How The United States is Outcompeting Canada on the Road to Paris

By Grant Knepper

The Paris Agreement is the single largest international treaty related to environmental emissions of its kind.¹ The agreement is an international treaty that calls on countries to submit a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) every five years indicating actions that will be taken to reduce emissions along with emission reduction goals for the upcoming years. The Paris Agreement seeks to reduce global emissions by forty-five percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.² However, while these are the goals set out by the Paris Agreement, many countries’ NDCs fall far short of making that forty-five percent reduction a possibility. For example, the United States has pledged to reduce emissions by fifty to fifty-two percent from their 2005 emission levels by 2030.³ While this percentage may seem large, this domestic target is only “almost sufficient” in making the Paris global emissions by 2030 achievable.² Canada’s NDC is similarly situated in being almost sufficient in meeting The Paris Agreement’s 2030 target with their goal aiming to reduce emissions by forty to forty-five percent from 2005 levels.⁴ While the Paris Agreement is focused on all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, CO2 emissions are isolated within this paper for two reasons. For one, CO2 emissions account for seventy-six percent of all GHG emissions globally with the next closest GHG, Methane, only accounting for sixteen percent.⁵ While all GHG emissions are important, CO2 is arguably one of the most important as it is the most plentifully emitted GHG and has contributed to warming the most.^{5 6}  Secondly, CO2 emissions are the type that most people are familiar with as well as the most talked about, so using it as the primary point of comparison allows for the easiest possible analysis due to the wealth of literature on CO2 specifically.

The Paris Agreement’s percentage-based NDCs allow for direct comparisons between countries’ relative progress toward their goals. This is useful in comparing the United States and Canada as they have vastly different sizes populations, and gross emissions levels. For example, in 2005, the United States emitted around six billion tons of CO2 compared to just 575.85 million tons of CO2 emitted by Canada.⁵ However, despite the vast differences in CO2 output between the two countries, their relative progress towards their NDC pledges is normalized due to being percentage based.

The big question now is how are the United States and Canada doing in reaching their 2030 pledges. The answer is: not very good. For one, 2020 data must be largely excluded in terms of fairly evaluating the efforts of both countries, as COVID has disrupted emissions in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. Instead, 2019 data will be used to discern the current progress of both countries. The United States, as of 2019, has reduced its CO2 emissions by fourteen percent and its total GHG emissions by almost twelve percent compared to 2005 with Canada increasing their CO2 emissions by one-third of a percent, but decreasing its total GHG emissions by almost half a percent since 2005.^{7 8 9} Put another way, the United States is twenty-seven percent of the way to meeting their conservative 2030 goals based on 2019 data compared to Canada’s one and one-quarter of a percent. These numbers appear rather surprising, largely because, the United States formally left the Paris Agreement in 2020, following President Trump’s announcement of the withdrawal three years prior.⁹ It wasn’t until 2021 that the United States officially rejoined the agreement under President Biden.¹¹ In contrast, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed the country’s commitment to the agreement at the same time President Trump was declaring the United States’ withdrawal.¹²

With the very different histories that both the United States and Canada have with the Paris Agreement and their almost paradoxical progress toward meeting their NDC pledges many may be thoroughly confused as to what is going on. The obvious assumption would be that the United States is simply outcompeting Canada in the green technology sector and is wielding that advantage to create the reduction in emissions seen today. This would seem particularly true as Canada has continued to push anti-oil policies that have led to significant divestments from Canada’s energy sector while the United States has increased its oil production and investments in its energy sector.¹³ However, Canada produces three times as much renewable energy per capita compared to the United States; thirty-one MWh per capita and eight MWh per capita respectively.¹⁴ Instead the major reason the United States has seen such a large decrease in emission levels compared to Canada comes down to the use of natural gas substituting coal in the United States energy sector through fracking.¹⁵

Fracking “involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.”¹⁶ Fracking is used to extract oil and natural gas from the Earth, with the latter being of great importance to the emissions story.¹⁷ Natural gas has been one of the sole causes of the decline in coal, a massive contributor to CO2 emissions. In the United States, coal’s market share has dropped eighteen percent since 2000, meanwhile, natural gas’s market share grew by eighteen percent .¹⁸ Natural gas is a cleaner alternative to coal, at least when it comes to CO2 output, making the transition towards it a major factor in the United States’ CO2 emissions decline.¹⁹ As a result, the US has been able to benefit from the reduction of coal-related CO2 emissions while also offsetting the release of methane through other policies such as, decreased coal mining, and decreases in methane from the waste and land use sectors.⁷

