Anti-LNG activists have decided that they now actually care for LNG investors after years of calling to divest

Qatar is building or chartering 104 LNG carriers, and plans to double its LNG output by the end of 2030. It would then produce 142 million megatonnes of LNG a year — more than 20 times the 7 million from the LNG Canada plant.

Strange to see activists opposed to LNG development in Canada publicly worrying about whether such projects are economically viable for investors.

One group has been arguing “the reality is that in the coming years the world may no longer need BC.’s LNG” and that could mean “the risk of future stranded assets.” Of course, they aren’t at all concerned about investors; they’re just desperately throwing every brick they can think of in organized and well-funded political campaigns to influence government.

Meanwhile, two of their prime targets proceed with their government-approved plans: LNG Canada moves steadily toward overseas exports in 2025, and Woodfibre LNG is moving toward construction, and shipping pre-sold exports in 2027. BC has also approved Fortis BC’s planned marine LNG terminal on the Fraser, which would provide LNG as fuel for visiting ships, and could also handle export cargoes from an expanded FortisBC plant in Delta.

And First Nations are working on the Haisla Nation’s Cedar LNG project, and the Nisga’a Nation’s proposed Ksi Lisims LNG operation. Odd how the activists refrain from criticizing the First Nations Peoples who want to export LNG to help their communities thrive .

And, somehow, the activists’ messages fail to impress LNG developers in the U.S., Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Qatar. For context, Qatar is building or chartering 104 LNG carriers, and plans to double its LNG output by the end of 2030. It would then produce 142 million megatonnes of LNG a year — more than 20 times the 7 million from the LNG Canada plant.

The critics’ climate issues and concerns are indeed legitimate, no argument. World emissions hit a record high in 2023, the International Energy Agency reports. Emissions in advanced economies fell to a 50-year low, but rose in China and India.

China in 2023 accounted for 35 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. The U.S. stood at 12.5 percent and India at 7.7 percent. While China has indeed made much progress on renewables, it and India continue to burn more and more coal.

Why Canadian groups think they can solve world issues by focussing on relatively modest LNG proposals in Canada is beyond us.

Our Canadian LNG will be environmentally cleaner than LNG from many rival suppliers. And buyers can use it to generate more of their electricity, replacing coal-powered generation that produces far more emissions. That’s an environmental plus.

LNG Canada will have an emissions intensity of 0.15 percent of carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG produced, less than half the global industry average of 0.35 percent per tonne, and 35 percent lower than the best-performing facility.

Woodfibre LNG will be the world’s first net-zero LNG export facility — 23 years ahead of government net-zero goals. Woodfibre LNG will have an emissions intensity of just 0.04 percent — and that’s less than one sixth of the global industry average.

The Haisla’s Cedar LNG project will have an emissions intensity of just 0.08 percent of CO2 per tonne of LNG. That’s less than a third of the global average. Its plans call for emissions to be near zero by 2030.

And the Nisga’a Ksi Lisims project promises to be operating with net-zero emissions within three years of the project’s first shipment.

Our LNG has another advantage over U.S. LNG: The shipping distance from BC to prime Asian buyers is about 10 days compared to 20 days from U.S. Gulf Coast LNG plants. That means 50-60 percent lower emissions from the ships carrying the LNG.

Canada produces only 1.5 percent of world greenhouse-gas emissions. As Canada’s independent parliamentary budget officer reported in 2022: “Canada’s own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change.”

Thus the First Nations LNG Alliance points out: “You could shut the entire country down — no energy, no industry, no jobs, no transportation, no heat, no light — and that reduction of 1.5 percent of emissions could be wiped out by new energy development and new emissions in other countries in a matter of some months or perhaps a few years.”

And so the Alliance says: “So we have government punishing taxpayers, First Nations and industry by putting on blinkers when it comes to LNG. Ottawa views Canada as a geographical silo in which we must meet our emissions targets, regardless of what others do.

“It’s long past time, indeed, to act locally — but think globally.”

Related Topics:#CanadaLNG #CedarLNG #FirstNationsLNGAlliance #KsiLisimsLNG #LNGCanada #ResourceWorks.com #WoodfibreLNG feature

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Nobel Prize nods to Alberta innovation in carbon capture

Alberta

Nobel Prize nods to Alberta innovation in carbon capture

Published on October 30, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Grady Semmens

‘We are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world’

To the naked eye, it looks about as exciting as baking soda or table salt.

But to the scientists in the University of Calgary chemistry lab who have spent more than a decade working on it, this white powder is nothing short of amazing.

