In its latest annual update of the measures to implement its Plan for a Green Economy, the Legault government decided to inject an additional $1 billion over five years for the decarbonization of the building sector, whether residential, commercial or industrial. A great opportunity for companies to adopt a transformation strategy before having it imposed on them.
Two weeks ago, the Government of Quebec announced new measures to achieve its climate targets, measures accompanied by an additional envelope of $9 billion in order to achieve its objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ( GHG) by 2030.
Beyond the feasibility or otherwise of achieving the objectives set by the Quebec government, the new measures aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of buildings in Quebec should encourage businesses that have not yet adopted energy strategy to tackle it quickly.
As we know, the heating, air conditioning and ventilation of buildings account for about 10% of total GHG emissions in Canada.
Over the past 10 years, many managers of office and commercial buildings, multi-residential and industrial buildings have gotten to work and adopted measures aimed first at reducing their energy bills and, secondarily, at reducing their carbon footprint.
“In the commercial and residential sector, a company could hope to recoup its investment in energy efficiency over a period of three years or less by taking advantage of government subsidies. In the industrial sector, companies are looking for a return on investment within a year,” explains Myrielle Robitaille, Senior Energy and Environment Advisor at Sia Partners, a French consulting group established in Montreal since 2017.
For 15 years, Myrielle Robitaille, an engineer specializing in energy efficiency, has supported dozens of companies in their efforts to adopt an optimal transformation strategy. It welcomes very favorably the latest measures that the Legault government has presented to accelerate the movement.
“Nearly 80% of commercial buildings have undergone a transformation, but only 20% of industrial companies. For them, investing in new equipment was more important than reducing their carbon footprint, they want a quick return on their investment,” observes Ms.me Robitaille.
In commercial buildings, it is often a question of simply installing building control systems – even if the heating, air conditioning and ventilation equipment is recent – to obtain a reduction in consumption by modulating it according to the conditions. changes of the day.
Restore before having it imposed
The Montreal company BrainBox AI, for example, has developed an autonomous artificial intelligence technology that makes it possible to interconnect all the heating, ventilation and air conditioning devices in a building and to have them communicate with each other according to the traffic, sunshine, door openings.
BrainBox AI’s technology reduces a building’s energy bill by 25% and its carbon footprint by 20-40%.
“I offer this kind of technology to our customers, but there are around fifty different actions that we can do to increase our energy efficiency. You have to go on a case-by-case basis,” explains Myrielle Robitaille.
If companies could already count on various subsidy programs from different governments to optimize their energy efficiency, the billion dollars that Quebec intends to invest to support their transformation adds predictability, believes the specialist.
Subsidies last a while. There, we know that there will still be funds, but what is important especially in the latest measures announced by Quebec, is that the government plans to introduce a mandatory disclosure standard for the energy balance sheets of businesses.
Myrielle Robitaille, Senior Energy and Environment Advisor at Sia Partners
Montreal imposed this rule in 2021 for buildings with more than 100 dwellings and began to apply it in 2022. Quebec could act in the fall to force companies to reveal their energy balance.
This is done in Europe and companies that emit too many GHGs can get a bad rating or even be considered unhealthy.
At a time when environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are increasingly important in the evaluation of companies, a supplier of goods or services with a negative rating could lose contracts with a customer who wishes to display an impeccable environmental record.
There are non-performing companies with a lackluster environmental record that will wake up too late and have their energy transformation imposed on them. The government is announcing aid and they would do better to take advantage of it to restore their energy balance rather than being forced into a costly transformation while risking tarnishing their reputation.