HALIFAX — Australian researchers have developed the world’s first public tool designed to assess how fossil-fuel projects will impact the climate, using a Canadian offshore oil initiative as a test case. The newly launched Carbon Impacts Tracer can evaluate the contributions of proposed mines, offshore oil platforms, and other energy developments to climate change, including effects on global temperatures, glacier melt, and human health.
According to Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate science professor at the Australian National University, the tool establishes a direct correlation between emissions from individual fossil fuel projects and their contribution to global warming, enabling researchers to trace specific impacts stemming from that warming. This breakthrough was announced during a virtual news conference held on Monday.
The online tool relies on expected carbon dioxide emission data, frequently sourced from the fossil fuel proponents’ own environmental assessments, to determine a project’s impact on global temperature rise. Moreover, it utilizes peer-reviewed literature to project the tangible consequences of temperature increases, such as coral reef degradation, declines in food production, and job losses.
The tool was officially launched on Monday and includes case studies for five Australian projects, one in the United Kingdom, and the proposed Bay du Nord offshore oil project. If realized, Bay du Nord would mark Canada’s first deepwater oil initiative, located approximately 500 kilometers east of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. This project, spearheaded by the Norwegian energy giant Equinor, is estimated to tap into over 430 million barrels of oil reserves.
The Carbon Impacts Tracer indicates that CO2 emissions from the Bay du Nord project could reach 188 megatonnes over a span of 20 years, contributing to a temperature increase of 0.00008 degrees Celsius. Additionally, the tool estimates that these emissions could expose more than 111,000 individuals to unprecedented heat levels, resulting in an anticipated 25 more heat-related fatalities in Europe alone.
Moreover, the tool predicts that Bay du Nord could lead to the loss of approximately 4.6 square kilometers of glacier, contributing to a rise in sea levels of about 0.025 millimeters. Economically, it suggests that around 2,100 jobs could be lost due to pollution from the project, displacing approximately 9,800 individuals into extreme poverty.
Equinor has yet to respond to inquiries regarding the tool's implications on the Bay du Nord project. Joel Finnis, a climatologist at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, acknowledged the tracer’s role in consolidating various research findings into a single resource that is accessible to the general public. He emphasized that the tool undercuts common arguments advocating for the expansion of new oil production, highlighting the significant costs—both human and financial—associated with fossil fuel projects.
Maria Nawaz, who leads the climate change accountability project at the Australian Human Rights Institute at the University of New South Wales, emphasized the historical difficulty in linking specific fossil fuel projects with their real-world impacts. She expressed hope that the tracer would be leveraged by lawmakers, regulators, and community members as new projects are proposed, and anticipates that it will bolster climate litigation aimed at holding both governments and corporations responsible for their emissions.
Nawaz further elaborated that the ability to directly connect individual fossil fuel projects to measurable additional warming and the resultant human and ecological damages effectively negates the “drop-in-the-ocean” defense often employed by proponents, who argue their contributions to emissions are negligible.
She envisions insurers using the tool to assess the risks associated with projects, while economists might utilize it to estimate broader economic impacts. However, it’s worth noting that the tool currently only estimates the impacts of proposed projects and does not account for existing oil wells or mines. The researchers plan to expand the tool by incorporating data on additional proposed developments as it becomes available.
