Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – A new backgrounder released by Environmental Defence today, Ontario’s Gas Problems: The Issues With Fracked Gas, takes a look at how Ontario’s increasing reliance on “natural gas” is worse than usually accounted for and worse than most Ontarians appreciate.

Some 90 per cent of the gas used in Ontario is fracked gas, imported from the U.S. and Western Canada. Fracking is harmful to human health, linked to respiratory disease, endocrine disruption, leukemia and other cancers. In the process of fracking, a lot of methane gas escapes into the atmosphere. Methane is over 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20 year period. These fugitive methane emissions are supercharging climate warming.

“Enbridge is aggressively marketing gas as clean and low-carbon, when in fact, it’s neither of those things. Ontario’s gas is mostly fracked, but it’s extracted in far-off places and the harms of fracking are out of sight, out of mind. But it’s bad,” said Keith Brooks, Programs Director for Environmental Defence. “Ontarians should be aware of the impacts of expanding the use of gas in this province. It’s much worse than most Ontarians typically think.”

The backgrounder points out that when the fugitive methane emissions are accounted for, burning gas to generate electricity is just as bad as coal or potentially even worse from a climate perspective. Fugitive methane emissions are also chronically underreported and may be even more abundant than most official reports account for. Further, Enbridge employees report that the gas monopoly often leaves pipeline leaks unaddressed, sometimes for months on end, letting methane seep into the atmosphere.

“Ontario led the way in phasing out coal-fired power plants, but now all that effort is being undone by an increasing reliance on gas. The province is building more gas plants and running the existing ones much more than originally planned, which is projected to see emissions increase by nearly 600 per cent by 2030 according to the IESO. Why are we going backward?” asked Brooks. “This accounting doesn’t consider all of the fugitive methane emissions released during gas extraction, transportation and storage, and it doesn’t factor in how potent the greenhouse gas methane is in the short term. When we do account for these factors, gas is worse than coal!”

Ontario is also celebrating the construction of a $358 million gas pipeline expansion project, subsidizing gas expansion to new communities like Bobcaygeon, Huntsville and Selwyn, and the province recently passed legislation to maintain a subsidy that would essentially ensure that new homes built in areas serviced by gas will get gas furnaces.

“We should not be building new gas pipelines in this province, and we certainly shouldn’t be subsidizing gas hook ups to new homes. Other jurisdictions are banning gas heating in new homes – that’s what Ontario should be doing as well. Heat pumps are far superior and less expensive to operate in most cases,” said Brooks. “All of this is just made all the more important when we factor in that most of this gas is fracked.”

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:

Tamara Latinovic, Environmental Defence
media@environmentaldefence.ca