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Electrification Announcement: Government Photo and Carbon Footprint

electrification announcement: The two leaders made their best efforts to present the funding as a step toward a greener future one in which clean electricity, rather than fossil fuels, powers everything from cars to space and water heating.B.C. Premier John Horgan speaks while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens at an electrification announcement in Surrey, B.C. on Aug. 29, 2019, according to National Observer. B.C. Government Photo Don't miss out on the latest news Sign up for our daily briefing But while the electrification of industry is a broadly positive step to reduce our carbon footprint, public money spent extending the scope and life expectancy of natural gas production in British Columbia is greenwashing at its worst, critics say. The prime minister of Canada and the premier of British Columbia were there to congratulate each other on an agreement to provide a combined 680 million to help the province's natural gas industry switch to using electricity to power its operations. The problem is that electrifying the activities of the province's oil and gas industry is like putting lipstick on a pig, said Andrew Weaver, the leader of the BC Greens and one of three Green legislators whose confidence vote maintains Horgan's minority NDP government. This release of methane from oil and gas operations happens both intentionally when energy firms flare it or vent it off, and unintentionally when it leaks from equipment. Most of the province's existing wells lean heavily on hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. fracking, to extract oil and gas from massive shale deposits in the Montney basin in northeastern B.C. ; The process of producing and transporting gas releases methane, the main constituent of natural gas, which is 34 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 100-year scale at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.