Can Hamilton meet Trudeau promises?
Can Hamilton meet Trudeau promises?
Trudeau’s promise to sharply cut Canadian carbon emissions over the next decade has major implications for Hamilton. The challenge locally is increased by the continuing failure of the city to put its own action plan into place more than two years after it declared a climate emergency. Their next climate update is due this month with the actual plan expected sometime later.
Trudeau is promising a total emissions cut of 40 to 45 percent from a baseline of 2005. But that target isn’t what it seems. In the first place Canada’s current emissions are almost exactly the same now as they were in 2005 so all the cuts have to take place in this decade. Canada has the worst climate behaviour among industrialized countries with the highest per person emissions even without counting our status as the fourth largest exporter of oil.
It also seems certain that all the reductions will have to come from less than three-quarters of the country’s carbon releases. That’s because more than a quarter currently come from the apparently untouchable extraction and processing of oil and gas – the largest category and even bigger than transportation.
Indeed oil and gas sector emissions are almost certain to increase over the next decade. The federal government is tripling the capacity of its Trans-Mountain oil export (TMX) pipeline and British Columbia proceeds with LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports. Those are fed by fracked gas extraction and being piped through the unceded territories of the Wet’suwet’en to the Kitimat export terminal.
That means all the promised carbon pollution cuts must come from the remaining sectors of the economy – effectively pushing the required drop to over 60 percent from sectors such as transportation and buildings. The promised cuts, even if achieved, will still leave us well behind both European and American goals.
Emissions from Hamilton did decline about a decade ago as a result of industrial closures and the provincial shutdown of coal-fired electricity generation, so officials might point to the cumulative 32 percent decline since 2005 as putting Hamilton well on its way to the required cuts. But those changes were not accomplished by city council action, and the national failure to make cuts means the whole country, including Hamilton, is effectively starting from scratch to achieve the 40-45 percent promise.
Outside of industrial sources, Hamilton’s carbon pollution sources are similar to other GTHA communities with transportation and residential properties the largest followed closely by commercial. Local reductions in all of those have been meager, especially in the last five years, and have actually climbed in the most recent year reported.
Between 2014 and 2018 commercial emissions in Hamilton barely budged, residential went down about five percent and transportation climbed nearly twelve percent. Including slight modifications from steel and other industry, overall total city emissions rose over those five years.
The local stall in emission reductions coincides with the final shutdowns of Ontario’s coal-fired electricity generation in 2014. However, the currently low-carbon electricity supply could be getting much dirtier if the current provincial government carries through with its plans to reverse that progress by increasing the use of fossil natural gas to generate electricity. That will drive up in emissions from that sector by 400 percent by the 2030 deadline for Canadian reductions.
The Ford government tore up Ontario’s climate plans as one of its first acts after taking power three years ago and has done little to replace it. Its revival of two major highway projects – the 413 and the Bradford Bypass – along with attempts to build warehouses on significant wetlands, confirm it isn’t going to be any help to Hamilton or other municipalities’ efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
