Canada's Sources of CO₂ Emissions

Key Insights

Coal's Dominance and Decline

In the early industrial era, coal was the primary source of CO₂ emissions in Canada, with significant increases in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883 spurred coal consumption, driving emissions upward. However, by the mid-20th century, coal's share of total emissions began to decline as oil and gas gained prominence. The data shows a marked decrease in coal emissions in recent decades, reflecting a shift towards cleaner energy sources.

Oil and Gas Industry Expansion

The discovery of oil in Leduc, Alberta, in 1947, and the subsequent development of the Syncrude oil sands in 1967, marked a new era of increased oil production and consumption in Canada. This led to a substantial rise in CO₂ emissions from oil, which became a significant contributor to the country's overall emissions profile. The 1970s saw the expansion of the natural gas industry, further increasing emissions, although natural gas is relatively cleaner compared to coal and oil.

Policy Shifts and Emission Reductions

Canada's commitment to international climate agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, has driven policy changes aimed at reducing emissions. The implementation of carbon pricing in 2018 and the net-zero emissions legislation in 2021 are significant steps towards achieving these goals. While these policies have led to reductions in potential emissions, the challenge remains to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability.

Temporary Emission Reductions

Economic events, such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, temporarily reduced CO₂ emissions in Canada due to decreased industrial activity and transportation. However, these reductions were short-lived, with emissions rebounding as economic activity resumed. These events highlight the complex relationship between economic fluctuations and emission levels, underscoring the need for sustained policy efforts to achieve long-term emission reductions.

Background

The chart shows a national breakdown by source of the yearly CO₂ emissions from human activities and processes expressed in megatonnes. It is critical to know and track the sources of national CO₂ emissions in order to understand their individual impacts on climate change.

The sources of human CO₂ emissions are

CO₂ From Fossil Fuels and Industry: coal, oil, gas combustion, other fossil processes
CO₂ From Land-Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry

Coal, oil and gas combustion

Fossil fuel CO₂ emissions from the combustion of coal, oil and gas are emitted by processes in electricity generation, transport, industry, and the building sector. All processes can be linked to human activities. Examples include driving cars with combustion engines burning diesel or gas, or electric cars charged by electricity from a power plant that burns coal.

Other fossil processes

Fossil CO₂ emissions from other processes include sources like cement manufacturing and production of chemicals and fertilizers. Cement also has an absorption factor highlighted in the absorption breakdown chart.

Land-use change

Human civilization emits CO₂ by changing and managing its land. Those emissions come, for example, from deforestation, logging, forest degradation, harvest activities and shifting agriculture cultivation. Land-use change also absorbs considerable amounts of CO₂, which is shown in the absorption breakdown chart. Land-use change emits more than it absorbs, so the net effect is still emissions, but less than for coal, oil and gas.

Wikipedia: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Earth System Science Data: GCP 2020 paper: Section 2.2 Land-use change; Section 2.1 Fossil fuel emissions
IPCC: Annual Report 6, 5.2.1.1 Anthropogenic CO₂ emissions

Units and Measures

CO₂ emissions are expressed in the total weight in megatonnes per year. 1 Megatonne is equal to 1 million tonnes.

Wikipedia: Megatonne
Wikipedia: Global warming potential

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About the Data

The last available year is 2023. CO₂ emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO₂ emissions from fossil sources and land-use change.

The Key Insights paragraph was generated using a large language model (LLM) using a structured approach to improve the accuracy. This included separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.

Data Sources

Global Carbon Budget 2024 Global Carbon Budget
Update cycle: yearlyDelay: ~ 10 months after the end of the year. Current year values are estimated and published in November.Credits: Friedlingstein et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.