Greenhouse gas emissions from the coal, oil and gas that Canada exports to other countries surpassed a billion tonnes last year — more than the country’s total emissions, according to newly uncovered federal data.
The staggering sum is a new threshold for Canada that reveals a significant gap between domestic and international climate action. Since 2012, Canada’s domestic emissions have fallen about six per cent, from 744 megatonnes (Mt) of CO2e to 702 MT last year. Over the same period, exported emissions from fossil fuels have grown 58 per cent, from 651.7 Mt to 1029.9 Mt.
The findings come as the annual U.N. climate negotiations, called COP29, kick off in Azerbaijan where countries of the world negotiate how to implement the Paris Agreement to cut emissions and adapt to warming already locked in. Exported emissions are somewhat of a grey area in the Paris Agreement because the treaty only holds countries responsible for emissions created within their own borders, effectively making Canada’s exported emissions a low priority for federal policy-makers.
Ecojustice staff lawyer Reid Gomme told Canada’s National Observer the federal government can fall back on “a technicality” of the Paris Agreement that doesn’t require it to reduce the country’s exported emissions, but the climate science is unequivocal that emissions created anywhere in the world affects everybody because there is only one shared atmosphere.
“When we're shipping those emissions abroad, they're not staying away,” he said. “We hope the government starts taking concrete steps [to address exported emissions], and feels pressure from findings like this, from both voices at home but also other countries that should see past claims about what we're doing.”
The data shows several concerning trends, Gomme said. Specifically, despite Canada being a co-founder of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, aimed at phasing out burning thermal coal for electricity all over the world, emissions from Canada’s thermal coal exports have grown from 5.3 Mt in 2017 — the same year that alliance was launched — to 17.5 Mt in 2023, representing a 230 per cent jump in emissions.
Emissions from exported crude oil have also leapt 93 per cent, from 397.4 MT in 2012 to 765.1 last year. Because the Trans Mountain Expansion Project only opened for business in May to facilitate more exports, that figure is expected to jump even higher next year.
Emissions from all gas exports increased slightly from 176.9 Mt in 2012 to 180.3 Mt in 2023 — just under two per cent growth. But that trend is poised to worsen as an LNG export boom is planned in British Columbia, that could see as many as 19 export terminals begin operations in the coming years, sending more gas overseas to be burned.
The province’s only operating LNG terminal currently is Tilbury LNG, though several more are close to operational or are expected to be approved soon. LNG Canada Phase 1, Cedar LNG and Woodfibre LNG are all either under construction or have been sanctioned, while two others, Ksi Lisims and LNG Canada Phase 2, are looking to be sanctioned in the next few years.
To combat rising domestic emissions from the fossil fuel sector, last week the federal government unveiled its draft regulations to cap oil and gas pollution. To fend off criticisms that the regulations would lead to production cuts, which could be construed as violating provincial jurisdiction, federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault emphasized that the government expects production to increase 16 per cent by 2030 with the cap in place.
Speaking to reporters from Azerbaijan Tuesday, Guilbeault said Canada has “a good story to tell” at COP29.
“Our emissions are at their lowest level in 25 years, while the economy is running at full steam,” he said. “We're matching investments with targeted regulations to drive cleaner production of energy with job-creating projects.”
An economy with significant fossil fuel exports running at full steam is the problem, Gomme said.
“Whatever we might do to bring down emissions domestically doesn't apply abroad obviously,” he said. “We aren't controlling what other countries do, but we do control what we decide to be our exports.”
“The question is, if we're still increasing — dramatically — how much we're sending abroad without any responsibility about what that ends up looking like for emissions, there's a big gap there in terms of our leadership, and making sure our overall actions lead to decreased emissions in the world,” he said.
In a report from 2021, Canada’s environment watchdog, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry DeMarco wrote that even though Canada’s emissions are 1.6 of the global total, it is among the top 10 largest emitters and one of the highest emitting countries on a per capita basis. Additionally, Canada is the planet’s fourth-largest producer of oil, with the majority of production exported and burned elsewhere.
“In this sense, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than those accounted for under the Paris Agreement because the agreement considers only emissions released within national boundaries, rather than exports, which are attributed to the consumer countries,” he wrote. “Regardless of the accounting approach, Canada continues to play a large role in the dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Even though the federal government tracks exported emissions, the data was not publicly available, and was only accessed after Ecojustice and Environmental Defence petitioned DeMarco’s office over several years, Gomme said. The Commissioner forwards petitions to relevant departments, who then compile a response.
Departments that ultimately provided the export emissions data include Environment and Climate Change Canada, Energy and Natural Resources Canada, Transport Canada and Statistics Canada.
A previous version of this story contained a typo that incorrectly characterized Canada's exported emissions.
Comments
The CNO really focuses on production, and on what production is local, because Canada is a producer, a really major one. But the climate problem is about consumption - Canada's sales would dry up instantly if people in non-producing countries stopped buying from us.
It's a global problem, not a Canada problem. Telling Canada to stop producing what people will desperately buy at any price is pointless. We have to talk about transition, about providing alternatives.
I take your point, but Canada's refusal to seriously incorporate exported emissions in our climate policies is clearly hurting global emission reduction efforts. Take for example the government subsidies flowing to LNG to encourage a boom in that industry. Politicians argue that if we can make LNG's Scope 1 and 2 emissions net-zero by electrifying export terminals, carbon capture, etc. than we might as well do it because Scope 3 isn't our concern. But plying the world with fossil fuels that could displace renewables slows global efforts, and robs other corners of our economy of non-emitting electricity they could use to decarbonize. We've seen our thermal coal exports increase, because Canadian ports are used to circumvent thermal coal export bans across the West Coast of the United States. Dismissing exported emissions as not our problem leads us down a path of not actually addressing the problem.
On top of that, I'd say Canada can't really control what other countries do. If others want to be the last barrel standing we can't stop them, but here at CNO we've covered the stranded asset risk this strategy to keep doubling down on fossil fuels until demand collapses represents. It's a strategy that puts us all at risk because its entrenching a very real problem into our economy.
So absolutely demand for fossil fuels need to be addressed, but with the crisis at hand, we can't ignore supply either.