leading producer of ethanol, having opened a $220-million plant near Sarnia two years ago, with more than $30-million in provincial assistance.

This summer it announced a $120-million expansion that will boost the plant's production to 400 million litres a year.

But the problem here, according to environmentalists, is not just a matter of accepting some bad with the good. Current opinion says that there is nothing green about biofuels, and indeed that no fuel could be more destructive to climate than that harvested from farm fields and tar sands
- the very blend our green-minded city just ordered a vast amount of.

The truth of the ethanol debate depends on which factors one includes in the "life-cycle analysis" of its use as fuel.

Previously unaccounted-for deforestation caused by ethanol demand has tipped the balance, according to Mr. Price, with the latest models now predicting that using the fuel will lead to higher emissions than straight fossil fuels.

"Arguably you could get a better carbon outcome simply by going with Shell instead of Suncor at this point," Mr. Price said.

The climate argument doesn't even consider the effect of widespread ethanol production on food prices - a concern that inspired Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty this summer to abandon a promise to mandate provincewide use of the same 10-per-cent ethanol blend the city just ordered.

But what really queers the deal is the origin of the main ingredient:

According to the same life-cycle analyses that now condemn biofuels, tar-sands oil has three times the carbon impact of conventional oil.

Less conscientious cities will hardly burn any of the stuff. But do-gooding Toronto will be swimming in it.