Measured Canadian oil sands CO<sub>2</sub> emissions are higher than estimates made using internationally recommended methods.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31015411.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-09714-9 and PMC identifier 6478833.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The oil and gas (O&G) sector represents a large source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. However, estimates of O&G emissions rely upon bottom-up approaches, and are rarely evaluated through atmospheric measurements. Here, we use aircraft measurements over the Canadian oil sands (OS) to derive the first top-down, measurement-based determination of the their annual CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and intensities. The results indicate that CO<sub>2</sub> emission intensities for OS facilities are 13-123% larger than those estimated using publically available data. This leads to 64% higher annual GHG emissions from surface mining operations, and 30% higher overall OS GHG emissions (17 Mt) compared to that reported by industry, despite emissions reporting which uses the most up to date and recommended bottom-up approaches. Given the similarity in bottom-up reporting methods across the entire O&G sector, these results suggest that O&G CO<sub>2</sub> emissions inventory data may be more uncertain than previously considered.