Canada loses ground on emissions targets
Forecast for 2030 higher than last year’s
OTTAWA • Canada is further away from meeting its emissions reduction targets under the Paris agreement than it was a year ago, according to new government projections, though Environment Minister Catherine Mckenna insists Canada will achieve its climate change goals.
New numbers released by Environment Canada on Thursday show that Canada is on track to fall 79 megatonnes short of its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions targets. That’s up from 66 megatonnes last year.
But the gap is arguably even larger than that, thanks to the Ontario government’s decision to scrap the province’s cap-and-trade system. In its projections, Ottawa compensated for that by including an estimate of the carbon that will be stored naturally in forests and soils.
In a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday, Mckenna was adamant that Canada will meet its Paris target of cutting emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. “Our government will remain steadfast in making progress on our climate plan with Canadians and reaching our targets,” she said. “We’re looking at policies every single day that can get us to a cleaner future.”
Ottawa is counting on improvements to public transit, new technology and provincial and territorial efforts to close the 79-megatonne gap. Mckenna said a number of those measures are already underway but have not yet been included in the government’s models that predict how emissions will decline.
Last year, the government estimated that its emissions in 2030 would be 583 megatonnes, well above its target of 517 megatonnes. It suggested the gap would be closed by investments in public transit and clean technology, and by “potential increases in stored carbon … in forests, soils and wetlands.” This year, the 2030 estimate has increased to 616 megatonnes. The government says the bulk of that difference — 30 megatonnes — is the result of the Ford government cancelling Ontario’s capand-trade program. As the Post has reported, many of those emissions cuts would have taken place in California, paid for by businesses in Ontario to meet the province’s stringent emissions cap and therefore counted as Canadian cuts.
With that program scrapped, the federal carbon tax that is to be applied in Ontario next year won’t make up the difference.
However, the federal government has this year included an estimate of how much carbon might be stored in forests and soils in 2030 — about 24 megatonnes. That allows Ottawa to list its 2030 projection as 592 megatonnes, not 616 — a smaller increase from last year.
The government is also estimating that Quebec’s cap-and-trade system, which is linked to California’s, will contribute 13 megatonnes of emissions cuts in 2030.
“We’re going to figure out the way forward in a cost-effective manner, but we’re committed to meeting our target,” Mckenna said.
The new estimates follow an announcement this week that the federal government will spend $1.6 billion to support Alberta’s struggling energy sector. Asked to reconcile Ottawa’s support for oil and gas with her claim to be committed to Canada’s Paris targets, Mckenna said the country is in a “transition.”
“Transitions to a cleaner future are hard,” she said. “They don’t happen from one day to the next.”
Also Thursday, the government said it will further loosen the standards certain heavy industrial emitters will have to meet.
Last July, the government quietly announced that companies that emit 50 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide a year or more would only face penalties if their emissions intensity were above 80 per cent of the average in their sector. An initial proposal had placed the cap at a more stringent 70 per cent, but Mckenna said the government didn’t want to drive industry out of the country. Some sectors, including the cement industry, had their threshold relaxed to 90 per cent.
Now, Ottawa has further loosened the threshold for the cement and lime sectors to 95 per cent, and to 90 per cent for petrochemicals. Again, government officials said the decision was related to competitiveness concerns.
The pricing system for heavy emitters will apply to 74 sectors of the economy, and will come into force Jan. 1 in Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island. Companies over the threshold will have the option to cut their emissions, buy credits to offset emissions, or pay the federal carbon price.
The federal carbon tax, a separate measure, takes effect in April 2019 in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick — the four provinces that have refused to implement their own carbon prices.