According to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global primary energy intensity — the amount of energy required per unit of economic output — is expected to improve by roughly 1.8 per cent in 2025, up from about 1 per cent in 2024. The jump suggests policymakers and industry are beginning to make headway. Still, the IEA warns that this rate remains well below the roughly 4 per cent annual improvement required to double energy-efficiency progress by 2030, a goal set at COP28.

The report notes that although more than 250 new policy measures were introduced in 2025 alone, sluggish progress in sectors such as industry and buildings threatens to drag down the overall outcome. The industrial sector’s energy-intensity improvement rate has reportedly fallen to under 0.5 per cent per year, compared with nearly 2 per cent in the previous decade.

Meanwhile, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlights a parallel challenge: despite setting new records for renewable-energy capacity additions in 2024 — 582 GW globally — the world remains off-track to hit the target of tripling renewable capacity to 11.2 TW by 2030. Equally concerning, efficiency gains remain modest: global energy intensity improved by just 1 per cent in 2024, far behind the 4 per cent-year-on-year improvement required.

Why improvement matters

Energy efficiency is a vital lever: it lowers consumption, reduces emissions, and improves energy affordability. If economies can use less energy to generate the same output, the benefits ripple across security, competitiveness and climate goals. The IEA underscores that “the power to enhance people’s lives and livelihoods through greater energy security, more affordable bills, improved economic competitiveness and lower emissions” lies in boosting efficiency.

In practice, though, rising energy demand is working against efficiency gains. IEA data show that global energy demand grew by 2.2 per cent in 2024 — faster than both the longer-term average (~1.3 per cent) and the rate of efficiency improvement. As a result, the system still becomes more energy-intensive overall.

Where progress is uneven

Some policy progress is visible. The IEA tracked over 250 new policy actions in 2025 aimed at boosting efficiency. Efficiency in emerging economies such as China and India also shows modest upticks as they invest in efficiency standards and technologies.

But headwinds remain:

• In the industrial sector — responsible for roughly two-thirds of global final energy-demand growth since 2019 — energy-intensity improvements have fallen sharply.

• Buildings and cooling represent major gaps. Many new air-conditioning units sold globally are far less efficient than best-available models, undermining broader gains. The IEA notes that many countries — especially in fast-growing regions — still lack binding efficiency standards for new buildings.

• The IRENA report also highlights that investment, grid infrastructure and supply-chain constraints are limiting how quickly renewables and efficiency measures can scale.

The implications for policy and business

For policymakers, the message is clear: the current pace, while improving, remains insufficient. Achieving the doubling of global energy-efficiency improvement by 2030 will require a material increase in ambition, enhanced enforcement, and faster diffusion of best-available technologies. The IEA’s “Energy Efficiency Policy Toolkit 2025” provides a menu of measures for industry, buildings and transport that countries can adopt.

For industry and business, especially in energy-intensive sectors, the opportunity is still large. With many systems still operating at less than half of today’s best-available efficiencies, retrofits, new high-efficiency equipment and smarter operations remain low-hanging fruit. But success will depend on regulation, capital deployment and the ability to implement change at scale.

The broader energy-transition backdrop

Efficiency gains must be made alongside the rapid deployment of renewables and rising electricity demand. The IRENA report emphasises that even as renewables grew by a record 582 GW in 2024, the world must now add more than 1,122 GW per year through the remainder of the decade to meet the tripling target. That puts enormous pressure on investment and supply chains.

At the same time, the IEA’s recent “Global Energy Review 2025” shows that growth in electricity demand — driven by cooling, digitalisation and electrification — outpaced overall energy demand growth. Unless efficiency improvements accelerate, energy use will continue to rise even with increased renewables entering the system.

What comes next

The next five years will likely determine whether the world stays on track for its dual targets: doubling energy-efficiency improvement rates and tripling renewable-energy capacity by 2030. Achieving those will require:

• Sharper regulation and standards: mandating minimum performance levels for equipment, buildings, and industrial processes.

• Scaling investment: The IRENA-led report states that to stay on track, annual investment in renewables must reach at least USD 1.4 trillion per year through 2025-30 — more than double the USD 624 billion invested in 2024.

• Faster technology deployment: Speeding up adoption of high-efficiency equipment, industrial optimisation, grid flexibility and smart controls.

• Targeting hard-to-abate sectors and regions: Industry, buildings in emerging economies, and regions with very low efficiency baselines will demand particular attention.

