Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are down, but so is public support for its carbon pricing policy. Let’s explore why.
Perception gap plagues Canada’s carbon price
By Rick Knight, CCL Research Coordinator
Canada’s carbon pricing law, which went into effect in mid-2018, features an annually rising carbon price, with 90% of the revenue rebated to households. Public support has historically been strong. As of July 2023, 10 of Canada’s 13 provinces or territories have adopted the federal plan, and the Niskanen Center reports that 80% of households come out ahead when receiving the rebate.
Sounds good! Indeed, my last blog post on this topic was titled “Canada leads the way on carbon pricing.”
But over the last year, public support for the carbon tax has dropped considerably – from 56% in 2021 to 45% this year. What happened?
Politics happened. A national election is scheduled for 2025, and Prime Minister Trudeau’s chief opponent, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre (pwa-lee-EV) is now leading an anti-carbon-tax campaign, summarized in the slogan “Axe the Tax.”
What’s the basis for this opposition? Is it because the carbon price has failed to reduce emissions?
The emissions
Here is a chart of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions per person from 2010 to 2022. The orange bars are prior to the enactment of the carbon tax, and the green bars are with the tax in effect.
Canadian Greenhouse Gas Emissions per Capita (Chart by CCL, adapted from Our World in Data)
Emissions clearly went down, but no reports have yet revealed how much of the decline is due to carbon pricing. Answering this question is complicated by the economic impact of the pandemic and, as this CTV article notes, “it’s not the only climate policy in Canada.” But it’s still clear that emissions are lower than they were before the carbon tax went into effect. Canadian author Michael Barnard explains that the decline is not chiefly due to individual day-to-day behavior, but longer-term decisions by businesses and consumers, such as replacing an old gas furnace with a heat pump or an old gasoline vehicle with an electric car.
So is opposition growing because the carbon tax imposes a net financial burden on average households?
Household costs
That doesn’t seem to be the case, according to this article that delves into the distributional impacts. The charts below are drawn from Statistics Canada’s Social Policy Simulation Database and Model and were reported by Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). The left-hand chart shows how rebates (blue) stack up versus energy costs (red) for the lowest-income households, and the right-hand chart shows the same data for the highest-income segment of the population.
Costs vs rebates for lowest and highest income level(adapted from Robson Fletcher/CBC)
Among low-income households, 94% get more in rebates than their carbon tax costs, with more than half netting at least C$30 per month. Even for the high-income households, rebates still exceed costs for a healthy 55%. These results are strikingly similar to those estimated in CCL’s Household Impact Study of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.
And yet, Poilievre and his allies claim that “the carbon tax will cost most households more than they ever get back.” That claim is drawn from the same PBO report cited above, which on the one hand shows that wealthy households will bear a much higher portion of the cost for reducing emissions, but on the other hand says that all households will see reduced income growth due to suppressed economic activity.
So what’s going on here?
The economy
According to CBC analyst Peter Zimonjic, the PBO report does not consider “the cost to the economy of doing nothing about climate change, the economic growth that could result from a shift to a green economy, and how carbon pricing compares to other climate policies such as regulations or tax credits.”
There may be an even more fundamental problem with the PBO analysis. As Zimonjic notes, a 2020 NBER research paper showed that the type of modeling used by the PBO does not comport with real-world data from three decades of carbon pricing in 31 European countries. That study showed no suppression of economic activity due to carbon taxes. And to further underscore this, a 2021 CBO paper states that “sending each household an equal share [of carbon tax revenue] in the form of a rebate could more than offset the economic incidence … of the carbon tax.”
Here is Canadian GDP growth before and after the carbon tax was enacted.
Canadian GDP per capita(Chart by CCL based on data from World Bank)
From 2018 to 2022, Canada’s per-capita GDP grew from C$46.5K to C$55.0K, overcoming the pandemic recession and even blowing past its previous peak in 2013. Thus, real-world data throws some shade on Poilievre’s argument to “axe the tax.”
Unfortunately, though, voters don’t consult studies and charts before they go to the polls; they vote according to what they believe to be true. And that’s where public messaging is crucial.
