When I lived in the NWT, and worked in diamond mining… we used to joke that we were turning diesel into diamonds – just not through compression. Running those mines, so far from the grid, required everything to be run on diesel. It’s an insane amount of fuel burnt.
In winter, if there was no wind, you’d drive over the hill towards the mine and there’d be this yellow orange haze that settled into the area around the mine – like the walls of a smoker’s bathroom. It was gross.
See page 3-25 for the 2019 numbers for a single mine – something like 60 million litres of diesel: https://registry.mvlwb.ca/Documents/W2021D0005/Ekati - Point Lake Project - Arctic IR 19 Response - 2019 AQMP - Sep 17_21.pdf
This isn’t actually a lot on the global scale, but in the NWT, with such a small population, it’s a lot.
For example, ordinary households driving fossil fuel-powered vehicles were the top emitters of the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ontario in 2021, the year the estimates were from.
Ban large vehicles, reduce car lanes, build more bike lanes, incentivise micromobility, and improve public transportation options.
Every step in this chain would benefit the whole of society a lot more than only helping with climate change. Do it already and stop pushing for unaffordable EVs that don’t have nearly the same benefits as a robust, active transportation network.
EVs just continue all the problems of car depedancy while only eliminating tail pipe emissions and greenwashing car centric design.
Regardless how it is powered, bringing 3000+ pounds of steel everywhere you go is inefficient.
Huh, I expected BC’s to be shipping considering the heavy ship traffic it gets.
Probably doesn’t count towards BC - probably falls under a federal jurisdiction (Transport Canada)
… And pulp and paper to be so low considering how few of those mills we still have left; or are they including the fuel burned to ship it overseas and the ship 100% of the finished product back?
McInnis Cement (Quebec), 1.4m ton in 2022
Toronto might as well be it’s own province, right? The Portlands Gas Plant on the lakeshore in East Toronto is the #1 emitter of GHG in the city and while operating at under 40% capacity. The Province of Ontario wants to expand the production capacity of this plant and run it constantly at max capacity. Thanks Doug.
Oh come on! Ontario is all the toxic gas coming out of Ottawa.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Simon Dyer, deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think-tank that has looked at the climate policy challenges across Canada, called it a “pretty nice reflection” of the dominant industries in different provinces.
He added that means specific policies to cut emissions in each sector are important at all levels of government — federal, provincial and municipal.
They’re based on the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, which is more targeted and less comprehensive than the National Inventory Report of greenhouse gas emissions submitted as part of Canada’s global commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which also includes things like changes in land use.
Meanwhile, he said Canadians need to hold Alberta and Saskatchewan accountable for their lack of progress, especially since they have been pushing back against the federal government’s climate policy efforts, saying they step into provincial jurisdiction.
“If Alberta and Saskatchewan want to lead,” he said, “that means actually, you know, setting targets and putting policies in place to reduce emissions.”
Dyer and his colleagues are currently working with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., on a new report looking at provincial and territorial climate plans and challenges across the country, which will be released in 2024.
The original article contains 727 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
