Provincial Forecast frequently asked questions

The British Columbia Provincial Forecast of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Supporting Metrics (Provincial Forecast) contains projections of province-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals for every fifth calendar year from 2015 to 2030, covering all the emissions included in the Province's legislated GHG emissions reduction targets.

Emissions projections

The emissions projections in the Provincial Forecast are broken down by:

• internationally defined emissions activity categories (fuel combustion, industrial process, etc.)
• the economic sectors that produce them
• each policy

Other projections

The Provincial Forecast also includes projections of:

• GDP by sector
• energy use by type and sector
• electricity generation
• fossil fuel commodity prices

Projection scenarios

The Provincial Forecast includes these projections for two main scenarios:

• a reference scenario that includes only climate policies existing as of July 2017
• a CleanBC scenario that includes CleanBC policies that have been announced to date.

Emissions projections are also included for individual policy scenarios.

The Provincial Forecast is produced using modelling conducted for the B.C. Government by Navius Research.

The Provincial Forecast Methodology Report (PDF, 1.2MB) is released annually along with the Provincial Forecast (XLSX, 102KB).

This report provides:

• a description of the models (gTech and IESD) used by Navius Research to produce the projections in the Provincial Forecast
• descriptions of each modelled policy and how they are represented in the modelling
• a summary of notable changes in the modelling from the previous year

It also describes the post-modelling adjustments applied by the B.C. Government to produce the net projections used to report on progress to achieving B.C.'s emissions targets in the annual Climate Change Accountability Report and elsewhere.

The projections are produced by Navius Research, a private consulting firm based in Vancouver, using the gTech and IESD models.

There is one exception to this: land-use change emissions are added to the model results by the B.C. Government. These emissions are within the scope of B.C.’s emissions targets, but cannot currently be modelled by Navius.

More information is available in the Provincial Forecast Methodology Report (PDF, 1.2MB).

B.C. makes one post-modelling addition, which accounts for land-use change emissions that are within the scope of B.C.’s emissions targets but cannot currently be modelled by Navius. As a baseline, the B.C. Government assumes that these emissions remain constant at the average of the five most recent years in the Provincial Inventory 1990-2020 (XLSX, 277KB). This post-modelling addition is included in the Provincial Forecast.

Post-modelling adjustments represent additional abatement applied to modelled emissions by the B.C. Government outside of the model. They are not included in the Provincial Forecast, but are used for B.C.’s assessment of actions to meet its emissions targets. There are two reasons that B.C. makes post-modelling adjustments:

1. Some types of policies cannot currently be assessed in the Navius model. For the 2022 modelling, this was the case for planned agriculture and deforestation actions.
2. For some complex programs, methods in addition to the Navius modelling are used to quantify emissions abatement. For the 2022 modelling, this was the case for the CleanBC Industry Fund.

For more information on post-modelling additions and adjustments, see the Provincial Forecast Methodology Report (PDF, 1.2MB).

The models that Navius uses to generate the projections operate in five-year intervals. They are designed to capture long-term trends in emissions, the economy, and society rather than year-to-year variations due to unpredictable short-term factors. These long-term trends are the best way to assess the impact of climate policies.

Since the original CleanBC plan was released in 2018, a methodology report has been published annually describing the modelling used to project emissions and related metrics. From 2018 to 2020, the projections themselves were published as tables within the methodology reports. The 2021 Provincial Forecast was the first to be published as a separate data file.

Climate Action Secretariat staff work closely with other ministries to ensure that the modelling assumptions and policy information used to produce the Provincial Forecast (XLSX, 102KB) are as accurate and up-to-date as possible, and consistent with other government data.