Technical appendix - Climate Vision: Progress Report 2012

Technical Appendix A

Introduction

This technical appendix provides details on the province’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and changes in emission levels since 1990 ^{footnote 1[1]}. In addition, it also provides an update on the province’s forecasted emission levels out to 2020, including the impact of policies on progress toward the province’s emission targets.

How Ontario Measures its GHG Emissions

Ontario’s definition of GHG emissions aligns with the definitions used to prepare Environment Canada’s National Inventory Report 1990–2010: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada (NIR), published in April, 2012. Each year, Environment Canada submits its updated NIR to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat. Historical GHG emissions in this progress report are taken from the latest NIR, which covers the period from 1990 to 2010. The data cover most activities in Ontario’s economy that influence GHGs but do not include impacts relating to land use and forestry at this time. The NIR is organized into numerous categories that are defined by UNFCCC reporting protocols and therefore do not match categorizations by other sources of economic, industrial, energy and emissions data. For this appendix, the categories are rolled up into six key economic sectors (see Table 1).

NB: Emissions from the pipeline transportation of petroleum products are included in the Industry sector.

Changes in NIR

Environment Canada is continually working to refine the data and methods used to estimate national and provincial emissions. These refinements often lead to re-calculation of GHG emission estimates for the whole time period of the NIR, dating back to 1990. This means that our 1990 base year emissions and historical trends can change from year to year, influencing our emission forecasts and the assessment of our progress to targets. These changes are well documented in the NIR and are typically minor but in recent years, some changes in the industrial sector methods have had a pronounced impact on Ontario emission estimates.

Sources of Ontario’s GHG Emissions

GHG emissions result from virtually all aspects of Ontario’s society and economy but primarily from how we produce and consume energy. Ontario’s 2010 emissions are estimated to have been 171 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂ eq), with sectoral shares shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: 2010 GHG emissions by sector

Long-Term Trends in Ontario’s Emissions (1990–2010)

Between 1990 and 2010, Ontario’s total annual emissions dropped by three per cent, from 176 Mt of CO₂ eq to 171 Mt of CO₂ eq. Figure 2 shows that, while total emissions increased fairly steadily in the first half of this period, more recent annual emission levels have fluctuated in response to changes in the economy, weather, energy demandandtechnologies usedby industry, electricity generation, transportation, andconsumer products.

Figure 2: Ontario’s GHG emissions, 1990-2010

In contrast to Ontario’s stable to declining emissions, the national trend is increasing emissions. In 2010, Canada’s GHG emissions totalled^{footnote 2[2]} 695 Mt CO₂ eq, which represents an increase of 18 per cent since 1990. However, increases since 1990 have varied significantly across Canada. Similar to Ontario, Quebec’s emissions decreased by two per cent while Saskatchewan realized the highest increase in emissions (67 per cent) (see Figure 3). In absolute emissions since 1990, the most growth has occurred in Alberta (68 Mt) while the greatest decrease has occurred in Ontario (5 Mt).

Figure 3: Territorial and provincial GHG emissions, 1990 and 2010

It is important to note that, while Ontario’s total emissions decreased by three per cent between 1990 and 2010, both emissions per capita and emissions for each dollar of real Gross Domestic Production (GDP) have declined by a much greater amount (24 percent and 38 per cent respectively; see Figure 4). This indicates an ongoing trend towards a lower-carbon economy and society, which our modelling suggests will continue.

Figure 4: Emission intensities indices

Ontario’s intensities are significantly lower than most provinces. Table 3 shows 2010 emissions per capita and per dollar of real GDP across Canada.

NB: GDP is measured in 1997 dollars.

Short-Term Trends in Ontario’s Emissions (2007–2010)

Between 2007 (when the Climate Change Action Plan was first released) and 2010, Ontario’s emissions decreased by 14 per cent — a decline of 29 Mt. Table 4 shows emissions decreased across all major sectors. The electricity sector saw a 40 per cent reduction in emissions, the largest decrease. The second largest decrease was in the industrial sector where emissions fell by 23 per cent. These reductions are largely attributable to reduced coal-fired electricity generation and a decline in both output and emission intensity in energy-intensive industries. Both residential and commercial buildings also reduced their emissions from heating, despite increases in total floor space. This is due to ongoing successful natural gas demand management programs, and the residential retrofit program; however, economic activity likely affected these emissions as well.

Emission Modelling Overview

Reporting on the progress of Climate Change Action Plan initiatives and projecting future GHG emissions are essential to understanding Ontario’s progress towards meeting its action plan targets. It should be noted, that emission forecasts are only one measure of progress on climate change actions. Decarbonization is achieved through steady, ongoing reductions in the key drivers of energy use (particularly fossil fuels) and non- energy emissions. Incremental progress in these areas is best assessed by looking at a variety of indicators — quantitative ones like emission forecasts, but also changes in emission intensities, building densities, vehicle kilometres travelled, etc. — along with qualitative assessments of the nature and resilience of socioeconomic changes. Finally, most of the important initiatives (public transit infrastructure, building energy efficiency, vehicle efficiency improvements, and land use) take decades until their peak impacts are felt.

Ontario’s approach to modelling GHG emissions is updated periodically to incorporate the latest data available and refinements based on best practices. In addition, the projections of emission reductions are adjusted as required to incorporate changes to programs or policies. This modelling uses the most recent NIR data (April 2012) from Environment Canada and economic and demographic forecasts from February 2012 by Informetrica.

This information was used to create:

1. A Business-as-Usual (BAU) projection — a projection that assumes underlying historical emission trends continue (excluding the anticipated future impact of emission reduction initiatives, both planned and already underway), while taking account of the current economic outlook for Ontario;
2. A Climate Change Action Plan projection — a projection that includes the anticipated future impact of emission reduction initiatives (both those that are underway and those that are committed to and sufficiently developed to reasonably estimate their impacts).

