Helium & Hot Air: Saskatchewan’s Greenwashing Sustainability Claims – CleanTechnica

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Standing in a Vancouver subway station with my spouse, waiting for a train, she drew my attention to a brightly-lit poster that declared Saskatchewan a sustainability leader. It was a typical glossy government ad, complete with verdant imagery and carefully calibrated wording to hint at environmental virtue without necessarily promising anything specific.

What grabbed my attention was an audacious claim about helium production. It equated Saskatchewan’s modest helium industry to planting billions of trees. Intrigued, and very skeptical, with what I know of Saskatchewan’s CO2e emissions, I decided to dig deeper.

In Saskatchewan, helium extraction comes primarily from nitrogen-rich gas fields deep beneath the prairie surface. This method produces relatively little greenhouse gas emission compared to the standard global practice of extracting helium from methane-rich natural gas. Traditional helium extraction elsewhere is entangled directly with methane combustion and venting, activities notoriously carbon-intensive. Saskatchewan’s geological accident, helium occurring alongside nitrogen, a benign, inert gas, was being presented as intentional policy success.

But here’s the catch. Saskatchewan was simply blessed by geological luck. This wasn’t an intentional sustainability strategy crafted by forward-thinking policymakers. Rather, it’s a fortunate quirk of geology that Saskatchewan’s helium reserves are nitrogen-dominant, virtually eliminating methane emissions from the extraction process. The province was marketing an accident of geology as a deliberate, calculated act of environmental leadership. In reality, the province itself had done little but open the tap and place ads touting its luck.

Meanwhile, natural gas extraction remains a significant source of emissions in Saskatchewan, particularly due to methane leaks and venting during production and processing. While the province often highlights its efforts to reduce methane through initiatives like the Methane Action Plan, overall emissions from oil and gas extraction still account for roughly 30% of Saskatchewan’s total greenhouse gases. The industry’s infrastructure and emissions intensity remain at odds with the province’s sustainability branding.

This realization prompted me to further question Saskatchewan’s bold sustainability claims, especially given the broader context. Saskatchewan remains one of Canada’s highest-emitting jurisdictions per capita. In 2023, it emitted roughly 74 million tons of CO2 equivalent, representing emissions of about 60 tons per person. To put that into context, that’s more than six times the per-capita emissions of Ontario or Quebec. A large fraction, about 30%, comes from oil and gas extraction. Another quarter comes from the province’s reliance on coal and natural gas for electricity. A further quarter arises from agriculture, especially methane emissions from livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizers. Seen through that lens, the province’s helium emissions claims feel far less meaningful.

Then there’s the broader marketing campaign itself. Saskatchewan’s government-funded advertising blitz, dubbed “Strong. Sustainable. Saskatchewan,” aggressively positions the province as an ecological leader. The polished commercials show vast wheat fields, high-tech equipment, smiling citizens, and fleeting images of wind turbines and solar arrays. Curiously, these videos also contain brief, discreet shots of fossil fuel infrastructure like refineries and oil pumps embedded strategically between frames of clean, open skies. The subtle inclusion of these images feels less like an honest disclosure and more like strategic plausible deniability.

Given Canada’s recently strengthened laws against greenwashing, particularly amendments to the Competition Act under Bill C-59, the province’s claims may expose it to regulatory scrutiny. Under these new provisions, environmental benefit claims must be rigorously substantiated by internationally recognized methodologies. Yet Saskatchewan’s claims to sustainability virtue rest on vaguely cited expert assessments without transparent, published data or independent verification. Moreover, the new laws explicitly place the burden of proof on the advertiser. If challenged, Saskatchewan would need to substantiate precisely what each of their claims actually means, how it was calculated, and what specific sources it was compared against.

Saskatchewan’s advertisements boast of being a global leader in producing “responsibly sourced oil,” leaning heavily on its carbon capture and storage (CCS) efforts, particularly at Boundary Dam. Here too, reality intrudes. The CCS technology employed is primarily for enhanced oil recovery, where captured CO2 is injected back into reservoirs to extract even more fossil fuels. While this certainly reduces immediate emissions compared to unabated coal burning, labeling the resulting oil as “responsibly sourced” implies a broader ethical and environmental superiority that’s questionable at best.

Saskatchewan’s sustainability campaign also heavily touts uranium as a major contributor to its clean energy credentials. Indeed, the province sits atop some of the richest uranium deposits in the world, positioning itself as a key global supplier to nuclear energy markets. This is another accident of geography. Promotional materials eagerly brand Saskatchewan uranium as vital to climate action, emphasizing its role in powering low-carbon nuclear plants worldwide. Yet these claims sidestep significant complexities. Nuclear power, while undeniably low in carbon emissions during operation, is accompanied by persistent issues such as radioactive waste disposal, safety concerns, and uncertain timelines for deployment of new nuclear infrastructure.

As I keep saying, conservative politicians in the 2020s can no longer deny climate change or the need to do something about it, so they’ve pivoted to nuclear energy, knowing that early costs are minimal and that it will be 15 to 20 years before it’s operational. Effectively, nuclear energy has become yet another delaying tactic in almost every instance, not an actually useful green technology. That was certainly the case in the recent Australian election, where Dutton’s coalition promised nuclear in operation on existing coal plants in an absurdly short time frame, with no accompanying details on cost, regulatory approaches or technology.

These vaguely framed claims, terms like “responsible,” “sustainable,” and “clean energy for centuries”, are precisely what Canada’s updated greenwashing laws target. The Competition Bureau has already warned businesses and public entities to substantiate environmental claims clearly and unequivocally. Saskatchewan’s campaign appears to risk running afoul of precisely these new rules. A savvy environmental organization, competitor, or even a motivated citizen could trigger scrutiny from federal regulators by formally challenging the accuracy of Saskatchewan’s ambitious statements.

This brings me back to the helium poster at that subway station. Saskatchewan is hardly alone in marketing its advantages. But governments and companies making sustainability claims today face higher stakes than ever. While it may be appealing to boast about geographic serendipity, it’s misleading to frame such luck as deliberate climate leadership. Claims like these must stand up to scrutiny, especially under the watchful eye of strengthened legislation and an increasingly skeptical public.

If Saskatchewan genuinely wants recognition for sustainability, it could take concrete steps such as accelerating the transition away from coal-fired electricity, reducing emissions from its enormous agricultural sector, or aggressively curbing methane emissions from oil and gas operations. Those are real, tangible actions that would earn legitimate praise and might justify the province’s bold promotional campaigns.

Until then, presenting fortunate geology as strategic foresight is misleading at best. Real sustainability leadership comes from intentional decisions and verifiable results, not from advertising campaigns that gloss over inconvenient realities. The next time I wait for a subway train and see another shiny poster claiming improbable environmental virtue, I’ll remember to look closely—at the fine print, the careful wording, and what’s carefully left unsaid.