jawagord wrote:The usage chart in the article shows Canada's fossil fuel consumption peaked in 2007 and has not yet returned to that level, despite 10 years of immigration and recovering economy. 2019 could be a new peak or not, we really won't know until decades after the fact if usage has truly peaked. Time to move on.
Yes and what happened in 2008? Oh yeah, the world went into a recession that should really be called the Second Great Depression and consumption of fossil fuels in North America and Europe took a serious hit. However population growth did not stop, or even slow by any appreciable amount so here we are a decade later and back near those 2007 levels.
In all honesty if the article was "Canada to hit new highs in Fossil Fuel use in 2019" I would have no problem with it, but Peak is a specific term with a specific meaning, the peak is the top and you can't go higher. Out here in the real world where people have to work and eat and heat their homes more people means more energy use. Increasing efficiency can slow down that rate of growth, but there are limits to energy efficiency and when nearly all new heating units are 93% efficient or better (mine was 97.5% when I installed it) the efficiency gains in the future are minimal compared to the last few decades. In 1980 the average furnace was only 55%-65% efficient so there was a LOT of room for improvement. Furnaces installed in the 21st century however have been under increasingly strong local efficiency requirement which means they are now much better than the 'minimum' 78% efficiency required by federal regulations in the USA. I am not sure what the Canadian minimum is but due to the vast cross border trade they are at least as tough as the USA standard and most likely much stricter. Aha just looked it up, Canadian furnaces have a 90% minimum requirement as of December 31, 2012.
Canadian Standards Gas Furnace Effectively this means all new construction and most older construction that replaces the heating units on a 25 year cycle either already have or will soon be getting high efficiency furnaces. In turn this means efficiency gains in the future will have to come from improved building practices like thicker walls with greater insulation, and those standards generally cost a lot for retrofitting to existing structures. People would rather spend a few extra dollars on heating in winter than a few thousand making the building more efficient in retaining that heat.
What this adds up to is when cities like Toronto and Edmonton grow by 100,000+ residents in just five years is a lot of new construction is going up to house them, and that new construction is all using high efficiency furnaces already, so the energy use will inevitably increase with the population growth.