The politics
There is a conventional wisdom in politics that taxes are always toxic. Canada defied that axiom when a coalition passed the carbon tax and maintained its popularity through the subsequent election cycle. But with another election approaching in 2025, the oppositional deluge has arrived. It seems to be working, despite the factual inaccuracy of anti-carbon price arguments. According to a government report for 2021, the average household rebate in the provinces where the federal tax applied exceeded the average carbon cost by C$249. But in a recent poll, only 14% of those polled believed their rebates exceeded their carbon tax costs, while 54% felt they came up short.
“What we’re learning in Canada is that our job as climate advocates is not over after a policy is enacted,” said Citizens’ Climate International Program Director Cathy Orlando, who’s been lobbying the Canadian Parliament since 2010. “Despite the fact that Climate Action Rebates are working for Canadian families and communities, the perception gap is putting this effective tool at risk. The effort to dismantle Canada’s carbon pricing policy is an effort to transfer wealth from ordinary Canadians to polluters. Our volunteers at Citizens Climate Lobby Canada will be working diligently this year and next to make sure the public knows the truth.”
This gulf between reality and perception shows that it’s not enough to simply tell the truth, nor is it enough to sell a policy product like a carbon tax once. The sale has to be made again and again until it becomes part of the sociopolitical landscape.
But black swan events like a pandemic can scramble public opinion in unpredictable ways, particularly when it affects the economy chaotically. Under COVID-19, supply chains ground to a halt, unemployment spiked, and then subsequent pent-up demand – exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – fueled inflation. Naturally, the opposition party grabbed the opportunity to assign blame to government policy – and to the carbon tax in particular.
This is a stark lesson in how seriously to take the political challenges around carbon pricing. Ironically, most people – Canadians and Americans alike – want their government to address climate change, but they can be easily turned against a policy that will actually work.
Can this conundrum be solved? A Financial Times article about the ups and downs of carbon pricing provides some guarded optimism, with one European economist noting that “Carbon pricing should go hand in hand with carbon dividends . . . Without carbon dividends, it is socially and politically unsustainable.”
Those of us who agree have the truth on our side. All we have to do is get people to understand it.
The post Perception gap plagues Canada’s carbon price appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CCL volunteers and staff met with 47 Republican offices, including the office of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) on Capitol Hill last month.
Statement on Foreign Pollution Fee Act
April 8, 2025 – Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) welcomes the reintroduction of the Foreign Pollution Fee Act by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“Foreign polluters should be held accountable for the climate impacts of their exports to the U.S., and this bill takes a critical step in ensuring that imported goods reflect their true carbon cost,” said Jennifer Tyler, CCL Vice President of Government Affairs.
“By requiring robust emissions accounting for foreign imports, the legislation promotes transparency and fairness in global trade.”
The bill’s introduction comes just a few weeks after 50 right-of-center CCLers lobbied 47 Republican offices on Capitol Hill on foreign pollution fees and other policies to reduce emissions.
CCL is pleased to see this important bill reintroduced, and our grassroots volunteers nationwide will be working toward its passage in Congress.
CONTACT: Flannery Winchester, CCL Vice President of Communications, 615-337-3642, flannery@citizensclimate.org
###
Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change. Learn more at citizensclimatelobby.org.
The post Statement on Foreign Pollution Fee Act appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Nearly 60 countries have ‘dramatically’ cut plans to build coal plants since 2015
Nearly 60 countries have drastically scaled back their plans for building coal-fired power plants since the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to figures released by Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
Among those making cuts of 98% or more to their coal-power pipeline are some of the world’s biggest coal users, including Turkey, Vietnam and Japan.
The data also shows that 35 nations eliminated coal from their plans entirely over the past decade, including South Korea and Germany.
Global coal-fired electricity generation has increased since 2015 as more power plants have come online.
But the data on plants in “pre-construction” phases in 2024 shows what GEM calls a “dramatic drop” in proposals for future coal plants.
The number of countries still planning new coal plants has roughly halved to just 33, with the proposed capacity – the maximum electricity output of those proposed plants – dropping by around two-thirds.
China and India, the world’s largest coal consumers, have also both reduced their planned coal capacity by more than 60% over the same timeframe, from a total of 801 gigawatts (GW) to 298GW.
