Canada’s Emissions Trends

Environment Canada
July 2011

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Annex 4:

Comparison with the Latest National Inventory Report

Canada’s Emissions Trends presents a projection of greenhouse gas emissions to the year 2020 which were constructed using Environment Canada’s integrated energy, economy and environment modeling platform.

Canada’s Emission Trends provides a detailed breakdown of emissions by economic sector as well as a description of assumptions sector by sector.  It provides all the details related to the summary of emissions projections published on January 28th on the Government of Canada’s website: http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=DC025A76-1

The technical work for Canada’s Emissions Trends was completed in December 2010. The projections were aligned to the most recent data available at that time. For example, the economic projections are calibrated to those used by Finance Canada in the fall 2010 Fiscal Update. As another example, Statistics Canada’s 2010 population growth projections are used within the modeling work. The projections also incorporate 2010 data from the National Energy Board and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Emission Trends report makes extensive use of the National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory. It therefore reflects the historical emissions data that were available at the time i.e., the 2010 National Inventory Report. The 2010 National Inventory provides GHG data up to 2008. Thus, all subsequent years are considered projection years.

Since the modeling work in this Emissions Trends report was completed in December 2010, Environment Canada has released the 2011 National Inventory Report (May 2011), which includes greenhouse gas data up to 2009.  In Canada’s National Inventory Report, greenhouse gas emissions are categorized by emitting activity whereas this Emissions Trends report allocates emissions on the basis of the economic sector from which they originate. For a comparison of the two alternative methods see page 15 of this report.

The new data in the 2011 National Inventory Report confirmed that emissions significantly declined between 2008 and 2009 as projected in this Emissions Trends report. The Trends report projected aggregate Canadian emissions to fall from 735 Mt in 2008 to 700 Mt in 2009.  NIR data shows that emissions fell slightly more to 690 Mt in 2009.

The new National Inventory Report also made slight revisions to previous years for greenhouse gas emissions at the national and provincial levels. This was due to updates in underlying 2008 data collection and slight methodological improvements.  The following table illustrates the small differences in Canadian greenhouse gas emission levels:

Table A4.1 Comparison with Latest National Inventory Report

Mt CO2e

2005

2006

2007

2008

200925

2010 NIR/ Canada’s Emissions Trends

731

718

750

734

700

2011 NIR

731

719

748

732

690

Difference

0

1

2

2

10*

Environment Canada has started its annual update of greenhouse gas emissions projections. The information in the 2011 National Inventory Report will be incorporated into the update along with the most recent data available from other government agencies as discussed on page 19 of this report.

25 No data for 2009 was provided in the 2010 National Inventory Report. Data presented here is a projection from this Emissions Trends Report.

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