Third-Party Validation

To provide confidence in the province’s long-term forecasts, Ontario has had its emissions forecasting methodology and assumptions validated by an independent third party. In 2009, Ontario was the first jurisdiction to undertake a validation of its forward-looking emission reduction forecasts. The process of completing a validation is intended to ensure that the methodologies, data sources and assumptions used to develop the projected GHG emissions under the action plan are reasonable and align with best practices where available. For this report, Ontario retained Navius Research Inc., who concluded that Ontario’s estimates are a fair representation of those expected using current best practices in GHG emissions forecasting and evaluation of GHG mitigation programs (see Appendix C for assurance statement).

Updated Emissions Projection

Since the release of the last climate change progress report, the province’s emission forecasting model has been updated to reflect the best available information.

The government is now projecting that the suite of initiatives will achieve approximately 90 per cent of the reductions needed to meet the 2014 target. The forecasts show a slight improvement over those in the last report (see Table 5). Changes in forecasted emissions reflect revisions to modelling^{footnote 3[3]}, changes to the BAU scenario (see below) and new data on program participation and effectiveness.

Updating the BAU

The province’s BAU scenario has been updated to reflect more recent emission and energy use data, revisions to historical data from Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, revised economic and demographic forecasts and refinements to the underlying model.

Figure 5: Forecasted GHG emissions

Initiative Impacts

The province’s suite of initiatives represent a combination of distinct GHG reduction efforts, such as provincial regulation requiring methane from landfills to be captured, and clusters of related efforts aimed at achieving a common goal, such as the phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation and related renewable generation and conservation activities. The initiatives cross all of the emission sources and economic sectors and represent a blend of short-, medium- and long-term emission reductions. The initiatives include activities that are both within and outside the direct control of the Ontario government and include federal policies that are closely interrelated with provincial initiatives.

NB: Emission reductions for all initiatives together may differ from the sum of individual initiative reductions due to interaction between them.

Phasing out coal-fired electricity generation and replacing it with renewable power, natural gas, refurbished nuclear and energy conservation has by far the largest impact in the near future (see Figure 7). After 2020, however, impacts from initiatives in the transportation and building sectors will increase relative to those from the electricity sector because of the time required for construction (transit projects) and turnover (vehicle fleets, housing stock).

Figure 7: Reductions by source

Uncertainty

The reductions presented in this report, linked to the government’s GHG emission reduction measures, are based on a single set of economic, demographic, energy, and policy assumptions. As with any modelling of this kind, there are significant uncertainties inherent in this projection.

As a rough example, if in 2020 both real GDP and population were one per cent higher than forecasted, the projected non-electricity emissions would be approximately 1.5 Mt greater (almost one per cent of non-electricity emissions). This change is a generalized effect. The increase could be significantly higher or lower depending, for example, on whether energy-intensive manufacturing output is higher than the service sector. Electricity emissions are sensitive to weather — more frequent hot summer afternoons (especially combined with higher GDP) would increase emissions much further.

Technical Appendix B: Status of Climate Ready Actions

1. Require consideration of climate change adaptation

2. Establish a climate change adaptation directorate

3. Promote water conservation

4. Review the Ontario low water response program

5. Consider climate change impacts in the building code

6. Undertake infrastructure vulnerability assessments

7. Build climate change adaptation into Ontario’s 10-year infrastructure plan

8. Integrate climate change impacts into the environmental assessment (EA) process

9. Integrate adaptive solutions into drinking water management

10. Develop guidance for stormwater management

11. Strengthen the winter road network

12. Protect animal health

13. Protect plant health

14. Encourage business risk-management approaches

15. Pilot adaptation strategies in the tourism sector

16. Conserve biodiversity and support resilient ecosystems

17. Undertake forest adaptation assessment

18. Build adaptation into great lakes agreements

19. Examine climate change impacts on fisheries

20. Develop the lake simcoe adaptation strategy

21. Increase awareness of land use planning tools

Climate change and sustainable land use planning considerations and practices are being incorporated into education and training outreach products and activities to the municipal sector.

22. Integrate adaptation policies into the provincial policy statement

23. Consider climate change in the growth plan for Northern Ontario

24. Raise awareness about health hazards of climate change

25. Raise public awareness of lyme disease

26. Update intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves

27. Update the environmental farm plan program

28. Provide community outreach and training

29. Develop the far north land use strategy

30. Incorporate climate change into curriculum

31. Enhance climate-related monitoring

32. Undertake climate impact indicators study

33. Undertake research partnerships for climate modelling

34. Establish an OPS climate modelling collaborative

35. Establish and lead Ontario’s Regional Adaptation Collaborative (RAC) and Participate in NRCAN adaptation platform and working groups

36. Work with the canadian council of ministers of the environment and canadian council of forest ministers

37. Participate in the territorial approach to climate change (United Nations Development Programme)

Additional initiatives

Ontario public service green transformation strategy

Dam safety guidance

Technical Appendix C: Assurance Statement

Attachment A: Assurance Statement

Based on the methods, data sources, and assumptions used to forecast Provincial GHG emissions for the Ontario Climate Change Action Plan 2010-11 Annual Report, the forecasted business as usual emissions for Ontario are a fair representation of those expected using current best practices in GHG emissions forecasting. Further, based on those methods, data sources and assumption used to model GHG reductions for the fifteen initiatives in the 2011 Annual Report, the estimated future annual GHG emissions reductions are a fair representation of forecasted annual GHG emissions reductions that would be expected using current best practises in the evaluation of GHG mitigation programs.

Dr. Chris Bataille
Lead Validator, Navius Research Inc.