Labours of Technology: Carbon Capture and Storage in Alberta, Canada
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LABOURS OF TECHNOLOGY: CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE IN ALBERTA, CANADA by Emilia Kennedy B.Sc., University of Alberta, 2005 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (GEOGRAPHY) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) JANUARY 2016 © Emilia Kennedy, 2016 Abstract Since the mid 2000s, carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) has become an important component of climate change policy, and in some jurisdictions is the central state strategy for climate change mitigation. Although carbon capture technology has garnered attention as a so-called ‘technological fix’ for climate change, less is known about how it is enrolled in processes of knowledge production, and in the regulation of spaces, processes and people for the purposes of carbon control. Using the case study of Alberta, Canada - a high-income hydrocarbon producing jurisdiction - this dissertation investigates how CCS technology operates as a political technology, that is, as an instrument that produces new ways of thinking about and managing complex political issues. The research investigates what procedures, techniques, and modes of analysis enabled CCS to become the primary climate change mitigation instrument/policy of the Alberta government. The strategy for addressing climate change through carbon capture is situated within the regulatory and institutional historical context of Alberta’s hydrocarbon-based political economy. CCS is assessed as a ‘technological fix’ that enables the Alberta provincial government and associated actors manage the province’s triple climate crisis, consisting of the impacts of climate change, and attendant issues of social legitimacy and market access for the province’s hydrocarbon exports. Expert and participant interviews, and documentary analysis demonstrated that CCS expertise and capacity within the province were strategically translated from existing oil and gas technological and institutional capacities. Yet, advancing carbon capture as a carbon control measure necessitated the incorporation of additional scientific and economic rationalities, institutional and regulatory capacities, and extra-jurisdictional expertise. ii I find that overall, carbon capture and storage has failed as a technological fix for Alberta’s carbon control crisis because some of the very factors that led to its rapid ascendancy as a carbon control measure – a resource strong advocate community, its continuity with an existing political economic pathway, and others – made it susceptible to disruption from exogenous events, notably a climate policy vacuum and competition from other energy technologies. iii Preface The identification and design of this research program, performance of this research, and analysis of this data were undertaken by the author, Emilia Kennedy. The resulting dissertation is an original intellectual product. UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board approved the fieldwork reported in these pages (certificate number H12 – 021116 ‘Carbon Capture’). iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface.....................................................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................v List of Tables...........................................................................................................................................x List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................xi List of Acronyms and Abbreviations ........................................................................................... xii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Politics and Technology in the Age of Carbon Control........................................1 1.1 Carbon Capture and Storage and the Strategic Address of Climate Change .................. 1 1.2 Objectives and Research Questions ................................................................................................. 8 1.3 Scholarly Context ...................................................................................................................................11 1.3.1 Contribution ....................................................................................................................................13 1.4 Findings and Structure of the Dissertation.................................................................................15 Chapter 2: Conceptual Foundations – Experts, Storylines and Fixes in a Techno- Bureaucratic Society......................................................................................................................... 20 2.1 Technological Fixes and the Political Economy of Carbon Control..................................22 2.1.1 Techno-fix or Technological Fix?............................................................................................25 2.2 Thinkable, Sayable and Doable: Governmentality and the Political Technologies of Modern Power……............................................................................................................................................ 28 2.3 Critical Policy Studies: “Storylines” and Mobile, Mutable Policies ...................................35 v 2.3.1 Traveling Technocrats, Bureaucratic Intellectuals, Legitimation, and Intellectual Path Dependencies............................................................................................................. 44 2.3.2 Existing Characterization of the Carbon Capture and Storage Community.........50 2.4 Actor-Network Theory: Translation and Composition .........................................................55 2.5 Research Methods .................................................................................................................................60 2.5.1 Data Sources....................................................................................................................................63 2.5.2 A Note on Techno-Strategic Language .................................................................................68 Chapter 3: Carbon Captured – Hydrocarbon Economy and a Carbon Constrained Future in Alberta, Canada ............................................................................................................... 70 3.1 Alberta’s Fossil Fuel Political Economy .......................................................................................70 3.1.1 The Oil Sands Bonanza................................................................................................................71 3.2 Environmental Effects of Oil Sands: SNAFU?.............................................................................75 3.2.1 Alberta: Petro-state …Or Carbon Captured?......................................................................81 3.2.2 “Passing the Buck”: Inter-jurisdictional Regulation of Resources and the Environment in Canada ............................................................................................................................ 88 3.3 The Regulation of Climate Change in Canada and Alberta...................................................92 3.3.1 The Seven(ty)-Percent Solution: CCS and Alberta’s Climate Change Strategy ...95 3.3.2 Specified Gas Emitters Regulation.........................................................................................98 3.3.3 CCS Major Initiatives....................................................................................................................99 3.4 Seeking Social License in a Carbon Constrained Future ....................................................101 Chapter 4: ‘The Shock of the Old’ – Translations in a Science-Policy Network ...........113 4.1 Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something True: How CCS Comes to Be.......................................................................................................................................................113 vi 4.2 Phase One: EOR and the Origins of CCS in Alberta...............................................................118 4.2.1 AOSTRA and the Direct Subsidization of Oilsands Technology Development 119 4.3 Phase Two: The New Mitigation Agenda and the Proliferation of Groupings..........121 4.3.1 A New Agenda: CORDNET ......................................................................................................123 4.3.2 Always Already Applied Research: Alberta Research Council................................127 4.3.3 Scoping and Policy Advocacy: The National Initiative on CO2 Capture and Storage…........................................................................................................................................................129 4.3.4 Physical Demonstration: ZECA and the CCPC ................................................................130 4.3.5 Innovation, of a Different Sort: Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI) .....132 4.3.6 Mapping the Pathway to Institutionalization: The Alberta Innovates Corporations…