Industry
Industrial emissions decreased by 1.4% in 2024 and remain 9% lower than 2019’s pre-pandemic level.
At 13% of total emissions across the GTHA, industry is the third-highest emitting sector after buildings and transportation. Unlike those sectors, however, industrial activity and consequent emissions are not distributed evenly across the region.
It is also important to note that year-to-year variations are typically driven by industrial processes rather than changes in weather.
The largest sources of industrial emissions in the GTHA continue to be steel and cement manufacturing, comprising roughly 70% of total industrial emissions.
The GTHA’s steel industry is largely concentrated in Hamilton, while cement is predominantly produced at plants in Durham and Peel. Importantly, the steel and cement outputs from those regions are used in the rest of the GTHA and beyond.
Industrial emissions are sourced from the Government of Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), which requires facilities emitting over 10 ktCO2eq to report their annual emission totals. This is an important resource for tracking and evaluating progress across the country’s largest industrial emitters. However, emissions from facilities that emit less than 10 ktCO2eq annually are excluded from this inventory as they are not subject to GHGRP reporting requirements.
In March 2025, the Canadian government announced that it will spend nearly $150 million of funding through its Output-Based Pricing System to help industrial facilities achieve greater energy efficiency and adopt sustainable solutions. A total of 38 projects will be funded, with several facilities located in the GTHA. This initiative is funded directly from industrial carbon pricing proceeds. TAF will monitor progress and emission reduction impacts resulting from these projects.
Projections: Since the GHGRP is published on a two-year lag and facility reported emissions are not yet available at the time of TAF’s publication, we project emissions in the industrial sector.
In 2023, we projected a 2.9% increase in GTHA industrial emissions, while recently released facility reported emissions data shows the actual increase was 1.2%. The 2023 industrial emissions data in this inventory has been updated to reflect actual data.
To continue to improve our projections, TAF has made several updates. The 2024 industrial emissions are projected based on primary production data from the GTHA’s steel and cement plants (we assume the emissions intensity of steel and cement production remained the same as in 2023). Non-steel and cement-related industrial emissions are projected based on job growth in the non-steel and cement manufacturing sectors, with data acquired from Statistics Canada.