Dependent Solutions

However, a good plan is not just a collection of individual solutions, as many core solutions are dependent on others. Thus the failure of just one solution could cause a substantial amount of planned reductions to be impossible. For example, Canada’s electric vehicle policies are one of the few areas to receive substantial government funding and support, but are themselves dependent on a huge increase in renewable energy capacity. The Canadian government estimates it could need up to 200% more electrical generating capacity by 2050 than its entire grid currently generates.¹² Such an expansion would require an unprecedented level of infrastructure investment in a short time, yet the Canadian Energy Regulator forecasts just a 25% increase in generating capacity by 2050 under current policies.¹³ Clearly it will not be possible to substantially scale critical solutions such as electric vehicles and heat pumps in the future, meaning key parts of Canada’s net zero plan are unattainable.

Ecosystem Health

It’s also important to realise that the effects of climate change are not just captured by measuring Co2e emissions. Ecosystems encompass everything from the wild Canadian boreal forests to the agricultural lands that we depend on for food. Our survival depends on healthy soils for plant growth, pollinators to fertilise plants and reliable clean water supplies. The scientific evidence repeatedly shows us that more diverse and healthy ecosystems are far better able to adapt to a changing climate.^{14 15}

In a huge country famed for its wilderness, it’s likely sounding alarmist to speak of “ecosystem collapse”, but the small amount of research undertaken into these areas show alarming trends. Global trends for insect populations, which we depend on for pollination, show that 80% of insects (measured by total weight) have died off in a period that could be as short as the last 30 years.¹⁶ There have been no major studies of insect population trends in Canada, but insect eating birds (a rough proxy for insect populations) have experienced the worst rate of decline of any bird type, decreasing by 60% in Canada since the 1970’s.¹⁷ Insects perform a huge variety of ecosystem services, and also form the bottom of the food chain on both land and fresh water. The severe decline in insects shows one clear and measurable way in which large scale ecosystem collapse could and is occurring.

Similarly the global rate of crop land abandonment caused by soil fertility collapse is shockingly high, with nearly a third of arable land abandoned globally. The highest rates of abandonment are in wealthier western countries which have used the most intensive farming techniques.¹⁸ In the absence of any Canadian specific data it seems reasonable to assume that Canada’s rate of soil fertility collapse is similar to that of the US, which would place it above the global average rate of collapse.

Globally 50% of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture, with 80% of this agricultural land being used for livestock rearing, which accounts for just 17% of the world's calories produced.¹⁹ Canada’s export oriented agricultural system is very much part of this inefficient global system, either directly via livestock farming or indirectly by exporting grains which are used to feed animals. This global system is highly inefficient at producing food, and when combined with the extremely high rates of arable land loss, it creates an insatiable need to convert the last remaining areas of wilderness into farmland. Land conversion to agriculture represents the single biggest pressure on ecosystems globally, and clearly any sensible climate change policy will have to address how we use and view our current agricultural land given the substantial threat of ecosystem collapse.

What defines ‘good’ climate change policy?

Below I will discuss four areas which are essential elements of a robust and plausible net zero strategy; funding, legislation, measurement and a back up plan. If a net zero strategy is to be effective then a country cannot afford to perform poorly against any of these criteria.

Funding

Climate change policy has to address greenhouse gas emission and ecosystem health through hundreds of different and specialised policies, but when reviewing each of these policies, how is it assessed as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at achieving its goal? First any solution needs to be adequately funded, whether that funding comes from government or the private sector is not particularly important, the greater issue being that the required funding is going to appear. Canadian government spending on climate change is extremely small, with more generous estimates (see detailed funding section) placing it at just one twentieth of the required annual spending amount. This implies that the government’s own net-zero emission models assume a huge amount of private capital investment (Environment Canada has not yet commented when asked to confirm this).

To give an example, the government cites a study on building retrofits by the Pembina Institute which states that reaching Canada’s net zero goals would require $21 billion per year in retrofits until 2040.²⁰ The federal government has committed just $2.6 billion spread over the next seven years. For the government models to reach net zero I can only assume that there is an expectation that the private sector will invest almost all of the $21 billion per year required to reduce emissions from just the building sector. There is currently no effective regulation in place to enforce or incentivise this behaviour. Assumptions such as these seem far closer to wishful thinking than they do to realistic estimates. A strong plan needs strong and plausible funding commitments.

Legislation

For some solutions strong legislation is the main tool required. Environmental legislation is usually controversial as it often negatively impacts certain key interest groups, resulting in strong opposition and lobbying pressures against environmental laws. As the second largest country in the world, Canada is home to huge natural assets and correspondingly large extractive industries. Industries such as oil and gas, mining, logging and fishing have major environmental side effects such as heavy pollution and wilderness destruction.