However, both countries still have a large number of coal projects in the pipeline and, together, made up 92% of newly proposed coal capacity globally in 2024.
‘Dramatic drop’
The Paris Agreement in 2015 had major implications for the use of fossil fuels. As the fossil fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned, coal has long been viewed by many as requiring a rapid phaseout.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) both see steep declines in “unabated” coal use by 2030 as essential to limit global warming to 1.5C.
But coal power capacity has continued to grow, largely driven by China.
Global capacity hit 2,175GW in 2024, up 1% from the year before and 13% higher than in 2015, according to GEM’s global coal-plant tracker.
This growth disguises a collapse in plans for future coal projects.
GEM’s latest analysis charts a decade of developments since the Paris Agreement and the “dramatic drop” in the number of coal plant proposals.
In 2015, coal power capacity in pre-construction – meaning plants that had been announced, or reached either the pre-permit or permitted stage – stood at 1,179GW.
By 2024, this had fallen to 355GW – a 70% drop. This indicates that countries are increasingly turning away from their earlier plans for a continued reliance on coal.
In total, 23 nations reduced the size of their proposals over this period and another 35 completely eliminated coal power from their future energy plans. Together, these 58 countries account for 80% of global fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions.
The chart below shows these changes, with China and India shown on a different x-axis due to the scale of their proposals. (See section below for more information.)
2015 to 2024, gigawatts (GW), in all countries that saw declines over this period. Red arrows indicate countries that no longer have any plans to build coal power plants. Source: Global Energy Monitor.
According to GEM, of the coal plants that were either under pre-construction or construction in 2015, 55% ended up being cancelled, a third were completed and the remainder are still under development.
Many of the nations that have phased coal out of their electricity plans are either very small or only had modest ambitions for building coal power in the first place.
However, the list also includes countries such as Germany and South Korea. These nations are both in the top 10 of global coal consumers, but their governments have committed to significantly reducing or, in Germany’s case, phasing out coal use by the late 2030s.
Turkey, Vietnam and Japan are among the big coal-driven economies that are now approaching having zero new coal plants in the works. All have around 2% of the planned capacity they had a decade ago.
Other major coal consumers have also drastically reduced their coal pipelines. Indonesia, the fifth-biggest coal user, has reduced its coal proposals by 90% and South Africa – the seventh-biggest – has cut its planned capacity by 83%.
Of the 68 countries that were planning to build new coal plants in 2015, just nine have increased their planned capacity. Around 85% of the planned increase in capacity by these nations is in Russia and its central Asian neighbours.
China and India
China is by far the world’s largest coal consumer, with India the second largest.
There was 44GW of coal power added to the global fleet last year. China was responsible for 30.5GW of this while retiring just 2.5GW, and India added 5.8GW while retiring 0.2GW.
Between them, these nations contributed 70% of the global coal-plant construction in 2024.
Nevertheless, there were signs of change as newly operating coal capacity around the world reached its lowest level in 20 years.
China and India have also seen significant drops in their pre-construction coal capacity over the past decade.
In 2015, China had 560GW of coal power in its pipeline and India had 241GW. Both nations have seen their proposed capacity drop by more than 60% to reach 217GW and 81GW, respectively.
While this is a significant reduction, both nations still have more coal capacity planned now than any other nation did in 2015. China’s current 217GW is roughly four times more than the 57GW Turkey was planning at that time.
GEM attributes the “slowdown” in China’s new proposals to the nation’s record-breaking solar and wind growth, which saw more electricity generation capacity installed in 2023 and 2024 than in the rest of the world combined.
As for India, GEM says the “notable declines” in coal proposals and commissions came after a “coal-plant investment bubble that went bust in the early 2010s”.
It notes that India is now “encouraging and fast-tracking the development of large coal plants”. The government has cited the need to meet the large nation’s growing electricity demand, especially due to the increased need for cooling technologies during heatwaves.
As other nations move away from the fossil fuel, coal capacity is likely to become increasingly concentrated in these two nations. Together, they made up 92% of the 116GW in newly proposed capacity last year.