Fracking has not led to a similar emissions reduction in Canada simply because the practice has not been as widely adopted in the United States. Of the 401 billion cubic meter increase in shale gas produced by fracking from 2005 to 2015 “90 percent of that fracking took place in the U.S., while about 10 percent was done in Canada.”¹⁸ The United States, from 2005-2019 saw the production of coal drop a little less than thirty-five percent and consumption drop almost thirty-nine percent (for a total of almost seventy-four percent).²⁰ Comparatively, Canada, in the same timeframe, only saw decreases in production and consumption of almost twenty-two percent and sixteen percent respectively (for a total of thirty-eight percent).²¹ This massive discrepancy between coal production and consumption between Canada and the United States is likely the leading cause of the United States’ superior progress towards meeting their Paris Agreement pledges.

The United States is currently on a much better trajectory to reach its 2030 goals than Canada largely on the back of a rise in fracking and a corresponding decrease in the consumption and production of coal. While fracking has many negative environmental impacts, the decrease in CO2 along with the freedom the practice gives for countries to move away from coal seems like a no-brainer solution for countries seeking to make progress towards their Paris climate goals. While Canada can still make gains in meeting its NDC emissions pledges, it appears the United States’ strategy of slowly transitioning to cleaner and cleaner (a large asterisk next to cleaner for natural gas) sources of energy has paid dividends for the country. One possible reason is that these other forms of energy, such as natural gas, are better able to immediately fill the gap of coal allowing the United States to pivot away from the heavy CO2 emitter for the lesser evil of natural gas compared to Canada relying heavily on coal as renewable energy simply is unable to match the output needs of the country at the levels being invested in. Time will tell if both, either, or neither country meets their NDC pledges, but one thing is for certain, the United States is making better on its pledges than Canada.

1. United Nations, The Paris Agreement (2022) https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/paris-agreement
2. United Nations, UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2022) https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition
3. Climate Action Tracker, USA, (August 16, 2022) https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/targets/
4. Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser, and Pablo Rosado, CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (USA), (2020) https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=~USA#what-are-the-country-s-annual-co2-emissions
5. Environmental Protection Agency, Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data, (February 25, 2022) https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
6. Union of Concerned Scientists, Why Does CO2 get Most of the Attention When There are so Many Other Heat-Trapping Gases? (August 3, 2017) https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/why-does-co2-get-more-attention-other-gases

7. Environmental Protection Agency, Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data Explorer, (November 1, 2022) https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#allsectors/allsectors/allgas/gas/allhttps://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/ghg-greenhouse-gas-emissions
8. Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser, and Pablo Rosado, CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Canada), (2020) https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/canada
9. Matt McGrath, Climate change: US formally withdraws from Paris Agreement, BBC, (November 4, 2020) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54797743
10. Anthony J. Blinken, The United States Officially Rejoins The Paris Agreement, US Department of State, (February 19, 2021) https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-officially-rejoins-the-paris-agreement/
11. Lydia O’Connor, Trudeau Reaffirms Climate Change Fight Will Go On Despite Trump, Huffpost, (January 6, 2017) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/justin-trudeau-kayak-climate-change_n_5935d76ce4b0099e7fae8c0d
12. Elmira Aliakbari and Ashley Stedman, A tale of two diverging energy fortunes – U.S. vs. Canada, Fraster Institute, (Appeared in the Washington Times) (August 31, 2018) https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/tale-of-two-diverging-energy-fortunes-us-vs-canada
13. Our World in Data, Per capita energy consumption from renewables, 2019 (July 8, 2022) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-renewables?time=2019
14. Robert Rapier, Yes, The U.S. Leads All Countries in Reducing Carbon Emissions, Forbes, (October 24, 2017) https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/?sh=542605fa3535
15. BBC, What is fracking and why is it so controversial?, BBC, (October 26, 2022) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14432401
16. Independent Petroleum Association of America, Hydraulic Fracking, (2022) https://www.ipaa.org/fracking/
17. Robert Rapier, Don’t Blame Renewable Energy For Dying U.S. Coal Industry, Forbes, (March 18, 2016) https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/03/18/whats-killing-the-coal-industry/?sh=7e162fc27dd4
18. S. Energy Information Administration, Natural gas explained, (December 8, 2021) https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-and-the-environment.php
19. Julia Conley, Fracking Boom in US and Canada Largely to Blame for ‘Massive’ Rise of Global Methane Levels: Study, Common Dreams, (August 14, 2019) https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/14/fracking-boom-us-and-canada-largely-blame-massive-rise-global-methane-levels-study
20. International Energy Agency, United States, (2022) https://www.iea.org/countries/united-states
21. International Energy Agency, Canada, (2022) https://www.iea.org/countries/canada