Climate Change Report | Tax pollution and reduce solo driving

In a report to be unveiled on Wednesday, researchers invite the Quebec government to take strong action to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, even taxing the most polluting vehicles.

Gabriel Beland
The Press

“While achieving the legal objective of reducing GHG emissions by 37.5% by 2030 is now practically unattainable, it is not too late to deploy profound transformations that will place Quebec on a trajectory towards carbon neutrality in 2050,” write researchers from the Trottier Energy Institute, affiliated with Polytechnique Montréal.

The document titled Plan for carbon neutrality in Quebec: 2050 trajectories and proposals for short-term actions lists a series of measures that the government can put in place now to raise the bar.

Many of these actions affect the transport sector, which represents the largest source of emissions. However, the electrification of transport is, according to them, not a panacea.

Remember that the Quebec government wants to reach 1.6 million electric vehicles on its roads by 2030.

The authors note that the transport sector is taking a worrying tangent. Not only does the car fleet continue to grow, but the size of the vehicles is also increasing.

The authors therefore call on the government to:

• Introduce a bonus-malus aimed at accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles and discouraging the purchase of highly emitting vehicles;
• Deploy more persuasive measures to reduce solo driving and counter the increase in the car fleet;
• Accelerate the deployment of public transport infrastructure and improve the quality of services.

“There is no secret: if we want to reduce emissions from transport, it takes fewer vehicles and vehicles that consume less,” said Simon Langlois-Bertrand, researcher at the Institut de l’énergie Trottier, in an interview. and co-author of the report with Normand Mousseau.

The Quebec government has already committed to reducing the share of solo car travel by 20% in its Sustainable Mobility Plan. But a real strategy in this direction is long overdue.

Less and less time

In its plan for a green economy presented at the end of April, the Quebec government says it has identified and funded 51% of the actions that will make it possible to achieve its objectives by 2030.

Researchers at the Trottier Energy Institute wanted to identify new ways to reduce emissions with this report.

Because if the government does not press the accelerator, the projections are formal: “without additional measures other than a carbon price equivalent to $170/t in 2030, as forecast by the Government of Canada, emissions from Quebec only go down very slowly, i.e. 11% in 2030 and 17% in 2050 compared to their 2016 level”.

In the building sector, for example, they propose to prohibit from 2023 “fossil energy options for heating new buildings and for existing buildings changing energy source [y compris la biénergie] “.

“This measure implies the rejection of the Hydro-Québec – Énergir agreement, which aims to maintain an essential role for natural gas in the building sector,” write the researchers.

The report also invites Quebec to “establish a roadmap expressly aimed at the decarbonization of all major industrial processes with defined reduction horizons”.

“It seems far away, 2050, but what we see is that the time scale is not very, very long,” argues the researcher.