A prime example of weak legislation is the lack of rules preventing bottom trawling in Canada, which is a fishing practice that produces a small proportion of Canada’s catch, but wreaks huge habitat destruction to the coastal seafloor habitats that often act as nurseries for many important fish species. The destruction of these habitats is likely to be a major factor preventing wild fish stocks from recovering.²¹

The practice seems widespread, with the bottom trawled fish catch from the Pacific North-West accounting for 38,500 tonnes²² of catch in an average year, or 5% of Canada’s entire 2019 catch.²³ Allowing bottom trawling is clearly diametrically opposed to Canada’s stated goal of protecting 30% of its waters by 2030. Traditionally waters are protected via the designation of a marine protected area (MPA). However Canada has introduced a new category called a marine refuge, in which bottom trawling and oil and gas extraction are both permissible. Canada is now on course to achieve its goal of protecting 30% of its waters by 2030, but as marine refuges make up the bulk of protected waters the oceans are protected purely on paper, with no meaningful change in practice. Sadly such weakening and distortion of environmental laws in Canada seems to be the rule rather than the exception, with the insidious side effect of creating a false sense of government action and oversight in the mind of the public.

Measurement

Canada is a vast country with enormous natural resources, many of which hold huge carbon reserves. For example Canada is home to one quarter of the world’s wetlands (c.129 million hectares, 13% of Canada’s terrestrial landmass),²⁴ which are an extremely dense carbon deposit that can easily release huge amounts of Co2e if disturbed. For context all of the world’s wetlands hold twice as much carbon as all of the world’s forests, despite having a much smaller land area.²⁵

Canada does not keep any inventory on the health of the vast majority of its wetlands, meaning any Co2e emissions caused by the drying out of these wetlands are not counted in current official emissions estimates. Worryingly what limited research there is indicates that drying and deterioration of the wetlands is very likely to be occurring, though to what scale we can’t say given the lack of data. In southern Canada approximately 70% of wetlands have been lost.²⁶ Complete failure to measure and track such a huge and vulnerable carbon sink highlights a blindspot that the Canadian government demonstrates time and again when dealing with natural resources and land use considerations.

A Back-up Plan And Redundancy

Mitigating the worst effects of climate change is an enormously difficult challenge, and because it depends on so many different solutions, the probability of failing to achieve just a few of the most critical solutions seems inevitable. Globally our emissions have increased continuously from around 35 GT in 1990 to 50 GT in 2019, driven by an increasing population and improving living standards in some developing countries.²⁷

While small emissions reductions have been made in some countries, it seems extremely naive to believe that we are on a global trajectory toward net-zero by 2050. Current plans are focused on greenhouse gas emission reductions, but it seems likely that we will need large scale carbon capture and sequestration projects so that Co2 can be removed from the atmosphere. These carbon capture technologies are different to carbon capture used to reduce emissions from highly polluting industries such as oil and gas production. Carbon capture used in the context of industrial processes is discussed later in this report, but it is not a technology which can be scaled to significantly reduce humanities overall emissions. To offset a significant portion of humanity’s emissions would require a huge global infrastructure in more ambitious carbon capture technologies that are currently unproven. Given the time it will take to develop and deploy such infrastructure, countries need to be investing heavily in large scale pilots now - yet still there are almost no such carbon capture and storage facilities of scale in the world today.²⁸ It seems that heavy investment in carbon capture and sequestration as a negative emissions technology should be an essential part of any climate change policy - not least because it would provide a technology which can be used in the future to potentially reverse historic emissions and some of their effects.

Assessment of Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction plan

Canada has mapped out its strategy for reducing the country's emissions 40% by 2030 in its ‘2030 Emissions Reduction Plan’. I have evaluated this plan over nine different sectors which I discuss on a sector by sector basis below. I have also included an additional category providing an overview assessment of the total amount of funding as this was a significant and time consuming area of research in its own right. ** Note - as the scope of the research was so broad I’ve limited the length of my descriptions for brevity. The embedded airtable provides a structured breakdown of all of my research notes and corresponding reference sources on a solution by solution basis.**

I have also provided a summary table by sector at the end of this report for convenience.

Funding

Finding out the amount of funding which the federal government has committed to fighting climate change is a much more difficult problem than it first appears. On the surface the government makes the repeated claim that it is spending $100 billion to fight climate change,²⁹ which would represent about one quarter of Canada’s budget revenue in 2022.³⁰ However the time frame of this spending is studiously ignored, with the 36 different pots of money I reviewed usually having deployment periods of between five and seven years.

A large portion of this money is in the form of low interest loans rather than grants, which seem hard to count as climate change funding given that these loans could only ever support projects likely to be profitable (assuming the loan is to actually be repaid).

There are then issues in many of the larger funding pots which relate to oil, gas and heavy industry. For example the ‘Net Zero Accelerator Initiative’ is an $8 billion fund, which lists carbon capture and storage at heavily polluting production facilities as a key area it aims to decarbonise. However environmental groups have pointed out that such technology represents a huge cost which has been proven to only reduce emissions marginally. The infrastructure required for comprehensive carbon capture and storage in oil production is equivalent to the existing pipework infrastructure used for refining.³¹ To effectively decarbonise oil production would require so much infrastructure as to create a complete ‘lock in’ to this fossil fuel source, or put another way, if we invest heavily in the long-term infrastructure of fossil fuel, then this is the energy infrastructure we will have to use in the future. And while emissions from the production of oil and gas can be reduced, these fuels will always release carbon when actually burned by the final consumer. As a result subsidising this technology achieves nothing more than slowing down our transition away from oil and gas, at great expense.

