NWT wrestles with whether to be more ambitious on emissions

The latest NWT climate change reporting shows ministers are still evaluating more ambitious emissions reduction goals that might match Canada’s targets.

However, the newly published reports say doing more would cost a lot of money the NWT doesn’t have, meaning progress is reliant on federal investment.

On Tuesday, the NWT government released its annual climate change response and energy reports for 2022-23.

The reports arrive almost a year after the periods they’re documenting, and the latest emissions data for the NWT dates back to 2021, so the papers don’t present an up-to-the-minute picture of the territory’s progress toward its current goal: reducing emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by the time we reach 2030.

Instead, the reports suggest that by 2021, the NWT had reduced emissions by 25 percent below 2005 levels. The GNWT expects to hit its 2030 target, a target that arguably became more difficult to miss than to hit after the Diavik diamond mine, one of the NWT’s larger emitters, said it would close in 2026.

Diavik is such a large emitter that if it wasn’t in operation, the reduction in CO2 equivalent would cover the entire gap between the territory’s current emissions and its 2030 target.

Months-long discussion

That leaves the NWT in a predicament.

Its 2030 target is fairly certain be achieved, partly because of the territory’s initiatives but in large part because of Diavik’s assist. (“Unfortunately, an anticipated reduction in mining activity in the late 2020s is one factor,” is how one GNWT report documents this – an acknowledgement that other mines could ramp down and inadvertently help the territory hit its target, too.)

Meanwhile, Canada’s nationwide targets are at least a 40-percent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030, then net-zero emissions by 2050.

Should the NWT beef up its own targets and aim to do more?

That question has been on the table for almost a year. Last summer, before the full scale of the NWT’s disastrous 2023 wildfire season emerged, the GNWT said it was already contemplating revising its targets to try to make a bigger difference.

“To be perfectly frank, climate change is an emergency,” said Robert Sexton, director of energy for the NWT’s Department of Infrastructure, at the time. “We’re seeing lots of changes in weather and climate, and to wildlife and the land, and the North is disproportionately affected by that.”

He added: “It’s been clear to us for some time, and most other observers, that it’s time to revise our approach – probably in a fairly significant way.”

This week, in a written introduction to her department’s latest reporting, infrastructure minister Caroline Wawzonek said the GNWT is still contemplating that.

Wawzonek said a mid-point review of the territory’s decade-long emissions strategy has not yet finished.

That review “comes at a time when the Government of Canada has pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050,” Wawzonek noted. “In this context, the review is considering if the approach … should evolve as we seek new pathways to a lower-carbon future and secure, affordable and sustainable energy in the NWT.

“These are dynamic times. The world is changing and the NWT must change with it,” Wawzonek added.

The cost of saving

While it’s not clear exactly when those remarks were penned, Wawzonek has only been the department’s minister since November.

When her department’s review of its strategy will conclude is not clear either, but the GNWT has completed a study “looking at technical and economic considerations for various low-carbon pathways to 2050.”

That study, first reported last year, “found more work and federal support are needed should the NWT adopt Government of Canada objectives,” the GNWT stated this week.

For the NWT to meet a tougher emissions reduction target, the study said more hydro, wind and solar would be needed alongside battery storage, a transition to electric vehicles and heat pumps, and more biomass.

The study also recommended “adopting biofuels as a last resort to displace diesel fuel in harder-to-abate sectors such as transportation, building heating, and potentially power generation,” according to a GNWT summary of its findings.

But the GNWT says saving even one extra tonne of CO2 equivalent is becoming increasingly expensive.

“The cost for current projects advanced by the GNWT to reduce emissions in diesel-powered communities ranges from $330 to $1,100 per lifetime tonne of CO2 equivalent abated,” a section of one report released this week states.

“This is partly because our residents are spread out across such a large land area – which does not allow for economy of scale – and our extremes in climate, especially in the winter.

“Without federal funding as a primary funding source, most emissions-reduction projects do not make economic sense on their own in the NWT and would adversely affect energy costs for northerners. The reality is that continued federal support is critical as we transition our energy systems.”

Among headline figures provided by the GNWT this week, the territory says it is investing “up to $194 million” between 2022 and 2025 related to energy and emissions. Those investments are expected to result in an emissions reduction of 50 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent per year by 2028, an update on the last projection, which was a reduction of 47.3 kilotonnes by 2025.

The NWT’s 2030 emissions target is 1,094 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. This week’s reports say the latest NWT emissions figure, from 2021, was 1,287 kilotonnes per year. According to its own reports, the Diavik mine emits around 200 kilotonnes per year.