Series: A Critique of Common Justifications for Alberta's Oil Sands

[This post is the third in a 5 part series, which looks at the main economic, social, and environmental justifications for Alberta's Oil Sands. The final post in this series will discuss select renewable energy sources, along with the feasibility of implementation in Alberta. Click for Justification 2 and Justification 1]

Argument 3 - Reinvesting in New Technologies to Extract the Rest of the Oil Sands

Current techniques make a large portion of the oil sands unavailable to us. While investing only a small portion of funding into renewable and sustainable technology, Alberta and the oil companies are investing in new technology to extract the rest of Alberta’s oil sands. The logic behind this decision is that “Alberta's conventional oil and gas supplies are declining rapidly” (Alberta Innovates) Industry admits that oil is a finite resource. The thing is, by definition, a finite resource will in every single instance reach a point where it dwindles and runs out. Therefore, even if newer technologies are made available, humanity will yet again find itself at this very same point of exhaustion. However next time, there will be no more oil, or, what remains will not make economic sense to extract. By this time, the rest of the world’s reserves will have likely run out, and as the only alternative, the world will have switched to powering their economies by use of sustainable technology, making oil the least desirable option.

This is what miles of undisturbed boreal forest now looks like thanks to the oil sands operations. Via Flickr - mrjorgen

There are many examples of countries and states already moving away from non-renewable energy sources. By 2007, Denmark had managed to source 19.7% of their electricity from wind power alone. This was a 16.4% increase in only 16 years. Even other nations who are oil rich are planning ways to reduce their dependency on oil. The UAE, a federation with the most oil per hectare than anywhere else in the world, is structuring their economy to be less dependent on oil money. An unstable oil market and eventual exhaustion are reasons cited for this, conditions that apply to oil extraction projects everywhere. Saudi Arabia is also moving away from oil for the same reasons. Although the alternatives that these nations choose are often unsustainable as well (ex. energy consuming skyscrapers, nuclear power), it does show a global consensus that oil is clearly not the energy of the future.

Alberta Innovates has directly stated that the priorities of the Energy and Environmental research are focused on the next twenty-years. Such short-term thinking is highly illogical when we fully expect multiple generations to come after ours. It would be much wiser to invest in renewable technologies, which are constantly improving and becoming more affordable, both for long-term business strategy and economic, social and environmental health.