Big N.B. emitters polluted less in 2023, but fell further behind targets
Data from province’s industrial carbon price system shows growing gap between emissions, targets
New Brunswick's biggest industrial carbon emitters pumped out lower amounts of greenhouse gases in 2023, but the reductions were not enough to keep pace with tightening emissions standards.
The gap between the total emissions by the province's 15 biggest industrial polluters and their regulated emissions limits grew larger, according to numbers from the provincial government.
That left them paying more under the province's credit-trading carbon pricing system.
Even so, that system is gaining traction, with more of those credits changing hands.
"I see good and bad news in these numbers," said Ross Linden-Fraser, a policy analyst with the Canadian Climate Institute who reviewed the numbers for CBC News
In 2023, the number of carbon credits traded — credits that emitters earn for lowering emissions and that they can then resell — was 18 times greater than in 2022.
That shows that the emitters have confidence in the system, Linder-Fraser said.
But the emissions limits that apply to each polluter get slightly stricter each year, and in 2023, emissions did not shrink enough to keep pace.
"What I see year over year is: the average isn't improving fast enough, and that's why facilities are paying more," he said.
Jonathan Alward, the vice-president of policy at the Atlantica Centre for Energy, an industry-backed research institute, said that because lowering emissions involves large, multi-year projects, reductions may seem to be slow.
"You'll see them make big investments and that's where the majority of the emission reduction will come from," he said.
The province refuses to provide the individual emissions standards for each of the 15 plants or the price they pay for credits because that is considered sensitive commercial information.
That makes it impossible to tell which of the 15 emitters fell short.
In a small province, "I don't think it would be fair to those businesses and their competitiveness to release any more information than that," Alward said.
But Linden-Fraser said other jurisdictions, including the European Union, publish detailed information that make the system more transparent.
"Are the prices of credits going up or going down? Is it becoming easier to comply, or do firms still have an incentive to make those reductions?" Linden-Fraser said.
"It's really hard to know if some are getting too easy a ride and some getting a harder ride."
New Brunswick's industrial carbon price is based on a credit trading system, a financial incentive for the 15 largest industrial emitters to stay below their emissions standards.
If they do, they earn what are called performance credits they can sell for a profit.
Plants that go above their standards must buy credits, adding to their cost.
The emissions standards are specific to each plant and are calculated per unit of production, meaning a plant that produces more in a given year can emit more without a penalty — as long as its emissions per unit are down.
They must reduce emissions by two per cent of the standard each year, until they reach 82 per cent of the standard in 2030.
Premier Susan Holt promised during last year's election to make the system more "robust," with more stringent emissions standards but also more incentives for lower emissions.
There's still no sign of those changes.
Emitters that go above their standard in a given year can buy two kinds of credits.
They can buy performance credits from emitters that earned them, or "fund credits" from the province.
The 15 big emitters collectively bought $21.1 million worth of fund credits in 2023, up from $12.6 million in 2022.
The fund credits generate revenue that the government said last year it would use to subsidize emissions-reduction projects by the 15 large emitters.
The province did not provide a list of those projects.
In 2023, the 15 biggest emitters covered by the program bought 13 times as many fund credits as the number of performance credits they earned.
That means the large emitters exceeded their targets far more than they stayed below them.
On the other hand, the emitters that had earned credits since the system launched sold a lot more of them in 2023.
"If facilities didn't try to do that, weren't trading with each other, that would suggest to me that they didn't have a lot of confidence in the system, or they didn't really care about the credits," Linden-Fraser said.
"The fact that facilities are trading, the fact that facilities are obtaining those credits, suggests to me that they think those credits have value, and they're worth having."
Alward agreed.
"It's a private system, where these businesses can talk with with one another, but I'm glad to see that that those conversations are happening and businesses are finding out where it makes sense to either hold on to a performance credit for the future or, or trade in."
In 2023 the total emissions limit for all 15 plants was the equivalent of 5.89 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, down from 6.53 million tonnes the year before.
Total emissions from those 15 plants were 6.21 million tonnes in 2023, down from 6.77 million in 2022.
The problem, according to Linden-Fraser, is that the gap between the two grew by 80,000 tonnes.
"It's OK if firms are above their emissions limit, but it's bad if their emissions don't bend towards the limit," he said.
"What I see is a widening gap between the emissions limit and the emissions that facilities are actually putting up into the atmosphere."
Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to strengthen the industrial carbon price standard in this year's election campaign.
The system is due to be reviewed by the end of 2026, with possible changes to follow.
Numbers posted by the province and by the Conservation Council of New Brunswick from a federal database show that the province's largest emitter, the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, emitted more greenhouse gases in 2023 than in 2022.
The second-biggest emitter, N.B. Power's Belledune generating station in the north, had lower emissions in 2023.
Emissions from N.B. Power's Coleson Cove plant at Saint John were also down, dropping it from third to fourth place on the list of the province's top emitters.
The utility's Bayside natural gas plant, also in Saint John, moved into third place in 2023 after being out of service for almost all of 2022.
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