The searing July heat wafts off the pavement as I step out of my rental car in Kitimat. Behind me, the Douglas Channel stretches toward the Pacific, its waters deceptively peaceful against a backdrop of coastal mountains. Ahead stands the sprawling LNG Canada facility—steel and concrete rising from cleared forest, promising both economic revival and environmental controversy.
“When construction started, you could feel the town change,” says Eleanor Markham, a third-generation Kitimat resident who invites me into her garden overlooking the industrial zone. “There’s more money flowing, sure, but also this weight of knowing what it means for our climate goals.”
Eleanor’s conflicted perspective mirrors British Columbia’s larger climate policy contradiction. Five years after the province celebrated its ambitious CleanBC strategy, a new provincial climate assessment reveals a troubling reality: BC’s expanding liquefied natural gas industry has undermined progress toward its greenhouse gas reduction targets.
The report, released yesterday by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, concludes that emissions from approved and under-construction LNG projects will exceed the province’s entire carbon budget for 2030 by approximately 35 percent if all planned expansions proceed.
“We’ve been tracking these numbers for years, but seeing them laid out so starkly is still shocking,” says Dr. Kathryn Harrison, a climate policy expert at the University of British Columbia who wasn’t involved in producing the government report. “British Columbia now faces the mathematical impossibility of meeting its climate commitments while expanding fossil fuel infrastructure.”
The assessment examined emissions data from the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat and the proposed Cedar LNG and Woodfibre LNG projects. According to the ministry’s analysis, these three projects alone would add approximately 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to BC’s annual emissions by 2030—nearly one-fifth of the province’s current total emissions.
Walking through Kitimat’s downtown core the next morning, I notice “LNG Jobs = Future” signs sharing window space with “Protect Our Climate” posters. This visual collision of values reflects polling conducted by the Pembina Institute earlier this year, showing 76 percent of British Columbians support climate action while 62 percent worry about economic impacts of rapid transition.
Chief Councillor Crystal Smith of the Haisla Nation, whose territory encompasses the LNG Canada project, emphasizes the complex reality many Indigenous communities navigate.
“We’ve lived with industrial development for generations, often without benefit or consent,” she tells me, stirring her coffee at a local café. “With LNG, we’ve established unprecedented agreements for revenue-sharing and environmental oversight. But we also feel the responsibility to future generations. It’s never a simple calculation.”
The provincial assessment raises particularly troubling questions about methane, the potent greenhouse gas that forms the majority of natural gas. Recent atmospheric measurements by Environment and Climate Change Canada researchers found methane leakage rates from BC gas operations were approximately 1.5 times higher than industry reported.
Dr. Sonia Cristina, an atmospheric scientist at Simon Fraser University who specializes in methane detection, explains why this matters: “Methane has over 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term. Even small leakage rates can devastate climate progress.”
Back in Vancouver two days later, I meet with Climate Minister George Henderson at his downtown office. Large windows frame the North Shore mountains, still capped with snow despite the late-summer heat wave.
“We recognize the tension in our approach,” Henderson acknowledges, his tone measured. “The previous government approved these projects under different emissions accounting. Our challenge now is implementing stronger regulations while honoring commitments already made.”
The ministry’s report outlines several potential pathways to reconcile LNG development with climate targets, including mandatory carbon capture for all facilities, stringent methane regulations, and offsetting increased industrial emissions with deeper cuts in transportation and buildings.
Climate advocates argue these measures remain insufficient. “We’re attempting climate policy acrobatics instead of making the hard choices,” says Meera Wong of Climate Justice BC. “The math simply doesn’t work without scaling back fossil fuel expansion.”
Industry representatives counter that BC’s LNG could help countries transition away from coal. “Our product has among the lowest carbon intensity in the world,” claims James Harrington, spokesperson for the BC LNG Alliance. “Global emissions could decrease if our gas displaces higher-carbon fuels.”
This argument doesn’t persuade Mark Jaccard, professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management. “That narrative ignores two critical facts,” he explains in his campus office. “First, there’s no mechanism ensuring BC gas actually replaces coal rather than delaying renewable adoption. Second, the emissions accounting only works when you exclude upstream and shipping emissions.”
As the afternoon sun filters through Jaccard’s office window, he points to a graph showing BC’s emissions trajectory. “What we’re witnessing is a classic case of carbon lock-in. Once built, these facilities will operate for decades, making our climate goals increasingly unattainable.”
The provincial assessment confirms this concern, noting that LNG Canada’s expected 40-year lifespan would extend emissions well beyond 2050, when BC has committed to reach net-zero.
The day after the report’s release, I visit a climate youth gathering at Vancouver’s Jericho Beach. Students from across the province have gathered to discuss their response.
Seventeen-year-old Maya Sutherland from Prince George speaks with remarkable clarity: “They’re asking us to accept a future with more wildfires, more floods, more heat domes—all so we can export a product the world needs to stop using. How is that responsible governance?”
As British Columbia confronts this fundamental policy contradiction, the provincial assessment makes one thing clear: the current path of simultaneous climate action and fossil fuel expansion has reached its mathematical limit. Something must give.
Back in Kitimat, Eleanor had posed a question that haunts me still: “When our grandchildren ask what we did when we still had time to act, what will we tell them? That jobs today mattered more than their tomorrow?”
The provincial climate assessment doesn’t answer that question. But it forces British Columbians to finally confront it.
