Canada has been a particularly heavy greenhouse gas emitter. Among Kyoto signatories that were off track to meet their reduction targets in 2004, Canada's 25 % increase in greenhouse gas emissions is among the highest. By contrast, members of the European Union made on average a 2 % reduction in CO2 emissions.   Indeed, even the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, increased its emissions by less than Canada (a 16 % increase between 1990 and 2004).  Canada's 20 tonne per capita emissions are also among the highest in the world, "largely the result of its size, climate (i.e. energy demands), and resource-based economy" according to Environment Canada.  The good news is that Canada has become increasingly carbon efficient since 1990-the amount of economic activity has been increasing for each unit of greenhouse gas emitted.  However, our overall emissions have grown because economic growth has led to higher incomes and more total extraction and use of fossil fuels, thus overshadowing efficiency savings.
    
Currently, the energy sector, which includes everything from road transportation to electricity generation and oil and gas production, is responsible for the vast majority of Canadian emissions. As Environment Canada reports, it is also in the energy sector where most of the growth in emissions has occurred since 1990. Much of that emissions growth came from increased production of oil and gas, and a lot of that was fueled by export demand (total oil and gas production grew by 65 % between 1990 and 2005, while exports grew by 156 %). However greenhouse gas emissions have also increased because of the nature of the oil produced. Due to the rising global price of oil, it has become more economically feasible to develop the oil sands, which require the emission of more greenhouse gases during extraction than does old fashioned, conventional crude.

On the consumption side, the biggest emitter is transportation, which represents one quarter of all Canadian greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions from the transportation sector have increased both because "more people drove further" and because they were increasingly likely to drive SUVs and other light trucks that emit more greenhouse gases than cars.

Meanwhile, electricity and heat generation were responsible for a 33 megatonne increase in greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2005, driven by increased demand and an increase in the proportion of electricity produced by coal-fired plants (which tend to be worse greenhouse gas emitters than other electricity producers). The good news is that the proportion of coal-generated electricity has declined in the last few years even as clean wind power capacity has risen.

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