Canada Green House Gas Emissions Figures Reveal Shock Offender


Statistics Canada recently released figures on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2004 to 2008 that contain a few surprises.

While the usual suspects - energy and transportation still loom large on the top 20 polluters list, the agriculture sector and its value chain emerges as a rather serious GHG offender, well ahead of pipelines, transportation and the cement industry.

Highly polluting agriculture-related industries include: Crop and Animal Production; Dairy Product Manufacturing; Meat Product Manufacturing; and, Pesticides, Fertilizer and other Agricultural Chemical Manufacturing.

Beef production has always been in the cross hairs of criticism for the amount of GHG emissions generated per pound of finished product; but who would have thought agriculture was a larger GHG polluter compared to trucking or rail transportation, or the oil and gas extraction sector when measured per $1,000 of production.

The electric power, transmission and distribution sector tops the GHG emitter list, due largely to the use of thermal coal to generate power. It is followed by pesticides, fertilizer and crop and animal production.

And the big three transport industries - pipelines, water and air transportation - also figure high on the list. Cement and concrete, chemical manufacturing and synthetic rubbers and resins are also strong emitters. The median rate of GHG emissions is 0.4 tonnes per thousand dollars of production. See Figure 1.



With respect to rates of improvement in cleaning up their GHG emissions act, some of the usual suspects still lead the charge in terms of GHG emissions. But the data reveals a few surprises with respect to GHG intensity per sector.

Who would have thought that universities and public institutions were lagging behind the coal industry in terms of how fast they were cleaning up their emissions act?

Those industries that are substantially improving (i.e. cutting) their emissions include coal mining, oil and gas extraction, petroleum and coal products manufacturing and oil and gas engineering construction. These industries were all improving at a rate of 10 percent or better compared to a median rate of 5.5 annually from 2004 to 2008.

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