Pipeline Corporations use Carbon Pricing and Carbon Tax to Greenwash Pipeline Destruction and the Fossil Fuel Industry
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Standing Rock touched hearts worldwide. In prayer and in peace, eagle feathers held high, despite bitter blizzards, over 200 Native Nations and thousands of allies faced down tanks to halt the construction of the Bakken frack-oil ETP Dakota Access Pipeline. But few Water Protectors and members of the public know that…
TransCanada Corporation, a major North American energy company and developer of the Keystone I pipeline, which is trying to expand the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline as part of the climate and ecosystem destructive Canadian Tar Sands Industrial Comple, uses carbon trading, carbon pricing, carbon tax and carbon offsets for greenwash.
Some “green” groups against pipelines, call for a carbon tax or carbon pricing. However, Big Oil such as Chevron and Shell are already using the CARBON TAX FRAUD to greenwash the Canadian Tar Sands, build more exploding pipelines and to drill and frack more. Similarly, to greenwash and to increase its pollution and destruction, the infamous pipeline giant TransCanada Corporation, that is also involved in natural gas-fired co-generation power plants, uses every conceivable form of Selling the Sky: carbon trading, carbon pricing, carbon tax and carbon offsets.
Carbon trading, also called carbon pricing and a carbon tax, puts a price on pollution in the form of tons of greenhouse gas emissions called “carbon credits.” To sell and greenwash building more pipelines, burning more fossil fuels in its power plants,viii polluting and destroying the climate even more, TransCanada uses over six different carbon markets, cap and trade, carbon pricingi and carbon tax from California, Québec, Alberta, British Colombia, the Northeast U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the United Nations. According to TransCanada Corporation‘s official Carbon Disclosure Project and Climate Change 2017 Information Request report, “TransCanada facilities are included in carbon pricing programs in California (cap and trade), the Northeast U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, British Columbia (carbon tax), Alberta (emissions trading scheme) and Québec (cap and trade).”
TransCanada, like the World Bank and governments, now uses carbon pricing as an umbrella term to refer to ALL forms of carbon trading, which proves that carbon pricing IS carbon trading: “TransCanada is already regulated with carbon pricing in British Columbia, Alberta, Québec, California and the U.S. Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).” According to its own internal reports, in 2017, TransCanada paid a mere $63 million under carbon pricing programs including California’s cap and trade market,xiv which is only 0.07% of its $88 billion assets.xv According to TransCanada, “carbon pricing programs… cover our natural gas pipelines, power facilities and power trading in California. As part of its support of carbon pricing, TransCanada already applies its own “internal carbon price” at up to C$80 for a ton of CO2. An example of carbon pricing’s perverse corruption, TransCanada also receives FREE pollution allowances from the government of Québec. According to TransCanada, “the government allocates free emission units for the majority of the Bécancour’s [power plant] compliance requirements.” In a frank recognition that the United Nations Paris Agreement is nothing more than a platform for false solutions to climate change like carbon pricing, TransCanada confesses that: “No direct implications for TransCanada are expected resulting from adoption of the Paris Agreement.”
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