Reconciliation in Action – Accelerating Net Zero
Chief Crystal Smith of the Haisla Nation says she often gets goosebumps when she thinks about Cedar LNG, the Haisla majority-owned proposed floating LNG facility in Kitimat, within the Haisla’s traditional territory in northwest BC. The project, done in partnership with Pembina Pipeline Corporation, was granted its Environmental Assessment Certificate from the Province of British Columbia and a positive Decision Statement from the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change in March 2023.
Chief Crystal Smith, Christine Kennedy and Michelle Mungall at the 2023 Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase.
Speaking on the IPSS 2023 stage with Christine Kennedy (President of Woodfibre LNG), and session moderator Michelle Mungall (former BC Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources), Smith says knowing that the project can provide for the Haisla people while contributing to global climate solutions is part of what provokes such an emotional reaction.
The other part is knowing that the project reflects the Nation’s values and has the backing of the Haisla Nation.
“It has the pride of an entire community, an entire 2,000 people.”
Smith explains that the Cedar LNG board made various decisions to ensure they could protect the environment and create one of the lowest-emitting LNG facilities in the world. These include the choice to power it by electric drive, meaning it will use renewable electricity from BC Hydro. They also chose to build a floating facility, to have even less impact on the Haisla lands. Additionally, the facility will use a technology that is air cooled versus water cooled.
“We are like many other Indigenous communities, not new to industrial development. So, we've seen what negative impacts are to our territory, when it comes to protecting our land, protecting our air, and our waters.
“And that is where we felt it was necessary to ensure that every decision was based on our Haisla values when it came to the protection of our environment and our culturally relevant places in our community.
“It is definitely a huge commitment from Haisla’s perspective.”
The Woodfibre LNG facility, which will be situated about seven km from Squamish in southwest BC, will also rely on renewable electricity from BC Hydro.
Kennedy says that decision was made early in the engagement process with the Squamish Nation. The Nation is a full regulator on the project, alongside other levels of government, and issued its own Environmental Assessment Certificate.
Both Cedar and Woodfibre are well on their way to meeting the standards set by the new energy action framework announced by the Province of British Columbia, also in March 2023. The framework stipulates that all proposed LNG facilities in or entering the environmental assessment process will have to pass an emissions test with a credible plan to be net zero by 2030. Achieving such a goal means that a project either emits no greenhouse gases (GHGs) or offsets its emissions through actions such as tree planting or utilizing technologies that can capture carbon before it is released.
Within days of the provincial announcement, Woodfibre released its net zero roadmap, outlining the steps it is taking to make the facility net zero by 2027. The roadmap also commits to being net zero during construction.
“With the ingredients that the project already had to be the lowest emitting in the world, we thought that we would look and see if we could get to that next stage to be facility net zero,” says Kennedy. “So, we engaged a third party, independent verification firm to carefully validate our emissions and then to work with us on a plan for how we would go from what was reasonably small emissions already—both through technology and carbon offsets— to net zero by the time the facility begins operations.
“Our project will start construction this fall. We're in a position to carefully track, monitor and offset the emissions of construction as well. This has been a close working partnership with Bright Spot Climate, who provides these services for a variety of other firms and for governments as well.”
Kennedy says that finding ways to achieve net zero involved working closely with their engineering teams to uncover technology uses that will reduce operations emissions as much as possible. Next, they chose offset partners using a few criteria: that they be nature-based, be proximate to the project, and have Indigenous involvement.
Through its planning, Cedar LNG was also already set to become one of the world’s lowest-emitting LNG facilities. Smith says they are now in the process of working with the provincial government to determine ways to achieve the ambitious net zero targets. She adds that the team has expanded their thinking to consider not only how to reduce Cedar’s emissions, but also methods for offsetting other projects in the Haisla territory.
Mungall suggests that projects like Cedar LNG and Woodfibre LNG, with their Indigenous involvement, strong ESG aspects and commitments to net zero, make them—and, by extension, the province of BC— attractive to investors. Smith and Kennedy agree.
“When we're moving forward [with Indigenous economic reconciliation], you're also contributing to us having that place where we're providing the solutions for taking care of not only our territory, but the globe,” says Smith.
“This is the path forward for all natural-resource development, really,” adds Kennedy.
Sponsored by Woodfibre LNG.