A Personal Project
Plan Zero is a personal project to work publicly toward understanding how Canada might achieve net-zero emissions.
These lines (from the IPCC-Sectors graphic at time of writing) represent most of Canada's human-caused emissions. The year 2020 marks half-way between the year 1990 (the left boundary of the horizontal axis) and the year 2050, at which point the government of Canada has pledged to the international community on behalf of Canadian citizens that we will have achieved net-zero CO2e emissions. As can be seen in the graphic, the total emissions are not yet obviously tracking to zero! What are we currently doing, and what might we do in the future to make these lines go down and to the right? It's December 2025 and I'm setting out to understand it in my own way. I'm launching this site with:
- IPCC Sectors: Canada's emissions by most-granular IPCC sector, some (5) of which have been investigated as to their underlying causes and sources.
- Strategies: Emission-reduction ideas, some (2) of which have been fleshed as high-level project / business plans.
- Source code: The Python-language modelling logic and content for the site (on github).
There are a lot of ways this project could go. I'll share it around a bit privately, get some feedback, and decide then. I'd like to work my way though at least the top ten or twenty emissions sectors in the way I've been working so far. I don't think the site is standalone yet for any audience, so I'm not going to broadcast anything just yet.
- James Bergstra, Ph.D.