

Market Snapshot: Industry shapes energy use across Canada

Release date: 2017-12-07

The National Energy Board recently released a new product: Provincial and Territorial Energy Profiles. These profiles provide insights into how our country produces, uses, and trades energy.

Close to half of Canada’s total end-use energy demandFootnote 1 comes from the industrial sector. The different types and sizes of industry in each province or territory are key factors for total end-use energy demand and energy intensity.

Energy intensity is the amount of energy required to produce one unit of economic output or activity. The energy used can be compared to gross domestic product (GDP). Energy use can also be compared to the size of the population to calculate energy use per capita. These figures show how Canadians use energy every day.

End-Use Energy Demand and Intensity by Province and Territory (2015)

Source and Description

Source: NEB, Statistics Canada, NEB calculations

Description: This column chart ¬shows the end-use demand in petajoules (PJ) in every province and territory. The reader can further break the data down by sector or by type of fuel. The chart can be displayed by the two measures of energy intensity: as gigajoules (GJ) per unit of output (that is, GDP in thousands of dollars), or GJ per capita. Note: One PJ is equal to one million GJ. One PJ is the amount of energy required to power the Montreal Metro for one year, or to heat 10 000 homes with natural gas for a year.

Resource extraction such as oil, gas, and mineral mining uses a lot of energy. The effect of these industries is clear for Alberta and Saskatchewan, which rank first and second respectively for end-use energy intensity and use per capita. In these provinces, end-use energy intensity is nearly double the national average, driven largely by industrial use of natural gas. In central Canada, the manufacturing and service sectors produce more economic output per unit of energy than the resource extraction industry does. For example, Ontario is the second largest end-use energy consumer in Canada; however, it ranks near the bottom (eleventh) for energy intensity.

Explore this interactive chart and the Provincial and Territorial Energy Profiles for more insights, or contact Kinsey Nickerson and Ryan Creighton with questions at snapshots@cer-rec.gc.ca.

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