And then there is the difficult issue of how to count Canada’s large proactive funding for activities we know to be root causes for climate change. Despite officially ceasing to subsidise oil and gas extraction, the Canadian government has introduced a tax credit for carbon capture and storage that may equate to funding of $8.6 billion by 2030.³² Historical annual subsidies to livestock farming are estimated to average between $8 - $10 billion per year,³³ a figure far higher than even the most generous estimates given to the federal government’s annual climate change spending.

When low interest loans are stripped out, I estimate that Canada is spending between $3.5 and $5.0 billion per year on climate change,³⁴ depending on whether one chooses to include the Net Zero Accelerator Initiative as climate spending, or if you view it as just another oil and gas subsidy. This estimate makes no adjustment for the substantial funding Canada gives to activities which are causing global warming. For context, some estimates place the required annual level of spending needed to reach net zero by 2050 at over $100 billion per year.³⁵

Electricity - 2019 emissions 61 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target 14 MT

Canada has one of the greenest energy grids in the world, with 82% of its energy coming from renewable sources, mostly hydro and some nuclear. Forecast emission reductions of 77% are based on phasing out the remaining coal plants (13 Mt reduction) and reducing emissions from gas plants due to efficiencies driven by a new carbon tax incentive, the 'Output Based Pricing System' (OBPS). However it seems that currently the OBPS may be too weak a carbon tax to cause major emissions reductions, evidenced by the fact that Alberta continues to approve and build new natural gas-fired power plants.³⁶ Even if the OBPS is successful it is unclear how Canada will decarbonise so much of its grid emissions by 2030.

Canada will need to double or triple its generating capacity by 2050 if it's to meet the power demand caused by electrification of current fossil fuel dependent activities (e.g. transportation and heating).³⁷ Its own energy regulator estimates that Canada is on course for just a 25% increase in generating capacity by 2050.³⁸ Much of Canada's power grid is old infrastructure so new projects are often just replacing decommissioned plants. Canada is systemically underinvesting in all types of renewable energy. Wind energy is forecast to be the main driver for increased power generation, but surprisingly Canada has no major offshore wind sites, despite this being a major area of focus for Europe and the US.

Power generation highlights the huge problems associated with climate change, as under currently prevailing economic wisdom, the Federal government does not consider itself able to commit to large infrastructure projects on a scale which matches the forecast dramatic acceleration in electricity demand. Grid infrastructure projects are complex and usually take decades from inception to completion. Canada's inability to plan ahead means that any solutions which depend on electrification are certain to either fail or have their adoption delayed by decades. In summary Canada has a very green energy grid, but it has no plans to scale this in line with the needs of the rest of its climate change strategy.

Transportation - 2019 emissions 186 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 143 MT

Canada's emissions from transport are currently significantly underestimated as it does not include emissions from international air travel and international shipping. Even so the majority of Canada's transport emissions come from passenger vehicles (87.5 Mt) and heavy goods vehicles (65 Mt). Interestingly Canadian's have the highest emitting vehicles per km driven in the world, emitting twice as much as most European countries.³⁹ This appears to be driven by the trend of truck ownership and implies huge reductions could be made by more stringent emissions taxation. Supporting sales of electric passenger vehicles is Canada's core policy for dealing with transport emissions. This is one of the few climate change areas receiving adequate funding, however the Canadian government's failure to expand its electrical generating capacity could quickly cause issues and prevent the uptake of EV vehicles at scale.

Additionally there are currently substantial supply shortages for the raw ingredients required for car batteries, meaning that globally current electric car production targets are unattainable until mining extraction manages to rapidly scale.⁴⁰

Support for alternative fuels for heavy goods vehicles is poor, with no large electric or hydrogen trucks operating in Canada - mainly because no fuel stations exist.⁴¹ There does not appear to be a plan to build fueling and charging stations nationwide for heavy goods vehicles, so there seems no prospect of these technologies gaining mainstream traction.

Public transport is woefully underfunded and municipalities struggle to deal with the operating losses that it generates. Ambitious projects such as high speed rail links between cities do not seem to justify the cost of building, especially if people do not consider the intra-city public transport adequate. Other areas such as air travel and shipping remain extremely difficult to make even small emissions reductions.⁴²

In summary Canada might well continue to see growth in electric passenger vehicles, but uptake will surely be much slower than forecast due to supply issues and a lack of electrical grid capacity. Therefore the forecast emissions reductions seem unlikely.

Essential Environments & Carbon Sinks [30 MT reduction forecast against this category]

Canada is the second largest country in the world and is therefore responsible for some of the world's largest natural resources - which act as both major carbon sinks and essential areas of biodiversity. Canada contains roughly a quarter of the world's wetlands, a fifth of the world's temperate rainforest and the longest coastline in the world. Unfortunately Canada does not track the environmental health of lands which are not directly managed for industry, meaning that emissions from degrading wetland/peatland, seafloors damaged by bottom trawling and non-managed forests are not measured. Even small amounts of damage to these environments can cause huge emissions, and the evidence indicates that substantial damage is almost certainly occurring.

