Effectiveness of the national pollutant release inventory as a policy tool to curb atmospheric industrial emissions in Canada

Abstract

To curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce concentrations of toxic substances in Canada’s atmosphere, many pieces of environment legislation are targeted at reducing industrial emissions. Traditional regulation prescribes penalties through fines to discourage industries from polluting, but in the past two decades, alternative forms of environmental regulation like the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) have been introduced. NPRI is an information management tool which requires industries to self-report emissions data based on a set of guidelines determined by Environment and Climate Change Canada, a federal agency. The tool works to inform the public regarding industry emissions and provides a large database that can be analyzed by researchers and regulators to inform emissions trends in Canada. These tools have seen some success in other jurisdictions (e.g., United States and Australia). However, some research assessing the U.S Toxic Release Inventory suggests there are fundamental weaknesses in the self-reported nature of the data, and incidences of under-reporting. This preliminary study aimed to explore NPRI in Canada and test its effectiveness against the National Air Pollutant Surveillance Network (NAPS), an air quality monitoring program administered by the federal government. While instances of under-reporting were undetected, their study identified areas of weakness in the NPRI tool and instances of increasing emissions across various industrial sectors in Canada.