The post Analysis: Nearly 60 countries have ‘dramatically’ cut plans to build coal plants since 2015 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Nearly 60 countries have ‘dramatically’ cut plans to build coal plants since 2015
Greenhouse Gases
Power-sector CO2 hits ‘all-time high’ in 2024 despite record growth for clean energy
Global power-sector emissions hit an “all-time high” in 2024, despite solar and wind power continuing to grow at record speed, according to analysis from thinktank Ember.
Emissions from the sector increased by 1.6% year-on-year, to reach a record high of 14.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO2).
This increase was predominantly due to a 4% growth in electricity demand worldwide, leading coal generation to increase by 1.4% and gas by 1.6%.
Embers’ analysis finds that the increase in fossil-fuel generation was, in particular, due to hotter temperatures in 2024, which drove up electricity demand in key regions such as India.
Clean electricity generation grew by a record 927 terawatt house (TWh), which would have been sufficient to cover 96% of electricity demand growth not caused by higher temperatures.
Despite the increase in emissions in the short-term, this “should not be mistaken for failure of the energy transition”, notes Ember, but a sign we’re nearing a “tipping point” wherein changes in weather and demand hold a particularly strong sway.
Clean-power growth
Low-carbon energy sources – renewables and nuclear – provided 40.9% of the world’s electricity in 2024, according to Ember.
This is the first time they have passed the 40% mark since the 1940s, when hydropower contributed around that percentage and coal made up 55%.
Renewable power sources collectively added a record 858TWh of generation last year – a 49% increase on the previous record set in 2022 of 577TWh.
Solar dominated electricity generation growth for the third year in a row in 2024, adding 474TWh of generation, as shown on the chart below. This was up 29% on 2023.
This allowed solar, which hit a total global capacity of 2,131TWh, to meet 40% of global electricity demand growth in 2024 alone.
Solar generation “avoided” an estimated 1,658MtCO2 in 2024 – equivalent to the power-sector emissions of the US, according to Ember.
The technology’s significant growth in 2024 – with more solar capacity installed last year than annual capacity installations of all fuels combined in any year before 2023 – continues a trend seen over recent years.
Across 99 countries, the electricity they produce from solar power has doubled in the past five years.
In 2024, non-OECD economies accounted for 58% of global solar generation, with China accounting for 39% alone. A decade ago the 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries – a group founded in 1961 to stimulate economic growth and global trade – made up 81% of global solar generation.
This shift follows the cost of solar falling more than 90% between 2010 and 2023, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The low cost of the technology has been a key factor in deployment rising sharply worldwide.
It has also enabled new markets to emerge, with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan among the top importers of Chinese solar panels in 2024, according to a recent guest post on Carbon Brief.
In a statement, Phil MacDonald, Ember’s managing director said:
“Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world’s ever-increasing demand for electricity.”
Wind generation also grew in 2024, although at a more moderate pace than solar power. Globally, an additional 182TW of wind capacity was added, or an increase of 7.9%.
Despite continued capacity additions, some geographies saw their lowest increase in wind generation in four years due to reduced wind speeds, notes Ember.
Hydro generation rebounded as drought conditions eased in 2023. This was particularly true in China, where capacity increased 130TWh, it adds.
Coal generation grew to 10,602TWh and gas generation to 6,788TWh, an increase of 149TWh and 104TWh, respectively.
However, due to the increases in renewable generation – despite coal and gas generation increasing in absolute terms – their share of generation has fallen.
Coal generation has dropped from 40.8% in 2007 to 34.4% in 2024, according to Ember. The share of gas generation has fallen for four consecutive years now since its peak in 2020 at 23.9%, with 22% of the world’s electricity generation from gas in 2024.
The increase in fossil-fuel generation was virtually identical in 2024 as it was in 2023, despite electricity demand growing (245TWh vs 246TWh, respectively).
Increased demand in short-term
Emissions in the power sector grew by 223mtCO2, despite the increase in renewables due to fossil fuels being relied on to meet increased demand, according to Ember.
Electricity demand increased by 4% over 2024 to meet 30,856TWh globally – crossing the 30,000TWh point for the first time ever. This is up from a 2.6% increase seen in 2023.