For instance I estimate that Canada's wetlands could contain 550 GT of Co2e,⁴³ which is roughly eleven years worth of current global emissions. Human activities such as logging can cause drainage of wetlands, resulting in the drying and release of this carbon. It is impossible to quantify the current rate of damage, but the the few areas where wetlands have been measured generally show declines in extent,⁴⁴ with approximately 70% of wetlands lost from the southern areas of Canada.⁴⁵

Arguably biodiversity loss and possible ecosystem collapse are an equally important unknown danger in Canada. Despite having a huge and extensive wilderness, key metrics are alarming. Global trends for insect collapse show that 80% of insects (measured by total weight) have died off in a period that could be as short as the last 30 years.^{46 47} There have been no major studies of insect population trends in Canada, but insect eating birds (a rough proxy for insect populations) have experienced the worst rate of decline of any bird type, decreasing by 60% in Canada since the 1970’s.⁴⁸

It's a similar story for fish stocks, with catches halving in Canada between the late 1980's and 2009.⁴⁹ Oceana Canada found that the number of Canadian fisheries rated as healthy fell from 34.5% to 26.5% between 2017 and 2020.⁵⁰ It is not clear what effect some form of ecosystem collapse in Canada would have on humanity and food supply chains, but losing pollinators, food sources (fish) and key water filtration and storage areas (wetlands) could have enormous ramifications. We have very limited data on all of these critical environments, but what we do have clearly indicates that ecosystem collapse is not a low probability event, but something that should be considered likely given our current trajectory.

Food Production - 2019 emissions 73 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 71 MT

Direct Co2e emissions from farming are a much smaller issue than the side effects caused by modern farming techniques. The key issues facing Canada are soil fertility collapse, increased droughts in the prairies (80% of Canada's farmland),⁵¹ the large scale monoculture nature of crop farming (causing biodiversity dead zones) and the inefficient use of land, which is heavily subsidised to support animal agriculture.

The rate of arable land collapse in wealthy Western countries is incredibly high, with global estimates showing that up to a third of global cropland became unusable in the last 40 years.⁵² The Canadian government has no official figures on the rate of abandoned farmland, but it seems likely that Canada has experienced similar rates of loss as the United States (which may have lost up to half of its cropland since 1980).⁵³ This issue ties in strongly with the loss of the remaining natural grassland in the prairies, a carbon sink which is likely being converted to cropland to replace abandoned farmland. Canada's prairies are an arid area that receive little rain traditionally. Under climate change models they are forecast to experience increasing droughts, which has already been a major factor in causing a dramatic increase in irrigation requirements of 74% between 2012 and 2018.⁵⁴ A partial collapse of certain areas of the prairies seems plausible given the more marginal quality of the land and the possibility of more severe localised areas of climate change, so the current intensive farming techniques which damage soil quality, intensively use water and kill biodiversity with pesticides are creating a very fragile ecosystem, unlikely to be able to deal with climatic shocks.

Wheat production is Canada's largest farming land use, followed closely by canola.⁵⁵ The goal for Canadian agriculture should be to rapidly change focus from high yield intensive crop farming which may irreversibly damage soil health, to more diverse farming practices that meet the criteria of 1) improving soil fertility, 2) maintaining maximum yields possible and 3) maximising biodiversity so as to build a resilient farmland area. Unfortunately the economic incentives and risks are currently far too great to make this a viable option for farmers.

For instance highly damaging and land intensive livestock products receive huge farming subsidies compared to fruit and vegetables and there seems to be no talk of changing this.⁵⁶ The risks of a failed harvest due to changing farming techniques would likely need to be insured by the government (no policies like this exist) and strong legislation would be needed to force transition to occur within a timeframe needed to prevent the worst effects of soil fertility collapse and biodiversity loss. Such substantive policies are not part of any of the major political parties' agendas,⁵⁷ and without political cognisance and will for such actions, it appears that the robustness of fragile Canadian farmland is receiving no meaningful attention. This is in spite of there being strong evidence that certain areas may fail completely in the coming decades due to droughts, flooding and other climate change effects.

Perennial crops and fermentation produced protein offer two hugely exciting technologies which could provide meaningful scalable solutions to the issues associated with agriculture at present. Perennial crops only need to be planted every few years, meaning that farmland does not need to be regularly tilled - which is the main driver of soil carbon loss. They also have far deeper root systems than traditional annual crops which allows these plants to store carbon and other nutrients deep within the soil, increasing soil fertility. Several grain types are near commercial viability, with claims that they may require just ten more years of selective breeding.⁵⁸ Current research on this area appears to be carried out by a very small number of institutes, so a very small amount of government funding could help rapidly decrease the time it takes to develop viable perennial crops.

Fermentation produced protein has clearly caught the imagination of investors, with $1.7 billion being invested into this new industry in 2021. There are several versions of this technology, with the most calorie efficient approach being to grow bacteria in a fermentation tank (similar to beer production) and to then heat and kill the bacteria, which can then form a protein rich flour. This allows the highly economical production of a huge amount of protein, most importantly from a very small land area. However most of the money invested has focused on R&D development, and there is a global shortage of appropriate fermentation production facilities for scaling production.⁵⁹ Building these facilities at scale is extremely expensive and many are concerned that the private sector is not willing to take on such large capital risks.⁶⁰ Serious long term infrastructure investment from the federal government will be needed to allow this exciting technology to become a mainstream industry.

Neither perennial crops or fermentation produced protein are considered in Canada's Emissions Reduction Plan.

