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A drone view of the tank farm at the Trans Mountain Burnaby Terminal as the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project began operations May 1 in Burnaby, British Columbia.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
The good news is that Canada is only halfway through reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the Liberal government is unlikely to gain much political credit for doing so.
The official report on emissions from 2022 released on Thursday found a slight increase in emissions. But as economist Dave Sawyer of the Canadian Climate Institute says, that's not “the whole picture.”
Canada's emissions remain significantly lower than in 2019, before the coronavirus shutdown caused economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions to plummet around the world. And the decoupling between emissions and economic growth is accelerating. The economy has grown by 3.2% since 2019, but annual emissions fell by 5.9% over this period, from 752 megatons to 708 megatons.
But while Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault declared the result a progress, his political opponents saw it as a target.
“Another report, another failure!” yelled freshman Democratic lawmaker Alexandre Boulouris in the House of Representatives.
Quebec's Mario Simard echoed that sentiment, saying that with the opening of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Guilbeault is moving the world's fourth-largest oil nation “between Russia and Iraq and on top of the world.” He argued that it would strengthen Canada's position in Canada. Ranking of the world's worst polluters. ”
Admittedly, the emissions numbers aren't exactly a huge success. Canada's goal under the Paris Agreement is to reduce emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels. By 2022, the decline was only 7%.
Guilbeault maintains that Canada remains on track to meet its commitments, but that depends on estimates of future reductions, including policies still under consideration, such as caps on emissions from the oil and gas sector. .
The trend line has a plus. And the political debate about emissions reduction targets appears to revolve around the idea that the only thing that matters is meeting the targets, not progress in reducing emissions.
The Conservatives did not bother to mention Thursday's emissions report, but they typically say the fact that targets are not being met shows that emissions reduction policies are a waste of time and money, and that it They like to argue that this is a good reason to quit. such a policy. The NDP's Bouleris wants to declare defeat to convince the public that the government is doing nothing. The European Union appears to believe that failure to meet its Paris goals could lead to Quebecers wanting to secede from Alberta's oil region.
In politics, modest progress is not a selling point. There is no cause for cheer as emissions have increased only slightly and are still below levels from a few years ago. Guilbeault gamely claimed that between 2019 and 2022, emissions fell by an amount equal to the emissions from 13 million cars.
Many experts, including Sawyer, see this as an important advance.
Sawyer said that going into 2022, the economy was still recovering from the coronavirus-induced slowdown, but “emissions didn't increase as much as we expected.” And the trend to decouple emissions from economic growth, or reduce carbon emissions per unit of economic output, has accelerated over the past three years, increasing from just over 2% to 3% annually. We need to reach 6% to meet the Paris target, but we are making progress.
“This idea of decoupling from economic growth is now showing a consistent and accelerating trend,” he said.
The cuts will not be economy-wide, and it's no big surprise that the oil and gas sector, a major part of Canada's economy, currently accounts for 31 per cent of Canada's emissions. However, emissions from electricity generation have fallen significantly.
The debate over how much of progress is due to government policy and how much to technological advances will never end just because it is progress. A high-profile political battle over fuel costs, known as a carbon tax, is intensifying. The institute recently released a report claiming that fuel costs will account for 8-14% of emissions reductions from 2025 to 2030, while industrial carbon pricing policies will contribute to reductions of 20-48%. did.
But the emissions results themselves are not the failure that Mr. Guilbeault's critics claim. Don't expect the Liberal government to score political points, but for those looking for long-awaited progress on emissions reductions, the glass is half full.
