Environmental Studies Professor Jean Philippe Sapinski. Photo: Université de Moncton
A professor of environmental studies at the Université de Moncton says PROENERGY, the US company that is proposing to build a fossil-fuel-burning generating plant on the Chignecto Isthmus, has grossly underestimated its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from burning backup diesel oil.
“The emissions that are projected for diesel are close to zero in its project summary which is absolute nonsense,” Jean Philippe Sapinski told Warktimes in a telephone interview on Monday.
“They should be at least 65,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.”
PROENERGY submitted its project summary to federal regulators on July 4 as it sought environmental approval for the project.
Sapinski says that he checked with Dr. Patrick Faubert, Chaire en éco-conseil (Chair in environmental consulting) at the Université du Québec in Chicoutimi.
In an e-mail to Warktimes, Faubert said he calculated that the company underestimated the emissions from burning light diesel oil by a factor of about one million, although it also overestimated GHG emissions from burning natural gas.
In any case, he says the company’s project summary does not provide the figures needed to support its calculations.
“Sources for emission factors and heat values should be shown to judge if the calculations are realistic,” Faubert writes.
Sapinski says the total GHG emissions presented in a table on page 44 should be closer to 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent rather than the 910,825 figure that is shown.
“700,000 tonnes is just as bad and as dangerous as 900,000. Right now, we can’t afford any increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” he says pointing to record numbers of destructive wildfires and increasingly violent hurricanes as the climate changes.
He adds that with “such obvious mistakes,” the PROENERGY document has little scientific credibility and he wonders if there are also mistakes in the calculations on the effects the gas plant would have on air, soil and water.
“What these calculation errors show is that, for me, the report was put together very rapidly.”
He also wonders why officials at the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) didn’t spot the errors before giving the gas plant project their quick approval.
“They probably didn’t read it over in any kind of detail,” he says. “Otherwise they would have spotted these problems.”
In response to a request for comment on the professors’ findings, Chris Evans, PROENERGY’s, vice-president of marketing based in Houston, Texas wrote in an e-mail:
“PROENERGY will not comment at this time.”
IAAC Communications Advisor Gina Pennesi responded to my e-mailed request for comment at 5:42 p.m. today, but did not address the questions raised by Professors Sapinski and Faubert. To read her response and my October 6th e-mail to her, click here.
Security presence visible as access road construction off Rte. 940 near Centre Village continued on Tuesday. Photo: Kristen Nicole LeBlanc, Facebook group, Stop the Tantramar Gas Plant!
Thoughts on the latest Wark Times Article about the proposed gas plant. ………………………………………………………………..Lack of Transparency, lack of proper scientific method to study and predict. Build it and ask forgiveness later, ex. Irving Saint John LNG Terminal. This smells like a fossil gas / diesel gas sham. The 10 engines are nothing more than super glorified jet engines. Who makes jet fuel in this province? Who supplied Logan Airport in Boston with 80% of its required jet fuel? This is the baby incubator project to supply power to NB. There are more to come.
Susan Holt is only the CEO of the province. We know who has been making the decisions. We are a captured province with captured politicians. There is a refinery and a liquid fossil gas plant in Saint John. The provinces of NB and NS are run from here by the Corporation. Just how much damage and cover up is going to happen before October 21st. Methane has a real distinct smell, ask anyone who has experienced it when manure spreading is happening in the fall. There is a lot of things that don’t pass the sniff test.
Lazy and incompetent drafters of reports and scientific papers use AI to do their work for them and frequently produce garbage statistics, graphs, and other “data” like what’s in the Proenergy summary.