• Bridging infrastructure and supply-chain gaps: Many of the bottlenecks highlighted by IRENA relate to grids, storage and component manufacturing.

Bottom line

The global trajectory of energy efficiency is improving — but not fast enough. At roughly 1.8 per cent improvement in 2025, the world remains well short of the pace required to hit the 4 per cent-plus annual gains needed to meet 2030 targets. In tandem with renewable-capacity scaling and rising demand, efficiency will remain one of the most important yet most challenging pieces of the energy-transition puzzle.

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By Lennie Kaplan

Alberta’s climate-change strategy, the emissions reduction and energy development plan (ERED), announced with fanfare by the Smith government in April 2023, seems to be in public limbo after more than two years.

The plan outlined a series of actions, opportunities and commitments to reduce the province’s emissions, including an aspirational target of a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.

But implementation appears to have stalled, which is troubling given renewed talks between Ottawa and Alberta about a “grand bargain” focused on significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging carbon capture and storage deployment, and unlocking pipeline development.

The 2025 mandate letters from Premier Danielle Smith to the ministers of environment and protected areas and energy and minerals make no reference to implementing the plan despite a 2023 mandate letter from the premier that talked about the two ministers co-ordinating to do so.

No significant action on implementation appears to have occurred over the past two years around the following key initiatives, which I support and believe are critical to success:

• reducing the provincial oilsands 100-megatonne (Mt) annual emissions limit to align with carbon capture and storage project targets – an estimated 11-Mt annual reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 – of the Pathways Alliance, an organization representing six of the largest oilsands producers;
• working collaboratively with partners – including environmental NGOs, industry, Indigenous organizations, municipalities, labour groups and others – to design effective policy and programs to support implementation of the ERED;
• establishing policies and programs that are evidence-based, including understanding the environmental, social and economic impact of policy choices;
• publishing reports documenting the progress and outcome of the actions taken as part of the plan.

In a 2018 audit, the Office of the Alberta Auditor General pointed out that critical elements of a robust system to manage provincial climate-change plans included maintaining overall and sectoral implementation plans, as well as rigorous and effective monitoring of the progress of climate-change programs, including complete information on costs.

The lack of action on the ERED creates uncertainty about how Alberta can reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 or any interim emissions-reduction targets for 2030, 2035, 2040 or 2045.

To come to that conclusion, we use the Canada Energy Dashboard, updated with detailed data to January 2025, based on the current suite of federal and provincial climate-change policies (but not the proposed federal oil and gas emissions cap, the federal clean-electricity regulations and the federal 75-per-cent oil-and-gas methane-reduction requirement) to examine Alberta’s emission projections. We further use refence cost assumptions for technologies such as carbon capture and storage, solar, wind and batteries, and hydrogen.

Based on this reasonable scenario, Alberta will miss its 2050 target of carbon neutrality by 222.4 megatonnes.

Canada needs to accelerate its transition to renewable energy

Many Albertans still fine with an oil-and-gas future

These Alberta emission levels do not include the implications of the latest Alberta government goal to increase oil production from nearly four million barrels per day in 2024 to six million barrels per day by 2030 and to eight million barrels per day by 2035.

Clearly, further actions will be critical, including vigorous implementation of the ERED, coupled with aggressive adoption of carbon capture and storage, and the early advent of direct air capture. So why the implementation delay?

One of the key components of a successful ERED is the need to conduct comprehensive emissions forecasting and analysis to develop credible sectoral and overall action plans.

The Alberta Environment and Protected Areas ministry recognized this recently when it issued an RFP to enhance the government’s internal capability to perform sophisticated analysis and forecasting of the social, economic and environmental impact of provincial climate-related policies and federal climate-related policies.

The goal is to have access to best practices and methods in the field of empirical economic-energy-environment modelling, including the ability to study the economic impact of policy scenarios, as well as how policy, energy prices and technological change impact energy use. This work is scheduled to begin in January.

Enhancing emissions forecasting and analysis capabilities within government is critical in preparing an overall ERED action plan as well as action plans for key industry sectors; establishing sectoral and interim emissions targets for 2030, 2035, 2040 and 2045; and promoting vigorous monitoring and reporting systems.

These are all best practices of a robust legislated climate-change accountability framework, which is vital because maintaining national and international credibility is important to Albertans.

The Alberta government talks about sovereignty within a united Canada. To put meaning to these words, Alberta needs a strong ERED if it expects to conclude a successful “grand bargain” with Ottawa on significantly reducing emissions, encouraging carbon capture and storage deployment, and unlocking pipeline development.

