Canada's greenhouse gas emissions plummeted to their lowest level in almost three decades in 2020 as pandemic restrictions kept cars off the road and grounded airplanes for months on end.
But a new and more accurate way to count methane emissions from the oil and gas industry means Canada emitted more than previously thought over the last 25 years, dampening some of the better news in the emissions report published Thursday.
It's 66 million tonnes, or almost nine per cent, lower than 2019. That's about what is produced by 20 million passenger vehicles over the course of a year, or approximately the emissions produced by eight in 10 of the passenger vehicles on Canadian roads.There is still a huge distance to go to meet Canada's new target to cut emissions to no more than 60 per cent of what they were in 2005 by 2030.Emissions haven't been lower than they were in 2020 since the mid-1990s.
Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, an environmental think tank, said Canada's 2020 emissions fell more than the global average. Smith said the United Kingdom publishes a provisional report on emissions just three months after the end of each year. Some are being replaced with nuclear, hydroelectricity, wind or solar sources, but many are transitioning to natural gas. In Alberta some are transitioning to gas but with the hope that eventually they can be run on hydrogen.
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