That’s because the material they invented is garnering global attention as a new solution to help address climate change.

Known as Calgary Framework-20 (CALF-20 for short), it has “an exceptional capacity to absorb carbon dioxide” and was recognized in connection with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

A jar of CALF-20, a metal-organic framework (MOF) used in carbon capture. Photo courtesy UCalgary

“It’s basically a molecular sponge that can adsorb CO2 very efficiently,” said Dr. George Shimizu, a UCalgary chemistry professor who leads the research group that first developed CALF-20 in 2013.

The team has been refining its effectiveness ever since.

“CALF-20 is a very exciting compound to work on because it has been a great example of translating basic science into something that works to solve a problem in the real world,” Shimizu said.

Advancing CCS

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new science in Alberta. Since 2015, operating projects in the province have removed 15 million tonnes of CO2 that would have otherwise been emitted to the atmosphere.

Alberta has nearly 60 proposed facilities for new CCS networks including the Pathways oil sands project, according to the Regina-based International CCS Knowledge Centre.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three of Shimizu’s colleagues in Japan, Australia and the United States, for developing the earliest versions of materials like CALF-20 between 1989 and 2003.

Custom-built molecules

CALF-20 is in a class called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — custom-built molecules that are particularly good at capturing and storing specific substances.

MOFs are leading to new technologies for harvesting water from air in the desert, storing toxic gases, and capturing CO2 from industrial exhaust or directly from the atmosphere.

CALF-20 is one of the few MOF compounds that has advanced to commercial use.

“There has been so much discussion about all the possible uses of MOFs, but there has been a lot of hype versus reality, and CALF-20 is the first to be proven stable and effective enough to be used at an industrial scale,” Shimizu said.

It has been licensed to companies capturing carbon across a range of industries, with the raw material now being produced by the tonne by chemical giant BASF.

CO2 pipeline at the Quest CCS project near Edmonton, Alta. Photo courtesy Shell Canada

Carbon capture filter gigafactory

Svante Inc. has demonstrated its CALF-20-based carbon capture system at a cement plant in British Columbia.

The company recently opened a “gigafactory” in Burnaby equipped to manufacture enough carbon capture and removal filters for up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions of more than 2.3 million cars.

The filters are designed to trap CO2 directly from industrial emissions and the atmosphere, the company says.

Svante chief operating officer Richard Laliberté called the Nobel committee’s recognition “a profound validation” for the entire field of carbon capture and removal.

CALF-20 expansion

Meanwhile, one of Shimizu’s former PhD students helped launch a spinoff company, Existent Sorbents, to further expand the applications of CALF-20.

Existent is working with oil sands producers, a major steel factory and a U.S.-based firm capturing emissions from other point sources, said CEO Adrien Côté.

“The first users of CALF-20 are leaders who took the risk of introducing new technology to industries that are shrewd about their top and bottom lines,” Côté said.

“It has been a long journey, but we are at the point where CALF-20 has proven to be resilient and able to survive in harsh real-world conditions, and we are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world.”

Business

Bill Gates walks away from the climate cult

Published on October 29, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Billionaire Bill Gates — long one of the loudest voices warning of climate catastrophe — now says the world has bigger problems to worry about. In a 17-page memo released Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder called for a “strategic pivot” away from the obsessive focus on reducing global temperatures, urging leaders instead to prioritize fighting poverty and eradicating disease in the developing world. “Climate change is a serious problem, but it’s not the end of humanity,” Gates wrote.

Gates, 70, argued that global leaders have lost perspective by treating climate change as an existential crisis while millions continue to suffer from preventable diseases like malaria. “If I had to choose between eradicating malaria and preventing a tenth of a degree of warming, I’d let the temperature go up 0.1 degree,” he told reporters ahead of next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil. “People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”

For decades, Gates has positioned himself as a leading advocate for global climate initiatives, investing billions in green energy projects and warning of the dangers of rising emissions. Yet his latest comments mark a striking reversal — and a rare admission that the world’s climate panic may have gone too far. “If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates told journalists. “If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo. It’s a pragmatic view from someone trying to maximize the money and innovation that helps poor countries.”

The billionaire’s change in tone is sure to raise eyebrows ahead of the U.N. conference, where climate activists plan to push for new emissions targets and wealth transfers from developed nations. Critics have long accused Gates and other elites of hypocrisy for lecturing the public about fossil fuels while traveling the globe on private jets. Now, Gates himself appears to be distancing from the doomsday rhetoric he once helped spread, effectively admitting that humanity faces more immediate moral imperatives than the weather.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)