Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions in 2024 were 685 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, 78 megatonnes, or 10 percent, below the 2005 level. That is the central result of the 2026 National Inventory Report, the official account Environment and Climate Change Canada submits under the Paris Agreement. The same document shows why that cut is not the same thing as being on track for 2030.
This is an explainer. It uses figures the department has already published. It does not add a private data set, and it does not treat a projection as a result that has already happened.
What the 685 megatonnes leaves out
The 685 megatonne total excludes the land use, land-use change and forestry sector. Canada’s progress toward its climate targets is not judged on that total alone. The department says progress is measured by combining the inventory with a separate land-use accounting contribution, reported in Canada’s Biennial Transparency Report and in the emissions-projections publications.
Inside the inventory itself, that land sector was a small net source in 2024, about 4.4 megatonnes. The flux swings. It was a net source of 81 megatonnes in 2005 and a net removal of 8.7 megatonnes in 2023. Forest harvest, the age of the managed forest, crop yields and drought all move it. A dry year can turn cropland from a sink into a source because soil loses carbon faster than crops put it back.
The national total also covers seven gases, not carbon dioxide alone. In 2024, carbon dioxide was 540 megatonnes, or 79 percent, mostly from burning fossil fuels. Methane was 105 megatonnes, or 15 percent. Nitrous oxide was 29 megatonnes, or 4.2 percent. The remaining synthetic gases, including hydrofluorocarbons, were 11 megatonnes, or 1.6 percent.
The inventory is rebuilt every year. Methods change, and past years change with them. This edition revised 2005 upward by 4.3 megatonnes and revised 2023 downward by 7.0 megatonnes compared with the inventory published in 2025. A percentage cut from 2005 is only as stable as that base year. Anyone comparing an older chart with this one should check which edition the 2005 bar came from.
Where the cut since 2005 came from
Electricity is the clear decline. Emissions from electricity fell 66 megatonnes, or 57 percent, between 2005 and 2024. The inventory attributes that drop to the phase-out of coal-fired generation.
Oil and gas did not follow the same line. Emissions from oil and gas were 10 megatonnes, or 5.1 percent, higher in 2024 than in 2005. They did fall after a peak. The sector reached 230 megatonnes in 2014 and was 208 megatonnes in 2024, a drop of 22 megatonnes, or 9.6 percent, from that peak. The department ties the later decline to measured cuts in fugitive methane.
Methane across the whole economy was at its lowest reported level in 2024. It was down 47 megatonnes, or 31 percent, from 2005, and down 39 megatonnes, or 27 percent, from 2012. Almost 80 percent of the decline since 2005 came from oil and gas. From the 2014 peak in oil and gas methane, those emissions fell 46 percent. Federal and provincial methane rules are the policy the inventory names.
The last decade shows both trends at once. From 2015 to 2024, total emissions fell 59 megatonnes, or 7.9 percent. Fugitive emissions from oil and natural gas fell 33 megatonnes, or 34 percent, and public electricity and heat production fell 25 megatonnes, or 31 percent. Over the same years, combustion emissions from oil and gas extraction rose 12 megatonnes, or 12 percent, which the inventory links to growth in oil-sands production. Light-duty gasoline trucks rose 6.2 megatonnes, or 13 percent, as the fleet and the kilometres driven grew.
The pandemic is still visible, but it is no longer the whole story. Emissions fell 67 megatonnes, or 9.0 percent, from 2019 to 2020, and almost half of that drop was transport, down 32 megatonnes, or 15 percent. They then rose 10 megatonnes in 2021 and another 4.5 megatonnes in 2022, still short of the 2019 level. From 2022 to 2024 they fell again, by 11 megatonnes, or 1.6 percent. The latest year was almost flat: 2024 was 2.2 megatonnes, or 0.3 percent, below the revised 2023 figure.
The 2024 mix
Energy still dominates. The energy sector, covering stationary combustion, transport and fugitive sources, was 81 percent of the 2024 total.
On the inventory’s sector split, stationary combustion was 298 megatonnes, or 43 percent. Transport was 189 megatonnes, or 28 percent. Fugitive sources were 66 megatonnes, or 9.6 percent. Agriculture was 56 megatonnes, or 8.2 percent. Industrial processes and product use were 53 megatonnes, or 7.8 percent. Waste was 23 megatonnes, or 3.3 percent. Those shares are of the 685 megatonne total, so they exclude the land sector.
Transport is almost back to where it stood in 2005. It was 190 megatonnes then and 189 in 2024, after a peak of 208 megatonnes in 2018 and 2019 and a pandemic low of 176 in 2020. A national cut that leaves the largest transport line essentially unchanged has to be made somewhere else.
Fugitive emissions moved more. They were 100 megatonnes in 2005, peaked at 105 in 2014, and were 66 in 2024. The inventory says oil and gas accounts for about 98 percent of that category. Crude oil and natural gas production rose about 60 percent over the period, mostly from the oil sands, and nearly 230,000 productive wells were drilled, yet fugitive emissions still fell 34 megatonnes, or 34 percent. The department reads that as a lower emission intensity: more fuel, less methane lost to venting and leaks, after federal and provincial controls.
