How green has Canada become in 20 years?

Monday, Dec. 11 marks the 20th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first collective response to the growing threat of climate change. Although Canada subsequently withdrew from that treaty, we continued to track our greenhouse gas emissions and stand again with all other nations (except one) to reduce our carbon footprint. Most GHG emissions are the result of energy consumption, but Canada does a very dismal job of making this link obvious, preferring exhortations to keep the global temperature rise to less than 1.5oC. The official government website for energy information contains details on how we consume energy across the country, and some of these data suggest an interesting picture of where Canada is heading in terms of energy consumption and the resulting emissions. The ‘Comprehensive Energy Use Database’ is maintained by Natural Resources Canada to track all sources of energy, their end use applications, and the resulting GHG emissions for five sectors: residential, commercial-institutional, industrial, transportation and agriculture. It also monitors important changes in heating degree days, building floorspace, kilometres traveled and other variables which have a direct influence on whether we use less or more energy. The database shows that gross energy consumption between 1997 and 2014 (the latest year available) is 17 per cent higher than when we agreed with the low-carbon goals of Kyoto. Electricity use has increased 12 per cent and natural gas has soared by 34 per cent but, when all sources of renewable energy are combined (wood, ethanol and biodiesel, as well as hydroelectricity, wind and solar), the data suggest there has been almost no increase and renewables are losing market share compared to other fuels. Part of this is explained by the transition of forest biomass to more sophisticated non-renewable fuels, and the common misperception that ‘electricity’ is the same as ‘energy’ although the former contributes only one-fifth of our total energy. New buildings and new cars are supposed to be more efficient, yet the 2014 data show that, on a per-capita basis, every person in Canada is responsible for the consumption of 70,000 kWh a year. Knowing how much of this is clean energy and how much is dirty energy, is the basic prerequisite to any real action plan. Governments want less GHG emissions and more low-carbon fuels, but they first need to quantify how much energy we consume now, and how much we can (and must) reduce. The One Tonne Challenge with Rick Mercer never told us where a tonne of carbon came from, nor how many tonnes we emitted; now we are being told to limit global temperature rise with, again, no details on how. As Kyoto marks its platinum anniversary, Canada has taken some important baby steps towards lower energy use and greener energy content but, until our federal, provincial and municipal governments tell us how to eliminate a lot more of our 70,000 kWh of personal energy baggage and how to clean up the lower balance, there is little chance that our ambitious energy goals or lofty environmental targets can be reached by the next Kyoto anniversary. Bill Eggertson Executive director Canadian Association for Renewable Energies International Ground Source Heat Pump Association Ottawa, Ont.

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How green has Canada become in 20 years?

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