Years of progress on bringing Canada’s carbon emissions down have stalled, and future progress looks increasingly fragile, according to an early 2024 emissions estimate from the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).
The leading climate policy think-tank, which publishes its estimates a few months before the government does, is saying for the first time that Canada will not meet its 2030 emissions target.
Emissions from the oil and gas industry rose, especially the oilsands, offsetting any emissions reductions in other sectors like transportation and buildings, it said.
The institute estimates 2024 emissions at 694.3 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — almost flat from 2023. They’re now 8.5 per cent below 2005 levels, a far cry from Canada’s target of reaching 40 to 45 per cent below those levels by 2030.
“The reductions required to get from where we are today to there would require 40 megatonnes [of carbon dioxide] reductions a year, which is a huge number,” said Dave Sawyer, CCI principal economist. “We have no precedent for it and we certainly don’t have policy oriented to drive that level of emission reductions.”
The gap is a sobering message from Sawyer’s organization, whose policy papers and estimates have a significant influence in guiding government and private sector action on climate. But he stresses that fighting climate change is “not a pass-or-fail test” and the report should be taken as a push to course-correct in terms of climate action.
“We have a short-term emergency right now with [U.S. President Donald Trump] and the economic impacts of the tariffs, but that’s not a reason to kill the long-term policy signals and expectations.”
Meanwhile, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin told CBC News in response to the report that her government still has some tools left to use.
“The way we’re approaching it, it’s a moral obligation to fight climate change for the future, our future generations. It’s existential.”
Why is the prognosis so poor?
Sawyer said that in previous years, the government had room to improve policy and get back on course to meeting climate goals. But in recent months, the new Mark Carney government has pulled back on key climate policies during a crucial time, largely due to backlash from people concerned with affordability, as well as industries focused on competitiveness.
Carney repealed the consumer carbon tax earlier this year, a key election issue. Earlier this month, his government announced that it was pausing the electric vehicle sales mandate, which would have required automakers to make 100 per cent of their new vehicle sales zero emissions by 2035 in response to pressure from the car industry.
He is also currently in talks with Alberta over oil and gas policy, with reports that the industry’s emissions cap, proposed under the previous Trudeau government, might be up for negotiation.
During a campaign stop in Winnipeg, Mark Carney touted the official end of the consumer carbon tax, a core but divisive Liberal environmental policy.
And Carney included the Phase 2 expansion of LNG Canada, the country’s first liquefied natural gas export terminal, in the initial list of major projects that his government wants to fast-track to boost the economy.
Sawyer said LNG-related emissions don’t factor into 2024’s total, given that the industry just started up in earnest this summer with the new terminal in B.C. However, in the coming years, it will make the emissions target further out of reach.
And efforts to bring down emissions from the sector — especially by tightening methane leaks — are not enough as the industry increases oil production.
“I think the cheap stuff has been basically grabbed,” he said, referring to the easier ways to cut methane emissions from oil and gas facilities.
2025 is a crossroads
The report warned the country faces a critical juncture this year, as it gets close to its 2030 target. Dabrusin, the environment minister, said further government action on climate is forthcoming.
Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said Wednesday the government is committed to tackling climate change but acknowledged that the next steps will be hard. A new independent analysis shows Canada’s 2030 climate target is now out of reach.
“There’s going to be a climate competitiveness strategy that we’re putting out,” she told CBC News.
While Ottawa has not yet specified what that new strategy would look like, Carney previously said he wants to focus on “results over objectives and investments over prohibition” at the Liberal Party caucus meeting in Edmonton.
Sawyer said it’s essential to shift the focus to the provinces, which can have a huge impact through their own policies on large emitting industries. He said it’s important to remember why we have these policies in the first place.
“The wildfires have gone through the roof. We’re all living in basically toxic air environments for months of the year. And we lose communities and infrastructure and then along come floods and ice storms,” he said.
“Why do we have targets? We have targets to focus the mind and focus policy on reducing emissions to avoid the economic drag and, frankly, the dangers that a lot of folks face.”
