Where does our energy come from in Canada?

However you slice it, we need energy to most things in our society, so what are the main sources of the energy that make Canada work?

• Oil         31.72%
• Natural Gas 27.55%
• Hydro       26.16%
• Coal         6.67%
• Nuclear      6.60%
• Renewables   1.31%

Data is from BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2013

As you can see, 65.94% of the energy we use in Canada still comes from fossil fuels, this is down from 69.49% in 2003 but honestly the country has been in the 67% +-3pp range for the last 20 years .  The economics of energy in Canada still do not make it worthwhile for business and the public to en-mass abandon fossil fuels.

On a positive side, the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in Canada has been steady of falling for the last six years.   As a nation we peaked in 2007 and then saw a huge drop with the global recession but the post recession recovery has been slower than the trends in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Year CO2 in millions of tonnes
2012 619.6
2011 623.7
2010 610.8
2009 589.8
2008 630.8
2007 641.2
2006 628.2
2005 635.6
2004 628.7
2003 630.6
2002 604.5
2001 591.1
2000 592.4
1999 574.4
1998 566.3
1997 560.7
1996 544.7
1995 526.3
1994 506.4
1993 491.0
1992 492.7

When you take out 2008 and 2009, Canada has had a steady level of CO2 emissions since 2003 and in fact has seen declines.  This seems to be because Canada's domestic consumption of fossil fuels has been flat since 2003.  When it comes to coal, 2012 was the lowest coal consumption by Canada since 1979.

From 2003 to 2012 Canada's primary energy consumption rose 5.35% which is at half the rate of population growth during the same time.   By comparison from 1993 to 2002 energy consumption rose by 15.44%, faster than the rate of population growth.