Only six per cent of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions come from residences. A new report from Statistics Canada says that thanks to improved home heating equipment and cleaner fuel sources, residential emissions remained fairly constant between 1990 and 2002. While the emission rate remained steady, almost 22 per cent more Canadian households were formed.
"It seems that home heating, though an obvious policy target, may not be the best source to find major national reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions," says Bradley Snider, an analyst with Statistics Canada, in a report in Canadian Social Trends.
In 1951, Snider says, there were about 3.4 million households in Canada, and by 2001 that number nearly tripled. However, the study says that during that time, the energy sources that produce the most GHG -- coal and oil -- were gradually replaced by cleaner burning hydroelectricity and natural gas.
"Without changes in the sources of energy used to heat the houses in the past 50 years, the picture would have been much different," says Snider. "If households in 2002 were still using, in the same proportions, the type of energy sources used in 1965, the quantity of GHG emissions produced by the residential sector would no doubt have been far higher than they currently are."
Snider says, "Overall, it is evident that growth in the efficiency of fuel uses -- using less GHG-intensive energy sources, updated furnaces, and improved insulation, among other factors -- has been remarkable."
However, he says there is still room for improvement, as is shown by the evolution of Canada's residential energy sources.
Back in 1947, 55 per cent of homes were heated with coal and 28 per cent with wood, says the Statistics Canada report. Twelve per cent of households were heated with oil and four per cent with natural gas.
By 1965, oil heating commanded 60 per cent of the market, with natural gas in 26 per cent of homes following the construction of the Trans-Canada natural gas pipeline. Coal and wood were used in only 10 per cent of households, and electric heat was just getting noticed.
In 1985, Snider says gas and electricity held the top spots, followed by oil. Wood heating was used in five per cent of households, which is still true today. By 2003, natural gas was used in 50 per cent of households, electricity in 33 per cent and oil in only 13 per cent.
"The total number of households using gas in 2003 (over six million) is almost double the number that ever used oil," says Snider. "And although the growth in electric heating seems to have ended in the mid 1990s, electricity still heated more homes in 2003 than oil ever did."
The Atlantic Provinces are still not well-served by natural gas -- the report says that the first customers in Nova Scotia to use natural gas were not hooked up until January 2004. Oil is still used by 60 per cent of residents in Nova Scotia and 81 per cent in PEI, while more than one in seven homes in the Atlantic Provinces uses wood heating. Better access to natural gas would reduce emissions in Canada's Maritime provinces.
The report says there were still more than 981,000 households in Ontario and Quebec that were using oil heat in 2003. If these homes switched to natural gas in Ontario and hydroelectricity heating in Quebec, it would reduce emissions.
Not all electric heat produces the same results. "Where electricity is produced by coal or oil-fired generating plants (Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), the use of electricity for home heating will result in greater levels of emissions than in provinces where hydroelectricity is dominant (Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia)," says Snider.
"Canadian households have shown a great flexibility in the last 50 years, readily adopting new technology and energy sources for home heating," he says. "This bodes well for their ability to adapt to the new energy and environmental challenges of the last century."
Canadian Social Trends is currently available for download for $9. However, Statistics Canada says all of its electronic reports will be available free after April 24, 2006.
