While the rest of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions crept up 3% since 2005, Ontario’s dropped 22%. Most of that gap comes down to one decision: closing every coal-fired power plant in the province by 2014, the single largest emissions reduction in Canadian history. Nuclear and hydroelectric power now generate the vast majority of Ontario’s electricity, giving the province one of the cleanest grids in North America.
Emissions Change Since 2005
73% of the way to the 2030 target
Scientists are “virtually certain” that 2026 will be among the hottest years on record. Global average temperatures are projected between 1.35 and 1.53 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with a 12% chance of exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold that Paris Agreement signatories committed to avoiding.
A 12% chance. That is not small.
Where Ontario’s Emissions Come From
That 22% headline masks a harder truth: the easy win is spent. Coal is gone.
What remains are the sectors where cuts come slowly and expensively.
Transportation is the biggest at about 35%: passenger vehicles, freight trucks, buses, rail. 8 million registered vehicles, the vast majority running on gasoline or diesel. EV adoption is growing (over 60,000 new battery-electric vehicles registered in 2024, roughly 10% of new car sales), but the existing fleet turns over slowly.
The average car stays on the road 12 to 15 years.
The gasoline-powered vehicles sold today will still be emitting in the late 2030s.
Industry accounts for roughly 28%. Steel, cement, chemicals, refining: energy-intensive processes that are difficult to electrify. The Algoma Steel conversion in Sault Ste. Marie is a real step forward. But it is one facility. Dozens of other large emitters across the province have no announced decarbonization timelines.
Buildings: about 20%, almost all from natural gas furnaces and water heaters. Ontario has roughly 5 million gas-heated buildings. Heat pumps work and are increasingly cost-competitive, but the retrofit pace is glacial. At current rates, converting Ontario’s building stock would take decades.
No mandate. No incentive program. No plan to speed things up. Nothing.
Agriculture and waste round out the remaining 15% to 17%. Methane from livestock, manure management, and landfills is a potent greenhouse gas (roughly 80 times more warming than CO2 over a 20-year period). Ontario’s 49 active landfills produce significant methane emissions; some have gas capture systems, but many older and smaller sites do not.
Agricultural methane is even harder to address. It would require changes to farming practices. The government has shown zero interest in mandating those.
The Cap-and-Trade Road Not Taken
The Wynne government introduced Ontario’s cap-and-trade system in 2017, linking it with Quebec and California in the Western Climate Initiative. The program set a declining cap on total emissions and required large emitters to buy allowances for every tonne of CO2 they produced. One full year of operation. $2.87 billion in revenue (that is not a typo), directed toward transit, building retrofits, social housing energy upgrades, and EV incentives.
The Ford government cancelled it in its first weeks in office in 2018.
Cost to the province: an estimated $3 billion in planned revenue, plus $2.8 billion in legal claims from companies that had purchased carbon allowances.
That’s a lot of money to not have.
Ontario’s Auditor General later noted that the cancellation left the province without a credible mechanism to drive emissions reductions in the sectors where they are most needed.
Ontario’s Plan
The Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan, released in November 2018, commits to reducing emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. The replacement framework relies on the Emissions Performance Standards program targeting large industrial emitters. The province says the EPS will reduce industrial emissions while saving Ontario over $1 billion compared to the federal regulation it replaced.
That is a neat trick if it holds.
Concrete wins? A few. The clean steelmaking investment in Sault Ste. Marie, projected to remove up to 3 million additional tonnes of GHG emissions. A new carbon flux monitoring station in the Ring of Fire area.
Individual projects. Not a system-wide strategy. Not even close.
The Math Problem
Ontario has the second-highest greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Second-highest.
Environmental Defence and other groups argue the Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan is too weak to deliver meaningful reductions beyond what coal closure already achieved. The numbers back them up: the federal government’s interim objective called for a 20% reduction below 2005 levels by 2026, and the most recent national data (from 2023) showed emissions at 8.5% below 2005. That interim target will be missed.
Ontario’s 22% reduction puts it ahead of the national curve. But most of that progress happened before Ford took office.
The question is what this government has actually done to push the number further. That matters more than the inherited headline.
Cars and Trucks
35% of Ontario’s emissions come from transportation. The province has no plan to cut them. No EV purchase incentive (the $14,000 rebate was cancelled in 2018). No zero-emission vehicle mandate like British Columbia and Quebec have adopted.
Zero tools for the biggest problem.
Meanwhile, the province is building more highways (Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass), which will induce more driving and more emissions. The government says economic growth and commute times matter too, and that the market will drive EV adoption without mandates.
You cannot build highways and cut transport emissions at the same time. Something gives.
June 2026: When We’ll Know More
Large industrial facilities in Ontario must report and verify their greenhouse gas emissions annually to the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. Reports for the 2025 reporting year are due June 1, 2026.
Those filings will be the first real look at whether industrial emissions are actually moving in the right direction under current policy.
Betting on Nuclear
$26.8 billion. The Pickering refurbishment and potential new reactors at Bruce Power are partly a climate story. Keeping 50% of the province’s electricity nuclear means keeping it carbon-free. But nuclear is expensive and slow to build, and growing electricity demand may outpace the timeline for new capacity.
The Ford government is betting that clean electricity and industrial emitter rules are enough.
They are not. At current pace, the province will probably miss the 2030 target. Nobody seems particularly worried about that in Queen’s Park.
Sources and verification: Ontario’s 22% emissions reduction since 2005 is from the Ontario government’s climate change page. The 3% national increase is from Environment and Climate Change Canada data. The sector-by-sector emissions breakdown (transportation 35%, industry 28%, buildings 20%, agriculture/waste 15-17%) is from Ontario’s greenhouse gas inventory reported through ECCC’s National Inventory Report. EV registration data (60,000 new BEVs in 2024) is from Statistics Canada and Transport Canada new vehicle registration data. The cap-and-trade revenue figure ($2.87 billion) and cancellation cost estimates are from the Ontario Auditor General’s 2019 report. The Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan commitments are from the 2018 provincial plan. The federal 20% interim target and 8.5% actual reduction are from ECCC’s greenhouse gas projections, updated December 2025. The Sault Ste. Marie clean steel investment is from the Ontario Ministry of Environment. The 2026 temperature projections and 12% chance of exceeding 1.5 degrees are from Environment Canada reporting in CBC News. The June 1, 2026 GHG reporting deadline is from the Ontario MECP. The cancellation of the $14,000 EV rebate in 2018 is from Ontario government records. Information on BC and Quebec ZEV mandates is from their respective provincial transportation policies.
Track Ontario environmental legislation at Ontario Pulse.