Industrial process emissions were 53 megatonnes in 2024, down from 57 in 2005. Cement, lime, iron and steel, and aluminium all fell, including the effect of closed or idled plants and the shutdown of older aluminium smelters. One source went the other way. Emissions from hydrofluorocarbons used as refrigerants rose 4.9 megatonnes, or 101 percent, from 2005, as they replaced older ozone-depleting chemicals. Since 2018 those HFC emissions have fallen 2.0 megatonnes, or 17 percent, alongside federal rules that phase the gases down.
Agriculture was 56 megatonnes in both 2005 and 2024, but the mix changed. Livestock numbers peaked in 2005 and then dropped. Fertilizer use rose 108 percent. In 2024, digestion of feed by livestock was 47 percent of agricultural emissions, and inorganic nitrogen fertilizer was 19 percent. Methane from agriculture was 31 megatonnes. Nitrous oxide from agricultural soils was 18 megatonnes, most of the national nitrous oxide total.
Waste stayed near 23 megatonnes. Landfills were 19 megatonnes of that, or 85 percent. Of the methane municipal landfills generated in 2024, 56 percent reached the air, 37 percent was captured and flared or used for energy, and about 6 percent was treated as oxidized in the cover. In 2005, capture was 30 percent. Wastewater was 2.6 megatonnes.
Carbon capture is still a small line in the emissions tables and a larger line in the storage tables. In 2024 about 1.0 megatonne of captured carbon dioxide went into long-term geological storage, and about 3.3 megatonnes were injected for enhanced oil recovery, of which about 870 kilotonnes had been imported from the United States. Since 2015, 10.4 megatonnes have gone into long-term storage and 58.3 megatonnes have been injected for enhanced oil recovery. Those stored tonnes are not the same thing as a reduction already counted in the 685.
A larger economy, a smaller intensity
Emissions per unit of gross domestic product fell 48 percent from 1990 and 37 percent from 2005. The index the inventory publishes, with 1990 set at 100, stood at 52 in 2024. In 1990 the inventory puts emissions at 608 megatonnes. They climbed to 763 in 2005, reached 779 in 2007, and were 685 in 2024. The economy grew faster than emissions for most of that span. Intensity is not a target. A country can burn less carbon per dollar and still miss a tonne-based pledge.
Per person, the department reports a drop from 24 tonnes in 2005 to 17 tonnes in 2024. Canada’s share of the world total is still large for its population. The inventory, citing Climate Watch for the year 2022, says Canada accounted for about 1.4 percent of global emissions and ranked 11th among national emitters.
The distance to 2030
The 2030 target, submitted as Canada’s nationally determined contribution, is a cut of 40 to 45 percent below 2005. The 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan also set an interim objective of 20 percent below 2005 by 2026. In February 2025 Canada filed a 2035 contribution of 45 to 50 percent below 2005. Net-zero emissions by 2050 is the long point in the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The 2035 plan that the Act requires is not due until the end of 2029.
The latest projection indicator, released in February 2026, does not show those targets being met on the policies it modeled. Under a “with measures” case, limited to policies funded, legislated and implemented by November 2025, it puts 2026 at 635 megatonnes, 16 percent below 2005, and 2030 at 600 megatonnes, 21 percent below 2005. A “with additional measures” case, which adds policies still under development plus nature-based and agriculture measures, puts 2030 at 546 megatonnes, 28 percent below 2005. The 2035 figures in that indicator are 577 megatonnes, or 24 percent below 2005, with measures, and 513 megatonnes, or 32 percent below, with the extra measures.
Those percentages are not calculated from the new inventory’s 763 megatonne base year. A footnote in the projections indicator says the comparison uses 759 megatonnes for 2005, the figure in the 2025 inventory. The 2026 inventory then revised 2005 up by 4.3 megatonnes. The scenarios also include the land-use accounting contribution, so they are not a forecast of the next 685-style total. A sensitivity range for 2030, excluding that land-use contribution, runs from 606 to 645 megatonnes, and the indicator says the land-use contribution is projected to remove another 25 megatonnes. None of the central cases reaches a 40 percent cut.
Using only the new inventory’s own 2005 total, a 40 percent cut lands near 458 megatonnes and a 45 percent cut lands near 420. The 2024 result, 685, is still on the high side of both numbers. That arithmetic is a scale check. It is not the official progress metric, because the official metric folds in land-use accounting that this inventory prints separately.
What changes the next number
The next inventory is due by 15 April 2027 and will add 2025. It will also revise earlier years again if methods or facility data change. The 2026 edition already folded in aerial methane measurements for the main oil- and gas-producing provinces, a top-down check on the usual bottom-up estimates. Further revisions of that kind can move the methane line without any change in the weather or the economy.
Two comparisons are worth keeping apart. One is the historical inventory: 685 megatonnes in 2024, 10 percent below 2005, with electricity and methane down and oil and gas still above its 2005 level. The other is the projection: on the policies modeled through November 2025, the department’s own indicator still has 2030 at 21 percent below 2005 with measures in place, or 28 percent if additional measures are counted. The legislated 2030 range is 40 to 45 percent.
Sources
Environment and Climate Change Canada, Executive summary, National Inventory Report 1990–2024, 2026 edition. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Greenhouse gas emissions indicator. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Greenhouse gas emissions projections, February 2026, including Canada’s 2025 greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions projections.