Oil & Gas - 2019 emissions 191 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 110 MT

Canada is one of the world's largest oil and gas producers. Methane leaks that occur during extraction and transport account for 54 Mt of the total 191 Mt of emissions.⁶¹ The Canadian government's main policies for reducing emissions seem extremely weak. Their methane emissions legislation (aimed at reducing leaks) appears to have no mandatory penalties.⁶² Their other main policy is a carbon tax called the 'Output Based Production System', which is aimed at reducing emissions from refining and production processes. However OBPS sets a low emissions reduction target and then returns 80%-90% of the tax back to the oil and gas industry to protect its competitiveness.⁶³

In addition Canada is forecasting significant rises in oil exports, indicating that this area's overall emissions are likely to rise. The Canadian government also openly admits that current estimates of emissions from methane leaks are too low, and estimates predict that actual leaks could be 50%-100% greater.⁶⁴

In summary this is a huge area of emissions, currently under-reporting emissions and forecast to increase its production volume. There is no strong legislation or tax incentives to meaningfully reduce emissions and so the forecast reductions seem unlikely to occur.

Industry - 2019 emissions 100 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 69 MT

Canada has many heavy industries such as mining, logging, chemical production, cement production and steel/iron manufacture. Many of these are some of the most difficult areas to decarbonise. The federal government's largest funding commitment by far is the 'Net Zero Accelerator' fund, which has $8 billion to deploy over seven years.

Two major electrification projects in steel production are likely to eliminate 6 Mt of emissions,⁶⁵ while there are some promising developments that aluminium production could be made net zero due to technological breakthroughs. However the speed of change for large manufacturing plants can be extremely slow, so this may take decades to become prevalent.

Despite the large funding on offer, it is unclear how other major emissions sources will decarbonise. Chemical manufacture releases greenhouse gases as a result of chemical reactions, so they cannot be decarbonised by further electrification.⁶⁶ 'Green' cement has seen low adoption in Canada and still has significant emissions,⁶⁷ and the government has no clear policies on how mining will reduce its emissions or environmental impacts.

In addition there is strong evidence that emissions from logging are systematically underestimated by 80 Mt Co2e per year due to deliberately misleading carbon accounting choices.⁶⁸ Large areas of forest which have not yet been logged have been included under Canada’s managed forestry land. These ecosystems are in a state of equilibrium where the Co2 sequestered by trees is offset by the Co2 released due to wildfires. The Canadian government counts the Co2 sequestered by these forests but excludes the Co2 released by wildfires, effectively giving it a fictitious 80 MT per annum carbon offset.

In summary, overall emissions are hugely underestimated at present. There appear to be some possible emissions reductions, such as from steel production, though this would be capped at current steel emissions of 16 Mt Co2e.⁶⁹ Other forms of heavy industry are either still searching for a scalable way to decarbonise, or continuing as normal.

Buildings - 2019 emissions 91 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 53 MT

The target reduction of 42% seems unlikely. Of the solutions included in this report, only the forecast use of alternative refrigerant seems on course to contribute a significant emissions reduction (aiming for a 15 MT annual reduction by 2036).⁷⁰ There is also decent legislation and market incentives driving the adoption of LED lights, but I roughly estimate that their complete adoption would only reduce emissions by 5 MT or less.⁷¹

85% of all energy consumption for buildings in Canada relates to heating and cooling, and subsidy of effective heating systems such as heat pumps, more insulation and more stringent refrigerant management is extremely small. In the government's own report it cites the Pembina study, which estimates that Canada needs to spend $21 billion per year from now until 2040 to make the building sector net-zero. The Canadian government is spending $2.6 billion spread over the next seven years, and is clearly hoping that the private sector will make up the difference. This seems highly unlikely as many of the projects have major upfront costs and modern investors are often unwilling to make major CAPEX outlays with slower payback periods.

Although some solutions may provide emissions reductions, Canada continues to expand its population rapidly with aggressive immigration targets. There are also cultural and legislation changes making things such as air conditioning mandatory in certain cities for new high rises,⁷² so there are currently unmeasured factors which will increase emissions in the future.

In addition there are serious questions over the effectiveness of the new model building codes introduced by the federal government. They offer a tiered approach, with the lower level tiers offering little improvement on existing building codes.⁷³ Worse still, there appear to be serious flaws with the model building codes, which allow the energy efficiency of a home to be calculated using a reference building approach. Critics point out that such an approach allows poorly designed buildings to appear energy efficient as they simply need to perform better than the architect's own design built with minimum building material standards. Studies show a major performance gap when the building is actually built.⁷⁴

Achieving Canada’s buildings emission reduction target will require the rapid implementation of a large number of solutions, and there does not appear to be the required funding nor legislation in place to make this happen.

Waste Management - 2019 emissions 28 MT Co2e, 2030 stated target of 13 MT

Waste management in Canada appears to be in a state of disarray. Actual recycling rates of materials such as plastic are just 9%,⁷⁵ and the lack of demand for low grade recycled material has made much recycling cost prohibitive for underfunded municipalities. In particular the decision by Asian countries such as China to cease accepting much of Canada’s waste has highlighted how the recycling of lower grade materials was mainly dealt with by sending them abroad (41% of Canada’s recycling was shipped abroad in 2016, which is no longer an option).⁷⁶ As a result Canada does not have enough processing facilities and finds it uneconomical to recycle lower grade materials.

