Tar Sands Producer Cenovus Pledges Net Zero GHG Production By 2050, Adds That It's "Aspirational"

[hatrack]

No hurry, guys - plenty of time.

Oilsands producer Cenovus Energy says it's aiming to achieve "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — and reclaim hundreds of decommissioned wells sites — as part of new sustainability targets announced Thursday. The move comes amid growing scrutiny of Canada's oilpatch and its impact on the environment, from green organizations and also investors.

Calgary-based Cenovus says its plan is to reduce its emissions per barrel by 30 per cent by 2030, while keeping flat its total emissions. The company says in that time-frame it will also reclaim 1,500 decommissioned well sites, representing three-quarters of its existing well sites that are no longer in use and set for reclamation.

Alex Pourbaix, the company's chief executive officer, says the targets the company has set are intended to "position us to thrive in the transition to a lower-carbon future." "I'm confident we have the right business model and talent in place to achieve them," he said in a statement.

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Al Reid, the company's executive vice-president of environment, corporate affairs and legal, says Cenovus's 2050 emissions goals are aspirational but added there is a "path" to reaching them. "The reason that it's aspirational is we know there's technologies that are in a nascent state today that could allow that to happen," he told CBC News. "But they're not commercial today." He said the primary example of that would be carbon capture and storage, a process that could stop carbon from entering the atmosphere and then store it underground. "Those are the kinds of things that we're working on," he said.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cenovus-oilsands-sustainability-strategy-1.5420652

[Mickju]

1. No brownie points for you