Fossil-fuel generation rose to meet the additional demand increase of 208TWh that was specifically driven by higher temperatures, according to Ember.
This dynamic was particularly pronounced in countries that experienced strong heatwaves.
For example, heatwaves in India led to the country experiencing its hottest day on record, with the western Rajasthan state’s Churu city hitting 50.5C on 28 May.
Coal-generation growth met 64% of India’s electricity demand growth in 2024, according to Ember, including that created by air conditioning.
However, this is still less than 91% of electricity demand growth in 2023, highlighting India’s continued transition away from coal, despite short-term trends.
On a global basis, if 2024 had the same temperatures as 2023, fossil generation would have increased by just 0.2%, Ember notes.
As it was, renewables met three-quarters of demand increases, with coal and gas meeting the majority of the rest.
Alongside heatwaves, emerging sectors such as data centres and electric vehicles (EVs), had a modest impact on increased electricity demand.
Demand from data centres and cryptocurrency mining increased by 20% in 2024, adding 0.4% to global electricity demand.
EV electricity demand increased by 38% in 2024, adding 0.2% to global electricity demand.
Despite increasing electricity demand, the growth of fossil fuels is still expected to be nearing the end.
According to Ember, assuming typical capacity factors, solar generation is expected to grow at an average rate of 21% per year between 2024 and 2030. Similarly, wind is expected to grow 13% per year.
Together with modest hydro and nuclear power growth, clean generation is expected to increase by an average of 9% per year to the end of the decade, adding 8,399TWh of annual generation by 2030.
This increase would be sufficient to keep pace with an increase in demand of 4.1% per year to 2030, exceeding the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) “stated policies scenario” scenario forecast of 3.3%, as shown in the chart below.
As such, over the next few years, while “changes in fossil generation in the short-term may be noisy, the direction and ultimate destination are unmistakable”, notes the Ember report, adding: “The global energy transition is no longer a question of if, but how fast.”
Many of the changes are expected to be partially determined by weather condition fluctuations from year to year.
Temperature effects impacted generation as well as demand. For example, if global weather conditions in 2024 had been in line with the five-year average, wind generation would have been 2TWh higher and hydro would have been 86TWh higher.
China and India
The world’s largest emerging economies are “on a path of clean electricity expansion that is set to reverse their power-sector fossil growth trends, tipping the global balance on fossil generation”, according to Ember.
China’s clean electricity additions met 81% of demand growth in 2024, due to record wind and solar capacity installations. This is the highest share since 2015 when the country saw its demand fall.
Its 623TWh increase in electricity demand was largely met by wind and solar, which collectively added 356TWh and a rebound in hydro generation which added 130TWh.
Fossil-fuel generation increased by 116TWh in 2024, a third of that seen in 2023, as shown in the chart below.
According to Ember, without the impact of hotter weather, clean generation would have met 97% of China’s rise in electricity demand in 2024.
The country’s renewables surge kept CO2 emissions below those for 2023 over the last 10 months of 2024, according to analysis for Carbon Brief.
Ember’s report suggests that India is likely to surpass China to become the country with the largest fossil-fuel generation growth in the coming years. Its fossil-fuel generation increase was the second-largest of any country in 2024 at 67TWh.
However, the cost of solar has fallen by 90% globally between 2010 and 2023. This has led to capacity increasing by 24 gigawatts of alternating current (GWac) in 2024 in India.
Currently, there are 143 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity under construction in the country, made up of 82GW of solar, 25GW of wind and 36GW of hybrid capacity.
Utility-scale projects already under construction as of January 2025 will nearly double India’s wind and solar capacity, notes Ember.
Elsewhere, wind and solar together generated 17% of the US’s electricity in 2024. The share of coal in the electricity mix fell below 15% – an all-time low – but gas generation rose, with the US accounting for more than half of the global gas generation increase in 2024.
Solar overtook coal generation in the EU for the first time in 2024 with the block seeing the largest fall in coal generation globally.
The post Power-sector CO2 hits ‘all-time high’ in 2024 despite record growth for clean energy appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Power-sector CO2 hits ‘all-time high’ in 2024 despite record growth for clean energy
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