Emission Factors and Reference Values

Version 1.0
June 2022

Document revision history

Introduction

Canada’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Offset Credit System is established under Part 2 of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (GGPPA) to encourage cost-effective domestic GHG emissions reductions from activities that are not covered by carbon pollution pricing and that go beyond legal requirements.

Canada’s GHG Offset Credit System consists of:

• regulations to implement the operational aspects of the system;
• federal offset protocols that establish the approach for quantifying GHG emissions reductions for a given project type; and
• a tracking system to register offset projects, issue and track offset credits, and share key information through a public registry.

The Canadian Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System Regulations (the “Regulations”) apply to a proponent of a project which is of a type for which a protocol has been included in the Compendium of Federal Offset Protocols; that aims to generate GHG reductions by preventing GHG emissions or removing GHGs from the atmosphere; and with respect to which the reductions are real, additional, quantified, verified, unique and permanent. The Minister must issue offset credits to a proponent for the period covered by a project report in the amount determined in accordance with subsection 29(2) of the Regulations if requirements of the section 7 and the subsection 29(1) of the Regulations are met.

This document provides emission factors and reference values that must be used in conjunction with a federal offset protocol to quantify the emission reductions achieved by an offset project. The document is categorized into general values and values specific to currently active federal offset protocols. Proponents may need to convert the units of the values provided in this document to align with the units presented in the quantification methodology of the relevant federal offset protocol.

Emission factors are subject to periodic updates when a new federal offset protocol is published, or when updated versions of the sources referenced in this document are published.

Proponents must always use the current version of this document. Amendments to this document apply on a go-forward basis and cannot be applied retroactively.

Abbreviations and acronyms

• CH₄: methane
• CO₂: carbon dioxide
• CO₂e: carbon dioxide equivalent
• g: gram
• GGPPA: Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act
• GHG: greenhouse gas
• kg: kilogram
• kWh: kilowatt hour
• L: litre
• LFG: landfill gas
• m³: metres cubed
• N₂O: nitrous oxide
• the “Regulations”: Canadian Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System Regulations
• SF₆: sulfur hexafluoride
• t: metric tonne

General

Global warming potentials

Global warming potentials are provided in Column 2 of Schedule 3 to the GGPPA.

Emission factors

Fuel combustion

Table 1 – CO₂ emission factors for natural gas (g CO₂/m³ natural gas)

* “marketable” applies to the fuel consumed by the Electric Utilities, Manufacturing Industries, Residential/commercial and Transport subsectors.

** “non-marketable” applies to raw/unprocessed gas consumption, mainly by natural gas producers.

Table 2 – CH₄ and N₂O emission factors for natural gas (g GHG/m³ natural gas)^{Footnote 3}

Table 3 – Emission factors for natural gas liquids (g GHG/L fuel)^{Footnote 4}

Table 4 – Emission factors for refined petroleum products (g GHG/L fuel)^{Footnote 5}

Biomass combustion

Table 5 – N₂O emission factors for LFG combustion (kg N₂O/tonne CH₄)^{Footnote 9}

Grid electricity GHG consumption intensity

A ‘generation intensity’ indicator is derived to reflect the GHG emissions intensity of electricity as it is delivered to the electricity grid. A ‘consumption intensity’ indicator is also derived to reflect the GHG emissions intensity of electricity as it is delivered to the consumer.

Table 6 – Electricity consumption intensity values (g CO₂e/kWh electricity consumed )^{Footnote 11}