A quarter of landfill material is organic which leads to unnecessarily high methane levels at landfills. Landfill methane capture legislation is too weak, as it fails to capture emissions from large open dumps which are no longer active, instead only covering active landfills which are still accepting waste.⁷⁷ About one third of methane emissions released by Canadian landfills are currently captured and flared,⁷⁸ but without legislation to address dumps which are no longer active, it seems unlikely that this number will increase significantly.

The core underlying issue seems to be that waste management is a provincial or municipal issue, and these governments do not have the budget to adequately fund the running costs of a loss making activity provided for the public good.

In summary the largest single action that could be taken is the introduction of much stronger methane capture laws at landfills, including closed sites. Outside of this legislation, other improvements to waste management practices seem unlikely given the lack of funding at provincial and municipal governments.

Large Scale Carbon Sequestration Projects - No emissions reductions forecast with this technology

Canada only mentions carbon capture and sequestration technology within the Emissions Reduction Plan in relation to cleaning fossil fuel emissions from heavy industry and power generation. This type of carbon capture only reduces emissions from polluting sources, and does not capture and store emissions that have already occured or occurred elsewhere.

Currently existing carbon capture technologies are fundamentally limited in capability, with one source estimating that using direct air capture to remove all of the world's emissions would require between two and four times the world's current electrical production.⁷⁹

As globally countries are showing no evidence of managing to reduce current emissions levels significantly, investing in more radical carbon capture technology is now essential. The famous startup incubator Y Combinator has researched and advocated for four more extreme carbon capture technologies.⁸⁰ Of these I believe that electro-geo-chemical engineering has the potential to offset a large portion of the world's emissions without requiring unattainably large amounts of electrical power and resources. This process would use renewable energy to extract carbon from seawater, which has the added benefit of de-acidifying the oceans. A large power plant (500 MW capacity) could be used to remove 8 MT of Co2e per year, about 1% of Canada's emissions.⁸¹

It seems to me that any serious plan for dealing with the effects of climate change should be investing in major projects like this. Y Combinator estimates that the entire world's emissions could be captured and sequestered using 14% of the world's current electrical output.⁸² Canada has no major projects of this ambition or scope and appears to have no plans to commence such a project. There are no financial incentives for the private sector to take on such a project at present.

Conclusion

Having researched Canadian climate change policy in depth, it is apparent to me that there is no realistic prospect of a meaningful reduction on the reported 739 MT of Co2e emitted in 2019. Although Canada may make small reductions in certain specific areas such as electric vehicles, steel production and alternative refrigerants - these reductions are likely to be inconsequential in comparison to the underreported emissions occurring from forest fires, wetland drying and methane leaks from oil transportation, which probably represent many hundreds of megatonnes of unreported emissions.

On ecological issues government regulation is extremely weak, with strong lobbying from fisheries, logging, mining, Industry and oil & gas invariably managing to alter and distort legislation before enactment - so that ultimately little change is required from industries when new environmental laws are eventually passed.

Climate change has numerous root cause issues, and is inextricably intertwined with ecological and environmental factors. Scientific research increasingly occurs in silos and as a result the holistic effects of biodiversity loss, habitat loss, soil fertility collapse, water depletion and a dramatically warming landmass are not painted as one complete portrait. The combination of these effects will surely push our current global food supply chain into disarray, and possible collapse in many regions. Canada’s prairies are especially vulnerable to these effects, meaning that Canada lacks long-term food security and is likely to become further dependent on importing.

As a wealthy nation with huge carbon stores in the form of vast wetlands, grasslands, forests and coastal waters - one would expect Canada to be in a strong position to act as a custodian to some of the world’s last great areas of wilderness. But instead Canada seems dependent on its extractive industries, and shows that a high standard of living does not on its own create the circumstances for benevolent environmental stewardship.

Clearly lack of political will, environmental awareness and opposing economic ideologies play major roles in preventing stronger environmental legislation and meaningful government funding support. Unless Canadian voters can be convinced that climate change is more severe, more urgent and more dangerous than is usually perceived - then I fail to see how the political will can be summoned to respond to climate change with the sweeping legislative changes and large scale funding commitments so clearly required.

Endnotes

1. “3 billion people could live in places as hot as the Sahara by 2070 unless we tackle climate change”, World Economic Forum, last modified May 13th, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/temperature-climate-change-greenhouse-gas-niche-emissions-hot/

2. “Temperatures”, Climate Action Tracker, last modified November 9th, 2021, https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/

3. Chuang Zhao et al., “Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates”, PNAS Vol 114 | No.35, August 15th, 2017, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701762114

4. Oliver Milman, “Earth has lost a third of arable land in past 40 years, scientists say”, The Guardian, last modified December 2nd, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-land-soil-food-security-shortage

5. Duncan Cameron et al.,“Grantham Centre briefing note: December 2015 A sustainable model for intensive agriculture”, December, 2015, https://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/A-sustainable-model-for-intensive-agriculture-Grantham-Centre-briefing-note-December-2015.pdf

6. Alberto Boretti & Lorenzo Rosa,”Reassessing the projections of the World Water Development Report”, npj Clean Water 2, 15, July 31st, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-019-0039-9

