Oil and gas sector emissions are increasing in Canada – it holds us back & costs lives

Corporate PR who spread misinformation in the U.S. do the same in Canada & plan the same damage here. If Canada doesn’t lead, we all loose.

The oil & gas sector, only 5% of Canada’s economy, is Canada’s most polluting sector causing around 30% of national emissions. The oil & gas sector showed emission increases of 11% since 2005: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html#oil-gas

It is why we have failed to meet climate targets.

“Furthermore, progress has stalled in reducing emission intensity; in fact, overall intensity in the oilsands has risen 1% since 2018.” – Pembina Institute: https://www.pembina.org/pub/waiting-to-launch-2024

According to a recent statement from the UN Environment Programme:

“Every fraction of a degree avoided counts in terms of lives saved, economies protected, damages avoided, biodiversity conserved, and the ability to rapidly bring down any temperature overshoot.”

Policies, like the proposed corporate emissions cap or pollution cap can not only help us address climate change but a fair cap on emissions from oil and gas, at the same level as Canada’s national climate target (45% below 2005 levels by 2030), would avoid the premature deaths of approximately 4,860 people in Canada over a decade, and come with economic benefit of CAD $45.1 billion, according to an analysis from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), this is before considering the climate change and non-fatal impacts of the air pollution prevented by a strong cap.

The heavy lifting under the emissions cap is done by methane reductions and “the IEA has shown that nearly half of the global oil and gas industry’s methane emissions can be reduced at no net cost…. Oil and gas companies in Canada can eliminate 75 per cent of their methane emissions at an average cost of only $11 per tonne.” Extremely cheap given their corporate profits and there are other easy steps they can take like electrifying operations.

“There are plenty of cost-effective opportunities to address remaining sources of methane emissions.” – Pembina Institute, November 14, 2024.

The cap does NOT make inflation worse nor grocery prices but oil and gas coporate profits are: Oil and gas corporations have also seen huge profits while Canadians by contrast are facing hard economic times: Of every additional dollar of inflation over the last two years in Canada [from 2023 back], 25 cents of that has gone to oil and gas and mining extraction profits. Average world incomes will drop by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, and the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. After the U.S. election, it just became more important than ever that we hold these corporations to their promises,

The emission cap is NOT a production cap and will NOT harm the economy or jobs. The recent claims of Deloitte and S&P Global studies which used rigged assumptions do NOT change this fact under any realistic scenario.

The emissions cap does not hurt competitiveness. Furthermore, as to the potential impact of U.S. tariffs on Canada, which we can thank the oil and gas CEOs behind the new U.S. Administration for causing, it looks like they likely won’t apply to Canadian oil and gas corporations, who are even talking about expanding their infrastructure in Canada right now. It’s just the other sectors of Canada’s economy that will suffer, those other sectors that cut their emissions already unlike oil and gas corporations. Very surprising.

Listen to our recent podcast on this here: