Canadian oil sand extraction: the nexus between economic development and environmental sustainability

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental degradation, income and regulation for the Alberta province of Canada, constructing an original data base combining official data with those extracted from Alberta Gas Report. This topic is relevant since Alberta is the third-largest oil reserve in the world after Saudi-Arabia and Venezuela. The province is interested by large extractions of unconventional oil from bituminous sands, which produces high greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4, N2O and HFC). Our attention is focused on the environmental overexploitation, specifically air quality depletion. The paper 1) provides a first assessment of the levels and the growth rates for GHG specifically generated by Alberta oil sands extraction, while distinguishing between in situ and mining extraction method. In this context, 2) we find empirical evidences supporting the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve; this is original results, being not aware of other contributions. 3) The paper, next, propose an original indicator where we frame the relationship between GDP and GHG in a global view. We construct the Sustainable Income Index for Alberta and some selected countries relevant for our investigation. A final discussion on global regulation concludes the paper.