Keystone XL's Climate Impact Worse Than Thought: Study
Published on Monday, August 11, 2014
byCommon Dreams
Keystone XL's Climate Impact Worse Than Thought: Study
'We can't be investing in infrastructure that's going to lock in our fossil fuel reliance'
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
The climate impacts of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline could be worse than thought, a new analysis shows.
According to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, completing this fossil fuel infrastructure project, which would run from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska, could lead to increased oil production. That in turn will cause a decrease in global oil prices, leading to greater oil consumption, the analysis states.
"We find that for every barrel of increased production, global oil consumption would increase 0.6 barrels owing to the incremental decrease in global oil prices," the study states.
“If that’s the case, that’d be a big greenhouse-gas impact,” stated co-author Peter Erickson, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Seattle, Washington.
The emissions generated as a result of the pipeline could be as much as four times greater than the State Department indicated in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) of the project, as the authors say that the modeling used for the FEIS did not take into consideration the pipeline's impact on global oil prices.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/11/keystone-xls-climate-impact-worse-thought-study
