Canada and the Kyoto Protocol

Canada was active in negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. However, the Liberal government that later signed the accord took little action towards meeting Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. In the decade after Kyoto, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions increased by around 30%. The current Conservative government opposed the imposition of binding targets at the 2007 Bali Conference unless such targets were also imposed on such countries as China and India, which are exempt from GHG reduction requirements under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol.

Canada's total GHG emissions for 2006 were ~721 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, about 29% above Canada's Kyoto targets. [Environment Canada. "A Climate Change Plan for the Purposes of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act." May 2008.]

The US, Canada, and Japan and others also observed that, at the time of the original Kyoto discussions, science had little understanding of the impact on global warming of tropical deforestation. Deforestation amounts to destruction of some of the vital chem|CO|2 reservoirs often called “carbon sinks”. Factor in the loss of sinks from rainforest destruction and Brazil and Indonesia become the world’s third- and fourth-largest GHG emitters.

Canadians are not the world’s biggest "per capita" greenhouse gas polluters. Honours in that competition go to Australia and the United States, respectively; Canada only gets the bronze. The main cause of these high GHG emissions is Canada’s hydrocarbon consumption – at 8,300 kilograms of crude oil equivalent per person per year, the highest in the world.

Canada is a big country, so transportation – often in cold weather, when fuel efficiency drops – is a big part of the economy. About 25 per cent of Canada's GHGs come from trucks, trains, airplanes and, especially, cars. Commerce, residential fuel consumption and industry (excluding oil and gas) account for 24 per cent of the total, but much of those emissions come from equipment (mining trucks, front-end loaders) that do not get recorded in the transportation ledger. Another 14 per cent come from non-energy sources. The rest come from the production and manufacture of energy and power. The following table summarizes forecast changes to annual emissions by sector in megatonnes.

As Canada creates targets for GHG reductions, policymakers will likely zero in on the three areas – transportation, electricity generation and fossil fuel production – in which the greatest reductions are possible. Together, these activities account for nearly two-thirds of Canada’s greenhouse gases. Efficiencies can be found there.

Will Canada’s pollution actually decline? Not according to "Canada’s Energy Outlook", the Natural Resources Canada report from which these numbers came. [ [http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/inter/publications/peo_e.html] Canada's Energy Outlook] As the table illustrates, NRCan estimates that Canada’s GHG emissions will increase by 139 million tonnes between 2004 and 2020, with more than a third of the total coming from petroleum production and refining. Upstream emissions will decline slightly, primarily from gas field depletion and from increasing production of coalbed methane, which requires less processing than conventional natural gas. Meanwhile, emissions from unconventional resources and refining will soar. [ [http://languageinstinct.blogspot.com/2008/03/beyond-bali.html] Beyond Bali]

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