Climate change: By the numbers

June 5 marks the 50th anniversary of the United Nations World Environment Day and kicks off Canadian Environment Week. Stay tuned for a week’s worth of stories, covering topics such as renewable energy, clean technology, Canadians’ commuting patterns and Canadian ecosystems.

The effects of climate change impact all Canadians in one way or another. As you read this, wildfires continue to spread across Canada, displacing many and affecting air quality.

Taking a data-driven approach to understanding and combatting these effects is a sound strategy.

The newly launched Climate Change Statistics page highlights key indicators from Statistics Canada surveys as well as other resources to contribute to a better understanding of climate change implications on Canadian industries and households.

Let’s have a look at some of these key indicators and other numbers.

Commuting, transportation and fuels

The 2021 Census of Population found that nearly one in four (24.3%) workers worked from home, as the COVID-19 pandemic sent home many workers that were able to do so. However, by May 2022, the number of car commuters had surpassed 2016 levels.

More cars on the road meant more gasoline consumption. As pandemic restrictions loosened, gross gasoline sales increased 4.1% from 2020 to 40.2 billion litres in 2021 but remained over 10% below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

More recently, the net production of finished petroleum products reached 9.1 million cubic metres in February 2023, up 1.6% from a year earlier. This included an increase of over one-tenth (+11.1%) in finished motor gasoline and an uptick of more than one-third (+35.0%) of kerosene jet fuel, as Canadians continued to travel more.

Energy use: industry and households

Energy consumption in Canada was on the rise in 2021, with consumption rates up 2.8% to 8 167 petajoules in 2021, following a 10.5% decrease in 2020. The sectors that saw the greatest increases in energy use were industrial (+5.0%), transportation (+4.9%), and agriculture (+1.9%). Meanwhile, energy use decreased in the residential (-2.1%), public administration (-1.0%) and commercial and other institutional (-0.3%) sectors.

Ontario, Alberta and Quebec continued to account for most of the energy consumed in Canada. In 2021, their combined share of total energy consumption was 74.6%.

The territories (+6.0%), Quebec (+4.6%), Alberta (+3.8%), Ontario (+2.3%), Saskatchewan (+1.9%), Prince Edward Island (+1.7%), British Columbia (+1.1%), and Nova Scotia (+0.7%) all recorded increases in energy consumption in 2021 compared with 2020.

New Brunswick (-1.1%), Newfoundland and Labrador (-0.5%) and Manitoba (-0.4%) were the three regions that saw decreases in consumption in 2021

Greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions data are accessible on the Canadian Centre for Energy Information (CCEI), a convenient one-stop virtual shop for information on energy in Canada with a collection of indicators and data visualization tools, allowing users to visualize key statistics.

The Energy and the environment page of the CCEI presents data from both Statistics Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), including greenhouse gas emissions data from ECCC's National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, Canada’s official greenhouse gas inventory and Statistics Canada's Physical Flow Accounts.

Impacts

Climate change can increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather.

For example, the western provinces experienced a significant drought in 2021, affecting the number of crops that could be harvested and their quality. This contributed to a $1.1 billion increase in crop insurance payments in 2022.

British Columbia also experienced damaging floods in 2021. In 2018, the firm locations most likely to have been directly affected by flooding accounted for 0.9% of the province’s gross domestic product.

Action

Statistics can also be used to measure the efforts being made across the country to help mitigate the impact of climate change. Here are some examples:

• In 2020, businesses in Canada spent $140 million on research and development of renewable energy resource technologies, up $53 million from 2019.
• From 2018 to 2021, spending on flood protection infrastructure rose nearly 90% to $1.7 billion. Expenditures in Ontario were highest, totalling $2.5 billion over the period as a whole, double the amount invested in any other province.
• In 2018, Canadian youth aged 15 to 30 years allocated a larger proportion of their charitable donations to environmental organizations (5.2% compared with 2.5% among those aged 31 to 46 years and 2.4% among those aged 47 years and older).
• The federal government has mandated that all new light duty vehicles (LDV) sold in Canada be zero-emission (ZEV) by 2035. Furthermore, according to New motor vehicle registrations, almost 1 of every 10 (9.6%) new LDV registration was ZEV in the fourth quarter of 2022.

All year round, let's continue to conserve and protect our precious environment. During Environment Week, visit the StatsCAN Plus website for more information and content on this topic. Next up, a closer look at renewable energy!