The BC government is not making much progress in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Will it be tempted to soften or even repeal its targets? This has happened before.
The targets
The BC government’s “Climate action and accountability” web site currently shows its GHG emission reduction targets compared to 2007:
The same targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050 are also set out in the province’s Climate Change Accountability Act.
Progress to date
The 2023 Climate Change Accountability Report provides the government’s most recent short-term forecast of GHG emissions in BC (all units are equivalent megatons of carbon dioxide, MtCO2e):
According to this 2023 report, BC’s GHG emissions in 2021 (the most recent year available) were 4 percent lower than the baseline from 2007. The report goes on to say that “if all CleanBC policies and programs planned today are fully implemented, B.C. could achieve 96% of the 2030 target.”
That sounds encouraging, and with a long list of government policies and actions in the report, one would certainly hope to see significant progress.
The problem, though, is that there hasn’t really been much progress since 2007. In fact, up to 2019, the last full year of reported data before the pandemic, GHG emissions had actually risen compared to 2007 (from 63.8 MtCO2e to 65.2 MtCO2e).
It is true that GHG emissions declined slightly in 2019 compared to 2018, and then more noticeably in 2020, no doubt helped by lower economic activity during the pandemic. But GHG emissions then rose in 2021, as BC emerged from the pandemic.
We’ve been here before
The Climate Change Accountability Act, originally known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, had previously contained a target for 2020 – a reduction of at least 33 percent from 2007 (i.e. emissions would have to be reduced to 42.75 MtCO2e).
This 2020 target was repealed in 2018. It must have been clear by 2018 that there was no chance of achieving it. The government’s press release at the time acknowledged that BC’s GHG emissions had risen in four of the previous five years, but made no mention that the 2020 target was being dropped.
The next report is due in June
Pursuant to section 7.1 of the Act, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy must make the annual climate change accountability report public by the end of June. The June 2024 report will be significant, in this, an election year.
To achieve the government’s 2025 target of a 16 percent reduction from 2007, GHG emissions would have to fall to 53.59 MtCO2e by 2025, below the bottom of the range now predicted by the government for that year.
The 2024 report, which will contain the province’s GHG emissions data for 2022, will give us a strong indication of how we’re doing. With luck, it might show a reduction from 2021 to 2022, an indication that the government’s CleanBC policies are starting to work.
Conclusion
I fear, though, that the increasing trend in GHG emissions shown in last year’s climate change accountability report will continue, and we will revert to where we were before just the pandemic – that is, back where we started in 2007.
If this is the case, our chances of meeting the 2025 target must be remote, and there will surely be a temptation to drop the target before we get too close to it. It is unlikely anything will happen before the October 2024 election. But it would not be surprising if the 2025 target disappeared from the government’s web site after that.
And what about the 2030 target, which is not just on the government’s web site, but is also set out in the Climate Change Accountability Act? The signs there are not good either.
There are two recent pointers. An academic study concluded that BC is unlikely to achieve its 2030 and 2040 GHG emission reduction targets through electrification. Also, the BCUC, in its decision on Fortis Gas’s long term resource plan, said that the utility’s “deep electrification” forecast scenario was “unlikely to be reasonably achieved in the short term, for instance by 2030.”
If the government’s CleanBC policies don’t start to bear fruit soon, the 2030 target is also in jeopardy. Should we expect another legislated target will be repealed?