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By Chris Bonasia

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By Mitchell Beer

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By Alison Bailie

British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan can celebrate a climate win this year—and in the oil and gas sector, no less. As of 2022, these provinces had beaten their 2025 targets for reducing methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas sector. They did so by setting specific reduction targets and implementing a coordinated policy framework.

Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas, and the oil and gas sector is the largest industrial contributor to these emissions in Canada. Fortunately, the methane emissions from this sector are largely due to methane gas leaks from equipment, and reducing these leaks can be relatively low cost, making it a no-brainer when it comes to policy action.

This Insight explores the latest data on oil and gas methane reductions, and the lessons it offers for additional effort in this space.

Oil and gas methane has been cut by more than half in under a decade

Reducing methane emissions is a high priority globally and in Canada. In 2021, Canada announced its support of the Global Methane Pledge—where by 2024 nearly 100 countries have completed national methane action plans or are in progress—and committed to developing a plan to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by at least 75 per cent below 2012 levels by 2030. The Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter has over 50 signatories—including some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies such as Shell, Exxon Mobil, and BP—who are aiming for near-zero methane emissions by 2030 at upstream operations, among other goals.

Methane accounted for 117 million tonnes (or megatonnes, Mt) of CO₂e emissions in 2022, or over 16 per cent of national greenhouse gas emissions, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada’s National Inventory Report¹. The oil and gas sectors emitted 56 Mt CO₂e of methane, just under half of total methane emissions.

The provinces have been leaders on emission reduction policies in the oil and gas sector, with Alberta being the first oil and gas producing jurisdiction to limit emissions from flaring. In 2018, the federal government introduced federal methane regulations to meet Canada’s commitment to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by 2025. Alberta developed their own methane regulations to reflect regional priorities and worked with the federal government to reach an equivalency agreement. British Columbia and Saskatchewan also worked with the federal government to reach equivalency agreements.

As shown in Figure 1, each province has reported significant emission reductions and achieved their methane reduction targets ahead of time.

Figure 1: All provinces have surpassed their 2025 oil & gas methane emissions reduction targets ahead of schedule

Success cutting methane came from multi-pronged coordinated policy

The numbers show a clear policy success story. Methane targets were met and exceeded thanks to a range of coordinated policies, including collaboration with the federal government.

First, each province introduced technology-based regulations that aligned with federal methane reduction measures, as described above.

Second, all three provinces incentivized research and development related to both methane measurement and mitigation, with some funding provided through compliance payments. For instance, penalties from Saskatchewan’s methane regulations were directed toward methane capture projects.

Third, governments have created incentive structures that reward emissions reductions. In Alberta, fugitive emissions were integrated into the provincial large-emitter trading system, enabling these reductions to contribute to a facility’s compliance and avoid more expensive mitigation options (In British Columbia and Saskatchewan fugitive emissions are largely excluded from industrial pricing systems). Alberta also enabled offset credits for reductions from pneumatic devices—typically pressure controllers, pumps, and other equipment that run on compressed gas or propane at wells and processing facilities—- that were installed prior to the regulation, which encouraged early action.

On the federal side, the government provided financial and technical support through research and development funding and in 2024 by launching the Methane Center of Excellence.
A significant benefit of the provincial and federal funding has been the improvement in methane leak measurement methodologies in the last five years. The federal government has made substantial updates to the estimates in the National Inventory Report, resulting in higher reported emissions, with fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas increasing by 12 Mt (27 per cent) to 19 Mt (32 per cent) per year for the period from 1990 to 2022 (the range reflects differences by year). This means the footprint of the oil and gas sector is larger than previously thought. However, the updates impact the reported base year emissions as well as recent years, meaning the per cent reduction targets may still be met. For example, research from Saskatchewan with improved measurement concludes that the province likely met its reduction target. Overall reporting updates have improved accuracy and reliability of the reported methane values, which is an essential step for emissions monitoring and policy action in future years.

How to cut even more methane emissions from oil and gas

Now is the time for provinces and the federal government to up their game with targets and policies aimed at deeper reductions and a wider scope of oil and gas methane emissions. The success in reducing methane has contributed to modest declines in the emissions intensity of oil and gas production overall, but production growth has outpaced these intensity improvements. This means that total sector emissions have continued to grow, adding to the increasingly costly impacts of global climate change.

Recent analysis from 440 Megatonnes shows that reducing methane emissions by 75 per cent or more by 2030 is one of the more promising policies to help get Canada’s emissions on track to meet the legislated 2030 emissions reduction target.

