The Faro mine site is not only a financial and environmental black hole, but it also has a history of sucking in the reputations of the management teams running it.
The latest executives struggling to prevent their credibility from swirling into the void are those of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, or CIRNAC, the federal agency responsible for cleaning up the mess.
The latest Faro scenario threatening to become a decision-making case study for future Masters of Public Administration students goes like this.
First, Ottawa approved the Faro mine. This was back in the colonial days of the 1960s when federal proconsuls ran the territory on a day-to-day basis.
Then a succession of private-sector management teams produced huge amounts of lead and zinc, as well as 26,000 soccer fields of acid-generating rock and other environmental mayhem. This phase ended in bankruptcy, a closed mine and the feds stepping in to remediate the site.
Fast forward to today. CIRNAC has a remediation plan whose size is suited to the scale of the Faro disaster. Parsons, a lead contractor, said their contract “could span over 20 years and exceed $2 billion.”
When the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board, commonly known as YESAB, reviewed CIRNAC’s plan, however, it pointed out that the remediation activities would themselves harm the environment. This is because of the scale of the carbon emissions from things like forest clearing and burning, heavy vehicles, pumps, generators, explosives and purchasing electricity from the Yukon’s partly-fossil grid.
The project’s peak year of emissions will see 194 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent going into the sky. This would be like increasing the Yukon’s emissions around 30 per cent, based on our 2021 numbers. And this doesn’t even include so-called “Scope 3” emissions such as emissions from producing large quantities of carbon-intensive lime Outside and trucking it to Faro.
Our looming 2030 Paris climate commitments make surging emissions particularly awkward.
YESAB recommended that CIRNAC “offset all annual carbon emissions” through activities such as tree planting or the purchase of carbon offsets.
Buying a carbon offset is where, if it is difficult or expensive to reduce your own emissions, you pay someone else to reduce theirs. This has been controversial internationally, but Canada has a number of respected government-certified offset programs.
It is at this point that Faro’s bad karma threatens to intervene.
Instead of just agreeing to deal with their carbon emissions, CIRNAC’s leaders instead wrote a letter saying that YESAB’s recommendation was “aspirational, but is ultimately not feasible to execute.” Instead, they suggested YESAB recommend they come up with a plan that “evaluates alternative ways to reduce (greenhouse gas emissions).” The plan would be developed over three years and the Faro site would “aim to be net zero by 2050.”
A cynic would say that the federal government’s position is that the little people in the Yukon should keep paying the carbon tax, while a well-funded federal agency gets a few years to come up with a plan that doesn’t need to meet any specific numbers until 2050.
Imagine what would happen if your grandmother wrote the government asking to not pay the carbon tax on her propane heater while she spent three years evaluating ways to reduce her greenhouse gas emissions with an aspiration for her house to be net zero by 2050.
There are a few things CIRNAC could do to change this Faro episode into a more inspirational kind of case study.
Their letter says that heavy battery electric vehicles are “not yet commercially available.” While this may be true at the Whitehorse dealerships, CIRNAC could talk to some of the Canadian mines already using electric haul trucks. Electric Autonomy reported two years ago that B.C.’s Brucejack mine was adopting all-electric haul trucks after a successful B.C.-government-funded trial of Sandvik Z50 trucks starting in 2020. Back in 2021, the Borden mine in Ontario announced it had replaced its underground diesel fleet with battery electric vehicles.
The federal government has shown leadership by earmarking extensive funds for climate innovation. CIRNAC could lead the way in trialling heavy electric vehicles in the North, which would be useful for all future mines and reclamation projects in Northern Canada.
CIRNAC’s letter teeters most precipitously on the edge of the Faro credibility black hole where it says “offsetting the Project’s emissions is not a viable option.” It goes on to argue why using the federal offset system, purchasing on voluntary markets or developing Yukon offsets won’t work.
This is strange for a number of reasons. First, there are dozens of companies already using government-certified offset programs in Canada. While the federal protocols for doing this are in early stages, Quebec, Alberta and B.C. all have highly credible track records. Quebec alone has issued 1,758 kilotonnes of offsets going back to 2014. Alberta has protocols for 19 different offset technologies.
Since global warming is a global problem, offsetting emissions from Faro can be done anywhere in the world. If CIRNAC needs to do it in Quebec or Alberta while a Yukon system gets set up, that is still good for the planet. YESAB’s recommendation suggests various Yukon-located methods, but the wording does not require them.
As for the voluntary sector, a bevy of highly respected international companies under strong scrutiny by environmentalists have partnered with firms such as ClimeWorks in Iceland. This company’s technology directly captures carbon dioxide from the air and stores it forever by fixing it to basalt rock deep underground. This is expensive, but clearly a viable option. Companies in Canada are working on similar technologies.
Offsetting the Faro project’s emissions will require work and money. If that is the issue, CIRNAC should say so rather than claiming it is “not a viable option.”
Dialling the Yukon’s carbon emissions up 30 per cent with Paris deadlines approaching while also dialling innovation down to zero will not be a good look for the Faro project. Think of how wonderful it would be to break the cycle of bad news from Faro by making it a demonstration project, with a legacy of battle-tested electric vehicles, offset approaches and — maybe — the eventual development of Yukon-based offset programs. Faro will not be the last mine needing low-carbon remediation in the North.
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.
