Thank you very much.
My evidence here is based on a report by my colleague Dan Calverley and me, which we had published yesterday, where we investigated the phase-out pathways for fossil fuel production within Paris-compliant carbon budgets.
I want to start by outlining a few key energy emission facts about Canada, which you will know better than I do anyway, and on oil and gas production and the broader emissions.
Canada produces a little under 5.5% of global oil and gas as a GDP per capita measured in U.S. dollars and purchasing power parity of about $51,500 per person, of which oil and gas revenue represents about 10%. So Canada's non-oil and gas GDP per capita is about $46,000 U.S. That's the 13th highest of the 88 countries that produce oil and gas around the world.
On the consumption side, Canada is demonstrating no meaningful leadership. It has one of the highest levels of emissions per capita, at around 16 tonnes per person. That's two and a half times higher than the CO2 per person in Sweden, where I am now and which has similarly cold winters.
Since 1990 and the first IPCC report, Canada has overseen a rise in CO2 emissions of 27%. At the same time, Sweden's emissions have fallen by 28%.
This is captured really in the issue of vehicles. Canada's car fleet is pretty much the most polluting of all of the industrialized nations. It is an excuse to use cold and long distances for this. Canadians live in a relatively narrow strip in the south of Canada, where temperatures are very similar to those in Sweden, Finland and Norway, which have much lower emitting vehicles.
In short, Canada is financially in a very favourable position, compared with the other oil and gas producers, to shift away from oil and gas production. Canada also has a huge potential to improve its deeply inefficient and profligate use of energy.
With this in mind, I'll move to the report, which has a key focus on the oil and gas sector, a sector in which I previously worked as a design engineer, both onshore and offshore.
As our starting point, we take the Canadian government's signatory to the Paris Agreement and other climate protocols at face value and that Canada therefore has every intention of delivering on its 1.5°C to 2°C commitments, as enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
From here, we used the IPCC's latest carbon budgets. For this evidence, I'm going to focus on our most conservative reading of the Paris Agreement, the G7 communiqué and COP26, which we take to be a 50% chance of not exceeding 1.5°C of warming. This equates to a global carbon budget for the global energy sector from 2022 of about 360 billion tonnes of CO2.
Building on this, I want to summarize the key messages from our report and relate these to Canada. The carbon budgets associated with keeping 1.5°C alive, and indeed staying well below 2°C, imply much more urgent cuts in emissions than any government is considering and require the rapid and complete phase-out of all fossil fuel production. The maths are clear. For a fifty-fifty chance of not exceeding 1.5, the carbon budget equates the 10 years of current global emissions. That's ten years.
The UN's equity framing of common but differentiated responsibility requires wealthy nations with economies that are less dependent on oil and gas revenues, such as Canada, to lead the way with high rates of closure and early phase-out dates. Poorer nations have a little leeway with both slower rates of closure and slightly later phase-out dates.
The carbon budget, for a 50% chance of 1.5°C, places very tight constraints on the production of oil and gas. For Canada, as with other wealthy oil and gas producers, the output of oil and gas needs to be cut by about 74% by 2030, with complete phase-out by 2034. For the poorest nations, a 14% cut is required by 2030 and all of the production ended by 2050.
There is no practical emissions space within the IPCC's carbon budget for a 50% chance of 1.5°C for any nation to develop any new production facilities of any kind, whether coal mines, oil wells or gas terminals. This challenging conclusion holds across all nations, regardless of income or levels of development.
To summarize, if Canada is to not renege on its Paris commitments, it has no choice but to establish a carbon cap-based oil and production. This cap needs to see Canada cut oil and gas production by almost three-quarters by 2030 and eliminate all production by 2034.
Alternatively, we need to be honest to our children and to those already suffering from the climate impacts we have knowingly chosen to impose on them and say that we are unprepared to make the changes necessary to meet our commitments. They'd need to prepare for 3°C or 4°C of warming, with the devastating climate impacts that will entail.
Our choice here will say a lot about the sort of society we are and what sort of leadership we have.
Thanks for listening.