7. “A Map of the Future of Water”, The Pew Charitable Trusts, March 3rd, 2019, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/spring-2019/a-map-of-the-future-of-water

8. Alberto Boretti & Lorenzo Rosa,”Reassessing the projections of the World Water Development Report”, npj Clean Water 2, 15, July 31st, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-019-0039-9

9. United Nations, “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision”, June 21st, 2017, https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html

10. Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster than Forests, United Nations Climate Change, last modified October 1st, 2018, https://unfccc.int/news/wetlands-disappearing-three-times-faster-than-forests

11. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “2030 Emissions Reduction Plan”, (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022), https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2022/eccc/En4-460-2022-eng.pdf

12. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “2030 Emissions Reduction Plan”, (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022), P40

13. “Canada’s Energy Futures 2021 Fact Sheet: Electricity”, last modified May 24th, 2022, https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/canada-energy-future/2021electricity/

14. “Greater biodiversity makes ecosystems more resistant to climate change”, Mongabay, last modified November 4th, 2015, “https://news.mongabay.com/2015/11/greater-biodiversity-makes-ecosystems-more-resistant-to-climate-change/”

15. “A high biodiversity mitigates the impact of ocean acidification on hard-bottom ecosystems”, E. Rastelli et al., February 19th, 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59886-4

16. Gretchen Vogel, “Where have all the insects gone?”, Science, last modified May 10th, 2017, https://www.science.org/content/article/where-have-all-insects-gone

17. Dr. Silke Nebel, “A Roadmap To Rescue Aerial Insectivores”, Birds Canada, last modified June 26th, 2020, https://www.birdscanada.org/a-roadmap-to-rescuing-aerial-insectivores

18. Yi Yang et al., “Restoring Abandoned Farmland to Mitigate Climate Change on a Full Earth”, One Earth, Volume , Issue 2, August 21st, 2020, P176 - 186

19. “Chart Shows What the World’s Land Is Used For … and It Explains Exactly Why So Many People Are Going Hungry”, One Green Planet, accessed September 16th, 2022, https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-used/

20. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “2030 Emissions Reduction Plan”, (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022), P34

21. “An Overview of Bottom Trawling In Canada”, Pacific Wild, last modified August 10th, 2021, https://pacificwild.org/an-overview-of-bottom-trawling-in-canada

22. “An Overview of Bottom Trawling In Canada”, Pacific Wild, last modified August 10th, 2021, https://pacificwild.org/an-overview-of-bottom-trawling-in-canada/

23. “Value of Outputs”, Government of Canada, last modified March 29th, 2021, https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/stats/cfs-spc/tab/cfs-spc-tab1-eng.htm

24. “Extent of Canada's wetlands”, Government of Canada, last modified August 31st, 2016, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/extent-wetlands.html

25. “Peatland Protection and Rewetting”, Project Drawdown, accessed September 12th, 2022, https://drawdown.org/solutions/peatland-protection-and-rewetting

26. Larry Kaumeyer, “What’s Happening To Canada’s Vanishing Wetlands?”,Ducks, last modified January 26th, https://www.ducks.ca/stories/wetlands/whats-happening-to-canadas-vanishing-wetlands/

27. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Greenhouse gas emissions”, Our World In Data, access September 12th, 2022, https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions

28. “Direct Air Capture”, International Energy Agency, last modified November, 2021, https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture

29. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “2030 Emissions Reduction Plan”, (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022), P6

30. “The 2022 Federal Budget at a Glance”, HillNotes, last modified April 19tj, 2022, https://hillnotes.ca/2022/04/19/the-2022-federal-budget-at-a-glance/

31. “Buyer Beware: Fossil Fuels Subsidies and Carbon Capture Fairy Tales in Canada”, Environmental Defence, March 2022, P12 https://environmentaldefence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Buyer-Beware-FFS-in-2021-March-2022.pdf

32. “Trudeau proposes tax credit to cover 50% of carbon capture technology cost”, Financial Post, last modified April 7th, 2022, https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/trudeau-proposes-tax-credit-to-cover-50-of-carbon-capture-technology-cost

33. “Taxpayers oblivious to the cost of farm subsidies”, The Globe And Mail, last modified July 7th, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/taxpayers-oblivious-to-the-cost-of-farm-subsidies/article13055078/

34. See the funding section of the airtable for a complete breakdown of all the funding sources I researched, whether they are grants or loans, and their timeframe.

35. “Canada needs $100B more annually to reach net-zero goal: Budget 2022”, Global News, last modified April 7th, 2022, https://globalnews.ca/news/8743093/environment-investments-needed-net-zero-budget-2022/

36. “Building on Canada’s electrical advantage”, Canadian Climate Institute, January 19th, 2022, https://climateinstitute.ca/stronger-carbon-pricing-is-the-way-to-net-zero/

37. Environment and Climate Change Canada, “2030 Emissions Reduction Plan”, (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022), P40

38. “Canada’s Energy Futures 2021 Fact Sheet: Electricity”, last modified May 24th, 2022, https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/canada-energy-future/2021electricity/

