I’m not sure about the electricity generation/consumption. I imagine BC and Quebec are exporters, due to plentiful hydroelectric; but that clearly doesn’t contribute much to GHG emissions. Manitoba might export as well… not sure where they get their electricity. So I imagine most of that generation growth corresponds to consumption growth. (I suppose I could control for population growth and recalculate all these numbers… but whatever.)

I’ve heard the complaints about “off” devices sucking juice from the wall, but I suspect it still doesn’t add up to that much. The media loves to focus on easy/stupid fixes like that… and sure, it would be a painless thing to fix. But at the end of the day, I imagine the big culprits are still air conditioning, space heating and water heating – the painful ones that would require major behaviour change to fix.

Incidentally, do you know what the population growth has been from 1990-2004?

I wonder- is the growth in electricty generation the same as electricity consumption? Or does Canada import/export a significant fraction of its electricty?

I’ve recent heard estimates that per capita electricity usage in San Diego is skyrocketing due at least in part to “phantom” electrical devices; as offices/houses generally have increasing numbers of gismos plugged into the wall, which may be “sleeping” but not off…