https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/01/30/analysis/canadas-climate-gap-widens-yet-again
[In short, based on the evidence and the projections of experts, we have
a very limited time left to make a dramatic shift on our GHG emissions
trend on the planet. In reality, we have to choose between fossil
hydrocarbons (notably coal, oil and natural gas and the carbon dioxide
they produce when used to extract energy) or the future of our species.
In 2018, the governments of Canada (e.g. bought the KMTM pipeline),
Ontario (e.g. dropped its existing GHG cap-and-trade program) and
Alberta (e.g. supported expansion of bitumen extraction operations)
chose oil over the future of people.
images and links in online article]
Canada's climate gap widens yet again
By Barry Saxifrage in Analysis, Energy | January 30th 2019
The gap between Canada's proposed climate efforts and its 2030 Paris
Agreement target has grown even wider in the last year. The federal
government is now predicting a gap larger than all emissions from the
province of Quebec.
The numbers come from the latest climate pollution projections
report,"Canada's Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollutant Emissions Projections
2018." Each year, the government tallies up its projections, and each
year the picture has gotten worse.
Back in 2016, the Canadian government projected that all current and
proposed policies (plus emissions credits they hope to be able to count)
would get Canada to within 44 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) of the 2030
target.
The next year the projected "emissions gap" widened to 66 MtCO2.
And now, the government's newest projections show the gap has widened
even further. They now project a gap of 78 MtCO2.
Unfortunately, that's the good news.
According to the new report, Canada's actual emissions are projected to
be even higher than that: 115 MtCO2 above their 2030 Paris target, or
less than halfway to the target.
The government is hoping to reduce that number by 37 MtCO2 in "emissions
credits" which would be bought from California and claimed from carbon
in Canada’s forests. However, these credits are uncertain. For one thing
Canada doesn't have permission to count them under the Paris Agreement.
For another, the amount is speculative at this point (I’ll get into the
details below).
With or without these credits, the latest report shows that Canada is on
track to miss its 2030 climate target by a large and growing amount.
To illustrate Canada's widening emissions gap, I've created a series of
charts that tell the story behind the latest government data.
Step 1: The goal
First, the goal.
Both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau committed to meeting the same
climate target for 2030. That goal, pledged under the global Paris
Agreement, is to reduce climate pollution to thirty per cent below 2005
levels.
That works out to a reduction in annual emissions of 220 MtCO2 below
2005 levels.
To make it visual, imagine progress in reducing climate pollution as a
green arrow stretching from the 2005 starting line on the left, to the
2030 goal line on the right.
Step 2: Current climate policies
Next, let's look at the impact of Canada's current climate policies.
The chart below includes a coloured bar showing emissions for each
sector of the economy. The length of the bars indicates the projected
change in emissions for that sector between 2005 and 2030, given current
policies.
Starting with the electricity sector, the green bars show which sectors
are expected to reduce climate pollution. Each of these move Canada
closer to the goal line. Then, the red bars show sectors on track to
increase climate pollution above the 2005 level. These push back the
progress we're making.
The blue arrow in the bottom left shows the net result for Canada. As
you can see, Canada's current climate policies fall short of the 2030
climate commitment by a long way.
It's worth underlining the two sectors that dominate this storyline.
Electricity: Under current policies, almost all of Canada’s emissions
cuts are expected to come from the electricity generation sector. It's
on track to emit 80 MtCO2 less in 2030 than 2005. This is being driven
by two major climate policies. First, Ontario eliminated coal-fired
generation. Second, the federal government has passed laws to phase out
coal-fired generation nationwide.
Oil & Gas: At the other extreme, the oil & gas extraction sector is on
track to cause almost all of the expected increase in climate pollution.
Under current policies, this sector is projected to emit 53 MtCO2 more
in 2030 than in 2005. That erases most of the progress made by the
electricity sector and pushes Canada's climate progress back almost to
the starting line. The primary driver is the ever-rising amounts of
bitumen being extracted from the Alberta oilsands.
Step 3: Proposed policies
The federal and provincial governments have proposed — but not yet
enacted — several new climate policies. These would improve the
situation but would still get Canada less than halfway to the goal. The
third version of my chart tells that story.
The bars on the chart above show the impact of these proposed policies.
For the green sectors, the extra emissions cuts are shown as dashed
extension to their bars. These four sectors combined are expected to cut
an additional 48 MtCO2.
In contrast, the proposed policies will reduce the combined climate
pollution from the three red sectors by half that much — 24 MtCO2. This
shrinks the length of each red bar slightly, but not enough to turn any
of them green.
The purple arrow at the bottom shows the national total from all the
proposed climate policies. As you can see, even if the new policies are
fully enacted, Canada fails to get even halfway to its goal.
The remaining emissions gap is 115 MtCO2. For scale, that's more than
the projected emissions from Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and
Newfoundland & Labrador, combined.
What now?
Step 4: Hoping for credits
As I mentioned at the outset, the Canadian government is also hoping to
count some "emissions credits" towards the target.
The new report lists projections for two kinds of "credits." One is an
ongoing effort to claim credits that Quebec is buying from California
under the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). The second is a newly
introduced effort to count some carbon credits from Canada’s forests
(LULUCF).
Both are speculative at this point. My chart shows them as dashed grey
boxes, just below the oil & gas sector. They are currently projected to
add up to 37 MtCO2 in 2030.
For those interested in the details of these hoped-for credits, I'll
provide a brief tour at the end of this article.
