While the oil sands get the bad rap, coal-fired power plants hold the lead in Canadian industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Utilities, a category which is chiefly electricity-generating stations but also includes pipelines, account for 43 per cent of carbon dioxide discharges in the latest national inventory by Statistics Canada and Environment Canada. Manufacturing comes second at 32 per cent. Oil and gas extraction, mining and quarrying collectively rank third with 21 per cent. The figures take months to compile from industry reports, and the latest inventory, released this winter, covers 2008.

Alberta has 109 of the 350 industrial operations required to file greenhouse gas reports because their annual carbon dioxide discharges exceed 100,000 tonnes. The energy province also has seven of the top 10 emitters: two are the biggest oil sands plants and five are coal-fired power stations. Eight of Canada’s top 10 greenhouse gas sources are electricity plants.

The national inventory is dominated by 58 sites with annual emissions exceeding one million tonnes that are responsible for 69 per cent of the industrial total of 263 million tonnes. The 2008 carbon dioxide discharges were down by 15.7 million tonnes, or six per cent, from 2007 due to plant closures and varying production by continuing operations. Alberta recorded a 3.5-million tonne drop but still led the nation by a wide margin with 2008 emissions of 111 million tonnes, or 42 per cent of the Canadian industrial total. Ontario came second with 67 million tonnes, or 26 per cent, but has Canada’s biggest emitter: the Nanticoke power plant southwest of Toronto.

Big industrial sites account for 35 per cent of the nation’s estimated total of 750 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from all sources including personal and small business consumers of fossil fuels. Canada, in turn, has 2.5 per cent of total world carbon dioxide discharges estimated at 30 billion tonnes.

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