Establishing regional greenhouse gas emissions mitigation priorities in Canada's building and transportation sectors

气候危机需要对所有经济部门进行快速和变革性的变革，以逐步淘汰化石燃料燃烧并最大限度地减少全球温室气体排放。在世界范围内，公司和各级政府（包括加拿大公司和政府）已承诺到2050年将温室气体排放量减少到净零，许多公司已承诺在短期内（例如，到2030年），但大多数国家缺乏实现这些目标的具体计划或现实途径。加拿大建筑和交通部门在2019年排放了2.77亿吨二氧化碳当量（占该国排放量的27%），由于目前采用的温室气体排放密集型工艺以及对前期承诺温室气体排放量和成本较大的基础设施系统的依赖以及较长的项目生命周期，建筑和交通部门的深度脱碳尤其具有挑战性。这些部门特别具有挑战性的方面包括加拿大轻型车辆车队的运输燃料循环排放以及混凝土和钢铁生产。这些行业存在或正在开发一套脱碳方案，但需要对新基础设施进行大量投资才能广泛部署。其中许多选择大大增加了对其他资源的使用，并要求低碳电力，以减少与现有技术相比的温室气体排放。由于技术的不确定性和区域因素影响这些备选办法在部署时的温室气体排放，因此对这些备选办法的绝对温室气体减排潜力没有很好的了解。这项研究将把生命周期评估（LCA）和技术经济评估（TEA）与其他技术结合起来，以证明在考虑时空变异性和不确定性以及部署新技术所需的基础设施投资的情况下，可以在加拿大的建筑和交通部门以具有成本效益的方式部署新技术，以最大限度地减少温室气体。本研究的具体近期目标是：1）评估现有建筑材料和车辆技术的温室气体排放和供应成本的区域和时间变化，2）评估不断变化的背景系统（例如，3）证明目标1和2中评估的时空变异性和不确定性如何影响加拿大建筑和运输部门内选定应用的新技术的成本效益和温室气体减排潜力。该研究计划将促进对单个温室气体减排战略在实现净零目标方面的作用以及不同温室气体减排途径的相关权衡和风险的理解。从方法上讲，这项研究将通过开发一个新的动态框架来推进环境和经济影响的评估方法，该框架可用于提供相对于现有技术的更全面和更强大的评估。

The climate crisis necessitates rapid and transformative changes to all sectors of the economy to phase out fossil fuel combustion and minimize global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Worldwide, companies and all levels of government (including Canadian firms and governments) have committed to reduce GHG emissions to net-zero by 2050 and many have committed to substantial near-term (e.g., by 2030) reductions but most lack concrete plans or realistic pathways to meet these targets. Deep decarbonization of buildings and transportation sectors, which in Canada emitted 277 Mt CO2eq in 2019 (27% of the country's emissions), is especially challenging due to the GHG emissions intensive processes currently employed and reliance on infrastructure systems with large up-front committed GHG emissions and costs and long project lifetimes. Particularly challenging aspects in these sectors include transport fuel cycle emissions from Canada's light duty vehicle fleet, and concrete and steel production. A suite of decarbonization options exist or are under development in these sectors, but require significant investment in new infrastructure to be widely deployed. Many of these options substantially increase use of other resources and require low-carbon electricity to reduce GHG emissions relative to incumbent technologies. The absolute GHG mitigation potential of these options is not well understood due to technology uncertainty and regional factors affecting GHG emissions of these options when deployed. This research will integrate life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA) with other techniques to demonstrate where new technologies can be cost-effectively deployed to maximize GHG mitigation across Canada's buildings and transportation sectors considering spatiotemporal variability and uncertainty and infrastructure investments required to deploy new technologies. The specific near-term objectives of this research are to: 1) Assess regional and temporal variability in GHG emissions and supply costs of existing building materials and vehicle technologies, 2) Evaluate how changing background systems (e.g., electricity grids) will affect future emissions of these technologies as other sectors decarbonize, 3) Demonstrate how spatiotemporal variability and uncertainty evaluated in Objectives 1 and 2 impacts the cost-effectiveness and GHG mitigation potential of new technologies in select applications within Canada's buildings and transportation sectors on an absolute basis. This research program will advance the understanding of the role of individual GHG mitigation strategies in meeting net zero targets and the associated tradeoffs and risks of different GHG mitigation pathways. Methodologically, this research will advance methods for estimating environmental and economic impacts by developing a novel dynamic framework that can be applied to provide more holistic and robust assessments of new technologies relative to incumbents.