39. “Energy Report Reveals That This Country Ranks Highest in Car Fossil Fuels”, Inverse, accessed September 13th, 2022, https://www.inverse.com/article/55829-international-energy-agency-report-fossil-fuel-emitting-vehicles-carbon-tax-country-ranking

40. “Battery-mineral shortage likely to impede Canada's goals for electric vehicles, industry expert says”, CBC News, last modified April 28th, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/critical-minerals-supply-canada-1.6433301

41. “With more models coming, incentives seen as key to boosting Canada’s medium- and heavy-duty electric truck transition”, Electric Autonomy, last modified May 20th, 2021, https://electricautonomy.ca/2021/05/20/incentives-electric-heavy-duty-trucks/

42. “How Airlines Are Trying to Boost Efficiency and Cut Emissions”, Wired, April 1st, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/planes-airlines-increase-fuel-efficiency-cut-emissions/

43. Project Drawdown estimates that the world’s wetlands contain 500 - 600 GT of carbon. Canada contains a quarter of the world’s wetlands and boreal soils seem to actually be more carbon rich than tropical wetlands, so taking a quarter of 600 GT as Canada’s carbon store seems reasonable. I then multiplied this by 44/12, which is the relative molecular weight of Co2 vs carbon.

44. “Extent of Canada's wetlands”, Government of Canada, last modified August 31st, 2016, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/extent-wetlands.html

45. Larry Kaumeyer, “What’s Happening To Canada’s Vanishing Wetlands?”,Ducks, last modified January 26th, https://www.ducks.ca/stories/wetlands/whats-happening-to-canadas-vanishing-wetlands/

46. Gretchen Vogel, “Where have all the insects gone?”, Science, last modified May 10th, 2017, https://www.science.org/content/article/where-have-all-insects-gone

47. “Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature', The Guardian, February 10th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

48. Dr. Silke Nebel, “A Roadmap To Rescue Aerial Insectivores”, Birds Canada, last modified June 26th, 2020, https://www.birdscanada.org/a-roadmap-to-rescuing-aerial-insectivores

49. Jeffrey A. Hutchings et al., “Climate change, fisheries, and aquaculture: trends and consequences for Canadian marine biodiversity”, Environmental Reviews, Volume 20, Number 4, December 2012, Abstract, https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/a2012-011

50. “The Health of Canadian Fisheries Continues to Decline”, Oceana, last modified November 16th, 2020, https://oceana.ca/en/press-releases/health-canadian-fisheries-continues-decline/

51. “Introduction - Prairies”, Government of Canada, last modified November 13th, 2015, https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/changements-climatiques/impacts-adaptation/introduction-prairies/10381

52. Oliver Milman, “Earth has lost a third of arable land in past 40 years, scientists say”, The Guardian, last modified December 2nd, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-land-soil-food-security-shortage

53. The research paper “Restoring Abandoned Farmland to Mitigate Climate Change on a Full Earth” estimates that the USA has lost 38.1 - 48.1 million hectares between 1980 and 2016. US cropland is currently estimated at approximately 103 million hectares per this source

54. “Agricultural irrigation patterns in Canada from 2012 to 2018”, Statistics Canada, last modified July 23rd, 2021, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/16-508-x/16-508-x2021001-eng.htm

55. “Principal field crop areas, June 2022”, Statistics Canada, last modified July 5th, 2022, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220705/dq220705b-eng.htm

56. “Taxpayers oblivious to the cost of farm subsidies”, The Globe And Mail, last modified July 7th, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/taxpayers-oblivious-to-the-cost-of-farm-subsidies/article13055078/

57. “Federal Election 2021: Ag Platforms of the Major Parties”, National Farmers Union, last modified September 1st, 2021, https://www.nfu.ca/federal-election-2021-ag-platforms-of-the-major-parties/

58. “Promising research for perennial plants on the Prairies”, The Western Producer, last modified December 29th, 2016, https://www.producer.com/farmliving/promising-research-for-perennial-plants-on-the-prairies/

59. “Fermentation: Meat, Seafood, Eggs and Dairy”, Good Food Institute, accessed September 14th, 2022, P36, https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2021-Fermentation-State-of-the-Industry-Report.pdf

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63. “LASER TALK: Output-based Pricing Systems”, Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada, accessed September 14th, 2022, https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/7588-2/

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65. “Greening steel looms as a 30-year challenge”, Daily Commercial News, last modified September 24th, 2021, https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/resource/2021/09/greening-steel-looms-as-a-30-year-challenge

66. “How to transform Canada’s heavy industry into a net-zero powerhouse”, Corporate Knights, last modified January 14th, 2022, https://www.corporateknights.com/energy/how-to-transform-canadas-heavy-industry-into-a-net-zero-powerhouse/

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68. “MISSING THE FOREST: HOW CARBON LOOPHOLES FOR LOGGING HINDER CANADA'S CLIMATE LEADERSHIP”, Environment Defence, 2021, P13, https://environmentaldefence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Missing-the-Forest-Oct-2021.pdf

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71. Per the following sources, the residential and commercial sectors appear to use similar amounts of overall energy. (https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-canada.html)

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82. “Electro-Geo Chemistry”, YCombinator, accessed September 14th, 2022, *note their report estimates ¼ of the world’s emissions could be removed using just 3.5% of global electrical output, http://carbon.ycombinator.com/electro-geo-chemistry/