Some governments are signalling more ambition. British Columbia has already amended their regulations with increased stringency aiming to reduce methane to 75 per cent below 2014 levels by 2030. As mentioned earlier, the federal government committed to developing a plan for 75 per cent reductions in 2021 and have released new draft oil and gas methane regulations as a key plank in this plan. Importantly, the draft regulations introduced a performance-based compliance option, which adds flexibility for compliance relative to the 2025 regulations.

However, not all governments have committed to this goal and the current draft regulations may need greater stringency. The Saskatchewan government has not adopted a new target, even though the provincial oil and gas sector has already cut venting and flaring emissions by 67 per cent. In addition,  analysis the province commissioned indicates that methane reductions are projected to be among the lowest-cost options for the oil and gas sector. The Alberta government announced it would engage with Albertans on meeting an even stronger target, 75 to 80 per cent methane emissions reductions. However, this doesn’t appear to have happened yet and the government’s technical submission states their opposition to the draft federal regulations, arguing that they are overly prescriptive and underestimate costs. While showing progress, British Columbia’s regulations have also faced criticism for not covering all oil and gas activities that could further reduce methane emissions, and some compliance deadlines extend to 2035.

Provinces can address these challenges by building on their previous successes, setting clear, achievable goals, and testing new technical and policy approaches through collaboration with industry, public or private sector researchers, Indigenous peoples, and others. Continued cooperation with the federal government will also be essential in achieving ambitious methane reduction targets.

Action to further reduce methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas sector is a smart move for British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. These provinces have demonstrated that coordinated, regionally tailored policies can lead to substantial emission reductions without compromising economic production. Methane is a high-impact greenhouse gas, and the success of the methane reduction policies  in the oil and gas sector offers valuable lessons for the current urgent opportunity for much deeper reductions by 2030.

Alison Bailie is a Senior Research Associate at the Canadian Climate Institute

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By Christopher Bonasia

Canada’s strained relationship with the Trump administration is raising concerns in the farm sector on both sides of the border, threatening to lower farm incomes, drive up consumer food prices, and hinder farmer efforts to adapt to climate change.

Amid tariff threats and even the possibility of U.S. annexation, worsening climate impacts will make it harder for the Canadian farm sector to diversify or grow domestic markets, Geneviève Grossenbacher, director of policy at Farmers for Climate Solutions, told The Energy Mix.

“More than ever, building climate resilience is important to safeguard our national food security and economic viability long term,” Grossenbacher said. To support farmers, policies must focus on building resilience and lowering costs on farms.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration three weeks ago, uncertainty over trade has forced Canada to reevaluate economic ties with its unpredictable southern neighbour. Earlier this month, Canada and Mexico were both tentatively spared from a trade war with a 30-day reprieve, but on Monday Trump announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium from all countries, including Canada, and businesses are already feeling the effects.

The tariffs are especially concerning given Trump’s continuing rumblings about using economic pressure to push Canada into becoming a 51st U.S. state—a claim that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau privately acknowledged in a recent meeting as “a real thing.”

Canada’s National Farmers Union (NFU) responded to Trump’s threats by calling for a stronger focus on food sovereignty. The union advocates for diversifying export markets, building regional and local markets, and preventing corporate profiteering, among other things—to protect Canadian farmers, workers, and consumers.

“The democratic control of important decisions about food and agriculture… is a key strategy to withstand President Trump’s economic pressure tactics, which are brazenly aimed at annexing Canada,” NFU wrote in a news release.

Climate change further complicates the outlook for Canadian farmers, with unpredictable and severe weather affecting yields. In a nation-wide poll, more than three-quarters of Canadian farmers recently said they had experienced severe weather in the last five years and ranked climate change among the top challenges facing the sector in the coming decade.

Solutions come with a hefty price tag. Building climate resilience on farms often depends on adopting new practices, said Max Hansgen, president of an NFU Ontario chapter. This may involve costly options like acquiring new equipment or hiring more labour. The changes would pay off in the long term, but in the interim farmers would need to raise product prices or increase production to make ends meet.

When combined with Trump’s tariffs, price increases to accommodate new practices could make farm products too expensive to sell. And increasing production without a viable market is “an obvious waste of capital,” said Hansgen.

“In an effort to remain competitively priced, farmers may opt to continue current practices to keep costs down.”

