Greenhouse Gases

Environmental Impact

The issue of greenhouse gases is becoming the most significant environmental problem facing the planet as a whole. Increased economic activity and energy consumption havemeant that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been rising constantly since the beginning of the industrial revolution. A United Nations report issued in February 2007 established, with a 90 percent level of certainty, a direct linkage between human activity and the warming of the planet. According to the report, temperatures could rise anywhere between 1.8 and 6.4 degrees between now and 2100, depending on the efforts that are undertaken to combat greenhouse gas emissions. In Quebec, the transportation sector is responsible for 37.4 percent of GHG emissions. However, of all the transportation modes, the marine sector emits the lowest proportion of GHG, accounting for 3 percent of transportation emissions overall or 1.1 percent of the province’s total emissions.

Action Plan Arising from the Environmental Program

Because marine is the most energy efficient mode of transportation, it emits lower quantities of GHG (on a tonne-kilometre basis) than the other modes. However, this fact is little known by the general public and barely recognized by governments. In view of the foregoing, the plan proposes collective actions that will encourage governments to turn increasingly toward the maritime sector as a means of improving the GHG record of both U.S. and Canada. Such a redeployment of transportation resources is currently underway in the European Union where reduction targets aremore ambitious, most notably through the Marco Polo program.

Although the maritime industry already posts a strong performance with respect to GHG, it is determined to go even further in improving its record. Like most industrial sectors, marine transportation produces GHG by burning combustible fossil fuels. Accordingly, the performance indicators for this issue focus on reducing fuel consumption as the principal means of reducing emissions. Thus, once participants have implemented an energy performance plan and completed an emissions inventory as per level 3, they will have to substantially improve their energy efficiency in order to attain levels 4 and 5.

Because there does not currently exist any detailed inventory of maritime industry emissions, it is not possible to establish collective reduction targets at the moment (such targets being more applicable at the port or company level). A collective emissions inventory (which does not include ports and terminals) is underway by Transport Canada and the results should be available in 2008. Over the course of the coming years, reduction targets could be adjusted in accordance with the data collected through national inventories and through the environmental program.

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