This text is taken from Courrier de l’économie. Click here to subscribe.
Vote with your money, the saying goes. In this game, the portrait of Quebec’s energy consumption drawn up last Monday by HEC Montreal tends to show that Quebecers are not interested in the fight against the climate or in reducing their energy consumption.
Professor and holder of the HEC Montréal Energy Sector Management Chair, Pierre-Olivier Pineau, illustrates the situation in one sentence. “I find it serious that there is a real technological improvement in transport and that instead of taking advantage of it, consumers prefer to opt for a higher category vehicle,” he told the Duty. This negates the energy gains that would otherwise have been allowed to be reaped.
In 2021, the average fuel consumption of automobiles registered in Québec was 9.3 liters per 100 kilometres. This includes the impact of a growing presence of hybrid or electric motor vehicles.
Ten years earlier, the average consumption of light vehicles in Canada was, according to the International Energy Agency, 9.4 liters per 100 kilometres. Meanwhile, Quebec’s automobile fleet has continued to grow, and it has even grown faster than the province’s population.
Whatever the Legault government says, the growing popularity of SUVs is part of the problem, but not only. There is a law that limits the average fuel consumption of new vehicles sold in Canada — it mimics the same standard, called CAFE, that exists in the United States. This standard is less stringent for SUVs, considered light trucks, than for cars.
This popularity of SUVs, is it the fault of car advertising? Is winter in 2023 so harsh that the sedans that dominated the market 15 years ago can no longer get through snowbanks or potholes? Are there so many road accidents these days that only a bigger and heavier vehicle is safe enough?
Either way, automakers say they’re producing more SUVs because that’s what consumers are asking of them.
Bonus Malus
We will have to wait until 2025 or 2026 for a report on the energy consumed in Quebec to testify to the success or otherwise of the electrification of transportation, which is still very recent. But one thing already seems certain: it will not be enough if Quebec wants to sustainably reduce its dependence on oil, which, except during COVID, only increases from one year to the next.
What else to do? Collectively, it seems the only way to change consumer habits is to talk to their wallets. There have been ride-sharing platforms, car-sharing services, and other ways to get around town, suburbs, and regions for years. Their adoption remains negligible.
Left to their own devices, Quebec consumers seem unable to reduce their energy consumption, including petroleum products. A bonus-malus program that would tax vehicles according to their greenhouse gas emissions, for example, is a solution put forward by experts. Would it be enough to permanently change the habits of Quebec consumers?
If they do not want to change of their own free will, Quebecers are able to forcefully adapt to new restrictions. The almost total closure of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine bridge-tunnel did not cause the planned motorway disaster. “This is empirical proof that we have succeeded in achieving what we thought was impossible to do,” observes Pierre-Olivier Pineau. It’s quite an extraordinary experience. It shows that we can do it. »
By fair means or foul.