Statistics Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Account

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Statistics Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Account is produced following the concepts of the System of National Accounts. It uses many of the same basic data as the greenhouse gas inventory compiled by Environment Canada; however, the information is recast into the commodity and industry framework of the System of National Accounts so that the emissions data can be used for economic modelling. In particular, this linkage permits use of Statistics Canada’s national input-output accounts to analyze the interplay between production and consumption of goods and services and the greenhouse gas emissions that result from those activities. Emissions from the production of goods and services are attributed via the input-output model to the final purchaser.

Statistics Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Account provides emissions estimates for 119 industries and 2 categories of household expenditure. In addition to the detailed emissions data produced by sector, several environment-economy “intensity” indicators are derived from Statistics Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Account, including the greenhouse gas intensity of gross industrial output, the greenhouse gas intensity of household consumption and the greenhouse gas intensity of net exports.

Emissions factors from Environment Canada are applied to Statistics Canada’s energy use account data (which are also based on the System of National Accounts industry and commodity frameworks). The energy use data come mainly from Statistics Canada’s Industrial Consumption of Energy Survey, transportation surveys, the Report on Energy Supply-Demand in Canada and Natural Resources Canada’s Census of Mines. Additional estimates of emissions that are not linked to fossil fuel consumption are taken directly from the Environment Canada greenhouse gas inventory and are applied to the appropriate industries in the System of National Accounts.

The final demand categories can be defined as follows:

• Exports: receipts from other provinces and territories or from abroad for sales of merchandise or services. The barter, grant, and giving of goods and services as gifts would also constitute exports.

• Gross fixed capital formation (subdivided into “Construction” and “Machinery and equipment”): the value of a producer’s acquisitions, less disposals, of fixed assets during the accounting period plus certain additions to the value of non-produced assets (such as subsoil assets or major improvements in the quantity, quality, or productivity of land) realized by the productive activity of institutional units.

• Government net current expenditure: economic activities of the federal government (including defence), the provincial and territorial governments, local (municipal) governments, universities, colleges, vocational and trade schools, publicly funded hospitals and residential care facilities, and publicly funded schools and school boards.

• Inventories: consist of stocks of outputs that are still held by the units that produced them prior to their being further processed, sold or delivered to other units, or used in other ways, and stocks of products acquired from other units that are intended to be used for intermediate consumption or for resale without further processing.

• Personal expenditure: represents the purchases of commodities, commodity taxes, wages and salaries, and supplementary labour income of persons employed by the personal sector. Includes individuals, families, and private non-profit organizations.