But the reverse could also be true for farms that are not reliant on export markets. If increased domestic demand created “the exact opposite economic conditions,” Hansgen added, it could help farmers invest in infrastructure changes that promote climate resilience.

“Proposed Canadian counter-tariffs and consumer sentiment could be a boon for producers who focus on the domestic market.”

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By Christopher Bonasia

A recent study finds that solar farms may have “positive” ecological effects in China’s deserts, where efforts are under way to reverse desertification.

The findings indicate “the essential role played by the construction of photovoltaic power stations in ecological environmental governance in desert areas,” linked to impacts on “the microclimate and the soil, plant, and microbial communities in these regions.”

However, the solar park still exerts pressure on the land, and further improvements are needed to achieve optimal ecological conditions, the researchers say.

Published in the journal Nature, the study evaluates the ecological and environmental effects of a solar installation at China’s 64-square-kilometre Qinghai Gonghe Photovoltaic Park, located in Qinghai province on the Tibetan Plateau. In China, deserts cover about 25% of the land, with desertification affecting around 400 million people. Officials include Qinghai province among the regions “most severely impacted by desertification,” reports XinhuaNet.

Other research describes the region as “the cradle of Asian rivers and the habitat of rare species” that is “fragile and undergoing unprecedented changes with the process of climate warming.”

Amidst the push to address desertification, desert-based solar parks have drawn attention in China for their effect on the local environment. The panels influence the impacts of wind, sun, and moisture on the area’s ecology to promote plant growth and reduce erosion.

Other research has already described these changes, but the recent study aimed to establish a set of indicators to quantify them. The researchers used a Driving-Pressure-Status-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, to help policymakers identify causes, effects, and solutions to environmental issues in a structured way.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency explains how the stages of a DPSIR framework measure:

• Drivers, often defined as “socio-economic sectors that fulfill human needs”;

• Pressures, or human activities spurred by the drivers, which “exert pressure” on the environment, like land use changes;

• Status, or changes to the state of the environment resulting from pressures;

• Impacts that reflect changes in the “quality or functioning of an ecosystem” that affects humans;

• Responses, or the decisions and actions of humans following from the impacts.

Within this framework, the researchers explain that the solar park’s development drove rising rates of population growth, urbanization, per capita GDP, and energy conservation. These indicators, which did not rise to a comparable degree in surrounding control areas, reflected job growth directly linked to the project and its integration with local agriculture, as well as the solar park’s contributions to energy conservation and decarbonization.

Pressures were measured by changes in the land surface’s radiation exposure and evaporation. Both indicators decreased, showing that the solar panels lowered how much these factors affected the environment. The state of the environment—measured by indicators linked to soil properties and microbial and plant growth—correspondingly indicated that the project had a “positive impact on the regulation of ecological and environmental effects,” the researchers found.

The changes affected ecosystem functions, shown by increases in indicators like available soil nutrients, above-ground organic matter, and soil carbon sequestration—an important measure, the researchers write, because the soil’s capacity to store carbon is important to climate mitigation.

The response measures from government and society showed higher regulatory capacity, environmental investment, photovoltaic value, and erosion control. The researchers say these measures indicate that measures are being taken to improve the site’s ecological and environmental conditions.

But despite these benefits, the ecological system remains under “tremendous pressure,” they warn. Lower scores for indicators like fungal abundance and daily photosynthetic radiation suggest that “more comprehensive response measures” are needed to enhance the region’s ecological health.

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Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced with carbon management practices, tools and other abatement, strategies⁽¹⁾, including technologies that remove, or re-use carbon dioxide (CO₂).⁽²⁾ CO₂ is stored naturally in many forms (i.e. carbon sink)—in the ocean, in soils, and in trees—however these forms do not necessarily store CO₂ permanently and might not pair directly to a CO₂ production source⁽³⁾. Artificial carbon sinks, like most carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects in operation today, inject CO₂ into deep geological formations, which is a long-term, or permanent, way to store large quantities of CO₂, preventing its release into the atmosphere.

Geological carbon storage traps injected CO₂ in a similar way as oil and gas reservoirs. Geological carbon storage reservoirs can include saline (saltwater) aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields, mature oil fields⁽⁴⁾⁽⁵⁾ or un-mineable coal seams⁽⁶⁾ (Figure 1). Globally, most CCS projects are onshore; however, some offshore projects exist, injecting CO₂ into sub-seabed geological formations.

What makes a good CO₂ storage reservoir?

CO₂ storage reservoirs are rock formations with interconnected pores—small holes and voids between mineral grains—that can be filled with CO₂.

