B.C.’s carbon tax has won international accolades, but the province is no green leader when it comes to fossil fuel extraction, a new report warns.

In fact, concludes the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the province's coal and natural gas reserves are a major carbon liability. Extracting and combusting them would create three years worth of global emissions.

“There is a battle at the heart of the BC government between the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, and so far the latter is winning,” the report reads.

From a North American perspective, B.C. creates less emissions than many jurisdictions. Most electricity here comes from clean hydro-projects rather than high-carbon coal.

But the province is a major producer of fossil fuels. Extracting natural gas and coal releases lots of greenhouse gases. For instance, the report points out, a recently approved Encana gas plant will add 2.2 million tonnes of carbon to B.C.’s yearly output.

That clearly contradicts provincial targets which aim to reduce emissions 33 percent below 2007 levels by 2020, it argues.

Official counting doesn’t factor in the carbon released by combusting coal, oil and gas outside the province. In effect, the report concludes, B.C. is exporting greenhouse gases to other jurisdictions.

Those downstream emissions in 2008 were 166 percent higher than the province’s total carbon output.

“As B.C. aims to dramatically cut its consumption of fossil fuels, at some point the province must also stop peddling fossil fuels in export markets,” the report reads.

The only feasible option right now to make fossil fuel extraction sustainable is carbon capture and storage, says the report.

But it noted the controversial technology is extremely expensive and unlikely to work outside major industrial operations.

Geoff Dembicki reports for the Tyee.