But the most important thing to note is that even if the government
finds a way to count these credits, Canada still wouldn’t be close to
meeting its 2030 Paris target. Canada's climate gap would be 78 MtCO2.
That's more than the province of Quebec emits today.
And, as mentioned above, this emissions gap keeps growing significantly
wider each time the government updates its projections.
A quick glance at the chart reveals the primary cause of Canada's
emissions gap.
Step 5: The role of rising oil & gas emissions
The Canadian government has said repeatedly and emphatically that they
are committed to meeting the 2030 climate target. To do that, they will
have to reign in the overwhelming driver of climate failure so far — oil
& gas sector emissions.
My final chart illustrates this necessity.
If the oil & gas sector reduced emissions in line with the national goal
— a 30 per cent reduction from 2005 levels — then this sector's
emissions would fall by 47 MtCO2 by 2030. The yellow bar on the chart
shows what this would look like.
In this scenario, Canada as a whole would be on track to meet its 2030
Paris climate target.
However, instead of reducing emissions, the oil & gas sector is on track
to increase its climate pollution by 23 per cent. That's creating an
emissions gap from just this one sector of 84 MtCO2. And as we've seen
above, that's bigger than the nation's entire gap.
If the government continues on the current path of allowing the oil &
gas sector to emit 84 MtCO2 more than its share of the nation's target,
then they will need to choose other parts of the economy to make large
additional cuts to make up for it. That's known as "burden shifting" and
in this case the burden is the size of all the emissions from Canada’s
second most populous province.
That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to Canada's climate goals.
How large will governments allow the oil & gas emissions burden to grow?
And the follow-up question is: who will government pick to shoulder that
burden?
Unfortunately, as with previous climate reports, the government fails to
address these critical questions. Instead of answers, it projects only a
widening climate gap — now 78 to 115 MtCO2 — without any specifics about
how it plans to close the gap.
Extra credits
For those of you interested in a brief overview of the two emissions
credit systems the government is pursuing, read on.
1) California WCI Credits
The government's first hope for emissions credits is to find a way to
count the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) offsets that Quebec is
planning to buy from California.
Quebec is projected to purchase around 13 MtCO2 of credits by 2030. The
province is buying them instead of cutting emissions at home, because
they think it will be less expensive to pay California to cut emissions.
Unfortunately for Canada, the WCI offsets aren't currently valid under
the Paris Agreement.
Moreover, the Americans have shown no sign that they are willing to do
the heavy lifting that would be required to make them valid. For Canada
to count cuts made by California, the USA would need to not count them.
In other words, the Americans would need to report higher levels of
emissions than they actually released. Otherwise there would be
"double-counting."
Further muddying the waters is the ongoing inability of the world's
nations to agree on the required rulebook for using international
offsets of any kind under the Paris Agreement. The last two UN meetings
that were meant to resolve the issue ended without an agreement.
So, there are a lot of roadblocks that Canada needs other people to
clear before it can count any WCI offsets towards its 2030 climate
target. If these aren't allowed then Canada's emissions gap jumps to 91
MtCO2.
2) Forest carbon (LULUCF) Credits
The second hope for credits lies in a new carbon accounting computer
model that Canada is putting together for its forests. It falls under
the tongue-twisting category of "Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry"
(LULUCF).
This is the first year that Canada has provided an estimate for how many
of these credits it might try to claim. The current estimate is for 24
MtCO2 in 2030.
There are several reasons these credits are speculative at this point:
* Not authorized yet – Canada is creating its own computer model for
forest carbon and the world hasn't agreed to the rules for them yet. As
Canada's report says: "UNFCCC negotiations on guidance for accounting in
the post-2020 time period are ongoing, the outcome of these negotiations
may influence Canada's final LULUCF accounting approaches." As a result,
the government cautions that any projections it makes "should be viewed
as preliminary and provisional."
* Complicated computer models – The report admits that "the
identification of the direct human influence on emissions and removals
is challenging since emissions and removals are affected by both human
activities and by natural events (e.g. drought, fire, insect
infestations, etc.), as well as by natural processes (e.g. forest growth)."
* Speculative assumptions – Some of the critical assumptions Canada is
making are uncertain. Any changes could easily wipe out expected
credits. For example, government is assuming that logging levels will be
significantly lower in 2030 than in the past. They are assuming that
wood products will be used in ways that release CO2 more slowly in the
future. They are assuming wildfires won't increase. And so on.
* Canada's managed forests are actually emitting carbon — Lots of it.
The government's own calculations show that Canada's managed forests
have transitioned from small carbon sinks into large carbon emitters in
recent years.
I've created a chart using the report's data from 1990 to 2016 to
illustrate this trend. The bold red and green line shows the annual
carbon gain or loss from Canada's managed forestlands. The green parts
of the line show years in which the forests stored carbon. The red parts
of the line are years in which the forests emitted carbon.
The primary reason for this switch to carbon emitting is the increasing
scale of wildfires and insect outbreaks. Both increases are being driven
in large part by human-induced climate change.
Even though our forests are shifting into being huge carbon emitters,
Canada hopes to claim carbon credits from them. The yellow line on the
chart shows the amount. The feds arrive at this number by ignoring the
increasing emissions from wildfires and insects. Their rationale is that
these are "natural" and not "anthropogenic.”
Whether Canada can find a way claim carbon offsets from forestlands that
have become large carbon emitters is yet to be seen.
