Grouped within the Quebec Council of Energy Efficiency Businesses (CQ3e), 24 companies, including building managers, construction firms, engineering firms and suppliers of electrical products, present a “Manifesto on the decarbonization of Quebec buildings”.
The recommendations of these companies aim to help Quebec reduce costs linked to electrification, maximize the potential for use and minimize environmental impacts. They are based on “three pillars”: reduction of consumption, judicious electrification and management of power demand.
“The three pillars are completely inseparable, we cannot simply decarbonize through electrification by replacing fossil fuel technology with electric technology, and think that that’s it”, because “after that, we contribute to another problem which is that of the possible lack of availability on the electricity network”, specified François Dussault, president of CQ3e.
Reduction of consumption
The CQ3e pointed out that Quebec consumes 3.5 times more energy per capita than the world average and that the province has the highest electricity consumption per capita in Canada.
According to the manifesto, reducing consumption involves recovering lost energy in buildings, whether residential, industrial, commercial or institutional, and several solutions exist.
For example, a lot of energy can be recovered from building air conditioning systems.
“When we air condition, we subtract energy from the air, so this energy that we remove, rather than simply expelling it outside, we can bring it back inside the building to something useful”, as “a sector of the building which needs to be heated”, explained Mr. Dussault.
He stressed that energy recovery is common, but it must be more common if Quebec wants to achieve carbon neutrality.
“We are not reinventing the wheel, we are simply saying that we must speed up the wheel. All these solutions must be encouraged and explained to owners and property managers… because time to achieve the (GHG reduction) targets is starting to run out. »
The manifesto also calls for improving building envelopes, i.e. walls, windows and roofs, by imposing in particular “minimum energy performance thresholds” and maximum GHG emission rates per building.
“Monitoring the (energy) performance of buildings should be a mandatory practice,” we can read in the manifesto of the 24 companies.
Judicious electrification
Increasing the number of heat pumps and considerably improving financial support for their installation, and particularly for geothermal heat pumps, is also part of the recommendations to optimize the use of energy, make economic gains and possibly achieve carbon neutrality, according to the group. businesses.
“In Quebec, we heat most of our residential or commercial buildings with the same technology as that of the toaster, because the electric baseboard is the equivalent, the image is a little strong, but it is the equivalent of a toaster, because we heat a filament,” indicated François Dussault.
“One kilowatt hour of electricity injected into an electric baseboard will give me one kilowatt hour of heating, but if we use the heat pump, one kilowatt hour at the inlet of the heat pump produces three, four and even five kilowatt hours useful for heating. It’s much more efficient, but it’s not widespread enough. The heat pump really needs to become the standard, and not the electric baseboard,” explained the president of the CQ3e.
The signatory companies of the manifesto request that “a favorable context be created for the importation or manufacturing in Quebec of certain heat pump technologies available elsewhere in the world, but absent from the Quebec market, for example ultra-high temperature heat pumps and air-air heat pumps.” -water for the residential sector”.
Power demand management
According to the Legault government, Hydro-Québec will have to produce significantly more electricity to meet demand in a context of energy transition.
And according to the 2022-2026 strategic plan tabled last year by Hydro-Québec, Quebec will need an additional 100 terawatt hours (TWh) of energy if the province wants to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In this context, the manifesto “recommends in particular to modify electricity tariffs and increase access to dynamic tariffs so that peak electricity costs are more closely linked to the peak of the network rather than to the peak of the building”.
Support the development of the renewable natural gas (RNG) sector for certain uses, stimulate the development of a Quebec sector in energy storage technologies for buildings and “develop the literacy and skills of real estate managers and entrepreneurs and professionals in the construction sector” on technologies, peak energy management and storage, are also part of the recommendations.
By publishing this manifesto, “we want to represent the voice of the actors on the ground, those who carry out the projects”, explained the president of the CQ3e.
These companies, he explained to The Canadian Press, “face technical feasibility issues and objective issues which are not always concomitant between the clients, the governments, the organizations which grant financial aid and energy distributors.
The manifesto is addressed to the government of Quebec, Hydro-Québec, Énergir, developers, builders and property managers.
“And since we are at the crossroads of all these stakeholders, we believe that it is important to bring our voice,” added François Dussault.
The buildings sector represents approximately 10% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Quebec and a little more than half of these GHGs come from fossil fuels such as fuel oil.
“Even in buildings that consume little fossil fuels, the potential of energy efficiency contributes to freeing up kilowatts and kilowatt-hours of electricity which become available for other sectors, other sectors. So we want to bring interest back to the building sector,” because “there is still a lot to do,” explained François Dussault.
The list of signatory companies includes Aedifica, Ainsworth, Akonovia, Ambioner, Bouthillette Parizeau, Ciet, C-Nergie, Dunsky, Econoler, Ecosystem, Energénia, Énergère, Enero solutions, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Krome, Lemay, Master, Nordexco, Pomerleau , Siemens, Sofiac, Trane and TST.