Alberta's Large Greenhouse Gas Emission Rate Explained

Inspiration

We were drawn by the huge difference in Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions compared to the other provinces. We decided to dig deeper and try to figure out why Alberta's emission rate is so bad, who is guilty, and how to fix it.

What it does

We found out that Alberta is home to 41 of the 100 most polluting companies in Canada, including the worst of them all, Syncrude Canada Ltd., which produced 12,254 petajoules in 2019.

How we built it

We started off by organizing data found in the "Physical flow account for greenhouse gas emissions data" set you provided us. By graphing it, we noticed a trend in these numbers: Alberta's emissions skyrocketed, and we wondered why. To better visualize our data, however, we decided to visualize the emissions per capita per province from the years 2009-2019. With this graph, we were now able to determine that the biggest emitters were both Alberta and Saskatchewan. We decided to build our story on this. By doing further research and using some other graphs provided by the Government of Canada, we were able to link these emissions to the tremendous industries of oil and natural gas in the Prairies. However, we decided to make Alberta the culprit in our story, as it produces 80% of Canada’s oil production to sustain the world’s 4th largest supplier of oil.

Challenges we ran into

We had a hard time with graph formatting and merging, which took much of our time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We had many schedule limitations that forced us to begin the project very late. However, we still created a solid story with some graphs to back up our ideas.

What we learned

We learned that Alberta is responsible for having 40 companies part of the 100 worse emitters in Canada. They keep funding these companies, who grow every year, especially Syncrude Canada, who is the worst offender.

What's next for Alberta's Large Greenhouse Gas Emission Rate Explained

There will not be any improvements unless Alberta pushes for renewable energy sources. 90% of their energy relies solely on non-renewables, like natural gas and coal.