All new construction in Montreal must be “zero emissions” by 2025, Mayor Valérie Plante will announce today. The Quebec metropolis is following in the footsteps of other major North American cities that are eliminating fossil fuel heating systems from new buildings erected on their territory.
From 2024, construction permits for small buildings (less than 2,000 square meters) will only be granted to buildings whose operation will not result in greenhouse gas emissions. From 2025, large buildings (over 2,000 square meters) will also be subject to the measure.
As part of the Montreal Climate Summit, the Plante administration will also announce today the advancement by a decade, to 2040, of its objective of seeing all of the city’s building stock powered by renewable energies. The residential, commercial and institutional building sector represents 30% of the emissions of the Montreal community.
“It’s really a decisive gesture to accelerate the ecological transition”, argues in an interview Marie-Andrée Mauger, the person in charge of the ecological transition and the environment within the executive committee of the City of Montreal.
Renewable natural gas (RNG) will be part of the energies considered carbon neutral. Owners wishing to use it will have to commit to buying “blocks” of GNR for years. These blocks are mixed with what circulates throughout the Énergir network, but 100% of their carbon-neutral footprint is attributed to whoever pays the associated tariff.
Beyond the main principles announced on Tuesday, a more detailed draft regulation will be presented next fall ahead of a public consultation on the roadmap “Towards zero-emission buildings in Montreal”. Mayor Plante’s cabinet hopes to pass the new building by-law as early as next year.
To remain within its jurisdiction, the City of Montreal will not regulate heating systems, but the polluting emissions released into the atmosphere, in this case, CO2. It is based on rapidly expanding international case law, because the CO2 is not considered a pollutant in the traditional sense of its regulations.
For existing buildings, the imposition of gradually increasing performance thresholds will allow the achievement of carbon neutrality in 2040. Those responsible for large buildings were already required to disclose their emissions; as of 2023, those in small buildings will also have to tell municipal authorities whether the heating is done with natural gas or oil.
Various means
The City will encourage the use of different strategies to decarbonize the building stock in the most efficient way possible: the development of urban thermal networks in new neighborhoods, the use of air-source heat pumps, geothermal energy, energy storage, etc Carbon offsets will not be allowed to offset a building’s emissions.
The City will also use the support services of Hydro-Québec, in particular to make its own building stock “zero emissions” by 2030. The state-owned company will first carry out a diagnosis of the buildings belonging to the City, before proposing “tools” to help it decarbonize its buildings and improve their energy efficiency.
“We want to replace systems that run 100% on fossil fuels and electrify them,” explains Hydro-Québec spokesperson Maxence Huard-Lefebvre. In some cases, dual-energy systems with natural gas will be used to reduce consumption during peak demand. »
Mayor Plante’s office specifies that, in municipal buildings whose gas heating equipment is still at the start of its useful life, electric heat pumps will be installed in parallel. The two systems will operate in a dual-energy formula, with a clear preponderance of electricity. By 2030, only GNR will be used in these systems.
The Montreal initiative is part of a broader context. After dozens of North American cities, including New York, San Francisco and Vancouver, many municipalities in Quebec are considering banning natural gas in new construction on their territory, learned The duty last week.