Protectionism Issue

"Keystone doesn't really matter in terms of lowering emissions. It shows an overemphasis on strategy versus content."
Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director, energy and sustainability, University of California-Davis

President Obama proposed cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from U.S. power plants by up to 30% from 2005 levels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated Keystone could add 18.7 million tonnes annually of carbon dioxide to the environment.

The newly introduced rules handed over to the states to implement by hook or by crook for their power plants could slash emissions by 169 million tonnes yearly This, according to a forecast by the managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, financial research group in Washington.

What an immense disparity. Keystone could add a relative minuscule 18.7 million tonnes, a 30% reduction of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emanating from coal-fired plants that proliferate all over the United States amounting to a whopping 169-million tonnes.

Is it the heat-emitting carbon dioxide from America's incredibly dirty, but cheap-energy-producing coal plants the focus of celebrities chaining themselves to White House fences, or is it that symbol of a foreign entrance to the carbon-sterile environment of the United States, sludgy, Canadian oil? It is Keystone they love to agitate against, throwing their venom at them furriners.

The U.S. State Department is preparing a recommendation on TransCanada Corp.'s application to build the $5.4-billion, 2, 673-kilometre pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to refineries present along the American Gulf Coast. Currently on hold, awaiting resolution of a dispute over the Nebraska route.

In 2011 and 2012, coal plants generating 24 gigawatts of electricity were shut down, with another 63 gigawatts representing a fifth of the coal fleet disappearing by 2017, if all proceeds as planned. Still leaving coal the first source of power plants fuel in the United States. Coal's share of power generation was 50% in 2007, falling to 38% last year.

Republicans and Democratic candidates both running in key energy states for the U.S Senate are exerting pressure on the White House to approve Keystone, first proposed in 2008, but put off for one delay after another for multiple environmental assessments, all of them coming in positively for the pipeline.

If the pipeline is refused, as it certainly appears it will be that way that President Obama comes down, TransCanada is prepared to transport by trains to deliver Canada crude, generating greater amounts of greenhouse gases than the proposed pipeline.

Emissions spew out of a large stack at the coal-fired Morgantown Generating Station on May 29 in Newburg, Md.(Photo: (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images))