Part 4 in a series on Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan

If you care about our climate, it’s likely that you are attuned to all the news coverage out there that describes how horribly complex it is for our world to cut emissions and reach net zero emissions to prevent the worst effect of climate change.

For instance, in the industrial sector, people talk about how the cement industry is a challenge because the process of making cement releases emissions. What are we going to do without cement? It’s the same with steel production.

We worry about the waste sector and how much garbage is going into methane-producing landfills. How do we stop garbage? In agriculture, livestock is a big problem because of the methane emissions. How do you stop a cow from farting? Do we all have to go vegan?

I was once talking with an executive from a tire company who talked to me for 45 minutes about how tractor tires around the world need to be completely rethought because current tractor tires over compact farm soil, leading to a need for excessive tilling, which releases the greenhouse gases trapped in the soil.

It can all get very overwhelming. When we get overwhelmed, we despair. And when we despair we disengage. Opponents of climate action know this, and they emphasize the complexity of the problem to discourage people from action.

That’s why it is important to have a good working knowledge of where emissions come from. It helps us focus our attention on the issues that are most important to address. Equally important, it lets us know what we can safely ignore, so we don’t get overwhelmed.

Emissions by Economic Sector

The most common way that emissions are broken down is by economic sector. Canada’s 2030 Emission Reduction plan is structured to assess and address our emissions in such a manner.

In Canada’s case – the biggest contributor to national emissions is the Oil and Gas sector. Oil and gas production accounts for about 3% of Canada’s economy and about 3% of direct and indirect jobs in Canada, but it is responsible for 31% of our national emissions – and growing.

And let me make a point that may be obvious to you but was not to me at first – the emissions from the oil and gas sector only represent the emissions from getting the oil and gas out of the ground – not from the use of oil and gas that is produced.

At almost one-third of Canada’s emissions, it’s clear that our way of making oil and gas requires a lot of oil and gas.

It’s because most of Canada’s oil and gas comes from the Alberta oilsands, a mixture of sand, clay, water, minerals, and bitumen that are processed to produce fuels. Bitumen, also known as asphalt, is a thick, sludgy mix of oil and sand that, for years, was mainly used for surfacing roads or roofs.

Bitumen has to be heated to a high temperature to get the oil in it to flow so it can be extracted. Oilsands producers use a lot of oil and gas to heat the earth in the production process. That makes Canada’s oil production among the most emissions-intensive in the world.

After the oil and gas sector, the next biggest emissions segment is transportation at 22% – that accounts for the oil and gas used in cars, trucks, trains, and domestic air travel as well as other things, like the oil and gas used to keep oil and gas pipelines running.

Buildings are third at 13% of emissions reflecting the emissions from keeping our buildings warm or cool.

Beyond that there are other categories like emissions from heavy industry, agriculture, electricity production, waste and other manufacturing. Together, these categories add up to about 35% of emissions.

So, while there are a lot of sectors in our economy with seemingly disparate emissions reduction issues, we should recognize that two-thirds of all Canadian emissions come from only three sectors: oil and gas, transport and buildings.

Emissions By Release Process

The other way to segment emissions is by their release process – which is the way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asks countries to report emissions.

In the process approach, emissions are reported in four categories:

1. Energy: combustion of fossil fuels for energy, regardless of what it is used for.
2. Agriculture: processes like soil tilling and livestock emissions
3. Industry: processes like cement and steel production
4. Waste: like methane from landfills.

From this perspective – our focus becomes even more clear – 82% of Canada’s emissions come from the use of fossil fuels to create energy – regardless of what that energy is used for.

When you recognize that for everything that runs on fossil fuels, there are alternatives that run on electricity, it makes it clear how it is indeed possible to dramatically cut our emissions. We just need to transition all the things that run on oil and gas in favour of things that run on electricity from renewable sources.

Simple, right?

So as we go through Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan in future articles, remember this: a plan to cut Canada’s emissions should do the following four things:

1. Rapidly transition away from fossil fuel use
   
2. Rapidly adopt technologies that run on electricity
   
3. Grow our supply of clean electricity
   
4. Focus action in particular on three sectors:
   • oil and gas
   • transport
   • buildings