Figure 1: Diagram of onshore and offshore CO₂ storage reservoirs

An ideal CO₂ storage reservoir will have high porosity and high permeability, which will allow large volumes to be injected and stored in the reservoir over time. In addition to these properties, a suitable geological carbon storage reservoir needs to have the following⁽⁷⁾:

• Normal, or below-normal, reservoir pressure to allow higher CO₂ injection rates.
• Depth greater than 800 meters, where subsurface pressure is high enough to keep CO₂ in its densest and most compressed state (supercritical state).
  • For example, non-EOR CO₂ storage is required at least 1 kilometre below the surface in Alberta⁽⁸⁾.
• A configuration called “a trap” to contain the CO₂ in the reservoir and prevent it from migrating.
• Enough capacity to receive the planned annual volumes of injected CO₂ over the life of the project (typically 20 years or more).

Since the 1970s, CO₂ has been injected into older oil fields for enhanced oil recovery with CCS (EOR-CCS). In Canada and globally, EOR established the commercial viability of early CCS projects and helped create economic value for CO₂, before carbon pricing policies, enabling some of the world’s first CCS projects. (Table 1)

Table 1: CO₂ Storage Facilities operating in western Canada

Canada’s future CO₂ storage potential

Western Canada’s potential for geological CO₂ storage, without EOR, is significant. In a 2015 study by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Alberta has a medium estimate of 78.3 billion tonnes of CO₂ storage, with Saskatchewan having an estimated 286.2 billion tonnes, Manitoba with 13.2 billion tonnes, and British Columbia with an estimated 1.87 billion tonnes⁽⁹⁾. However, these estimates may be revised as more research is done. For example, a 2022 study by Geoscience BC⁽¹⁰⁾ estimates that Northeast B.C. alone has a storage potential of 4.23 billion tonnes of CO₂, more than four times the DOE’s 2015 estimate for the province. There is significant CO₂ storage potential on Canada’s coasts as well: for example, the median estimate of CO₂ storage offshore Nova Scotia is 177 billion tonnes⁽¹¹⁾. Canada’s wealth of CO₂ storage capacity could theoretically store Canada’s annual CO₂ emissions (708 million tonnes in 2022) for hundreds of years.

While EOR continues to offer a viable economic pathway for CCS in Canada, a growing number of projects under development are designed with dedicated geological storage, where CO₂ is injected into a geological formation and stored without the production of oil. Currently, there are 11 CO₂ storage facilities associated with CCS projects under development in western Canada (Table 2). Also, more than 25 new CCS projects were selected for evaluation by the Alberta government in 2022, with all of them either including carbon storage or relying on third party carbon storage.

Table 2: Canadian CCS projects with dedicated geological storage (modified from Global CCS Institute 2024)

Sources: Global CCS Institute (Global Status of CCS 2024), NRCan, Entropy Inc, Heidelberg Materials, decarbdonnect (Wolf Lamont Carbon Hub, Strathcona Cold Lake CCUS Hub), Heartland Generation, Rocky Mountain Carbon, Gibson Energy, Government of Canada, Shell.

In Canada, provinces have jurisdiction over their subsurface resources and regulate certain CCS activities, including geological CO₂ storage:

• Alberta has enacted a comprehensive regulatory framework for CCS. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) regulates facilities that capture CO₂, CO₂ pipelines, and subsurface operations to store CO₂⁽¹²⁾.
• Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Energy and Resources regulates the development of CO₂-dedicated underground storage in the province, as well as EOR-CCS⁽¹³⁾.
• The British Columbia government passed the Energy Statutes Amendment Act in 2022 updating its regulatory framework on CCS⁽¹⁴⁾. The B.C. Energy Regulator (BCER) is responsible for the regulation of CCS activity, including CO₂ storage⁽¹⁵⁾.
• On 4 June 2024, the Manitoba government passed the Captured Carbon Storage Act establishing a regulatory framework for licensing and operating CCS in the province⁽¹⁶⁾.
• Ontario is taking a phased approach to enabling and regulating carbon storage in the province. In March 2023 it removed the prohibition to develop underground carbon storage. In June 2023 the Ontario government enacted an amendment of the Oil, Gas and Salt Resources Act to enable “special projects” for carbon storage demonstration projects, which was followed with its corresponding regulations in January 2024⁽¹⁷⁾. As of August 2024, the province is currently working on the design of a regulatory framework for commercial geologic carbon storage projects⁽¹⁸⁾.

Footnotes

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