Vancouver, BC: Analysis of recently released energy statistics reinforces the conclusion that Canadian manufacturers as a whole are steadily reducing the amount of energy they consume. Viewed another way, Canadian manufacturers have proven themselves very successful at finding ways to extract more and more economic value out of each unit of energy consumed.
The February 2014 Enerinfo report finds that, “Energy use by the manufacturing industries … rose in both 2010 and 2011 but, based on the most recent Industrial Consumption of Energy survey, it dropped by nearly 2% in 2012. Energy use is now 9% less than in 1990 and 18% below 2004 peak levels. This makes the trend line of energy use over the last four years fairly flat in spite of a continued increase in GDP over the same period. And, when energy use decreases, fuel-based GHG emissions also tend downward; they dropped 2% in 2012, about 7.5% higher than the low of 2009. Like energy, emissions are still 17% below 1990 levels. With a GDP growth of 1.6%, both energy and emissions intensities continue to decline.” The Enerinfo report is published regularly by the Canadian Industrial Energy End-use Data and Analysis Centre (CIEEDAC) at Simon Fraser University.
The report continues, “While intensities are not at their lowest point (2006, see Fig. 1, next page), it has been quite flat since 2006. It took nearly 25% less energy to generate a dollar’s worth of goods in 2012 than it did in 1990.” These data do not include coal mining and upstream oil and gas (including bitumen) or indirect emissions from electricity.
Data on cogeneration have not been updated since 2009 but recently, after a workshop sponsored by the Canadian Gas Association and others, CIEEDAC was able to obtain funding to reinvigorate the database. “Progress on both the database and the online query system is well on its way and should be ready by March 31, 2014.”
District Energy data is also being collected. CIEEDAC personnel sent out its first district energy survey to about 106 district energy operations and received responses to at least 63 of them (59%).
The data will be placed on line when assessments are complete and a report will be released by March 31, 2014.
CIEEDAC’s database, which contains energy, production and GHG emissions data for over 130 industry sectors up to 2012, has been recently updated. The data is now accessible on line on the CIEEDAC web site at this location: www3.cieedac.sfu.ca/CIEEDACweb/mod.php?mod=NAICSPublic&menu=1602
CIEEDAC's funding was curtailed in 2011 for 2012 and subsequent years. But industry associations and other federal agencies have, in great part, filled in the financial gap that permitted CIEEDAC to remain functional. Recently, CIEEDAC also obtained some funding to make progress on updating its cogeneration and renewable energy databases. It also received funding to initiate a new District Energy database which will be released before the end of March.
For more information, see www.cieedac.sfu.ca.