Five years ago, in late November 2020, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change announced that Canada would enact legislation committing Canada to achieve “Net-Zero Emissions by 2050”. We need to take a close look at Canada’s declared climate policy goal and the sufficiency and candour of our existing scheme of emissions reduction targets for 2035, 2040, and 2045.
A new law, passed by Canada’s Parliament on June 30, 2021, laid out a timetable for announcing specific emissions reduction targets for 2030, 2035, 2040, and 2045. On July 12, 2021, in accordance with the new legislative timetable for the public disclosure of our emissions reduction targets, the government announced Canada’s new commitment to reduce our emissions by 2030 in the range of 40% to 45%, below the 2005 level.
The reduction target announced in July 2021 raised expectations that Canada would adopt stringent new climate policies aimed to reduce our emissions. In 2005 Canada’s annual emissions were 759 Mt CO2eq (millions of tonnes of CO2eq). A 40% to 45% reduction by 2030 would mean that our national emissions would decline to within a range of 420 – 456 Mt CO2eq.
Unfortunately, it is now clear that Canada’s emissions reductions are not remotely on track to meet that 2030 target. The emissions that are the subject of these commitments are quantified and reported in Canada’s National Inventory Report, which Canada submits annually to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The most recent edition of the Inventory Report was published in April 2025. Our total annual emissions in 2023 were 694 Mt CO2eq.That represents a reduction of only 8.5% below the 2005 level.
While official emissions data for the 2024 year are not yet available, a recent provisional estimate shows that our national emissions did not decline at all in 2024: they “levelled out” in 2024 and remained at about 694 Mt. To achieve Canada’s promised 40% reduction target would require cutting Canada’s emissions down to 456 Mt by 2030 – which would mean annual reductions of about 40 Mt every year from now to 2030. Annual reductions on that scale are unachievable.
Canada’s 40% reduction target is now far beyond reach. Canada is on track to reduce emissions in the much lower range of 20 % to 25% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The oil and gas sector accounts for the largest share of Canada’s annual emissions: 208 Mt in 2023 (31% of our national annual total). Canada’s oil sands production at present is continuing to expand accompanied by rising emissions at production sites in Alberta. In addition, a series of emissions-intensive new LNG facilities in B.C. are scheduled to be in operation by 2030 (LNG Canada phase 2, Woodfibre, Cedar, and the Ksi Lisims Project). Natural gas production is projected to continue expanding to supply these new LNG operations. All these developments mean more emissions.
The government’s promised solution is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. During the past several years the oil industry and Federal Government Ministers have made bold claims that large-scale adoption of CCS will make possible substantial emissions reductions even while oil sands production continues to grow. But the available evidence shows the level of reductions achievable by CCS technology by 2030 is very limited. CCS may be able to “capture” some portion of the emissions increase from new production, perhaps as much as 10 Mt CO2 per year or slightly more, but it offers no possibility of achieving within the next 5 to 10 years any deep reductions in the very high levels of already existing emissions in this sector. The annual level of emissions in the oil sands sub-sector in 2023 alone reached 89 Mt CO2eq, which is just one part of the Canada’s total 208 Mt oil and gas sector emissions which include conventional oil production, natural gas production, and LNG. If we cannot quickly reduce those larger numbers, we won’t be able to lower the overall level of Canada’s emissions at the pace required to meet our reduction targets. The ongoing expansion of Canada’s oil and gas production to 2030 and 2035 and accompanying growth of emissions cannot be reconciled with Canada’s existing commitment to establish a series of binding greenhouse gas reduction targets that will guide us through the 2030s and 2040s.
- Read the discussion paper now: Canada’s promised goal: “Net-Zero Emissions by 2050” (opens as a PDF in your web browser)
